Did Patches fall?

If you know which way to look, there are a lot of vistas you can overlook from Firelink. One such vista is Blighttown. There's a convenient perch that sticks out from the ruins in Firelink, just on the way to the cemetery, right by the spot where Patches squats once he's come up from the Tomb of Giants. If you look down from there you can see the huge buttresses that end, at their base, in the Blighttown swamps.

Coincidentally... on one of those buttresses, there is a body.

On this body, you pick up the Eagle shield.

Patches's shield.

Directly bellow where he stands, when he's in Firelink.



I actually need to go back to that lookout point and see if those buttresses are the same ones you pick up the shield from, because I'm piecing this together from memory and, for the life of me, I'm having a hard time trying to figure out if the orientation of Blighttown from Firelink is correct! It could just be another swamp area... Also, the body could be someone else's, and Patches just picked up his shield from there. But by the way other loot works in this game (the set of Thorns on "Kirk's body" in Quelaag's domain; or the set of Favor on "Lautrec's body" in S&O's room, for example) it makes more sense to think of it as Patches's body.

Also, I just like the irony of Patches falling to his death, and we get his shield from his body. Seems fitting. By the way, he's alive and in Firelink on my most recent playthrough... Just for the hell of it I'm going to kick him down next time I play!

That's an awesome observation. My first thought is "hell yes" he fell. My second thought is that I need to look now. 8')

Time is off at times.

^That's right, I forgot you can see the Great Hollow from there too. I can picture it now, though, and it does make me think that those buttresses are the very ones you make your way on--that's Btown down there!

Yeah, DkS uses these 'gorgeous views' to make the game feel open world.

Maybe the shield acted like a hang-glider as he was falling, which is how his body ended so far from where he fell. I'll have a proper look at the area tomorrow... after I kick Patches down!

I was so hoping this was true... maybe he fell from somewhere else?

The entrance to Quelaag's domain is almost directly below the perch beside Patches. The eagle shield should be on the second or third pillar along the left burg wall (when viewed from firelink).
Here's an overview of the full map: https://2img.net/h/oi45.tinypic.com/mj4op3.jpg

Looks like all those times patches made people fall are coming back to haunt him...

Update!

So I went back there today and kicked Patches down, like I said I would!



That buttress is definitely looking good. I just don't remember if you pick the shield up from the furthest one (from the Depths, so the closest one to Firelink), but I think so. Keep in mind that, although it doesn't look quite like it should, what with all the wooden structures and platforms missing, that's because it's the mini-map (or whatever the right technical term is...). It's only a representation of what it's supposed to be, to save processing power from having to render the whole environment at that distance. Kind of like, when you observe the Parish Belltower from Sen's, you can't see the lader that's supposed to be on the outside of it, but it's supposed to be there.

Oh, by the way, the shiny at the bottom of the screen is Patches's loot! That's probably where the killing floor is--if I'd had a prism stone on me I'd have thrown one, but I'd boxed them all...

So I think it's looking likely that our friend Patches took a plunge! (And even if he didn't... I forced him down myself!)


Edit: upon further examination of Blighttown, sadly, the nearest buttress is not the one you get the shield from. It's actually on the 2nd furthest one from firelink... which is quite far!

Btw, ublug, that's an awesome image! I was wishing for something like that, didn't know it existed. Any chance there's a higher res version out there?