Tseldora's zone design has some flaws. I couldn't find the way to the 2nd bonfire for a long time, bit late to be introducing actual working zip lines this late in the game. The annoying casters with a barrage of homing soul arrows are just out of reach and impossible to free aim target with spells. Moving the camera just a tiny bit up or down makes the spells either go way low or high above. I had to resort to using a bow, how degrading! Just let me aim spells.
The end boss was cool, but the approach felt like a poor copy of the crystal cave. It all felt smaller than DS1. Anyway all great bosses defeated, 10x estus flask, dark pyromancy flame +10.

Next Drangleic castle. I just got to the first bonfire and a second nearby down a whole where old guy in wheelchair is sitting in the dark again. He still doesn't want me. That room next to the bonfire has some very hard hitting damage spunges. I practiced some strategies on them, patience seems the only thing that works hehe.

I changed some of my armor for caster benefits, faster casting sleeves, extra spell uses hat, second dragon ring. Now I'm down to only 37.5% equipment load. Maybe I should re-allocate my points, no need for 20 vitality anymore. Can you do that without any negative side effects?

You can relocate without penalties, you'll be booted down to your starting SL. I switched my stats twice in the first playthrough, Soul Vessel is one of the best additions to DS2.

Cool, I'll unlock great lightning spear tonight. That needs 42 faith, but I've been putting points in int instead to get soul vortex at 37, which was quite underwhelming. Looks cool yet pretty inefficient in pve. It would be a lot more useful if you could target pve AoE spells instead of them centering around you. As a caster the last thing I want to do is stand in the middle of a group of enemies. Soul shower kind of works but still manages to almost miss everything. So far Flame swathe has only proved to be very effective with some aoe damage. Too bad it only has 4 uses, it does a lovely 1100 damage :)

A lot of mage builds I've seen revolve around Soul Vortex. Might be a PvP thing only, but it seems to be pretty effective. How about Hexes, using any?

Yeah it's probably a pvp spell. Low damage against in game enemies, but it creates a big unavoidable swirl around you.
I'm mostly using the standard dark orb, it's the fastest casting spell I have, usually briefly stops enemies, does 350+ damage (Archdrake staff +10) and with 2 copies of the spell loaded, plus enhancements from gear and attunement level, gives me 52 casts. Most efficient for normal enemies. It's a slow moving orb though, I imagine quite useless in pvp, easy to avoid.

There are lots of interesting hexes, but a fast kill is always the best solution, casting time means everything. And a lot of hexes consume souls, not useful while trying to meet int/faith requirements... I'm going to try out scraps of life tonight, that might be a decent AoE spell. I just bought it from Cromwell the Pardoner. (Confirming my suspicion I must have killed an ally, he's acusing me and asking for a ton of souls)

Drangleic castle was a great level, some devious bottlenecks but not too hard and fun bosses. The first dual boss took 2 attempts, the end boss huge knight I managed on the first try with a lot of careful dodging and waiting my time to hit him with great lightning spears. It still took all my great lightning spears and a bunch of normal ones, plus a bunch of estus flasks. Fights that go on a while are the best.
I did some co-op there too, got a preview of the Throne of want.

I experimented with some more spells. Scraps of life is basically the hex form of Firestorm which I found as well now. Dark storm is the hex form of Soul vortex, looks impressive but with both spells prepare to take some damage while casting them near enemies. You can cast dark storm already while scraps of life is still going for a nice double aoe damage mess around you. I still prefer keeping my distance.

Affinity is the hex form of homing soul mass. I only get 3 orbs around my head so far, not really worth it. It takes up 3 spell slots, casts rather slow, moves even slower (although they actually follow targets unlinke homing soul mass) and doesn't do all that much damage yet. On the same enemy 606 with all 3 hits vs 358 for the standard orb which I can cast about 3 times in the time it takes to cast and get affinity to hit. Plus that has 26 uses per spell slot instead of 4. With more orbs it might become more useful. Unfortunately you cannot stack it with homing soul mass, no double amount of homing missiles above your head.

weird thing happened to me this morning
First playthrough on the char, traveled from Black Gultch back to Majula to spend some souls
noticed all items in the area had respawned - including the chests, all the way to the borders of the other areas!
got two more Estus shards, 5 more homeward bones and assorted other stuff
Nothing else seems to have changed, all NPSs dialogue and shops were at the same level as before, etc. no other areas had changed as far as I can tell
The only thing I did different was to copy my save file to the PSN cloud before firing up the game
Glitch or by design?

well I think I'm more than half way through the game by now, just learnt of Lucatiel's quest so I wanted to do it, I tried to keep her alive during Smelting Demon fight, but after wasting 150K souls on it I gave up and killed the boss by myself, bummer. I think I'll just keep using bonfire ascetics in no man's wharf to kill flexible sentry 3 times and see if that works .

also halberd is really hard to use with the new direct hit system, the second swing always do less damage because of the forward positioning.

Is the Bonfire at level 2 now? Sounds like you (accidentally) burned a bonfire aesthetic in Majula.
I need to do that somewhere there are fire seeds. I screwed up by only leveling up the dark pyromancy flame. It's at +10 now, but since I'm now mostly staying in or near human form it gets a -250 ish modifier on it's 300 power :/ It's only at full power when you're at 50% health.
I guess the stock level in the shops didn't come back in Majula, no buying the 3 fire seeds again?

I have a weird glitch too atm. The fast travel menu is showing all locations. The ones I haven't discovered yet are blacked out with ??? for descriptions.

The game crossed the line for me last night. Drangleic castle was just right, Shrine of Amana went into frustration territory. I ran out of enemies around the 2nd bonfire trying to get to the 3rd. Annoying multiple casters that keep firing homing soul arrows from miles away. Yet I can't target them until I'm almost right on top of them. Free aiming a homing soul arrow of my own in their direction doesn't make it go after them, still misses. They're positioned in such a way that to approach one your back/side is exposed to the barrage of another, combined with things hidden in the water that jump you and very aggresive sword wielding enemies that jump you. Top it off with the slow movement in water while you're basically walking on a ledge and can fall in the deep and drown at any moment. The only way to see where you can walk is with a torch while looking straight down. What a nightmare.
I lost over 100k souls there on failed retrievals. Only made it through after lots of trial and error, magic defense ring +2, great magic barrier, great magic shield, great lightning spears for the casters with some lucky hits in free aming, and careful positioning not to get more than 2 at the time. Next area more casters shooting from different directions. I need a break.