This is the kind of stuff I'm getting annoyed with, but I'm not that much of a dry -blam!- that I can't laugh at that. Plus, I can't get mad at you, brah.

In all seriousness, this map should help. I'd go to the Forest of Fallen Giants first, but you can go to Heide's Tower if you want. Both have their drawbacks and benefits. The Forest is longer but less dangerous and easier, and if you kill the Pursuer you can skip an area to make it to the Lost Bastille. If you go to Heide's, there's some tough enemies but the boss is a joke. There's also some good items like The Ring of Binding and a bunch of Effigies, but you'll need to go through No Man's Wharf and take the boat to get to Lost Bastille, which means fighting another boss. The upside is that once you get there, you get to skip a boss that you would have to go through if you came from the Forest. That boss is rage inducing to a lot of people, but I've never had problems with it because I just used co-op Speaking of co-op, get the White Sign Soapstone in the Forest from Pate. You can summon humans and in some instances NPCs. Not sure if they patched the last gen version with more summons, but some of the NPC summons in the Scholar version are insanely ridiculous. Like if you find Masterless Glencour, his ass will tank the entire area and the boss and not give a -blam!-.

Hmm, I'm kinda leaning towards the forest, but knowing me I'll probably just flip a coin. Good stuff either way.