Struggling hard on 5-2. Spent a couple hours and calling it a night now instead of staying up until the late A.M. banging my head against this wall and getting frustrated (well more than already frustrated for not progressing for last several hours and losing another 10-20k souls).
At first I thought thanks to the regen items I have I can almost mitigate the poison so I can just shortcut through the swamp each part.
Also I got the meat cleaver and it kicks ass, I can one hit take out most normal enemies, cool. Works especially great against NPC black phantoms since the 3rd hit flips them back. I just need more END because it eats through it fast, but starting to put more in slowly.
But in 5-2 the large trolls are screwing me up. Especially if I get in the water and can't roll I'm basically dead because I can't dodge and they have too much HP to kill in one stamina bar worth of swipes. I keep getting the two giant trolls in front of the fog door on the wooden bridge. The last time I got there I tried just running past them and they chased me into the little village area past it and I had to keep moving only to get ganked by like a group of the little guys all stabbing me at once and killing me. Definitely seems like I can run slowly through the swamp for 10 mins in the first 2 sections and get to that spot with the 2 large trolls, but I probably have to take it slowly and try to kill them and slowly move forward from that point on.
Oh and not sure it matters but I'm basically having to run around naked because the meat cleaver is 10 weight and putting me over 50% with any plate armor. Just wearing black leather armor set, so something but not very durable.
I know I can do it, it's just really tedious having to sludge through the 2 areas of swamp for 10 mins each try. Least favorite area in the game so far. I didn't even remember this level from the original, probably erased it from my mind to stop the pain.
