The Return of The Ringed City DLC

Yesterday morning I finally returned to my Ringed City DLC blind playthrough videos after a two month break. The first thing I encountered was a dragon boss, Darkeater Midir. I died. I decided to go a different direction. :) I ran into Judicator Argo and his entourage of Dark Spirits. It took a couple of tries but I got through that ordeal to a woman whom I assumed to be Princess Filianore.

I had been planning to get back to DS3 for a long time, but Monday was an appropriate day to return to The Ringed City because it was also the day of the total solar eclipse passing across the continental United States. If you’ve gotten to a certain point in Dark Souls III you’ll know that a total eclipse dominates the sky above Lothric Castle, as seen in the featured image above. Synergy!

I was not in the path of totality but I experienced about 90% totality which was certainly enough to notice a huge change in the environment for an hour. From the pictures I took it is almost impossible to see anything different, but it was unusually dark for 2:30 PM on a sunny day. Not the dark you would associate with a cloudy day, or dawn, or dusk. Shadows were still well-defined as if it was full daylight. It’s just that the light was dim. The only metaphor I could think of at the time is that it looked like the batteries on the sun had worn down.

And now, low-tech eclipse pictures! These two images were taken with my phone stuck in a pinhole eclipse viewer box.

2:10 PM 2:55 PM

By far the most interesting and unexpected thing I saw was this pattern of eclipse-shaped light slivers (presumably) cast through the leaves in the trees onto the ground. It was surreal and a little bit disorienting to look at because my brain had no point of reference for it.

Like a bunch of giant fingernail clippings left on the ground!

And my tweet thread about the eclipse for posterity.

Ha! You thought this was going to be a post about games!