There's a petition asking for a Dark Souls PC Port! SIGN IT! Links The Official Website English Wiki Run by the Demon's Souls Wiki Guys Dark Souls Weapon Damage Calculator Squint's Excellent Demon's Souls LP What is Dark Souls? Dark Souls is the spiritual sequel to Demon's Souls, From Software's critically acclaimed and infamously difficult Action RPG. Published by Namco Bandai, Dark Souls maintains the visual, audio and gameplay style of Demon's Souls with an entirely new story and setting. What can I expect from the game? Death. Ridiculous amounts of it. Like its predecessor, Dark Souls offers a vastly different experience from most other games on the market. You won't be able to grind your way to victory or abuse lenient save systems to see the game through. Dark Souls places you in a large, open and hostile world with no map, no adjustable difficulty, no pausing and checkpoints are few and far between. In this European-style dark fantasy world, you'll face scores of relentless undead, towering knights, fire-breathing wyverns and twisted, living nightmares working tirelessly to toss your vivisected corpse against the walls. Boss fights set you against cleaver-brandishing demons, dire wolves wielding greatswords and all manner of ancient horrors that can effortlessly crush you underneath their heels. Even the world itself assails you with traps, pits and narrow cliffs over steep drops that prey on the fragile lives of unwitting adventurers. Death is a constant companion and a central element of the gameplay: if you're not dying, you're not learning and if you're not learning, you can't win. Enemies will surprise and overwhelm you, but the enemy layout is set in stone and enemies will always stick to their own certain behavior and attack animations. As long as you play patiently and learn from your mistakes, you'll be able to move forward onto new, even more difficult challenges. Fortunately, you won't need to rely on experience alone. The game has a vast amount of European- and Eastern-inspired weapons and armor to discover as well as original creations that complement the game's setting and lore. Don't expect just typical swords and maces: you'll be able to equip scythes, whips and even a giant, spiked carriage wheel! Dark Souls inherits Demon's Souls' vicious challenge and twisted sense of humor, remaining as strangely compelling and rewarding as ever. From Software takes an enormous risk by asking players to do away with their typical expectations and immerse themselves in a game that celebrates constant failure. However, there is no other game like and if you allow yourself to be taken in by Dark Souls, don't be surprised when it's difficult to let go. What's the story like? Dark Souls has a slightly more complicated story than Demon's Souls did. In ancient times, the land was uncivilized, covered by fog, giant trees and ruled over by stone-scaled dragons. Then four lords harnessed the power of fire to take the world from the dragons and create a world of prosperity. Fast forward to the time where the game takes place and the flames that helped the world prosper are on the verge of fading. On top of that, the world is plagued by an Undead Curse and those unlucky enough to be marked with the accursed Dark Sign live as the Hollowed: immortal undead who've lost their mind and indiscriminately attack others. You - the player - are one of the undead, captured and corralled into an asylum in the distant north until the end of the world. By a twist of fate, you manage to keep your mind and escape the asylum, only to be whisked away to Lordran - the land of the ancients and the origin of the four lords. You must put your immortality to use and find an end to the Undead Curse. What about the actual gameplay? Dark Souls is a 3rd-Person Action RPG that plays like a slower, more methodical Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. You get to create your own character and design his or her face to your liking with the in-depth facial creation system. Don't like fucking around with sliders? The game has random face generation features that allow you to quickly and easily create a face you'll like! You'll get to choose from one of ten classes suited to different styles of play. Knights and Warriors use their heavy armor to trade blows while the light armor worn by Thieves, Wanderers and Bandits improve their ability to dodge fatal attacks. Hunters take down their opponents from afar, but their bows lack the flourish of the Sorcerer's arcane bolts or the Pyromancer's explosive fireballs. New players may enjoy the edge that the Priest's healing Miracles provide while more experienced players can challenge themselves with the poorly armed and unarmored Deprived. Each class can start with a Gift that you choose; items that can give you an edge at the beginning or provide a reward later on in the game. If you don't like the class you picked or wish to branch out into other playstyles, Dark Souls leveling system allows you to improve individual stats to diversify your abilities or strengthen existing ones. No matter what you choose, fighting your foes is always easier said than done. What actions you take is limited by your Stamina bar: attacking, guarding with your shield, dodging and running away all drain your Stamina bar. Stamina regenerates quickly, but you must be aware constantly or you may find yourself without enough Stamina to dodge, block or attack when you need to. On top of that, you're also limited by your environment. Weapon swings bounce off walls, sudden drops into pits can kill you instantly and traps are hidden everywhere. The world itself is a multi-layered labyrinth of twisting paths, hidden corridors and shortcuts allowing you to travel quickly between the game's wide variety of gorgeous, hostile locales. The game is absolutely massive with secrets and an enormous cast of enemies that you'll rarely find in more than one location. It will take dozens of hours to finish the game and even then you won't be able to find everything the game has to offer. Fortunately the game has a New Game + feature that allows you to carry your character over into a fresh game with all their stats intact. Don't think that the game will be any easier the second time around: all enemies get a tremendous boost to their stats, so even the lowest level enemies become deadly once again. Even when you manage to beat New Game +, the difficulty never lets up and those enemies become stronger still each time you clear the game. What's with the multiplayer? Dark Souls carries over Demon's Souls unique multiplayer, allowing players to interact with each other in ways you can't experience in any other title! Dark Souls is primarily a single player game and being online isn't necessary to enjoy the game, but the multitude of options you're given are meant to enhance your experience and make the game world more robust and exciting. Assisting By using a special item called the "White Soapstone," players can summon up to three other players around their level as friendly Blue Phantoms to help them through areas and bosses that the host can't defeat alone. Don't expect easy mode, as Blue Phantoms can't heal themselves without spells, instead getting healed every time the host player uses their healing item and they disappear after you defeat a boss. This is an "Oh shit, help!" option rather than full-fledged Co-Op. There's no Voice Op on PS3, Party Chat AND Private Chat is forbidden on Xbox Live - the game will kick you to the title screen if it detects Party/Private Chat - and the players that are summoned are the first ones who touch the mark left by your White Soapstone. You can't play privately with friends unless you can constantly and consistently orchestrate some complex, failsafe plan to make sure they're the first ones to reach the mark and you can only chat with them through 3rd Party programs like Skype or Ventrilo. Also worth noting is that after meeting certain conditions, you can summon certain NPCs to help you with boss fights like you would a regular player. For the what level range you need to be in to expect summons/to be summoned, refer to this handy image or this post by YorexTheMad: Invading If cooperating isn't your style, you can invade players to kill them for fun and profit! By using invading items like the "Cracked Red Eye Stone," you get to stalk a random player as a Black Phantom in their own world to kill them for precious rewards! Be warned however, you can only heal yourself with spells as a Black Phantom while your prey can still use his/her healing items. Players may also be accompanied by whatever number Blue Phantoms they've summoned and the invaded player gets a reward for killing you. Even as the instigator, the risks are high. The further you play in the game, the more ways you get to invade other players. You can get items that will let you team up with up to two other Black Phantoms to defeat players trespassing in certain areas of the game, increase the number of enemies in a player's game and hunt players that betray their Covenants as a purple Spirit of Vengeance. If you want to kill other players, there's no shortage of options! Like with assisting, you can be invaded by certain NPCs like you would any other player if you reach a certain points in the game while in Human form. Environmental By far, the most frequent way players will interact with each other will be through their environments. By using an "Orange Guidance Soapstone," players can leave pre-made messages throughout the game world that other players can read. With these messages, players can help others find secrets and checkpoints or trick them into falling for traps. Even without any input the game world is bustling with activity. Players will fade in and out of your game as transparent, white Illusions that can let you see how other players are faring in the same area. Players who die in their own games will leave Bloodstains that you can touch, allowing you to see the last few moments before the player was killed and possibly learn from their mistakes. Other players will also be able to notice significant events that happen in your game: if you ring an important bell, players nearby will be able to hear it ringing. Even items you drop won't go to waste: they'll transform into powerful Black Phantoms known as Vagrants that invade other players' games and have a chance to drop even more powerful items when they're killed. There are rumors of even more obfuscated and obscure ways that players can interact with each other. What other changes have been made? Bonfires have replaced the Nexus as safe havens where players can rest. Littered throughout the game world, these bonfires act as checkpoints where players restore their health, refill their Estus Flasks, restock and exchange their magic, and level up their stats. Players will be able to buy items that will allow them to repair their weapons and stock their items at bonfires. If there are other players resting at the bonfire you're resting at, you'll be able to see them sitting around it. Estus Flasks are the main health restoring item in the game. There are a handful of other items that can restore health, but Estus Flasks are used faster and can be refilled every time you visit a bonfire. Estus Flasks can also be upgraded to restore more health per-use. Humanity is a new, secondary resource to the game that you can gain by killing monsters or by using special Humanity items. Humanity can be spent at bonfires to restore your character back to Human form or to strengthen that bonfire up to three times, giving you five more uses out of your Estus Flask for each strengthening every time you use that bonfire. Like souls, Humanity is lost when you die and you only have one chance to regain it if you can get back to your Bloodstain. Covenants are special factions that your character can vow his or her loyalty to. Joining these Covenants yield special rewards and privileges, but can also hold dire consequences if you betray them. There's no longer Item Burden in the game, you can carry everything you pick up indefinitely regardless of weight. Of course, this means your inventory will eventually become packed with items you have to sort through. You'll be able to purchase a chest to store items in and eventually you'll find an NPC that will take weapons and armor in exchange for a small amount of souls. Poise is a new stat that measures hyper armor, or what kind of hits you can take before you get knocked out of 'offensive' animations - attacking, using Est/items, running - and doesn't affect your dodge animations at all. The higher your Poise, the more powerful attacks you can take without getting knocked out of animations. Light armors generally have no Poise, while Heavy armors will have more Poise the heavier they are. Not all Heavy armors have more defense than lighter armors, so remember to check the Poise of an armor with Square before deciding which piece of armor to wear. Fuck this game! It's huge, difficult and I don't know what to do! The community behind the wildly successful and informative Demon's Souls wiki have made one for Dark Souls. It's a little bare right now, but it'll be sure to fill up in no time. If you can't wait or don't like going to a computer to reference information, there's this awesome hardcover guide written by Future Press. These are the same dudes who were responsible for the unbelievably comprehensive 400-page Bayonetta guide, so it'll be well worth checking out. If you want a handy guide that doesn't require you to scour a wiki, GameFAQs or buy an expensive guide, SA user Sheep-Goats has provided an informative and FREE guide for you to download: I cannot stress how awesome this guide is to have even after buying the hard cover guide above. Help! I've been cursed and I keep dying in one hit to everything! What can I do?! Don't delete your character yet and DON'T PANIC. Read the spoiler below for an easy, monster-free way to cure your curse! (thanks to GhostDog for finding this!) You need to be able to get back to the undead asylum, which requires the elevator in the back of the firelink shrine to be active. Spoiler To do so, you must have access to the elevator that goes down to Fire Shrine from the Church, from the bottom, when the elevator starts moving up, you must move forward and drop on top of the area where you exit/enter the elevator at the bottom, follow the path to the right, on top of a little green patch, look down, and you will see a broken column, do a roll towards that broken column and land on it, and go across the beam, from there climb up the stairs all the way to the top, where you will find the craw's nest, when you step in, you will get a prompt to "Curl Into a Ball", if you crawl into a ball, about 30 seconds or so, the craw will pick you up, and bring you back to the Undead Asylum. Then trade one red invasion stone shard with the crow for two purging stones. This is NOT the nest you're dropped off on - it's on a precipice nearby. You'll hear a message when you find it. Remember to drop the red invasion stone shard IN THE NEST and then reload/commit suicide in order to get the traded purging stones to spawn in the nest. I'm still not sure... What are the reviews like? I want the game, but I can't decide for which system! How do they compare? According to currently available information, both versions perform nearly identical. The Xbox 360 has only one clear advantage over the PS3, and that's the ability to install the game onto the console. Likewise, the Playstation 3's advantage is that uses a controller more suited to the game; the buttons used for defending and attacking are, respectively, L1/R1 on the PS3 and LB/RB on the 360. Some people find using the shoulder buttons on the 360 controller uncomfortable and there's currently no options to re-assign commands on the controller. The 360 controller also has a worse D-Pad, which is used to switch items and weapons. If none of the above concerns you, feel free to get whichever version of the game you like. I'm new to the game. Got any tips? Spend as much of your souls and humanity as often as you can and NEVER horde them. Both resources can be very easily lost forever and you have essentially unlimited income of each, so souls and humanity you spend are worth far more than the ones you save in the long run. If you find it difficult and more time consuming than usual to kill enemies or bosses on a certain path, turn back and go explore someplace else. You may find an "easier" path and the souls/items you obtain there will make you more ready to revisit troublesome areas. Improving Vitality and Endurance is NEVER WRONG. More health and stamina is ALWAYS a good thing. Do not neglect your shield; it WILL save you, time and time again. Media A Musical Tribute to Anor Londo Dark Souls Prologue Video Bartholomew Trailer Bosses Destroy Trailer Dark Souls Gamescom Trailer Where There's a Whip, There's a Way I will maintain a list of people playing and link a google doc if we have more than 10 or so. I will be very surprised if the playerbase is larger than Reigner and myself however.
