If you really wanted to you can kill the necromancers and peg it past the skeletons and do a catacombs run without the need to manufacture a divine weapon.
You can use different armor without knowing your stats it's hard to suggest anything better with similar weight.
It becomes an ascend pyromancy flame which has better scaling and damage gives you a high damage adjustment on pyromancies.
Yeah, beating Manus at SL1 is probably the hardest thing I've ever done in a game. Took me so many retries, and when I finally won I swear to Gwyn my hands were shaking. Haha.
Nito is actually weak to fire damage, as for the skeletons when they start to become an actual issue on later NG cycles you probably have something that outclasses Astora's straight sword.
Interesting, did not know this
It's not a very difficult fight, I just like not being harassed by annoying mobs. In general I take my boss fights slow and methodical.
When doing Catacombs at low-level I either use poison arrows on the Necromancers or run past everything (the shortcut drop down to the bottoms means you don't have to engage a single enemy unless you want to).
That is how deflection off the top of my head.
Magic works too of course, a couple of crystal soul spears with all the equipment stacked should do it. I use great combustion too, good advice.
Hahaha ouch. Did you find the Gravelord sign to kill whoever was infecting your world?
There isn't gravelords in the second one, there's just more roaming soul phantom thingy that spawn.
They work completely differently though.