Being a good Dark Souls player is ultimately a matter of patience. When searching for tips and tricks online, a common experience for new players is be barraged with the “git gud” meme. This happens not because the Dark Souls community is strictly against giving out tips (which they can be), but because the only advice anyone can give a struggling Dark Souls player that has stood the test of time is to continue struggling: we’ve all been there, that’s the what the game is designed around.
All of the following tips will revolve around pragmatic approaches you can take to ease your Dark Souls experience without giving away spoilers, but the greatest thing any DS player can do for themselves is to accept that running up against a wall repeatedly is often the only way to get over a difficulty spike: yes, DS players all enjoy this process.
Exploration is the Key to Victory
All of your niche upgrade materials, spells, armor, weapons, rings, progression paths, and bosses will be found through exploration. If you’re a new player, the greatest advice anyone can give you is to explore. Spend a little time to run around that church, take an extra moment to search for an invisible wall here n’ there, and pay close attention to seemingly unremarkable things.
The player who explores will unlock all of the things previously mentioned alongside shortcuts for more convenient travel and, generally speaking, a greater gaming experience as a whole: Dark Souls 1 was built around exploration. Explore and you win, refuse to explore and the game becomes 200% harder.
Come Back Later
Yes, Dark Souls is a difficult game. No, that doesn’t mean it’s supposed to be that difficult. The Soulsborne series has a reputation for being tough, and it is. But the downside of this reputation is that players will often find themselves in situations they are not prepared for and simply assume that this is the way it’s supposed to be. It isn’t always supposed to be difficult.
If the enemies seem unreasonably tough, feel free to head back to a bonfire, a blacksmith, or an NPC to buy some materials to aid you on your playthrough. Or, simply, take a different route and explore a different area of the game.
Upgrade your weapons, level your character, explore for some better loot, or farm enemies just for the hell of it: if an area seems too tough, it probably is. Just because these games are meant to be difficult does not mean they’re meant to be unfair. At least, not in Dark Souls’ case.
All things are Viable, Some Things are Better
No, you aren’t failing to kill that boss because your weapon isn’t S-Tier. Unless you’re using a broken straight sword, you can kill that boss, I promise you.
That being said, not all weapons are created equal. Some weapons, like the Black Knight weapons, are designed to be extremely powerful early-to-mid-game weapons, where a standard, run of the mill Broad Sword might outclass them in terms of raw DPS when combined with weapon buffs. Which means that, regardless of how strong one of those weapons is and why, the player can use either and be deadly, if they know what they’re doing.
Daggers and smaller weapons are greatly enhanced with weapon buffs, while standard swords, halberds, and two-handers can generally hold their own in terms of DPS, and feature greater poise damage to knock your opponents off-balance.
Whatever your choice of weapon, combining it with a shield is ideal for easing the difficulty of any Dark Souls playthrough. When learning the movesets of a boss, having that shield raised while studying their habits is a great way to absorb some of the inflicted damage while staying alive long enough to experiment with the fight.
Fast Roll > Defenses
The mathematics on defensive stats is such that if you can’t fast roll in any given situation, you’re only hurting yourself. There’s really no situation, unless you’re an experienced player who’s just trying to chug through boss fights for fun, where not being able to fast roll is worth having extra defensive stats.
A fast roll is achieved by rolling whilst your character has 25% or less of their maximum carry weight. Whenever a new player begins their Dark Souls journey, the easiest and most common way to make the game 10x more difficult for themselves is to play assuming that a medium or “fat roll” are the standard forms of evasion.
This phenomena is quite common for players who choose the knight class and find themselves rolling around silly-like against the Asylum Demon thanks to their rather heavy set of armor.
A fast roll gives the player more frames of invincibility, more distance traveled, and a greater speed of recovery when rolling. There is zero contest between it and defensive stats: if you have to choose between stronger armor and a fast roll, keep your standard gear and opt for the fast roll until you have a higher maximum carry weight.
Save the Precious Humanities!
Those humanities you find around Dark Souls 1 are key to improving a playthrough. For new players, their absolute best use is to upgrade bonfires to allow for double the alloted Estus Flasks after resting at a specific location. This doubled bonus of 10 can turn into 20 if you find the right unlock for it, so keep exploring!
Humanities have other uses, as well, but almost always are best reserved for bonfire upgrades unless you absolutely know what you’re doing: they can be used for full HP heals, they offer the player an extra defensive stat across the board per humanity held (and popped, as indicated in the top left hand corner of the screen), they can be spent for secretive unlocks at certain NPCs, and they improve drop rates of items relative to the amount popped, up to ten.
All of those uses, aside from bonfire upgrades and heals, are extremely niche use cases for new players to need, let alone know how, to access in the first place. The simplest way to use Humanities in a consistent way is to first find a bonfire that leads to a boss run you’re having trouble with and select the “kindle” option.
Kindling doubles the amount of Estus Flasks given by a Bonfire, as aforementioned, but costs one humanity and can only be done while not hollowed. This means that a new chosen undead will most likely need to spend one humanity to “reverse hollowing” and another humanity to “kindle”. Two humanities for a permanent upgrade to the alloted Estus Flasks is well worth the investment.
Just remember, it isn’t enough to have the humanities in your inventory, you first need to use them in your inventory so that they are “popped” and accounted for in the top left hand corner of your screen. Also remember that all popped humanities will be left on the ground after death, just like souls, so be careful when popping them in an unsafe area!
What Could Those Fire Keeper Souls be Used For?
Fire Keeper Souls can be used to gain a small sum of souls (please don’t do this!) or to upgrade your maximum healing gained from Estus Flasks (save them for this!) To upgrade your Estus, speak to one of the few fire keepers around the game. One can be found just underneath the starting area of Firelink Shrine if you travel down the set of stairs to the left of the helpful Crestfallen Warrior.
These Firekeeper Souls are rare, but a few should be easy to find, so long as you follow the best advice available and explore!
Git Gud
No, seriously, git gud. If you want to be good at Dark Souls, but feel like you’re running up against a wall, all you can do is Git Gud. To quote a certain earthbender:
“There’s no different angle
no clever solution
no trickety-trick
that’s gunna move that rock.
You’ve got to face it head-on.”
-Toph Beifong
Fortunately for those who love it, and unfortunately for those who don’t, Dark Souls, as a trilogy, is about repetition. A repetition of lore, a repetition of personalities, a repetition of worlds, and, to complement this facet of the art, a repetition of gameplay: dying on repeat until you accomplish your goal is the point of the game.
When people tell you to “Git Gud”, they aren’t making fun of you. They are trying to tell you to continue dying until you finally understand. Dark Souls is something that doesn’t make sense until, at last, you’re quite certain that it does.
You must be logged in to post a comment.