I bought the Season Pass for Dark Souls III ages ago, but now that both DLC packs are out it’s time to give them a go.  Naturally enough, Ashes of Ariandel came first.

So let’s do this!

YAY SNOW! So pretty.  Hey, big dudes to fight.  With spears.  And a lot of wolves.  Suddenly Tiffany, the Ashen One, Linker of the Flame and Slayer of Beasts is a sad girl in snow.

Round two.  More cautious now.  Dudes, wolves, no problem, this is DID THAT TREE JUST LOOK AT ME OH GOD I’M ON FIRE.

Round three!  Hidden Body + Great Heavy Soul Arrow makes short work of everything including the evil trees.  More dudes, some falling off things, some bigger dudes with more wolves and I Wonder What’s In That Tower?

(There was a learning experience in the tower.  For the sake of brevity I will omit several more learning experiences)

OK, cool church thing.  Guy outside tells me to go in and say hi.  Naturally I go and spend all of my souls before coming back.  Turns out it wasn’t a trap!  The chick inside isn’t very friendly, though, but at least she doesn’t try to kill me.

Leave.  Lots of comments right at the end of the bridge.  Succumb to curiosity and look up what they mean.  Ooooh, secrets!

(More learning experiences.)

OK, it’s a guy with a couple of wolves.  Hey, now it’s a guy with one BIG wolf.  Wait, we’re done?  That was a boss?  Well, dang, if that’s as hard as this is going to get this is going to be a piece of cake!

(In which I wander through most of the rest of the DLC, dying often.)

OK, we’re back in the cathedral and it’s time for the final boss fight.  I die.  That was expected.  A couple more deaths, though, and I feel like I’m starting to get it down.

Wife wanders in and asks me what I’m doing.  I explain that I’m playing something called Ashes of Ariandel.  She immediately asks me if I didn’t mean Arendelle.  I groan.  I go back to fighting the boss.  Boss kills me again.  Wife tells me that I should “let it go.”

…I probably deserved that.

Finally I kill the boss, who immediately respawns as TWO bosses.  This kills me a few more times.

Finally I give in and use the NPC summon near the fog gate, and this makes the two boss part super trivial.  Woo!  Time for loot!

…or, maybe not. Time for a third stage.  Well, how hard can OW

OW

Well, that was a learning experience for sure, and I have the first couple of phases down so how bad could this be?

A few more runs and I regret asking that question.  I pull out the old white summon stone and sunbro it up a couple of times just so I can reassure myself that this boss CAN be killed.

At this point, I’m glowering at the screen, the clock has long since ticked past 3 AM, and I’m done being Ms. Nice Ember.  I summon a couple of sunbros of my very own, we all trot down into the fog gate, and Elsa takes a long-earned dirt nap.

Next up – off to the Ringed City!