Originally Posted by Pessimeister 
Thanks for this little prompt because at first I was sure that I had, but after a little bit of extra vertical exploration, realised I'd missed some hidden chests. One contained a morning-star,
Haha, that was actually a coincidence.
And it even fits with the extra vertical exploration
.
What I had in mind concerns
Spoiler
the bird. More specific/bigger spoiler would be that in this case you need to
The reason why mentioning this occurred to me was that in certain way this ties to exploring Anor Londo (not Dukeīs Archives). But maybe youīve already discovered this bowl of coolness.
Originally Posted by Pessimeister
wonderfully grim
Itīs probably even grimmer when one
Spoiler
gets all the way down there before progressing the plot far enough.
I imagine that, at least on first playthrough, getting all the way up must be a pain when one is unfortunate enough to rest in ToG early
.
Originally Posted by Pessimeister
the game does have a knack for throwing up some nicely obscure details.
Indeed. Sometimes itīs not even details, like in the case of the whole "DLC"
.
Also,
Originally Posted by Pessimeister
Mission accomplished. 
(somehow Iīve missed the post previously)
Originally Posted by Pessimeister
Easily my most intense boss-fight thus far. Interesting to see what else the game has in store…as progress implies the difficulty will yet rise even further?
I wouldnīt say the difficulty rises even further, but some encounters may fall roughly into the same ballpark as O&S. To some degree it certainly depends on build and/or how one is used to play.
For example, on my first playthrough I had a lot of problems getting to that chest behind O&S, but somehow I defeated the DLCīs final boss on my first try.
On second playthrough I had quite major problems with DLCīs final boss, even though I wrecked O&S on first try (and in hollow form).
Speaking of DLC, itīs excellent when it comes to bosses.
3 of my 6 Dark Soulsī favourite bosses dwell in there (and all 3 are pretty intense)
.
My 3 "vanilla" favs, btw, are
And when it comes to traversing areas, Iīd say that after Anor Londo the difficulty does not go any further either, though the game remains fairly steady at keeping players on their toes.