Dark Souls: Jackpot! Wait, was I really supposed to find this?

Sometimes when you’re playing D&D — so I’ve been told — the dungeonmaster feels sorry for you because you’re doing so poorly. So maybe you kill a kobold and find, hey, it was carrying a Vorpal Blade. I’m pretty sure that’s what just happened to me in Dark Souls.

After the jump, only pity can explain why I found what I found

Playing Dark Souls is like ironing. You smooth out an area, then you give it another pass and smooth out a little farther. And then you smooth out the farther area and go a little farther. That’s what progress is like in Dark Souls.

My theory for what I just found is that I’ve been smoothing out the same area for so long, the game took pity on me. I was going up a tower for the umpteenth time to kill the same old archer I’ve learned to kill so he doesn’t shoot me in the back as I advance. But this time, I found something I’d never seen before. I can’t really describe it very well because I freaked out and swung my axe wildly at it. I’m not used to seeing things I haven’t seen before. The reason I didn’t run away instead is because it was small. It resembled an onion, but it was the size of a pumpkin. And I think it had some kind of claw. I don’t know. But once I’d killed it by connecting with a few whacks — I don’t think it ever tried to attack me back, although it did try to run away — it dropped something. When I looted it, I discovered ten large souls of something-or-other.

These are like bags on money. When you “use” them, they deposit several souls into your bank. Souls are what you use to buy stuff and level up. They’re the equivalent of gold and experience points. Most of them give me 200 souls. I’ve found a few that give me 400. Each one of these ten I just found gave me 1000 souls. So that’s 10,000 souls in one whack. All by basically spazzing out on a walking vegetable.

Dark Souls taketh away, and Dark Souls giveth.

Up next: the last Dark Souls game diary entry
(Click here for the previous Dark Souls entry)