I love FromSoft games. I think this is probably a well-known fact about me. Dark Souls III is my favorite game of all time and watching Kurpa get the plat in it is making me want to go back to it. When I did my own hundo chievo in it (there is a raging debate about whether you’re allowed to call it a plat if you don’t do it on PlayStation, which I think is ridic, but whatevs), and I was hating the game by the time I popped The Dark Souls achievement (meaning I got all the other chievos), and then I did not touch the game again for several months. That was a grind of a plat and I think a way of FromSoft saying, “We don’t wanna, but if w e hafta, HERE. The covenant achievements are b-r-u-t-a-l.
Anywayy, I’ve been dipping back into Dark Souls Remastered because it’s finally, FINALLY back on line. They had to take it off because of a hacker issue back when Elden Ring was dropped. All the PC versions of the From games were cut off. Now, they are all back online.
Before that, there was a glitch with the PC version in that it would not save properly and you could not play online. Which was annoying. Now that I’ve beaten every boss solo, I have no issues with summoning. Can I beat the bosses solo? Yes. I did when the game first game out as Remastered because…well, ok. Quick detour.
When the Remastered came out, there was a hack that allowed someone to invade (on PC) and kill Andre, the first and most important blacksmith. He’s very early into the game, but the first time I played, it took me twenty or more hours to get to him. And I accidentally hit him because I was still getting used to the controller buttons. It was the first game I played using the controller (Xbox) so when I went to talk to Andre, I accidentally attacked him instead. Here’s the thing about the first game. If you attack someone once, they will be forever aggroed to you. I thought maybe if I sat back down at the bonfire, I could reset him, but no. He came after me, fists up.
I Googled it because I could not imagine playing the whole game without him. I had to kill the Bell Gargs (hadn’t done that yet) and meet Oswarld of Carim so he could forgive my sins. Here’s the thing. It goes up with every level, so between the first time I met him and when I could actually pay him, it cost a few thou more. I think it was ten thou in total, which was an exorbitant sum at that time. In following games, you can hit a NPC once without any consequence, which is much better.
Anyway. With the remaster, I reached Andre and found him dead. I had been playing online, and when I Googled, I realized that it was a hacker who was going around killing Andre.
I made the decision to start the game over and got back to where I was in less than an hour. I marveled at how far I’d come, and I played the rest of the game offline. So I did it all solo or with the NPC summons for the rest of that playthrough.
I went back to this game because why not? It was back online and to my relief, the glitch that was fucking up the saving and me going online was fixed. It started offline, but I could go online if I wanted. I tend to play offline and then just go online when I wanted to summon for a boss. I did that when I hit Anor Londo, right before the Biggie & Smalls fight, and I immediately got invaded. There is a deep divide in the community as to whether this is a good inclusion or not (the invasion system). Several in the RKG Discord insist that it’s part of the game. Well, yes. It is. I don’t think anyone is disputing that. But to me, it’s not a fun part. And most people who are not PvPers are very vocal as to their hatred of it.
Blah blah blah reward/risk for going human. (Except in DS II in which you could get invaded even when not human). Again, no one is arguing this. What I am arguing is that it’s not fun for people who are not PvPers. Lag is not fun especially in the first game. And, at this point, anyone who is invading is basically doing only that, which means they are specced to kill you quickly. The last time I played, I got invaded in the Tomb of the Giants as I was running to Nito. I died and went back to the bonfire. I went human again and just as soon as the cooldown ended, I was invaded by the same person.
Yeah, no. That’s just not fun when all I want to do is get to the boss and kill him. That’s why I’ll kill myself as soon as possible to not give the invader the satisfaction. I usually have humanity for days so I don’t care if I waste one. It was really cool to be able to summon to humans for O&S after being invaded. We took them down easy-peasy, and I breezed on with my merry way.
But. I got a nudge from someone on the Discord who mentioned that I might like to try the onebro run in the original Dark Souls. I tried it in Dark Souls III, but stopped at the Deacons of the Deep, which is about a fourth of the way into the game. My Discord friend told me that the DS III onebro run was notoriously difficult because you have to have stats to wield the pyros. He gently encouraged me to try it in the original game. You start as the Pyro who is a true level one character.
I said I would never do it because I am really bad at these games. My one way to do them is to over-level and basically crush my way through the bosses. While helping Krupa with his DS III plat, I mentioned the cat ring, which greatly negates fall damage because he needed to get to the bottom of an area and he kept getting killed trying to get there. If you climb down the ladder, you can then jump from that platform to the bottom if you have the ring without taking any fall damage.
People were like, “holy shit!”, but when you suck at the games as I do, you learn all the tips and tricks to make it easier. I use the Hidden Body spell/Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring combo to stealth around, which vastly mitigates how frustrating the games can be. That did not exist in the second game, but it’s in the first and third.
I’m going to go for as long as it’s fun. I know myself and if it gets to the point where I’m mad more often than I’m happy, then I’ll just quit. I have nothing left to prove and this is just something I’m doing for a bit of fun. I predict I’ll lay down the controller before I hit Sen’s Fortress.