“Git Gud or die trying”
I like Dark Souls and FromSoft games in general, as I have discussed on several occasions now. But I didn’t always like them. I started Dark Souls probably three separate times and never even got the nerve to get through The Depths until my fourth attempt. It wasn’t until after I had played and beaten Bloodborne that I worked up the courage to return to the original Dark Souls. And I’m so happy that I did.
The game is a master class in world design and level layout, a master class in creating atmosphere and telling a story with gameplay mechanics, a master class in expansive, obscure lore and bizarre secrets. But it is not a master class in teaching you how to play. There’s so much about the game that confused me the first time I got into it, and sometimes there’s still stuff that I don’t quite get. But there are two types of people in this world; those who git gud or those who cheese. I am the second type of person.
For those who aren’t initiated into the sometimes uplifting, often slimy world of online videogame culture, cheesing is a type of way to play a game where you exploit glitches, bugs, or gameplay mechanics in such a way as to make the game stupidly easy or stacked in your favor. There’s things like the bucket hats in Skyrim. That’s kind of cheese-like. There’s the Dragonrider in Dark Souls 2, who you can get to commit accidental suicide. There’s Yoshi’s egg death, where you poop someone off a cliff. There’s the Drake Sword. You know who you are.
And here’s the thing; if a game is good, there’s supposed to be no way to cheese it. You won’t be able to get an easy win with a cheap move, or spam your way into an overpowered weapon. But, as Jeff Goldblum once said, life finds a way. And with a large enough fanbase, eventually someone will find the easy way out, even if it’s incredibly convoluted.
Sometimes, though, you just have to have some cheese. If you’re like me, chances are you reach a skill cap at some point and have to brute force your way through the game. That’s how I got started in Dark Souls, actually. I’m good now, but when I first played through it, I sucked. So, if you, too, suck at Dark Souls, let me impart some wisdom onto you. Maybe one of these will help you.
If my computer wasn’t a potato, this list would be about Sekiro, but you know what, Dark Souls: Remastered is pretty good, too. At least it doesn’t use Games for Windows Live.
1. Learn to Roll
Dark Souls is a game about stamina management. It’s about finding the right time to strike your opponent, while also learning their moves and preparing an advanced plan for how you’ll get out of the way.
Or it’s about rolling around like a lunatic.
I like to play the way where when I get nervous about an attack I start rolling out of the way as many times as I need to, stamina be damned. Does it work? Most of the time, yeah. When it doesn’t I get slapped on the back and killed, but it usually works pretty well. The thing about rolling is that your character is invincible during certain frames of animation, so you can technically roll into attacks too, but that’s high-level strategy. I suggest waiting until you feel competent.
2. Grind Out those Levels
I play pretty cautiously. I save every other minute in games like Fallout and Skyrim. Having a set time limit makes me anxious as all hell. And I take losing my souls very seriously. So, in Dark Souls and its many followers, when you die you lose however many souls, or gold, or echoes you were carrying. These souls act as both currency at shops and as a way to increase your character level and get stronger. If you die, you can go back to where you were killed and retrieve your souls, but if you’re killed on the way there before you get them back, they’re gone forever.
I take it as a personal failure when I lose these souls, especially if it’s a lot of them, so I make sure to run back to a bonfire (one of the checkpoints in the game) every time I feel like I have enough souls to level up. It takes a long-ass time and stopped me from progressing beyond Undead Burg for like my first ten hours, but I got to a pretty solid level by the time I beat the gargoyles. Plus leveling determines what items you can use, so if you want to use that one hammer or shield, you might have to grind. And, speaking of the gargoyles…
3. Kindle Those Bonfires
So, Dark Souls has two standard states for your character; Hollow and Human. Hollow is when you look like a gross corpse and Human is when you look like, well, a human. You can become Human by going to a bonfire and choosing to “Reverse Hollowing,” and this has several effects. It makes you pretty again, for one. But it also lets you play online, including helping others, receiving help, or getting stabbed in the back by random strangers. And, most importantly, it lets you kindle bonfires.
To Reverse Hollowing, you need to spend Humanity, which is indicated by the number to the left of your health bar. When you die, you become Hollow again and lose your collected Humanity. But you can also find Humanity items, which you can crush to gain Humanity points, and you don’t lose the items when you die, unlike “soft humanity.” It’s confusing and makes just about no sense until fifteen hours in, and the game doesn’t explain any of this.
But here’s what I do; whenever I find Humanity items, I hoard them all like a pack-rat until I reach a new bonfire. See, each bonfire gives you five uses of your health flask when you respawn. But if you kindle a bonfire, you get ten health flasks when you respawn. However, you need humanity to kindle the bonfire, and you also have to be human to kindle. So I spam that stored humanity whenever I reach a new bonfire and light that shit up.
Is this a good strategy? No, not at all. If you aren’t careful with your Humanity, you’ll end up using it all on useless bonfires that you don’t need to kindle when instead you could be using it to summon the Sun Bro. It’s kind of like spending money on lottery tickets to try and win money. It doesn’t usually pay out. Unless you’re like me and feel the need to kindle every bonfire to a full 20 Estus Flasks, then there’s a sense of completion in it.
4. Find Every Item
As I’ve maybe said before, I have OCD and I’m a bit of a collector. And this transfers over to video games, too; if I see something shiny or interesting in a far corner, I will go to any length to get it, even if that means getting cursed or walking into a painting like in Mario. And in games like Dark Souls, being a neurotic dumpster-diver is actually rewarded.
See, you never know what an item will be until you pick it up. Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes they’re literal shit. But I just have to know, because it could be a new weapon, or a powerful spell, or a magic soul that lets you drink more juice. Plus, if you build up a stockpile of items, like knives and dung pies, you can use them to cheese your way through boss fights, like the Capra Demon. Fuck that guy, and his dogs, too.
And eventually you’ll reach a point where you can sell your excess items to a big snake-man who may or may not manipulating you, and that’s a great way to make some extra souls to buy that next upgrade for your weapon or get those last points you need for another level. Like I said before, I go slow, and slow and steady wins the race. Speaking of slow…
5. Build that Poise
Poise is one of the most useless stats in the later Dark Souls games, but it can save your life in the first one. Essentially how much you weigh, poise allows you to be hit by enemies without flinching or cancelling your attack. If you’re like me, having high poise lets you tank your way through small enemies or even bosses. I like to get the Black Knight Sword, do that slow swing thing, and bash enemies out of my way even as they bite at my heels.
If your poise is low, certain attacks will stagger you and stop whatever action you were doing, and that’s no good. So I find that it’s best to get some rockin’ rock armor, a 100% physical-resistance shield, and truck your way through everything. It’s especially effective against the More than Four Kings. Sure, you’ll be slow and you won’t be able to roll almost at all, but if you get the ring that boosts your carry weight, then you’re golden.
You could, alternatively, get the ring that boosts your poise without adding extra weight, but it doesn’t give you any of the extra armor that comes with, you know, wearing armor. But then again, by the end of the game your armor isn’t going to make much of a difference, anyway. At that point it becomes Fashion Souls.
6. Hit, Run, and Snipe
Do you see that big, creepy demon without the face? The one that lives in the basement and shoots lightning at you? Yeah, him. You want to kill that guy, don’t you? You can do it the real way or you can do it my way.
If you can move fast enough (i.e. aren’t weighed down with armor), and if you swing fast enough, you can run up to a slow-moving enemy, hit then once or twice, and then run away before they can slam your ass into the ground. It’s a bit like David and Goliath, except David is a zombie and Goliath is a meaty woman with a potato sack.
Alternatively, you can turn on the game’s hidden easy mode and become a battle-mage. If you get enough spells and put enough level-points into Intelligence, eventually you can turn into a magical Gatling gun and shoot enemies from a distance with near-infinite sorcery arrows. Just stand where the enemy AI can’t see you, pull out your staff, and start blasting. No, not like that, you pervert.
At some points in the game you can even get bows and crossbows, which you can use to literally snipe your enemies from a room away. Sure, the bolts cost money to buy, and the aiming is pretty finicky, but how else do you want to get that dragon tail?
7. Learn to Parry
Perhaps the cheapest, cheesiest, most effective strategy in the game is actually one of the ones that the game does teach you to use. If you have your shield out and press the right button at the right moment, you can parry incoming attacks and open up your enemy to a critical strike. These attacks do ridiculous amounts of damage and come with a cool animation, plus they give you some breathing room.
Parrying can make the toughest enemies into walks in the spooky park because their attacks are slow, predictable, and regularly timed. The towering dark knights that whooped my ass a million times? Just parry their swipes and block the others, and you, too can wield that sick-looking helmet. Regular enemies with swords and stupid capes? The parries have no end. NPC fighters that kill your friends and steal your stuff? Show them who’s really got the goddess’s favor. The final boss of the game? Even Miyazaki’s embarrassed by how easy it can be with parrying.
If you’ve learned anything from this article, I hope it’s that this game is fucking nuts and can be utterly overwhelming to newcomers. That’s okay, that’s how I felt for a long time, too. It’s like that on purpose, which is why your friend with the fedora keeps telling you to git gud. But, if you learned anything else, I hope it’s that knowledge is power. Dark Souls, and really any challenging video game, rewards those who learn its systems and intricacies. With enough practice, research, and determination, eventually any challenge can be overcome, no matter the odds.
Isn’t that just life, though?
