Artorias of the DLC

Goddamn Sanctuary Guardian.

I was rocking 30k souls and 6 humanity on my SL45 Dex/Int build and this thing is pounding me into oblivion. It's fast, It has heavy lightning range, it hits 5-6 times in a row and pretty breaks all stability and poise. It leaps, it flies, it shoots. What the hell? How do I beat it? Should I leave and go somewhere else? I'm afraid I'll die and never recover my power. I know, I know, not the way to play, but still. I need to beat this damned thing.

You need to make your peace with coming into that fight with nothing to lose. Two things that are worth noting: One, unlike Artorias himself, he doesn't have a persistent chain attack, meaning that you don't have to be lucky to survive on rolling alone. At SL1 I found an upgraded gargoyle shield (+13) was sufficient to soak the main hits along with a steel ring and a lightning ring, and then in terms of defense it was just a question of learning when to initiate rolls in order to get out of the heavy charge and the heavy lightning blasts that were one shots (or, for that matter, the secondary multi lightning that can chain into a kill). If you have higher strength than sl1 then you can go with the silver knight shield or, ideally, the eagle shield in order to completely brush off his main attacks.
Offensively, I embraced my trusty light crossbow +15, thus ensuring that I wouldn't have to close the distance to hurt him and that my stamina expenditure would be minimal. With a level above 1 I would have had many effective melee choices that are quick, but it turned out to be really efficient for this boss. Pyro is great for team kills, but I find the risk in exposure (because you have to close the distance) to be less than worthwhile solo.

30k souls and 6 humanity is a trivial amount. You're one boss away from access to guaranteed infinite humanity drops, and 30k shouldn't make you blink, either.

Depending on which platform you are on, though, I'm sure one of us could give you a hand.

Once more into the breach my friends. Let's do this thing.

And It was 300 K souls, my bad. It wasn't so much a storage thing as a highscore, as I was seeing how much souls I could accumulate without losing it.

And Done!

I forgot I needed to be really really patient and learn all its tells and which ones are the openings I need to take it out. I got complacent after running through all the other bosses and having their movesets ingrained in my muscle memory after months of beating them.

Man, THIS GAME!

I absolutely loved both the Sanctuary Guardian and the Artorias fights. Then I discovered Chained Prisoner can be a bit of a bastard too if you're not prepared. And goddamnit, Artorias and Sif made me want to join the Forest Covenant forever.

I didn't realize chained prisoner was a boss or even a hard battle. I saw a guy in a doorway running after me and I peppered him with soul lances and crystal soul mass. He didn't even make it out of the hallway.

He's not hard at all if you're not meleeing him. Your strikes bounce off him and make you lose your timing a bit. Also, arrows didn't do much damage to him and he had one charge attack I didn't spot that got me. But I wouldn't call him a boss or even a mini-boss, however he did get me after I had gone through the rest of Oolacile Township without a scratch. I only have two slots for pyro on this character and pyro doesn't hurt him. A Black Knight Halberd does, though.

Yeah... the chained prisoner respawns, so he's not even a mini-boss. He's just a rather hard (and completely unique) regular enemy.

Soloed SG, in NG+ no less, for the first time ever. Havel's shield and taking my time. I'm not sure that the lightning ring does anything to mitigate his attacks.

Just downed Manus. I went in to the expansion with no information on it and avoided consulting wikis for information. Despite this, I nailed every boss on the first try--although I did have a number of non-boss deaths due to mistakes.

Since I'm hardly the best player out there (don't ask how long it took for me to down the law firm), I'm guessing that I'm overleveled and overgeared. Havel's armor and the Greatshield of Artorias let me tank every attack they hit me with, and the +15 large club took things down quickly.

I feel even more like a heel for killing Sif now. :/

Try doing Sif after the DLC sometime. :/

My solution is to join the Forest Covenant and just stay in it forever and ever.

Ummm. you do know that Hawk Ring and a bow/crossbow takes care of Manus? I discovered it quite by chance but since I _WAS_ playing an archer I didn't feel very bad about it.

You don't even need the Hawk Ring, although I'm sure it's much less tedious if you have it. The one time I used that method was with just the Light Crossbow and bolts that weren't quite reaching him before they started to drop so they dealt crappy damage. Also I didn't completely kill him that way, just got him down to a tiny sliver of health, so the actual fight had a really cool sudden death feel to it as he immediately cast the spell that sets up all the dark balls to converge on you from the outside and I had to race to him and hit him with a Combustion before they hit me.

I missed Kalameet on my first pass through. He's a right bastard, isn't he? I racked up four deaths before calling it a night. Figures that there would be something in here to humble me!

I've also discovered what's waiting for me in the Forest Sanctuary now. We'll see if I'm masochistic enough to tackle that later. One, I can deal with...

Well, I tried to record myself fighting the Sanctuary Guardian to show you guys who've been having trouble with him how it's done, but Fraps quit recording just as the fight was starting. It took me two tries this time around, because the first time I misjudged the range of the Large Club, which I'm not that familiar with yet. The second time I didn't make that mistake, and I killed him in three hits. That's exactly what you want to do: get in his face, hit him hard and fast and take him down without giving him a chance to try too much of his bullshit.

You may not be picking up what Hammett is laying down. You can shoot Manus before the fight even starts, from the other side of the fog door. You can kill him that way if you want, in complete safety. It's a cheesy method for sure, but it's there for you in a pinch.

As you saw in our fight, I only got lightly grazed once by the vertical magic. I don't think there's anywhere safer than right next to him for magic, not least because you can get in 2-3 solid hits. That makes his melee the key concern, and there it's just a matter (for me) of using <25% and the steel ring to make it as survivable as possible in case I fuck up my blocking and strafing.

I had trouble with Manus only in so far as I started learning his patterns. Once I got that, it was only a matter to several attempts to get it down right. Basically, I hit him with the same strat LK gave me for Artorias. Stable shield, keep close and combust. You do have to watch out for a couple of things though. When he roars, back the fuck off, cos he'll fury into a flurry of blows that will eat your stamina greatly.

Also, the silver pendant helps with dark magic. Just activate it the moment he casts any of his spells and it'll shrug it off.

I can't use the dpad to switch stuff in the heat of the moment either, I pretty much always back away to give myself a second or two and do it preemptively. At least the PS3 dpad means I very rarely accidentally switch multiple things.

Actually. I leave it on the pendant since that one is more time dependent. Switching to estes means at least I can recover from a shield fuck up during the heal animation. And I pretty much leave only 3 things in the inventory at the fight. Green Blossom, Pendent and Flask.

Long time lurker, first time poster, amazingly stupid question.

How the heck do I get the broken pendant to access the dlc?

I rescued dusk from the golem and went hunting for the extra golem in the duke's archive. It's not there. Systematically wipe out everything in the archive. No pendant. Checked the chest of game breaking drops at the firelink shrine. Went back, summoned dusk as a merchant. Loaded up on humanity and greed ring. There's still no extra golem, nor do the present one (top of elevator after first bonfire in duke's archive) drops anything.

After nearly finishing the game, this is where I'm about to permanently rage quit.

Any mocking suggestions are appreciated.

Typically I make sure I have Dusk's gear (ie that I've reloaded after summoning her) and that I've gone through all of her "talk" options, and then the golem drops the pendant. It is just the one crystal golem you describe, who didn't drop anything before but will now.

Oh, and it is an auto-drop. Item find (ring, humanity) has no effect on it. Also, to make transit easier when testing this: remember homeward bones work to get you back to the last bonfire you sat down at. That means you can sit at the Archives bonfire, bonfire warp to the Undead Parish, and then run to Dusk etc, and simply homeward bone back to the Archives bonfire so long as you don't sit down at any others.

First of all, thanks for this.

Unfortunately, it still doesn't work. I've talked with her until she repeats. I bought a random spell from her. I've quit and reloaded the game a couple of times. And the crystal golem drops ... a piece of blue titanite. Son of a bitch!

Okay, could you elaborate on having Dusk's 'gear'. Is there some sort of macguffin I need before I kill the golem for the other macguffin?

I think that emasculating baddies with my lightning battle-axe is a proper way to recover from my cough / jet lag (5 week business trip in Beijing/Seoul is brutal), but this is just getting frustrating even by Dark Souls standards.

There is only one blue golem in the Duke's Archive. It is in the first room after you take the lift up, outside where you meed the first channeler. I daresay if it is not there at all it is not recognizing the DLC and you may have other problems. Is this PC or console?

Did you go down to the end of that cave where you killed the golden golem and pick up her gear? That is what LK means by that I think.

So here's my checklist for the DLC, in order of accessibility.
1-Kill the hydra. Reload.
2-Free Dusk from Golem. Reload.
3-Summon Dusk, speak until conversation is exhausted. Reload.
4-Run back to where the Golem was, pick up Dusk's equipment off the corpse (incidentally including an excellent piece of head equipment)
5-Place lordvessel.
6-Go to Duke's, kill Golem, pick up pendant.
7-Take pendant back to Dusk's Golem area, and go to DLC.

I assume you've done all of these things, which is a bit of a puzzle. You mentioned that you travel...is this on PC or another platform? I ask because sometimes with console versions if the DLC is registered to another region from the disc proper, you will get the patch parts of the DLC (the free stuff, like the Golem in Duke's itself with no pendant and the change to the Eagle shield and so on) but not unlock the new content.

If by some chance you're on PC, we can probably troubleshoot from there. To be clear, the DLC that you buy only has the unlock code; the guts of the experience are all in the patch and are simply closed off by the absence of pendant if you have no unlock code. It sounds like you have the patch part but not the DLC unlock taking effect.

Okay,

I hadn't gone back to the corpse after exhausting the conversation. I've now gone back and put on the fetching antiquated outfit. Killed the golem (again), and it doesn't drop anything (again). I placed the lordvessel a while back, and have put in 3/4 of the lord souls.

All of my dark souls gaming have been on the ps3 in the united states. I purchased the (used) disk here. Maybe it's from a different region.

I'm sorry to hear that, and I doubt the (US) disc is different from your (USA PSN Store account)-purchased DLC. It seems to me like re-downloading the DLC and patch after deleting them off your drive are the only avenues left open to you.

Eh, what can you do.

Thanks again for your help.

That crystal golem never dropped anything for me other than the broken pendant. You're killing the one in the Duke's Archive, right before the Channeler, correct?

If I remember correctly, it's not too hard to make the pendant drop... I don't think you need to pick up Dusk's armor, or buy any spells from her, or anything special like that. I think you just need to free her from the golem, then summon her. (Of course, it doesn't hurt to pick up her sweet, sweet armor either.)

Assuming that you're killing the correct golem, the behaviour you're describing is identical to what I encountered before I purchased the DLC. You might want to double check that you have, in fact, purchased the DLC. It requires an additional purchase separate from the Dark Souls disk.