Beat Dark Souls without Andre the Blacksmith (accidentally killed him early, never turned back) — AMA
Previous post where I mentioned my smith was dead: https://www.reddit.com/r/darksoulsremastered/s/4fsvktBnRr
So this run went sideways fast. I accidentally hit Andre in the Undead Parish early on, and that was it — he aggroed on me permanently. Since I hadn't gotten any upgrades from him yet, he was basically gone as far as reinforcement went. No +15, no weapon scaling, nothing. My main blacksmith was dead to me for the rest of the game before I'd even gotten anything out of him.
I told myself I was never going to quit over it. Just adapted and kept pushing forward. My main weapon ended up being a Dragon Tooth +1, which is basically nothing by endgame standards, but I made it work. Was it harder? Yeah, definitely a bit more of a grind without a fully upgraded weapon — but that's Dark Souls. The challenge is the whole point, and honestly figuring out how to make do with what I had made the run more memorable than if I'd just followed the normal path.
Huge shout out to my Crystal Halberd though. Durability was hanging on by a thread the entire back half of the game, but that thing carried me. Hits like a truck. Once you get used to working around the lack of upgrades, the game actually starts to feel pretty manageable.
No Andre, no problem. GG.
AMA — happy to answer questions about the run.