On the PC, my friend and I entered the forest for the first time and used the White Soapstone to co-op (my friend hosted). We progressed and defeated the Butterfly, and thus I was returned back to my world.
We then tried to co-op again and it failed; neither of us ever saw each others soapstone markings. Sif is still alive, shouldn't either of us be able to co-op still? We were still in the same game session when we defeated the Butterfly (thus no network changes were made etc).
My friend is SL42 and I'm SL41. Our NAT is open, ports are forwarded, firewall is off. We are in the area where the Butterfly is, and I'm (have not defeated Butterfly) trying to summon him but still cannot see his soapstone.
Why can we not see each others soapstones to co-op again?
Best Answer
The only TRUE requirement for co-op is that you are within the 10% co-op level range of each other. In my experience co-op-ing with a friend on PC, it can be extremely finnicky to get into each other's games due to many different servers, etc. I've found the best solution for making it work "better" are for you both to be in one of the co-op friendly Covenants (3 at the bottom):
http://darksouls.wikidot.com/covenants
It's quite easy to join Way of White even at the beginning of the game. Once the two of us both got into that covenant, we have had almost no trouble joining each other's games.