Part 9: Shaded Woods

This turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, so I split it in two. I also happen to have "cheesed" the boss fight, so I included a non-cheesy version as a separate video.




The classy black set works with a lot of helmets. The Archdrake helm is one of them.
Gamepaly-wise we've switched to a sorcery build. We're gonna barely use any sorcery in this vid, though. Instead greatswords will have more of a chance to shine here. They are my favorite weapon type in the game. Most of them have one directional attack like a thrust or overhead swing in addition to the wide 180+ degree swings. Considering the bare utility this gives them they also do really really great damage.



Oi, here's some extra stuff and the boss gear we can make

Scorpioness Najka

There's gotta be at least one arachnid boss in every souls game. Demon's Souls had the Armor Spider, Dark Souls had Quelaag, which also happened to be half lady half spider. Almost like Najka who's half woman half scorpion.

Most of her attacks involve her two stingers in some fashion. but the most straight-forward thing she can do is to hit you with her spear/twin-blade/staff type thing. The first thing you notice as you enter her arena, though, will be that she can use magic. She uses a homing soul arrow which moves slow enough to easily dodge it. She also has her own bigger version of Homing Soul Mass, which seems to be designed in a way that doesn't fire all projectiles at once. It's probably supposed to prevent her from one-shotting you but it also makes dodging a little trickier. It's best to wait for the sound that plays when they actually fire and dodge then, rather than do what I did and just roll when you THINK it MIGHT fire. She can also fire a barrage of five projectiles but it's something she rarely does.

Now to her stingers, she has two attacks with which she will ram her stingers in the ground in front of her. She can either do it with both at the same time, or with a slight delay. She'll never only do it with one. Unless you do enough damage to one of them and it comes off. This is likely to happen at some point in your fight seeing as this is a great moment to actually attack her. Whenever she rams her stingers into the ground just wail on them or walk around and hit her.

When behind her she will also do two other attacks. One is a very wide sweep. In case you want to fell the tree in the corner of the arena this is probably the attack that will do it but it's not worth it (the items you get are a few flame butterlfies). When directly behind her she may also just raise her tails and smash it down on the ground several times

Finally, she can also just burrow into the ground whipping up dust wherever she currently is. Get away from where she currently is. You can run away from her like an idiot or you an just stand on the stone part which is located opposite of the entrance. You can then have her try to reach you and laugh at her puny attempts to dig through rock. Whenever she resurfaces that way you can hit her a couple times. Just don't let her catch you if you decide to not do that hide out on the rock for some reason, because that will do a lot of damage.

From her Husband, Tark, we learn that, along with him, she's been artificially created by someone. This is supposed to mirror Seath's story from the first game. Seath is a mutant dragon without scales who wanted to achieve immortality at all costs and part of his research consisted of sewing together various life-forms. Mostly serpentine ones (basically there's only two I can think of right now, the Man-Serpents and the crazy Cthulhu ladies.), seeing as he's a dragon and serpents are supposed to be imperfect dragons in the Lore of the first game. Though, that may be more specifically in reference to the primordial serpents who are seemingly absent from Dark Souls II. The crazy creature merger here seems to focus more on arachnids for some reason anyway. By the way, did I mention that Seath's "research" turned him insane? Not only him but also Logan, a powerful sorcerer who studied Seath's research.


Boss Weapons
Soul of the Scorpioness Najka.
Najka was born of the misdeeds of an ancient being, a frail soul from the beginning, that soon succumbed to madness.
Note: "Soul from the beginning who succumed to madness" seems to confirm that we're talking Seath here. Only we killed him in the first game. Whe took out his immortality McGuffin and then wrecked his body. It's very unlikely that he created Tark and Najka during or before Dark Souls, seeing as quite a long stretch of time has passed since that happened. We'll probably learn more later, though.

Give this soul to Straid to make...

Soul Shower

Magic Type: Sorcery
Requirements: 22 INT
Description: Causes some magic to rain down from above. Will not work in areas with low ceilings and be useless on single small enemies.

In-Game Description:
Hurls a huge soul mass which splits into smaller souls that rain from above.
Requires real talent and is difficult to handle. Only works in certain places, and against certain foes.


Item Descriptions
Old Sun Ring
An odd stone ring containing a fiery heat. Accumulates power as the user is harmed, then explodes damaging surrounding enemies while leaving it's wearer unscathed.
Our deeds will come back to us in some form or another, both good and bad
Note: One of the rings infamous in PvP because it triggers an explosion once enough damage is dealt to the wearer. This can potentially turn a fight around.

Clear Bluestone Ring
A ring that belonged to Fiorenza, the only truly moneyed merchant in Volgen. Shortens spell casting time.
Fiorenza used his riches to buy up trinkets of luxury and rare collectibles, but was ruined after years of excessive debauchery.

Red Tearstone Ring
Dark Souls II: A ring set with a rare tearstone.
Reacts when the wearer is in danger, temporarily increasing its wearer's physical attack power.
Caitha, goddess of tears, mourns the undeserving dead, shedding tears as red as blood. It is said that the stone set in this ring is one such tear.
Dark Souls: The rare gem called tearstone has the uncanny ability to sense imminent death.
This red tearstone from Carim boosts the attack of its wearer when in danger.

Ring of Life Protection
Dark Souls II: Divine ring that watches over one's life. Created by the students of Ivory Rhones,sage of Lindelt
It's great protective power will protect you
from any loss upon death, but after its power is spent, the ring will break.
Dark Souls: This mystical ring was created in a sacrificial rite of Velka, the Goddess of Sin. The magenta-shaded
ring is especially rare. Its wearer will lose nothing upon death, but the ring itself breaks.
Note: In Dark Souls the ring was called the Ring of Sacrifice and broke permanently after one use. In Dark Souls II you can repair the Ring of Life protection.

Ring of Soul Protection
Divine ring that watches over one's soul. Created by Ivory Rhones, sage of Lindelt.
Its great protective power will protect you from any loss upon death or petrification, but after its power is spent, the ring will break
Note: The ring can be repaired for a small fee by a blacksmith of your choice.

Sorcery: Homing Souls Mass
Dark Souls II: Multiple soul masses appear above the head. When fired, they home in on their target.
This spell was said to have been devised by a master sorcerer, but his name is long forgotten.
Dark Souls: Sorcery developed by Big Hat Logan: Homing soulmass. Life originates in the soul; no wonder the soulmass draws toward it. This sorcery is a window into seeker Logan's methods.

Gower's Ring of Protection (NG+ only)
The Ring of the assassin Gower, who has killed a half-dozen kings, and several distinguished clergymen.
Reduces damage taken from behind.
For an assassin. whose own life is always at stake, the greatest liability is one's exposed back.

Black Knight Halberd
Dark Souls II: Halberd wielded by knights who served the lord of light in a long-forgotten age.
Even after their flesh was charred by flame, they remained as strong as ever, and stood watch, challenging visitors to their land.
Dark Souls: Halberd of one of the black knights who wander Lordran. Used to face chaos demons.
The large motion that puts the weight of the body into the attack reflects the great size of their adversaries long ago.
This is one of the rare weapons.
Note Black Knights were Gwyn's closest Knights. Originally they were Silver Knights but their armor got scorched when fighting the Chaos Demons. Chaos, in Dark Souls, was closely linked to fire and pyromancy. Or more accurately somewhat of a perversion of it, seeing as Chaos was born of a failed attempt by the Witch of Izalith to create a new first flame which instead spawned chaos demons and mutated those who came in touch with it turning her into the most hated boss of Dark Souls: The Bed of Chaos. Don't worry, there's no Bed of Chaos in Dark Souls II.

Vengarl's Helm
Helmet worn by the ferocious Vengarl of Forossa. As Vengarl's helmet suggests, he was not unlike a mad beast on the battlefield.

The Rest of Vengarl's Set
Armor/Gloves/Boots of the ferocious Vengarl of Forossa. Vengarl was known as a raging, deadly warrior. Even Forossa's Lion Knights, a motley crew of rabid fighters, kept him at arm's length.
Note: We won't be finding the rest of his set until later. I'm including it here because it makes sense more now that we've just met Vengarl.A