Dark Souls – How to Cheese Bosses with a Bow

The air is full of the wonderful sounds and smells of fall: kids walking home from school, leaves changing colors, and even the occasional late barbecue (or is that a pile of burning leaves).  This fall there are also rumors that Dark Souls 2 (March 14 2014 release date) will be even harder and more hardcore than is predecessor.  Dark Souls indeed is a difficult but fair game.  Ingenious players have beaten the game in a number of different ways to prove that with enough practice, the game can be beaten even while handcuffing your character with an additional self-imposed challenge.

I myself had to try a bow-only and no-shield walkthrough.  As a non-bow user (or even a fan of bows), my expectations were mixed: surely the challenge would be high but the level of enjoyment might be low.  How wrong I was!  The bow turns out to be fun, flexible and requires a different level of strategies and tactics than melee weapons or spells.  My biggest surprise is that a bow is actually easier to use as a primary weapon if you don’t use a shield!

Another draw for bow users is cheese.  Cheese in videogames usually refers to a repetitive technique that allows you to dispatch a tough boss or enemy with a minimum of risk. The bow is the ultimate cheese weapon.  My walkthough is cheese-free but it doesn’t mean that I did not nibble off that giant cheese plate offered by a powerful bow with long range plus the Fog and Slumbering Dragoncrest Rings.  Cheesing is tricky and fun.  It can be repetitive, not enjoyable to watch and borderline cheating to some.  But there is joy to be had the first time you master an obscure cheese technique, like dispatching Manus or Siff from outside their boss areas.

So I present to you the following:

A cheese-free full walkthrough for lactose intolerant bow users and a giant plate of cheese for those that don’t care.  Each one is yummy thanks to the main ingredient, a simple bow.