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— Merchant Hag Melentia

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Ever really wonder how you're going to just get by with such limited uses of your Estus Flask? Fortunately for the cowardly or the simply incompetent, the requirement for easing what ails you is rather simple and the only major thing you have to do is make your way through the game's first Area, The Forest of Fallen Giants.

I recommend using this guide to get you through this area if you're unfamiliar, which ensures that you get everything and that everything goes according to plan.

The Forest of Fallen Giants Walkthrough [darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com]

The only real requirement now from that page is that you've defeated The Last Giant, which will then cause Merchant Hag Melentia to move to the game's main hub, Majula. This is important because from here on in, for 300 souls per this particular item, Merchant Hag Melentia will sell you an infinite supply of Lifegems.

It's important to remember that when you need to stock up on these life-giving implements that you don't wait until you're out to refuel on them, and simply either:

• Restock when you die, or
  
• Restock when you warp back to Majula for whatever reasons.

The less of these you have to buy, the lesser expenses that are incurred to your Soul budget, which means you can then always have a cheap resource for 99 Lifegems at all times once you clear The Last Giant, which sets you up for the rest of your journey when utilizing this method.

As an aside, the usage of Lifegems are much more forgiving when it comes to engaging enemies than is the Estus Flask for obvious reasons: Lifegems allow you to remain mobile while you're engaged with the enemy. It makes the difference between an attack missing you by mere inches or you getting hit, or you getting hit with the tip of a blade versus a sweet spot that's found closer to the hilt of the blade, or vice-versa. This is life-saving.

OF NOTE: Buy Lenigrast's Key from her. Use it to open the workshop of Blacksmith Lenigrast at Majula. This is important for a litany of reasons but most important and relevant to this guide, for the sake of making necessary repairs to keep the game as broken as possible.
Moving right along:

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— Felkin, The Outcast

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I've written in-depth about the importance of having a wider, infinite array of healing items that keep you mobile, standing and on the go, but what if that doesn't quite cut it? What if you do end up dying, anyway? Maybe you have the Ring of Binding, which only limits H.P. reduction when you die (become Hollow) by 25%, and stops further H.P. reduction at 75% of your maximum health pool instead of the normal 50%. That's great. But that's not what we want. Our job is to nullify dying completely, and that's where this comes in.

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"Divine ring that watches over one's life. Created by the students of Ivory Rhones, sage of Lindelt It's great protective power will protect you from any loss upon death, but after its power is spent, the ring will break."

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— FextraLife's Dark Souls II Wiki : The Ring of Life Protection. [darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com]

...But the ring never exactly tells you that you can't fix the ring, and indeed you can thanks to a certain unfriendly blacksmith in Majula named Lenigrast, for only 14,000 souls per repairing. Which, for the cost of dying without consequence and having an enormous health pool thanks to having 99 Lifegems, is nothing at all.

Having this ring serves two functions at once for an extremely low cost:

• It completely nullifies the disasters that come with dying, namely the maximum H.P. loss that comes with the game's Hollowing mechanic, and
  
• This allows you to keep your souls upon death, which is excellent since those kept souls will easily cover your repair costs to get you back on the road to success.

In the grand scheme of things, this one's a no-brainer. Your only real concerns are of getting to the Huntsman's Copse where he's stationed just before the Undead Refuge bonfire at said Copse, and getting the 8 Faith and 8 Intelligence points on your character in order to speak with him so that he'll become a merchant to you. But how hard could that be?

Let's move onto our last topic.

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— Captain Drummond

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So now we have near-infinite health at a rate so cheap it's insane.
Now we have the Ring of Life Protection which pretty much keeps our whole grift of our game going.
At this point, the game is thoroughly subverted (and yet still challenging thankfully - but not overly so now), and we've come to the next topic of our guide and what I'd consider to be inherently important to the topic of breaking Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin: Farming the Giant Lord.

But this requires quite the amount of set-up, and if you want to do it correctly you're going to need a few things done for the maximum payoff of getting hundreds of thousands of souls at once, all easily repeatable to boost your levels so that you can have an all-around, extremely strong character:

• You need the Ashen Mist Heart. That's not up for debate, you strictly need it to access the Memory of Jeigh where within is the Giant Lord in the first place. In order to get this, you need to have gotten to The Dragon Shrine, and you need to have conversed with The Ancient Dragon there. Don't kill it, just converse with it. Unless you like suffering.
  
• You also need this artifact (again, The Ashen Mist Heart) to access the other Giant Memory realms, specifically that of the Memory of Orro and the Memory of Vammar that you may come into contact with Benhart of Jugo or Captain Drummond respectively, that either one (but not both) can be summoned into the Memory of Jeigh to help you with the 'arduous' battle ahead. Exhaust their dialogues in whichever memory they appear in:
  
  1. Benhart of Jugo, my preferred choice of combat buddy, can be found in The Memory of Orro.
     
  2. Captain Drummond, however, can be found in The Memory of Vammar. Exhaust the dialogues of each.
• Not up for discussion, you need The King's Ring. which you'll find at the end of The Undead Crypt, to open a strange door that leads to the bonfire at The Forest of Fallen Giants. This bonfire is called The Place Unbeknownst, for which you will also need:
  
• One (1) Bonfire Ascetic, which after you defeat the Lord of the Bonfire (The Giant Lord) you shall burn at this aforementioned bonfire, and once you've retrieved the Bonfire Ascetic waiting for you as soon as you get into the Memory of Jeigh, you're still up a Bonfire Ascetic which will allow you to continue farming The Giant Lord.

If you've sat all of this up, make your way down to The Place Unbeknownst and its accompanying bonfire, going into the nearby tree and engaging in battle with The Giant Lord. Be sure to wear Soul-augmenting items, such as:

• Covetous Silver Serpent Ring,
  
• The Nahr Alma Robes,
  
• The Tseldora Robes,
  
• The Tseldora Trousers,
  
• The Jester Gloves,

and anything else you can think of that would confer the benefits of netting you more Souls.

Doing all of this allows you to farm well over 300,000 Souls, which easily translates to getting so many levels in that you can multi-class with extreme ease. As of right now, my character is Lv. 490, and I've no intention of stopping there. Be warned though, that this will continuously elevate you through the tiers of PvP and you'll find it more and more difficult to be summoned and even invaded. If you do not care about this at all, feel free to go with power.

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With doing all of these things, you pretty much end up breaking the game of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin.
What this doesn't do is make you impossible to kill, but what it should do is most certainly strengthen your resolve toward finishing the game or maybe even just inspiring you to push the bar higher and higher and gain strength beyond what's considered normal in this game, strength beyond the basic PvP range.

I hope that this guide rekindles an interest for the people who found the game's difficulty too offputting or maybe for people who just wanted to find another way to play the game themselves. At the very least, it was fun putting this guide together and remembering how I got through all of it without so much worry and stress so that I could actually learn to then enjoy the game.

I suck at closing statements so, have fun in Drangleic, don't die, become the next true monarch.

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