With the second Bell of Awakening rung, Daniel (@dungeondive) declares this instalment of A Normal Guy Plays Dark Souls a cleanup episode, and the first job is one he nearly forgot: curling into a ball in the crow’s nest above Firelink and waiting, a beat longer than feels comfortable, to be carried back to the Undead Asylum. Before leaving he checks on the Crestfallen Warrior, audibly starting to go hollow, and meets Kingseeker Frampt, whose teeth Daniel files under nightmare fuel and whose appetite is the game’s only way to sell items.
The Asylum has changed. The floor is trapped, Oscar has lost his mind and his roll speed, and the trap catches Daniel as squarely as it catches Oscar. The Stray Demon falls for a Titanite Slab, one of roughly three guaranteed in the whole game, a Black Knight in a narrow corridor gives up its greatsword, and the starting cell yields the Peculiar Doll. Daniel lingers on that one: the Painted World was among the first levels FromSoftware built, feels like Demon’s Souls, and ranks among his favourites.
Then Darkroot Garden: a bonfire behind an illusory wall, a slowly walking tree hiding the path to the Wolf Ring, stone knights casting Tranquil Walk of Peace, a Moonlight Butterfly who will not land, and a petrified blacksmith atop a tower, one of the places Daniel fell in love with the game. Every death so far, he notes, has been to gravity. Sen’s Fortress is next.
Daniel calls Sen’s Fortress the game’s great dungeon crawl: a prototypical dungeon, all traps and tension. Which video game dungeon most deserves a faithful tabletop translation, and has anyone managed it?