. Water that slows you down, crawling enemies that are hard to see in the water, a couple of NPC invasions, tons of caster enemies, a few heavy knights, a few hippos, some dragon-people melee enemies. Oh, a handful of powerful pyromancers on the upper levels.
¯\_(ツ
_/¯
I managed to get across this area relatively easily after getting stuck in the section after the second bonfire for a few tries. The key is fishing each enemy one by one with arrows: poison arrows are totally OP. Fire four arrows, poison the enemy, hide until it's dead.
The area boss,
, is a total pushover, though. I used the summon sign of
and used
as a meatshield. I fired some poison arrows to the boss's face until it was poisoned, and then finished it off with my Lightning Heide Knight Sword +10. Easy peasy... although I can't shake the feeling that this fight is a complete letdown after such a potentially hard section.