bugsonglass said:

buddy while you're getting your foot-rub, do you have any advice on how to get past the dragon in 1-4?  i get fried every time i try just to run through, thief's ring or not

Observe his patterns.  He sprays left to right, and then right to left, and then left to right, and so on.  If you stand on the left side, wait for him to do a left to right blast and start running the second there is room to run up the left side without getting hit.  If you are wearing heavy armor, I suggest unequipping it so that you can run faster and have more endurance.  You should be fine.

bugsonglass said:

rag how can i make sure i get valley of defilement to pure white so selen vinland appears.

Or you try this.

beat king allant and beat the game.  i bet you're all impressed!!

i don't like how i cheesed some of the hardest bosses in the game, but what can i say, it's all part of it, i didn't cheat.  both king allant and king dorian were killed by repeated poison cloud... it was like they chain-smoked themselves to death and they didn't even know it (since i was wearing my stealthy thief's ring - best item in the game bar none).

i also got the old monk's headband.  this is so cool.  you actually get summoned by the old monk to be the level's boss (as a black phantom)  in someone else's game.  and if you kill them you get the monk's headband which is a pretty cool item for spell-casters.  by the way this, was the one and only time i was in someone else's game as a black phantom.  and i never invaded, i was summoned

there are a few things i didn't get to do in this playthrough which i wanted to do but i didn't get around to:

1. Kill everything.  I didn't have the patience to kill the blue dragon by magic since i'd have to wait for my MP gauge to refill many times (or waste a lot of precious spice).  I didn't kill the 4 giant trolls in the poison swamp.  i didn't develop a bow in the game so i couldn't snipe them, and they got me every time i got near and tried firestorm
2. I didn't do all the special events.  For some reason Selen Vinland never appeared in the swamp to give me the vinland quest and i didn't know what more to do to get pure white tendency (no gg your suggestions did not help at all ).  Didn't find that weapon to show Scirvir.  I never met Mephistopheles either.  
3. I didn't find most black phantom NPCs.  i never had pure black tendency in any of the worlds for some reason.  The only one I really wanted was Black Scirvir because I really want/meed that talisman.  The reason i never had a chance to do all the black phantom NPC stuff is that i missed the halloween event (all the world's in everybody's game were made pure black tendency for a few days over halloween) ... because somebody made me be pumpkin boy in animal crossing!
4. I didn't bother too much with cool weapons and shields and other gear.  there's a lot of fun to be had with forging new and special weapons but since i played as pretty much a pure sorcerer, i didn't bother.  i used my trusted crescent falchion from the moment i got it till the end (actually i am still using it)

onto new game plus.  the game starts over and the difficulty goes up quite a bit (almost back to square one).  you get to keep all your weapons and gear as well as the spells and miracles you learned!  if i do go on to do a full second playthrough i will aim to get any spells i'm missing (unless there are two still, which need the same demon) and i will invest some leveling into Faith, so i can be using miracles as well.  also maybe dexterity, since a bow would be great help in many cases.  I will also obviously try and do all of what i listed above

aspro, if you want to start the game, i would be happy to start a new character as well in case you would like to blue phantom etc (players need to be of comparable level to join each other's game)

bugsonglass said:

1. king dorian were killed by repeated poison cloud...
2. it was like they chain-smoked themselves to death
3. i was wearing my stealthy thief's ring
4. i also got the old monk's headband.

This game sounds AWESOME

bugsonglass said:

gamingeek said:

I dont think a broken 360 will bring in enough cash to buy a PS3.

 nah, that was before i read what your bro decided.  i just remembered back when you said that there was a chance you would offload your 360 and game collection to him and put what he gave you for that towards a ps3, but i understand that won't be happening.

At the moment I have a dvd player on the brink of death and blu-ray players are cheap enough to get, about £100.

I'm trying to balance this versus getting a PS3 with Blu-ray but its still out of my price range. PS3 slim + at least two games is how much? Plus then I actually have to start buying Blu-ray movies

More likely is that I buy a cheap blu-ray player and play normal dvds on it. How sad.