The first NPC you meet,
in the Ringed City DLC,
is an old Pilgrim woman
who casts her gaze over the Dreg Heap.
she talks about how she feels like a god,
looking over this grand sight
of kingdoms and townships
come together.
She then goes on to say;
"Far below,
there's a deep, dark hole carved out of a tree".
From time to time, voices brim
in the depths of the cavity,
even now".
"Mutterings of the very demon that Prince Lorian spoke of,
I'm sure".
"Horrible sounds,
of an afflicted thing
yet cursing men".
And if you remember,
The Demon Prince was said to have been slain
by Prince Lorian,
eternally scorching his greatsword with fire.
Turns out
he didn't finish the job,
and to finish it for him,
we have to go down.
The first thing that you encounter on your way down
are these
so-called,
Murkmen.
You can find, and use their hand scythes and their staffs,
and some are even possessed by Soul Dregs,
which
are said to have a grave likeness
to the human form.
And it makes sense that these creatures
of the deep would be down here,
of course,
because Human Dregs are supposed to
sink to the lowest depths imaginable,
and the entire theme of this DLC appears to be
descent.
Descent down to that Demon Prince
the old woman mentions,
and
down to the Ringed City,
even beyond that.
But to get there,
you're going to have to go
past these angels,
who,
I reckon, are going to be responsible for most of your
deaths in the DLC.
In the room I was playing this DLC,
everywhere I looked around the rooms,
someone was dying to one of these angels.
They're utterly relentless,
and
especially so in
the second section of this area which, unfortunately,
isn't shown in the footage that your seeing,
and I think it's the best area.
The second section is named Earthen Peak,
confirming theories that the
windmills we saw in the previous trailer,
were from there.
I can also confirm,
it includes a poison swamp,
Lothric Theives,
the poisonous bug things,
and
a female desert pyromancer,
and of course,
an angel.
Here though,
the angel makes this entire stage
into this huge stealth section.
It's kind of like the Dragon God, in Demon's Souls,
if you played that,
where you have to hide,
and you have to wait for it's attention to
wander
before you can continue.
So you run from cover to cover,
avoiding this angel's glare,
and hoping it gets distracted by another enemy
and starts shooting them instead.
Really fun.
There's never really been a stealth
component to this extent in Souls,
and I didn't like it
until I decided to be
really really patient,
and
then
it paid off, I progressed,
and
I figured it out,
so...
Interestingly,
uh...
those bolts of light that
the angel is shooting at you;
if you look closely it actually disperses into feathers,
white feathers that are akin
to those that you see in the Lothric royal bloodline.
We talk about that in this video,
so that's definitely significant, from a lore point of view.
And
additionally,
and I'm not going to
give too much away here,
but these angels are linked to The Pilgrims of Londor,
which
raises some serious lore implications.
So it might take you a little while to get
past Earthen Peak and find the first boss.
But when you do find it, it's probably
going to take you even longer to beat it
because this fight really was quite tough.
No one else, I could see, could beat it.
And
I only beat it because I left the DLC,
I speedran to Rosaria,
and I respec'd my character
to get rid of all its faith points,
and
put it all into vigor.
My character was soul level 125,
which is really high.
This stuff is endgame content for sure.
This fight has three phases.
So first you fight a Crimson Bat,
which is a simple
single bat,
that teaches you the boss's moveset.
And then,
when you get The Crimson Bat to fifty percent health,
it summons a second boss called
The Demon from Below.
And The Demon from Below looks virtually identical to
The Crimson Bat,
except that its fire is more purple than red
So The Demon from Below will get in
your face, and
the weak Crimson Bat will back off,
and
it mostly spams this ranged explosion attack that
you can see here.
So this is phase two,
and in phase two,
you obviously have a choice of which
bat to kill first.
And
I think,
whichever one you kill,
affects the third phase of the fight.
So
if you kill the weakened Crimson Bat first,
then The Demon from Below
will turn into The Demon Prince,
who summons these floating chaos orbs that spam long-range
fireballs at you
throughout the fight.
However,
if you kill the full health
Demon from Below first, in phase two,
then The Crimson Bat will turn into The Demon
Prince as well,
except,
instead of the chaos orbs,
this Demon Prince
has the long-ranged laser beam you see in the footage here.
And,
in my opinion,
the laser beam is way easier to deal with than the orbs.
It actually leaves him open a majority of the time.
And,
it's a way for the developers to make phase three easier on you
to reward you for killing the full
health demon in phase two,
as opposed to the weakened demon in phase two.
I hope that makes sense,
but
regardless
of what you choose,
when The Demon Prince is dead,
you get The Soul of a Demon Prince,
and it reads;
"The Demon Prince,
after his defeat to Lorian,
retreated beneath the earth
and lost the memory of the flame that burned within him,
marking the end of demonkind".
And further on,
we find a small envoy banner,
and it's just like the little ringed banner you get from Emma
after you kill Vordt.
It reads;
"This small banner was used by envoys of Great Lord Gwyn
in days of yore.
Face the ringed cliff
and hold banner high
to summon facilitators of transport.
For the pygmies,
who took the dark soul,
the Great Lord gifted the Ringed City,
an isolated place at world's end,
and
he gifted his beloved youngest daughter,
promising her that he would come for her
when the day came".
So,
the dark soul,
surely that's what lies deep below
in the Ringed City.
And surely,
that's our goal
And it's also the goal of others,
I found:
the Herald Knights,
who became these bloated abyss creatures.
According to their weaponry and their armor,
they also sought the dark soul,
but they sank into the dark with the rest of their legion:
their gear becoming
corroded
and their forms becoming all
bloated.
And there's another
I can think of
who seeks the dark soul:
Gael.
Now, he was featured in some of the
promotional material
and
now
we know that's no coincidence.
Hell, you can even summon him for this
boss fight.
And
you know what else I found
in the middle of The Earthen Peak swamp?
I found a loincloth
that looks
identical
to the one that Gael wears.
So,
somewhere,
without undergarments,
Gael is travelling towards the dark soul with us,
I think.
So,
huh
that's
pretty significant from a lore point of view.
And
I'm not gonna talk about that here, I'm going to talk
about it in my notes that
are
below this video in the description,
because there is a ton of stuff that I have
Intentionally
left out of this video,
um...
and you can read all those notes in the
description instead.
I'll explain why in a minute.
But in those notes,
uh...
you can read about
how
I met the character
Lapp,
who is an amnesiac knight
who has forgotten who he is,
and he's looking for the purging monument
to cure his hollowing.
I wrote down all of his dialogue
and I wrote down all of the dialogue for the
Pilgrim lady at the start of the DLC.
Thank god I can touch-type,
it's so hard to keep up.
Uhm...
There's also a list of all the weapons I found,
including a pyromancy
melee attack
that slaps people around with a
giant fan of fire.
And I've also included
the secret
to killing the angels,
so,
spoiler alert.
And I've also written down what I think that could
mean for the story.
And I've written down a lot more.
And I would talk about this stuff,
but I hate making videos that
just
show the same footage over and over again,
and
this is the only footage I have
and this stuff is really interesting and
I don't really want to talk about it
behind this same loop that you've been
watching for like
what
10 minutes now?
So I think this is the best way to get it
across to you.
But uhm...
these are the kind of notes I make
available for beacon patrons,
but
today
I'm going to share it with everyone
because
I need to share this early
access, I really want to,
uhm...
although,
so many spoilers here.
Honestly.
I think that's too many spoilers at this
point
uhm...
in my notes.
So,
be careful when you read them.
You should know what you're getting into.
Oh,
and
these next bits of footage weren't in
the section I was able to play.
So first,
a knight with a brand upon his chest,
has this
sword moveset
that reminds me of
the Soul of Cinder
and
Gwyn's combo,
and he has an Archdragon Shield
which
I think implies that these knights
would have been around for the war against the dragons.
So this city must be really old
if that's true.
Next, there's this long bridge sequence,
with this firing squad of knights
that look a little bit like they have the
Ruin Sentinel Helm from Dark Souls 2.
And
there's the Gray
Judicator Giant
in the background
who is possibly summoning them.
So please,
leave a like
if this stuff was interesting.
Took a while to get it all written down.
And thank you for watching.