Iudex Gundyr First Boss Down
I picked up the steam deck last night for the first time in a while and resumed the initial (secondary?) graveyard in Dark Souls 3.
Last time, I'd died several times to this first boss, only once getting him as far as his second phase.
This time, for reasons that are still unclear, I succeeded.
I started with several rounds of this graveyard route, initially to see whether there were more fire pots to be had, but no — those seem to have been looted from a corpse rather than dropped by the nearby enemy. Also, this let me refamiliarise myself somewhat with the controls.
In I went, and promptly died to Gundyr.
Second time in, I recovered my dropped souls, and must have panic rolled a bit less or at slightly better times, been mildly less greedy in making attacks, and healed in what could have been an attack window. Only healed once, apparently toward the end of his first phase.
Suddenly he was in his second phase, and I had no idea what was going on. I spammed R1/R2, fully expecting my character to die. It came down to the final moment when I'm sure one hit would have killed her, but instead I miraculously got a hit in and he was down.
Found the shrine, haven't figured out how to unlock it, went exploring and got uchi'd by a skilled swordsman. More adventures await!