Overview Dark Souls is a dark fantasy action-RPG for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC developed. It is the to one of the company's previous titles,. The game's working title was 'Project Dark'. It is the second game in the franchise. FromSoftware self-published the game's Playstation 3 version in Japan, where it was released September 22, 2011. The Xbox 360 version was not released in Japan.
As you know it, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is the port of the game on PC. It was initially not meant to be, but a petition brought the game to the PC platform; FROM SOFTWARE, however, had no experience with PC ports, and this port is unanimously recognized to be a mess on several points: PC optimization, and a lot of things about the online experience.
Is the publisher for both versions of the game in Western territories. They released the game in North America on October 4, 2011, and in Europe October 7, 2011. The Asian version of the game with English voice-acting and English and traditional Chinese subtitles was released on October 19th, 2011. In April 2012, a German game magazine preview surfaced, revealing a PC version with new Bosses coming in August of the same year.
The Prepare to Die Edition was released worldwide for the PC on August 24th, 2012. The additional content, Artorias of the Abyss, came to consoles as downloadable content on October 23rd, 2012 for North America and a day later for other regions.
The game (as with its predecessor) is known primarily for its difficulty, including very high combat lethality and scarce information provided to players. Dark Souls director, has said that the primary 'concepts behind Dark Souls are 'sense of achievement' and 'surprise of discovery' with difficulty merely being a means to these ends. Players who exercise patience and critical-thinking are rewarded. Dark Souls intentionally does not conform to many established game design conventions, such as maps and designated objectives, contributing to the game's divisive reputation. Influences In his, creator mentioned the influence of several classic on his game designs for Dark Souls, including,. In another interview, he also cited of the early games on Dark Souls. It was also influenced by 's own series.
Legacy Dark Souls has had a strong influence on a number of action RPG titles and the video game industry in general. Developers of games such as, and have Dark Souls games as an influence.
The innovative multiplayer of Dark Souls also games such as and the development of the. Gameplay Dark Souls offers a large, seamless world for players to explore. Compared to Demon's Souls, the game is longer, larger, and features more complex level design, as well as more enemies, spells, and equipment to discover. The various regions of the world are interconnected by many routes, some overt and others hidden, and lacks a fixed hub similar to in Demon's Souls.
Players will often find that they can access multiple areas at once, and will have to rely on their own instincts and experience to decide where to go. Saving A character resting at a bonfire.
Dark Souls includes a system, meaning the game automatically saves itself every few seconds. Players never lose progress due to having to load an earlier saved game, as when the player dies, the game continues on by automatically the player at the last visited bonfire with death penalties (see below). The game only uses one save slot per character, with no option for the player to save to additional slots, which makes every action the player takes carry the weight of permanence (as there is no 'earlier save' to reload). Dying Dark Souls uses a kind of 'two strikes and you're out' system for deaths.
When a player dies, the player drops all currently held Humanity and souls, and, if in human form, changes to 'hollowed' form (see multiplayer below). On the spot where the player died, a bloodstain will appear, containing all of the player's lost humanity and souls. If the player is able to return to that spot and touch their bloodstain without dying again, the player will reclaim all of their lost humanity and souls. However, if the player dies again before touching the bloodstain of their first death, that bloodstain will vanish forever along with all of the humanity and souls it contained, and a new bloodstain will be created containing only the humanity and souls held by the player at the moment of their second death. In this way, the play can have no more than one bloodstain in existence at any one time. Multiplayer By default, Dark Souls is played online at all times.
While a player is playing alone, they will encounter indirect traces of other players playing in parallel in their own games. These traces come in three forms:.
Messages can be placed on the ground by players to warn, cajole, or even misdirect other players who happen by and see it. These messages can only be constructed out of a fixed selection of words and phrases, which allows for players worldwide playing in any language to see localized versions of any message. Players can also rate up or down the messages of other players, granting another player humanity in the process. Bloodstains can be seen on the ground that, when interacted with, will produce a ghostly replay of the last 5 seconds of another player's life before they died in that place.
By witnessing another player's demise, a player may be able to learn directly from others' mistakes. Apparitions of other players that appear for a few seconds showing a real-time glimpse of what another player is doing at that very moment.
Players can also directly impact others' games by summoning other players to engage in cooperative play or by invading another's game to assassinate the host player. All direct multiplayer interaction is governed by level ranges, that vary depending on the type of interaction that occurs (e.g. For cooperative play, only players who are within 10 levels +10% of the host player's soul level can join the host's game).
Cooperative summoning requires both the summoner and the summonee(s) to voluntarily initiate the partnership. Players who wish to be summoned can be in either human or hollowed form and must place their summon sign (a white label with their name) on the ground where they think a potential summoner will see it and then wait. A player who wishes to summon others must first be in human form in order to see the placed summon signs of other players and must be in a level in which the main boss is still alive (since the goal of coop is to kill bosses together) and may then interact with a summon sign of their choice to attempt to summon that player. Up to two players may be summoned at one time (making for a 3-player team). Players who are summoned into a host's game are known as phantoms and special rules apply to them. Phantoms cannot use their Estus Flasks, cannot leave the level that the host is in, and cannot interact with NPCs or objects (like doors, fog walls, or levers). When the host uses an Estus Flask, all phantoms are healed by it as well as the host (making the host responsible for healing his helping phantoms).
For every enemy that is killed for any reason, the host gets 100% of the souls and all phantoms also get 50% of the souls. If the host and phantoms manage to kill the level boss, the host gets the standard full rewards, the phantoms get 50% of the soul reward and gain one point of humanity before being returned to their own worlds. If a phantom dies for any reason, he returns to his own world, keeping any new souls they earned and does not suffer any death penalty whatsoever. If the host dies, all phantoms are sent back to their own worlds and the host suffers the full death penalty, dropping all humanity and souls into a new bloodstain and reverting to hollowed form, meaning the host cannot summon new phantoms without first spending humanity to reverse hollowing. Invasions are another form of joining a host's game, but without their permission and for the purpose of PvP. To invade another's game, a player must be in human form and standing in the level they wish to invade in, then use a red eye orb item.
A target is any player in human form who is within the correct level range of the invader. Level ranges for red eye orb invasions are different from cooperative summoning in that the player being invaded is limited to 10% of the invader's level below, but unlimited above. (For example, a level 50 invader can invade anyone level 45 and above). If these conditions are met, the invading phantom will appear in the host's game, and the host will receive a message warning them that an invader has arrived.
Kirk - Knight of Thorns. An NPC invader.
As an invading phantom, special rules apply, similar to being a summoned phantom: the invading phantom may not use Estus Flasks, leave the level, or interact with NPCs. Because the conditions for a host to get invaded are the same as those for a host to be able to summon cooperative phantoms, the host may summon phantoms to help them to fight against the invader.
If the invading phantom is killed, they return to their own world still in human form, but their bloodstain will be wherever they were when they joined the other player's world. The host that defeated the invader will receive a number of souls (dependent on the level of their invader), and can also touch the bloodstain left by the invader to receive one point of humanity.
If the host dies for any reason while the invading phantom is in their game, the host suffers the standard death penalty and the invader returns to their own world with a bonus of souls and one extra point of humanity. If the invaded player dies and has an item called an Indictment, they can choose to indict the invading player to give them a point of sin, which is recorded in a kind of online leaderboard called The Book of the Guilty. Players recorded in The Book of the Guilty can be targeted for invasions by members of the Blades of the Darkmoon covenant, who use the Blue Eye Orb and Darkmoon Blade Covenant Ring items to invade a host's world as a 'Spirit of Vengeance'. Darkmoon Blade Covenant invasions differ from all other forms of multiplayer, in that a Spirit of Vengeance can invade players who are at a substantially lower level than they are (50 levels +20% of their level lower, instead of 10% lower). Further into the game, it is possible to acquire an item (Red Sign Soapstone) in The Painted World, which allows players to place down a summon sign on the ground to engage in optional PVP combat.
Unlike the white sign soapstone, this summon sign gives off a reddish hue to distinguish itself to other players. Should a player accept the duel, a hostile phantom will enter their world to engage in a battle to the death. A maximum of 3 phantoms may be summoned, all of which can attack one-another. If a red phantom dies in a host's world, any other players present will receive souls for their death, but only the host has the opportunity of gaining a humanity point, by touching the bloodstain left behind by the red phantom that was killed. A Red Sign Soapstone can be seen by anyone 10 +10% levels lower than the player who placed the sign, but unlimited above (for example if a level 50 player placed a Red Sign Soapstone, it would be visible to anyone level 35 and above). Another form of optional PVP combat is available for players in the Path of the Dragon covenant. Upon joining the covenant, the player receives a Dragon Eye item.
When using the item, a summon sign is placed on the ground that will appear in other player's worlds. When another player interacts with this sign, they will show up in the summoning player's world as an invader. The winner of the duel will receive one Dragon Scale and an amount of souls relative to their opponent's soul level. This Dragon Scale is not taken from the losing player's inventory, there is no penalty at all for losing a duel initiated in this manner. Dragon summon signs appear for players within the normal co-op range of 10 +10% of the summoner's soul level. Players in the Gravelord Servant have the ability to initiate invasions in a different form from the other multiplayer options. If they are human and in an area where they have not yet defeated the boss, they are able to use consumable Eye of Death items to 'infect' three other player's worlds.
Players eligible for this infection are any within a range of 10 +10% of the Gravelord player's level. If the infected player is on their first playthrough of the game this has no effect. However, if the player is on a New Game+, black phantom versions of enemies will appear in addition to the regular enemies in their world.
The black phantom versions of enemies deal more damage, and have more health than regular enemies. The Gravelord Servant player's summon sign appears in the infected worlds as well, and in order to remove the black phantom enemies, those players must find the sign and interact with it to invade the Gravelord Servant's world. Upon the death of the Gravelord Servant, or the Gravelord Servant leaving the area or quitting the game, the infected player's worlds are returned to normal.
Battle of Stoicism The Artorias of the Abyss DLC also added a battle arena to the game for more direct PVP confrontation. There are three modes of play: 1 vs. 2, and 4 player. Players will be grouped into 1 of 4 tiers automatically. Soul levels 1-50, 51-100, 101 - 200, and 201+ will all be grouped into matches together.
Unlike all other forms of PVP, no souls, humanity, or covenant items can be gained from winning Battle of Stoicism matches. Instead, players are rewarded with a place on an in-game leaderboard called the Plaque of Legends. Story Seath the Scaleless, traitor of dragons. Long ago the world was a gray, lifeless place covered in fog and dominated by dragons.
Then, fire appeared, and creatures emerged from the dark, finding souls of Lords within the flames:, first of the dead; and her daughters of chaos, the Lord of Sunlight, and his knights; and the easily forgotten Furtive Pygmy. They challenged the dragons. With Nito's powers of disease, the witches' firestorms, Gwyn's powerful bolts and the aid of, a dragon who betrayed his own kind, they succeeded, vanquishing the dragons and starting the Age of Fire. Over time, the flames started to fade and darkness began to spread. The world is plagued by hollows, the undead that have gone mad from being resurrected.
So the lords have captured the undead and imprisoned them. But you are the chosen undead to leave the Asylum and make your way to Lordran and fulfill the prophecy.
DLC Access In order to access the new content, one must have (along with purchasing the DLC or owning the PC version): 1. Saved from the golden crystal golem behind the hydra in Darkroot Basin 2. Acquired the Lordvessel from After doing this, you must place down the Lordvessel (whether it be with or ) to open up the golden fog gates throughout Lordran. You now must enter The Duke's Archives and take the elevator up. There will be a crystal golem in the right side of the balcony up the stairs. Killing him will reward you with The Broken Pendant. Now backtrack all the way back to Darkroot Basin, to where you originally saved Dusk.
There will be a black orb. Touch it to be transported to Oolacile Sanctuary. DLC Additions The addition of the Artorias of the Abyss content includes a whole new area in the Dark Souls universe. Being transported to this area also takes you back in time to when the people of Oolacile still existed (though in a deformed manner). The new content explores the story of, the legendary walker.
This content includes an area that is visibly recognizable as the in its past form. There are 4 additional bosses from the new content, several new non-playable characters, and new weapons, armor, and spells. The new bosses are intended to challenge even the most experienced Dark Souls players. The conclusion of the new content rewrites the history of Knight Artorias, as the player kills the famous knight after being heavily weakened by the Abyss.
The player character takes the place of Knight Artorias as the Abysswalker, defeating Additionally, the character will take down one of the few remaining Dragon's in Lordran,. Stats Vitality Governs the player's maximum health points. Vitality: 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 99 Maximum Health: 572 792 1100 1325 1500 1588 1675 1758 1837 1900 Attunement Governs item drop-rates and the number of spell slots. Attunement: 10 12 14 16 19 23 28 34 41 50 Spell Slots: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Endurance Governs stamina, maximum equipment burden and resistance to bleeding. Roll and run speed will vary based on the percentage of maximum burden used by equip weight.
Equip weight ≥ 100% of Equip Burden makes rolling and running impossible. Equip weight ≥ 50% of Equip Burden sets movement speed to slow and disabled rolling.
Equip weight.
Greetings RPSers. I’m Andrew Tsai, a dedicated PC gamer who has been meticulously cataloguing hacks and fixes for PC games over the last year.
You may recognise me as that guy whose, or maybe you may of heard of, the website about fixing PC games which I administrate. The aim of this new column is to help provide the very best experience out of any given PC game. Sometimes it’ll be brand new releases, other times it’ll be older games whose communities have come up with the goods over the months or years. Each article will focus on providing quality of life tips and improvements with recommendations on what mods to download, what fixes to apply and what pitfalls to expect. First up is Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, which is right now until Monday 6pm GMT at 33% off (£20.09/$26.79). Dark Souls’ existence on PC is a story of hope and disappointment. Petitioned by over 90,000 fans to bring the game onto PC from consoles, around the time that the Doublefine Kickstarter was gaining momentum, it seemed like a golden age when game developers were finally listening and giving gamers exactly what they wanted.
However, fans were disappointed that even after all of the petition’s noise and success, the Dark Souls developers weren’t able to deliver anything more than a functional PC port, where traces of the game’s console origins remain in plain sight. However, the dedicated PC gaming community worked together and fixed the most egregious problems, and even if there’s much that can likely never be fixed, Dark Souls on PC has become a shining example of the PC gaming community can achieve. Resolution The most noticeable issue with Dark Souls is that the internal resolution is locked to the low resolution of 1024×720, and changing the resolution value in-game has no effect, other than changing the size of the output window.
Thankfully, the mod from Durante unlocks the resolution to allow values such as 1920×1080, vastly improving the texture sharpness of the game: 1) download 2) disable in-game anti-aliasing (this causes game to render in a tiny box) 3) place the folder dsfix and the files DSfix.ini, DSfixKeys.ini and DINPUT8.dll into the game directory – normally C: Program Files Steam steamapps common Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition DATA 4) adjust the game resolution in DSfix.ini using Notepad (for example, renderWidth 1366 renderHeight 768) Another feature DSfix can unlock is the framerate cap of 30 FPS. However, this has several unintended side-effects, including broken collision detection and other gameplay problems, including. You can unlock the framerate cap at your own peril by adjusting this value in DSfix.ini: unlockFPS 1 Other strongly recommended improvements to add to DSfix.ini are: borderlessFullscreen 1 Borderless fullscreen windowed allows seamless alt+tabbing by rendering the game window to cover the entire fullscreen, a feature that should be standard for all games. Remember to also set the in-game PC option to windowed mode as well to make this option work. SkipIntro 1 Skipping videos automatically saves time when booting up the game.
Controls Dark Souls was designed to be played with a controller, and it’s with a controller that you’ll get the best experience with the game. The Steam store page states that a controller is “strongly recommended”, and this isn’t an exaggeration. With the keyboard, the default keys are mapped very unintuitively, for example, the ‘End’ key is used to access the menu rather than ‘Escape’. All tutorials and button prompts use the Xbox 360 prompts, with no keyboard prompts in sight. You’ll need some mental agility to connect the fact that the prompt ‘A’ refers to the keyboard key ‘Q’ or that going back in a menu can only be done by pressing ‘backspace’.
![Die Die](http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/211420/ss_754d1f1749df9bf37051415df9f8499070b160b5.1920x1080.jpg)
If you are determined to stick with the keyboard, it’s recommended to keep this for all the keyboard commands on hand, courtesy of redditor Tru3Magic. Dark Souls’ mouse control feel very jittery to the point of unplayability and nausea, as it produces very unintuitive results when the camera collides with a wall or the floor. This can be somewhat alleviated by using, a fix which maps the right analogue stick of a controller to the mouse.
The fix introduces negative mouse acceleration, which causes the camera to turn slower the faster the mouse is swiped, but it still produces a much smoother (but still flawed) experience than with default mouse controls.