I wish this game was more clear sometimes. I know they wanted to make this unforgiving and stuff, but sometimes it's just annoying more like lol. Like they just wanted to troll people XD. "Hey, let's make Anastacias soul have the exact same name as normal Firekeeper soul and give no warning when you are about to use it. Let's see how many idiots will fall for it! Because F you, welcome to Dark Souls." XD
This game is an accidental success. Whenever something is broken, idiots will say it's "design filosophy", when it's half bad design, half adding Kaizo mechanics.
Gee, I guess some people can't put 2 and 2 together. Lautrec kills the Firekeeper. Lautrec Drops a Firekeeper soul. Firekeeper soul has different description from others. Hmmmmmm.... Guess I should use it normally!
It's not after you ring both bells. I made my way through The Depths and Blighttown, but before fighting the boss I decided to go back up to buy some more arrows. When I got to firelink, she was dead, despite not ringing the bell yet
Hi, Iron Golem here to say, swords can't reach her, dumdums. I believe they meant, if the player can't, why can he? Shotels are curved sickles, not mega balls straight long stabby stabs
It is worth noting the Lautrec's trigger to kill her is picking up both the fire keeper souls from the parish, and blighttown, not ringing the bells of awakening.
ringing the bells also causes him to kill her, i rung both bells before i realised there was another fire keeper soul in blighttown and she was dead before i went back and got it
There are enough clues to figure it out. If you read the description of the black eye orb and Anastasia's soul then you get a couple of clues as to what you should do.
One of the things I love about this game is the attention the lore gets. It doesn't tell you anything, you have to seek it out. Read all item descriptions, notice what game mechanics do what and there limitations and "exploits" are. Miyazaki even said you can skip ceaseless discharge because he understood not wanting to kill something so innocent but you'll think it's an exploit or glitch but it's on purpose. You just have to go out of your way to do it and be desperate enough to try.