Recent experiences:

Beat game with second character/build, a mage. Got moonlight greatsword from Seath's tail. Have to say if you are an int build you need to get it. I have it at +5 currently along with a +5 enchanted longsword. The longsword is technically 10 points more powerful, but that's deceptive as the moonlight sword hits with pure magic. There's no physical component to damage.

Basically it does ridiculous damage against anything that's not a golem.

Other things that are great: Crystal Homing Soulmass, and Fire Surge. The former just does a metric fuckton of damage and is nice because you cast it before engaging an enemy. The latter is probably the best DPS in the game for as long as it lasts... and can be used to cut off tails. It's what I used to do Seath's and it was just a couple seconds, less time than it would have taken to swing a sword three times, to 'cut' it off.

I since started a new character. Whose gimmick is/was using only caestus (and eventually golem's fist weapon) on both hands. Parrying with leather clad fist and then demolishing faces.

It actually went very well for awhile! Until about the time I got to just outside the gargoyle area. I bought my caestuses (caesti?) finally (after having been using an axe because barehanded does like 2 damage, but no shield), and found the damage pretty underwhelming. So I farmed souls/titanite shards from the balder knights and general undead, just going back to the fire whenever my flasks ran low. Got my primary caestus up to +5 and everything was going well. Was parrying/riposting baldur knights (even the rapier ones) like a boss, destroying everything in my path.

Then I found the primary weakness of a no shield style: being mobbed. The huge mob of weak enemies that are up by the channeler there just destroyed me. Over and over. Trying different strategies.

That character therefore has been shelved for awhile. I might go back to it eventually (possibly swallowing pride and doing shield/axe or shield/halberd for that one little section), but for now I'm done with it.

Other things not having a shield causes problems with: Anything that isn't humanoid or can't be parried.

Anyway, I took my newly learned totally awesome riposting abilities and decided to go ahead and NG+ my mage. And I decided to kill quelagg straight off to get access to the chaos covenant and the goodies within!

And... I learned something. Ringing the second bell before doing anything else causes Firekeeper related spoilerLautrec to escape imprisonment, head directly to firelink shrine, and murder the keeper POST HASTE.

That was kinda interesting to learn, but I'm also kinda sad 'cause I was going to summon him for gaping dragon with Solaire (if you rescue him you can do this).

Also: Getting summoned for gargoyle fight in NG+ is pretty hard, apparently. I've got my summon out while typing this stuff down and doing some other things.

Other things worth note! There are two endings! To get one you must unlock (but not necessarily enter) the darkwraith covenant. I suggest doing this at least once as it spells out a lot more story that makes things much more interesting and paints the world in much deeper shades of grey.

How to enter Darkwraith CovenantBasically, all you have to do is kill the four kings without talking to Frampt. There's two ways to do this: The first is to kill Ingvard (the red robed guy on top of the building in New Lando) and take the key to the seal from his corpse. This allows you to fight the 4 kings basically immediately upon starting the game. I could go do it now in my NG+ if I wanted! But I don't want because fuuuuuuck that shit!

Anyway! The other way to do it is to get the Lordvessel and then immediately go talk to Ingvard, because FUCK that Frampt guy, amirite? Ingvard will give you the key as per normal and you can fight them as per normal.

Upon killing the Four Kings the Covenant will be available in the Abyss and will tell you a lot more of the story.

Speaking of the Four Kings: I guess maybe spoilers involving summonable NPCs if you care about that kind of thing.When you get to the area with Moonlight Butterfly, be human and do not have a summoning sign out. Then go to the bottom of the stairs leading up to her fog gate. There will be a summon sign under some shrubs. It is for Witch Beatrice, who is amazing in the Moonlight Butterfly fight, and will basically solo that shit like a boss if you let her.

After summoning her there, however, she is summonable for the four kings. To find her, walk to the fog gate leading to the kings, do not enter it. Turn around. Walk back over the bridge, and then walk to the left of the door that heads back to where you just were. There will be a Darkwraith there. Kill that bitch. Summoning sign will be on the ground in the corner behind him.

She's a bit annoying at this point because she will try to kill ALL THE GHOSTS but she is not cursed and can't and this means you have to in order to get her to follow you even though the ones hovering above that area are a non-threat.

However, she's also really good DPS and, as we all know, DPS vs Kings = How to Win.

Man, you guys are fast, I'm still at my second playthrough. Just killed Nito. Then I got one-shotted by the Firesage Demon after that I went to kill the Stray Demon to train for the Firesage Demon. Both of those bosses are pretty bullshit if you try a ranged strategy. The best thing here is to grab its balls from behind and don't let go.

I finally found the Ember to upgrade my weapons to +15. Which is just what I'll do with my Zweihänder now. Killing a Capra Demon with one swing of your sword is really awesome after the bullshit bossfight which solely hinged on what you did in the first three seconds of the fight.

Grew to love the Zweihänder, got used to the slow attack speed and just learned to time my attacks properly. Since the overhead swing does some AOE stunning it's not to be underestimated and pretty much the only attack I use when meleeing.

I'm also one miracle away from having all miracles, spells, and pyromancies, and have almost all my weapon upgrade trophies done. Just missing magic, occult, crystal, and lightning, I think. And I have weapons of each up to +9/4, respectively. Just need slabs. Which I should be able to get through this play through so long as I remember to meet Siegmeyer at all his points and finish his quest.

Basically I should have every trophy except the 'get every weapon' one after this play, and should be able to get every weapon on one more play. Some demon souls can make three things (actually I think only Sif's), and last boss'sGwyn's is used for getting a weapon and a miracle.

I haven't actually played in a while thanks to school and other new video games distracting me. But anyway, just an extra note/emphasis about the Darkwraith Covenant: If you don't want to kill the red-robed guy in New Londo and want to get the Lordvessel for him to give you the key, you are not allowed to talk to Frampt AT ALL. Not even to sell him items. I know a guy who did this and it screwed him over. Also, if you're doing it on NG+, here's something that took me about 8 deaths against the Four Kings to find out (solo, since nobody had a goddamn summon sign outside that boss, and I didn't get Beatrice). Get in close, and stay close. Blocking an attack with an Eagle Shield +9 at close range took out a tiny chunk of stamina, while blocking that same attack from 3 or 4 steps back would break my guard. Likewise, simply getting hit by an attack at close range took off about 100 hp, compared to the roughly 600 damage from the same attack 3 steps back. Just make sure you block when a king charges up their AoE magic blast. Also, be prepared to lose some humanity.

Ingward or what his name is gave me the key even though I talked to Frampt after acquiring the Lordvessel. As far as I know you're only not allowed to talk to Frampt once you have the Lordvessel if you want to join the Darkwraith Covenant. You can still fight the four kings.

Yeah, you have to fight the four kings no matter what, but the darkwraith thing won't happen if you talk to Frampt at all.

Was on the receiving end of Gravelord Covenant today. It totally works. And is painful.

What it does is makes black phantom duplicates of some of the enemies in the area that are much much much harder. I'm in NG+ with 28 vit and 238 physical defense vs thrust. Got cursed, black phantom version of polearm silver knight one shotted me. That is to say it did over 1034 hp in damage. Took me awhile to figure out what it even was... about until someone else managed to invade and kill the guy and I got the message that he was gone and all the phantomy ones disappeared.

You also can't invade anyone else while cursed (got cursed in the middle of invading via dark moon ring, and it cancelled it).

I had this happen in my first run through Sen's. The sign was in the room you summon Tarkus. Yeah that was fun......

trolololol
 

I'm just happy to know about it/that it works.

Means gravelord might be my desired covenant when I'm done fucking around.

I know that it works, because I've used it on 4 separate occasions and been invaded by someone on two of those occasions. The thing is, there are a lot of unknown details. When I activate my Eye of Death, is it only the area in which I activated it affected by it? What if there isn't anybody in that area that can be affected by it (either level difference, or not in the same server group clusterfuck thing)? What happens when someone dies? Since allegedly I gain half their souls but I've yet to hear someone experience that.

Like, if the game told you upon activating an Eye of Death "You infected the worlds of PLAYER NAME X 3" and told you when one of your black phantom minions killed someone then everything would be fine. Instead it's all kind of vague and you just have to hope that it's working. Like I would rather get a "failed to invade" message when using a Darkwraith stone than deal with the uncertainty of the Gravelord Covenant, especially considering Eye of Deaths are consumables and rather limited unless you're lucky and good at repelling invaders.

edit-- what would be really cool is if after you activated it you could see black ghost silouhettes of the black phantom monsters you summoned into other worlds, so you know where your minions are, and if someone is fighting them.