Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-6132984-20140326160838/@comment-24136094-20140330024034

The tower shield is in one of the two chests directly after the Old Dragonslayer boss on Heide's Tower of Flame. The Drangleic set by default is better than un-upgraded elite knife set but is heavier, the full set of armour (minus the helmet, found later on in the game) is found directly after the Pursuer boss fight. After killing the Pursuer head forward and there is a large missing chunk of the ground, fall down into the hole and carefully walk over the the item on the corpse, you will find the full Drangleic set + the sword and shield, both if which are very good but the entire set requires twinkling titanite to upgrade.

To get past sinners rise it is advisable to just leg it through the water area and reach the boss fog, the enemies won't follow you to the other side, they will turn back around halfway past the bridge.

Sorry for the huge wall of text.