r/DarkSouls2

I know i rolled abit early but come on thats ridiculous!

Looks like the same trees and the world that was ruled by dragons in ds1 opening cutscene

Finally achieved my lifelong dream of getting those two rings.

Did i finally achieve “git gud”, what percentage of the population does this put me at and do i get bragging rights or nah ?

Anybody play ds2 on mac m-series by running windows in parallels ? I have issue which looks like this, so any ideas how to fix that ?

I don't know if anybody felt the same as me but out of all the souls game dark souls 2 feels the most satisfying or catharsis.

For example the attacking animation with lets say great club, the noises and everything feels very satisfactory although the clunkiness can be annoying sometimes.

And the best fights fume knight,sir alonne and looking glass knight are the epitome of it.

What do you think?

The spider never try to attack you when you have a torch in hand, they try to flee from you instead, even with the boss fight, as long as you have a torch in hand only the boss wil try to stomp you, the little one won't try a damn thing

DS2's intro is partly symbolic, metaphorical. Yet the ladle battlemaiden in Things Betwixt says the place is a link between Drangleic and the outer world, a "limbo". This implies that Drangleic has really disappeared from the outer world and the scene where we enter it from a whirlpool is quite literal.

The dark, the abyss and later the deep are all generally associated with water, additionally some ghosts emerge from the whirlpool reminiscent of New Londo and also of Nashandra's cursing abilities. I believe by diving into the lake we literally enter the abyss. Or something close to it.

Going by Felkin's words: "This land…lies closest to the Dark… Th-that is…that is why I came here." He is a renowned hexer so you'd expect him to know what he is talking about.

When we wake up in Things Betwixt we are standing on some kind of monument with no visible path leading us there. This monument is oddly similar to other smaller ones spread thoughout Drangleic that allow us to delve into the abyss and progress in the Pilgrims of the Dark covenant. These are dimensional portals.

The pillars of these smaller monuments depict a writhing mass of humans, clearly dark imagery. And the other place where we find this imagery is the Shrine of Amana. In the Shrine of Amana there is also this fire altar that we can pray to that restores our humanity if we have run out of effigies. This altar has the shape of two four-armed creatures standing side by side, clearly reminiscent of the Darklurker.

There is a good theory that Darklurker is Amana and that he inherited the soul of the Four Kings. Consider the angel imagery in Shrine of Amana, the clothing of Amana priestesses being really similar to that of the Darklurker and also the Darklurker possessing a completely white/light soul that can be transmuted into Lifedrain Patch. Lifedrain was the signature ability of the Four Kings.

Dark creatures such as Throne Watchers, Fume Knight or Nashandra drop darker souls, this is not the case with the Darklurker, despite dwelling in the abyss. The Four Kings were also abyssal creatures who had a white soul since it was a fragment of Gwyn's soul. By the time of DS2 the other Lords have also reincarnated through the "Old Ones' Souls" that can be obtained by stoking the fire with bonfire ascetics.

Not only that, the Shrine of Amana also connects with Nito through the MilfaNito and the Grave Wardens, and with Izalith through the Demon of Song and the huge tree covering the place. This was a place built by the gods to appease the undead and keep them under control, possibly guiding them to the Undead Crypt. Its reasonable then to assume that the last head of the Shrine, Amana, is also serving the gods' interests, much like his humanity restoring altar suggests.

So this brings us to the Pilgrims of the Dark covenant, led by Grandahl. Grandahl dresses suspiciously similar to the sealers of New Londo and he is clearly an abyss supporter. He is a successor of the third sealer that was helping Lautrec in DS1, if he isnt that sealer himself. He only grants us the highest rank in his covenant after killing the Darklurker, implying that the Darklurker was somehow interfering with the spread of the abyss.

Indeed, for the Darklurker to appear we have to light different sconces spread through each of the abyssal levels. Why? As Vendrick puts it "Shadow is not cast, but born of fire. And, the brighter the flame, the deeper the shadow." So by lightning fires inside the abyss, we are strengthening it and angering the Darklurker, who eventually attacks us. Not too different from when we light a torch in the Undead Crypt and Agdayne goes apeshit.

If that was not enough proof of the Darklurker intentions, then consider that all the portals to the abyss remain open after killing him, no longer needing to sacrifice effigies to access them. Ironic, that the reincarnation of the Four Kings is now helping the gods under Gwyn's influence, while the last of the sealers of New Londo is still antagonizing them by trying to spread the abyss.

That begs the question: Why did Drangleic disappear only after Vendrick went into hiding? The Shrine of Amana precedes Vendrick's rule, and Drangleic was still connected to the outside world when Vendrick conquered it. To solve this we have to answer another question: What is uniquely pulling the land into the abyss in the first place? The answer is the same as in DS1: Manus.

Nashandra and her sisters are reincarnations of different fragments of Manus. Grandahl tells us that the abyss has split into smaller pieces, this is because its source has also divided. Its not that these abyssal creatures have suddenly stopped corrupting their surroundings, rather the Darklurker has been preventing them from doing so.

Nadalia, Elana and Alsanna were all part of old kingdoms that fell, predating Drangleic by centuries and causing Amana to become the Darklurker. Only after Vendrick's disappearance did Nashandra also grow unchecked and started tipping the balance in favour of the abyss, probably due to the power she leeched off her husband. That is what caused the kingdom to vanish and turned it into a "walled off land", as the firekeeper from the intro cinematic puts it.

Lastly I'd want to point out to some DS3 item descriptions that have confused many people over the years, the one from the Dark Sigil and the one from the Firekeeper Soul:

>A black gaping hole in the flesh that resembles the brand of an Undead.
The darkness of humanity seeps from this bottomless pitch-back hole, the gap filled by the accumulation of the curse.
This Dark Sigil will never heal, but there is a tale told of a Fire Keeper who returned from the Abyss, and brought great comfort to a bearer of the curse.

Indeed, the undead brand that the protagonist carries on their shoulder in DS2 is none other than the Dark Sigil, the dark soul seeping out after the Darksign has weakened enough.

And the Firekeeper who returned from the abyss and "brought comfort to a bearer of the curse" is of course Shanalotte.

>Soul of a Fire Keeper who is said to have returned from the Abyss.
This Fire Keeper preserves the bonfire, and serves its champion. She is said to have soothed and accepted the dark sigil, which has tainted her soul.
And yet, her soul will one day embed itself in the bosom another Fire Keeper.

Going by the Dark Sigil description there is only one Firekeeper who returned from the abyss, a special event that was recounted as a tale. This is the soul of Shanalotte, who managed to escape from Drangleic like she wanted and eventually embraced the dark side of her own humanity over her other draconic half.

As you see, there are a lot connections between the three games everywhere.

And that is all. If you want to know more about the overarching story of the games, feel free to check out this other post of mine where I explain the most general aspects in a simple and straight-forward manner.

TLDR: Drangleic is slowly sinking into the abyss due to Manus' influence. The Darklurker is trying to keep that from happening, thus causing a pocket dimension or "limbo" to form between the surface world and the abyss. Literally "Things Betwixt". Yet another example of stagnation and space-time fuckery.

I have played and completed Elden Ring and DS1 before, but this seems a bit much, to ask me not to die in a souls game or be punished harder. I guess I'll just do a 50% HP run?