When Should You Fight Pinwheel?

I don't need this video, I fought pinwheel 10 years ago. That's also when you should've fought pinwheel.

I once started an NG+ playthrough after first-trying all the endgame bosses in NG, went straight to pinwheel with my fully upgraded zweihander and died. Worst moment in my gaming career.

“It’s not satisfying to watch an NPC kill a boss for you.” I would disagree, but I am too busy watching Tarkus solo the Iron Golem for the dozenth time. It never gets old.

I usually do Pinwheel first... Nowhere else in any souls game makes me think, "oh thank goodness, I'm in the boss room, so now I'm safe."

If I remember correctly, Pinwheel is actually a tragedy of localization. His Japanese name is San'ninbaori which is close to a type of classic comedy sketch where two performers dress up as one dude in a trench coat. I think his name literally translates into something like 3 dudes in a coat. So Japanese players will immediately get the joke that the boss is supposed to be. After the pain in the ass that is vanilla blind catacombs, to come up to the daunting boss fog after the wheel skeletons from hell is a big deal and the player probably is theorizing what kind of monstrosity could be here. Then they cross the fog and the boss is a literal punchline, that relatively competent players can beat at a very low soul level. The catacombs was the setup for the ultimate joke. And tragically because many other cultures don’t have good comparisons to the cultural performance joke, the rest of the world doesn’t get this top tier laugh that was intended for the game. I sometimes wonder how many other gags are in other Fromsoft games that don’t have direct translations.

Fighting Pinwheel immediately after Capra Demon makes way more sense when you consider this is usually about the time that Reah's questine is progressed to Petrus being returned to Firelink and informing you she's stuck in Tomb of the Giants

Further evidence that you're intended to do Pinwheel right after Capra can be found in the cleric interactions. After you fight the Capra Demon, Petrus's companions will show up, and eventually go into the Catacombs to search for the Rite of Kindling. Then Petrus will return alone. If you haven't fought the Gaping Dragon by this point, there will be a special interaction with Lautrec where you can pay him to reveal that Petrus fled and left Reah to die in the Catacombs. Lautrec and Petrus will then both encourage you to kill Reah for her humanity. The game is practically begging you to go down into the Catacombs at this point: you've been told that a powerful item called "kindling" is down there (which you might realize lets you kindle bonfires above 10 flasks if you've been paying attention), and it also has an NPC who you can either rescue or kill for a bunch of humanity. More evidence still can be found with the way divine weapons are introduced. Andre tells you that Divine weapons are helpful if you're struggling in the Catacombs, and encourages you to seek out the divine blacksmith in the Darkroot Garden. Finding this ember is your main reward for fighting the Moonlight Butterfly. Domnhall of Zena also tells you about this after you've bought a few things from him, and references Kindling as well. Keep in mind that Domnhall first appears at the entrance to Blighttown, right outside that path to the Gaping Dragon's arena. This suggests to me that the devs intended players to do the Catacombs around the same time as the Gaping Dragon (which also checks out healthwise, since Pinwheel has more health than Capra but less than the Gaping Dragon). They probably expected players to return to Firelink after fighting Capra, interact with Petrus's group, and then return there a couple times while figuring out the Depths. Then either right after or right before fighting the Dragon, the player would get curious about Reah and Kindling, make use of Andre and Domnhall's tips about divine weapons (and fight the Moonlight Butterfly if they hadn't already), and go into the Catacombs, fight Pinwheel, and save Reah. The player would then be much better equipped for upper Blighttown, since they would have a lot of Estus available to deal with the sprawling level and toxic darts.

My biggest shame was dying to pinwheel first time i ever got to him. I did 1 r2. Laughed at how much damage my zwei did and completely forgot to heal.

Before I ever played Dark Souls, I knew the game was infamous for its difficulty. When I played Dark Souls for the first time, I wanted to complete the game without any form of guidance, and so when I first arrived at Firelink Shrine, I somehow missed the stairway up to Undead Burg, and ended up slogging my way through the graveyard and the catacombs. I thought that the tanky, regenerating skeletons were just supposed to be like that - a part of the game's trademark difficulty. I pressed on until I reached Pinwheel at the bottom of the catacombs. I had a hell of a time fighting him at my low character level, and low level of experience with the game itself - he was the second boss I ever fought, after all. We had a legendary struggle, and I lost several times, having to get all the way back down to him through the catacombs. This was on the Xbox version, before the Vamos bonfire was added in the remaster. After finally defeating him, I ventured even further into the Tomb of Giants, and felt even more out of my element with the extremely strong giant skeletons and oppressive darkness. I continued ever forward, and imagine my surprise when, after all that effort, I came across the golden fog leading to Nito which I could not pass. Finally, I decided to look it up, and I realized that I had played through an entire endgame area immediately after starting the game. The whole time, I thought it was just supposed to be that hard. That's why I've always been amused at how people perceive Pinwheel to be the weakest boss in the game. Because for me, Pinwheel represents an incredibly difficult milestone that I overcame on my first playthrough. I think that going through that entire ordeal gave me a good perspective on the difficulty of the game, because after all of that, I was prepared to handle anything it threw at me.

Horror story: A friend of mine in his first playthrough went aaaall the way down through the catacombs and the tomb of the giants BEFORE UNDEAD BURG. Just imagine. Imagine enduring underleveled not only the reviving skeletons but the horrors of the pitch black vertical giant dog infested dungeon for the first time and reaching that golden fog wall. You message your friends. "You have to go back." (No warp without vessel) "...I have to go back." He went back. Walking, climbing and crawling his way back to firelink. Good ending: at least he got dropped the black glaive. May be OP for a first timer but fuck me he EARNED it

Paladin Leeroy was the original LetMeSoloHer. Bring your homie Leeroy and watch him crush Pinwheel.

Theres a shortcut back to firelink shrine immediately after Capra that connects to the sewer merchant and undead burg entrance. Its placed just before the depths door. So yes, you naturally want to visit Firelink after Capra and could be encouraged by Rhea to head down.

I usually fight him after the Asylum Demon and before Gwyn, Lord of Cinder

Pinwheel is so easy you can fight him as soon as you can get to lordran without much difficulty. It's getting to pinwheel that's the challenge. You can get the rite of kindling early but unless your last bonfire is firelink and you use a homeward bone, you are stuck climbing back out of the catacombs and that's a pain in the ass. So it's risk vs reward. There's plenty of each.

Salty Spitoon: Fight Pinwheel immediately after arriving in Firelink Weenie Hut Juniors: Fight Pinwheel after Moonlight Butterfly Super Weenie Hut Juniors: Fight Pinwheel after Lordvessel

Narratively, you should get to the catacombs early enough to interact with Patches there. But just late enough to take Andre's suggestion of entering with a holy weapon to perma kill skeletons without the stress of their necromancers reviving them. So pretty much after the moonlight butterfly

you video actually made me realize pinwheel's difficulty kinda makes sense if you take into account a beginner player: let's say this player is exploring lower burg, goes into capra, dies, returns to that area and decides to keep going forward without fighting capra, they'll find the locked door and then the shortcut to Firelink. If they keep trying to beat capra in that level range, they might take the Firelink shortcut to level up, as its probably the safest route to take, if they did that they might go "might as well try to explore the graveyard again, now that I'm stronger" Obviously not the most optmial play to veterans but for someone going in blind it might work out that way. STILL, I really think pinwheel should be stronger to act as a wall for newer players to avoid having them getting stuck in tomb of the giants

For stuff like "What order" I always tend to look at how many souls the boss gives when they die as some kind of hint of when the character, well, at least gets the most out of the boss for their level? In which case, Pinwheel is number 5 on the list: Asylum Demon 2,000 Taurus Demon 3,000 Capra Demon 6,000 Bell Gargoyles 10,000 Moonlight Butterfly 10,000 Pinwheel 15,000 Which perfectly matches your last playthrough, and the logic you got out from the music order! :D This logic does break down, because for example Iron Golem gives 40k but Priscilla only gives 30k, and you Have to kill the Golem before you can go after her.. If anyone's curious, immediately after Pinwheel come the four bosses that are all worth 20k souls: Stray Demon 20,000 Chaos Witch Quelaag 20,000 Ceaseless Discharge 20,000 Demon Firesage 20,000 Fun fact: After 10k souls worth, Pinwheel and Gaping Dragon are the only two bosses that aren't worth an even 10s of thousands of souls, Pinwheel being worth 15k and Gaping Dragon 25k. Is this a secret deep lore implication?? No.

As someone who is playing Dark Souls for the first time and made the mistake of brute forcing my way into the Catacombs right out of the Undead Asylum, I really can't say I regret the agony of fighting Pinwheel and escaping because those 15,000 souls he drops and the Zweihander in the graveyard made me an absolute beast

The end of the catacombs being a boss fight in a giant coffin is great.