Okay, discovered the next boss, giant fire spider witch lady

I uh. have no idea how to tackle this one. gonna have to try different things. what sort of equipment should I have now?

@Felthry Hit and run tactics are your best friend for Quelaag. Never stay directly in front of her, watch for lava, and never stay close to her for too long

Also you can start farming large titanite shards from the leech monsters here so you can get some decent amount of armor upgrades now assuming you have the smithboxes

@SCP1471 we do have those but we don't have everything upgraded to +6 yet and you need a smith to do the +5 to +6 one

@Felthry There's a shortcut that leads right back up to firelink shrine from the bottom of Blighttown. It's a bit of a walk but there's a section near the bonfire down there that leads up through new londo ruins

Also there's an NPC you can summon for help. You need to kill her first since she invades in the swamp if you're human, but she's SUPER tanky and can help keep Quelaag's attention off of ya

@SCP1471 right now we need to get another humanity so we can kindle the fire near the boss fight

also something triggered an event and firelink shrine's fire has gone out and someone killed the fire keeper

@Felthry Oh god THAT asshole. Yeah, welcome to dark souls. You're not gonna be able to use firelink's bonfire until well into a zone called Anor Londo

@SCP1471 is that soon?

@Felthry Once you kill quelaag you get access to a place called Sen's Fortress and that place leads into Anor Londo. So... soon-ish?

@SCP1471 I thought I was going after a bell in blighttown x.x

@Felthry yeah! the bell opens that huge gate near the blacksmith dude

@SCP1471 the one where onion guy is forlornly waiting for it to open?

@Felthry Yup! So assuming you killed the gargoyles and rang the first bell, the second bell will open that huge gate

@SCP1471 anyway what you're saying is we should be set to beat quellag or however it's spelled (quelaag? quelagg? there's a double letter somewhere in there) now, with our current equipment? of course i'd like to get ten estus flask uses though first, that means kindling that fire

also does this mean I won't be able to upgrade the estus flask until after this fight because I found a fire keeper soul and want to upgrade it

@Felthry Yeah if you beat Maneater Mildred and summon her for the fight you should be good

Oh there's another firekeeper once you get to the start of Anor Londo who can upgrade your flasks. Also a secret fire keeper right after Quelaag who can do that too. (look for illusory walls in the area after Quelaag but before the bonfire right after her)

@SCP1471 how do you summon someone for a fight

@Felthry You need to be human. There'll be a white glowing sign on the ground right before Quelaag's fog wall

@SCP1471 oh great, so I need _another_ unit of humanity

humanity is hard to come by!

@Felthry yeah its not easy unfortunately. If you can't revive to human for the fight then just try a few times with hit and run tactics. Stay at her sides, never in front or directly behind, and if her human-like body slumps forward then get away from her

@SCP1471 well I immediately got some humanity from a random spidery thingy, kindled the fire, killed mildred, and now I have a ton of sould, enough to level up twice

I don't know what to level though. Strength? Vitality? Resistance? Maybe boost my rather lacking intelligence stat? that last one might be a waste though I dunno

@Felthry Resistance is a garbage stat, don't bother putting points in it. And you're already levelling up Faith so getting Intelligence wouldn't help much either. Honestly i'd say either strength or vitality depending on if you need more damage or life more

@SCP1471 yeah faith is actually currently my highest stat at 18, I leveled it up so I could use homeward. maybe I'll put a point each in strenght and dexterity? still using astora's short sword as a main weapon; I've not encountered any enemies where the longsword +6 does more damage, at least not yet, but the dexterity would be nice for the bow I use when I need ranged damage

@Felthry yeah get some more other stuff, either attack stats (str, dex) or durability (vit, end). in dark souls its actually a really bad idea to balance your build cuz being a jack of all trades in this game usually ends up meaning you suck everywhere

@SCP1471 okay so, fighting quelag, how do I survive the "kill everything" attack

@SCP1471 that is, sometimes she just outputs a massive red haze that does enormous damage and just instantly kills me with nothing I can do about it