V1.

0, October 2011

Dark Souls
A Rough Guide

Table of Contents
Getting Started 1 2 2 Character Selection Starting Gifts How to Succeed at Dark Souls

Game Mechanics 4 5 9 9 12 16 17 Humanity Stats Poise Magic Upgrading Equipment Multiplayer Covenants

Preferred Equipment 25 26 27 28 29 29 Armor Shields Catalysts, Talismans (and Flames) Rings Farming Equipment Weapons

Specific Advice 37 37 38 38 39 41 41 Curing Curse De-aggroing NPCs Donts Early Equipment Farming Souls A PvM build to ~SL25 Sticking Points

This guide was written by Sheep-Goats of the Something Awful Forums. You can contact me there or email me sheepgoats (without a hyphen) at that one email service that Google provides. You can reproduce this as you like, but please keep it in its full, intact form including my contact info. This version (v1.0) was finalized on October 15, 2011. Planned additions for the next version are some Farming tables, Boss Soul usage table, and more detailed info on spells. Many parts of this guide rely on info from all of the following: The Wikidot Wiki, the Wikispaces wiki, the Japanese Livedoor wiki via Google Translate, the Future Press official guide, and opinions Ive assembled ad-hoc from various internet forums. My thanks to the people working on those resources, you should check them all out, and if those organizations wants to copy and paste my stuff into their site or whatever Im totally fine with that. Other sites should ask me first. I can send a .doc file to facilitate the Ctrl+C, Ctrl+P process on request.

Getting Started
Character Selection Starting Gifts How to Succeed at Dark Souls Character Selection
Pick Pyromancer, Priest or Thief The character type you start the game with is not a binding choice at all like it is in games like Diablo 2. Very quickly into the game you could spend some of the souls you collect to make your Knight a wizard just as capable as any of the starting mage classes or a Sorcerer just as capable a melee fighter as a warrior. Really your starting character mostly amounts to a set of equipment and skills that you will use to finish your first two or three hours of play and at that point all doors are totally open to you. With that said, Dark Souls is a difficult game and there are some characters that have an advantage during these two hours. Probably the two strongest starting choices overall are the Pyromancer and the Priest. The Pyromancer starts with a powerful spell to help with the odd enemy youre unsure how to deal with in melee and has a good overall stat distribution, particularly for a mage. The Priest starts with the Heal miracle and so he has twice the healing capacity between bonfires (which are the continuation and leveling points in Dark Souls) that other characters have. Their armor and weapons arent a major concern as lots of different sorts equipment becomes available very quickly in the game, however the Pyromancers robes are actually a quite good light armor set thanks to their scalability and built-in poison and even curse resistance. The mace of the Priest is also something other characters wont get ahold of until maybe 15 or so hours into the game and is, of course, handy against skeletons. Dont take this to say that magic reigns supreme in Dark Souls, its just that these two characters start with good melee and good magic which can open doors for you early on. Speaking of opening doors, the Thief starts with a free Master Key and is therefore an interesting choice. His weapon actually isnt bad either, even if its just a little knife. For more info on the Master Key see the next section on Starting Gifts. Hes the only character that starts with an item that is otherwise unavailable in the game. Using him in fights will, however, require a little more finesse than most of your other options. You should probably avoid picking the Deprived. His even stats may seem like he makes a better option for min/maxing a character as you go but thats just not the case as he also starts at a higher soul level. His starting equipment is pretty bad the club is okay but his shield is trash and he has no magic or armor. If your main concern is having a character who doesnt waste any stats for your build you should know that builds are only relevant for PvP and, more importantly, the PvP meta is still undefined and therefore its impossible to even plan a build right now anyway as you dont know what your goals are. There have been several significant changes from Demons Souls (especially having to do with the relative value of damage governing stats, weapon scaling, and the use of healing items in PvP) that make formulating these goals impossible right now. The Pyromancer does seem to get a few more overall stat points for his soul level than anyone else, but whether these are in the right place for a strong PvP character is up in the air. Lastly, all items, weapons and armor are now gender neutral, unlike in Demons Souls. Male or Female is an aesthetic choice only in Dark Souls. As is the facial generator. Just dont pick neon colored hair because I wont summon you if you look like you fell out of a special edition Sucker Punch DVD case. 1

Starting Gifts
Take the Pendant or Master Key A lot of players agonize over this way too much. To simplify things, all of the gifts can be found easily in the game, either early on or just before you need them, except for two. The Pendant allows for some extra plot later in the game and, while available in game, is a real pain to get. The Master Key is a reusable item that is not present anywhere else in the game. It allows you to open a few (not all!) locked doors early that you would otherwise have to wait to get access to later. This allows you to sequence break a bit early on and grab a bit more equipment. All of the doors the Master Key opens you will acquire the actual keys for along the way. Most of these will be found but a few will have to be purchased, so the Master Key also saves you a bit of money. Its important to note that the Thief starts with a Master Key anyway, so if you decide to start with the Thief dont pick the Master Key as your gift as theres no point to having two of them. A few people choose the Black Firebombs. These are consumable items that you can easily find later on and you only get ten of them as your gift and they dont recharge or renew. The reason people take these is that it makes killing a boss in the tutorial level easy (who is otherwise almost impossible thanks to you not having an actual weapon of any sort at that point) and killing that boss drops a unique weapon if and only if you kill him on your first encounter (without running away through the portcullis like youre expected to do). That weapon has a huge strength requirement though and you probably wont even be able to use it until youre almost done with your first run through the game so you could always just wait to kill that boss for your second run through the game (called New Game Plus, or NG+, a concept familiar to those whove played Demons Souls) with that character. Its a decent weapon, actually, but not exactly spectacular. The Tiny Beings Ring seems like the obvious choice to people familiar with Demons Souls but its description doesnt match its actual effects. In reality all it does is add 30 HP to your HP bar and it will get replaced by almost any other ring you come across. Its terrible. The Old Witches Ring also seems compelling but in reality it just functions as an item to give you some dialog you otherwise wouldnt get and that dialog has nothing to do with actually interacting with the associated Covenant stuff. You can try it in one of your later playthroughs as it only opens up a tiny bit more dialog than youd otherwise get. All of the other items are easily replaced consumables. Might as well take no gift at all as one of those.

How To Succeed at Dark Souls

Go slow Use your shield Watch your stamina Try something else Even the most basic foe in Demons Souls can usually kill you in a few hits. There are parts of the game that reward charging through and taking risks, but in general, especially at the start, its important to move slowly through the level taking out potential threats along the way. Expect to be put in pincer attacks, to have enemies ambush your or sneak up behind you in both obvious and non-obvious spots. Enemies will chase you for a long ways and are quite good at following you around corners and up ladders so anything you leave behind will tend to catch back up to you, generally at the worst possible time. Every character starts with a shield and this is for good reason. It is, of course, possible to progress using a two handed weapon and just out-ranging most foes but youll often be stuck into blind turns or narrow spaces with little to no option to evade. There are many enemies who can parry and riposte your attacks or 2

else who use their shields very well so a willy-nilly offense can frequently get you in to trouble. Often new areas will have nasty surprises lurking just out of sight. Enter new areas not only slowly but enter with your shield raised. Until the game tells you differently expect to deal with most foes by letting them attack your raised shield first and then attacking them during their recovery animations. Both blocking and attacking (and running away or evading) uses Stamina, the green bar near the top of the screen that refills quickly whenever youre not doing something too strenuous. Your stamina is your lifes blood every bit as much as your HP is. People who are brand new to Dark Souls usually die by rushing in or being careless or not using their shield. After they get over this they often die because they burn all of their stamina in a flurry of attacks or by sprinting everywhere and therefore arrive at fights without any Stamina, which means arriving without the ability to fight. When your shield is raised your Stamina recovers very slowly so in tough fights you will have to mix defending with your shield to leaving it down with attacking and dodging very carefully so you keep enough Stamina to be safe but make quick enough progress against your foes HP to kill him before you make a major mistake or get backed into a corner and beaten down. Stamina management is often the name of the game for this reason always consider upgrading your Endurance stat when it comes time to level up as every point of Endurance not only lets you stay agile in heavier equipment (more on that later) but also gives you a few more precious points of Stamina. Following the go slow and use your shield maxims wont always lead you to success. Some attacks are too strong for a shield to handle or come from an angle that your shield doesnt cover. Many monsters have attacks now that bypass your guard entirely even if their normal attacks do not these usually look like theyre trying to grab you and youll have to learn to use offense or evasion to survive them (and flail on L1 and R1 if they do grab you). Some enemies will just face you and passively guard while their friends catch up, making and effort to let you make the first mistake instead of them. In some areas it isnt even wise to go slow, some foes will be nearly immune to your particular weapon of choice, and on and on like that. There is, however, always a way to succeed there is a Something Awful Forum member Im aware of who cannot use the L1 or L2 buttons at all thanks to a severely injured left hand and he beat the Gargoyles at a low level so be aware that there are always options available to you if you look for them. If youve failed in attempting the same thing five times in a row its probably not because youre under leveled or an area is cheap, its probably because youre not keeping an open mind and looking for the solutions available to you. Dark Souls is an extremely well designed game you may have to take this as a point of faith in the beginning but as you work your way through it youll realize why it has the fanbase it does, and youll learn to listen to it when it tells you that what youre trying isnt going to work. Either try something different or come back to the area later when you have new tools to utilize. Ive included some advice for the most common sticking points in a section called Sticking Points on page 41, but you should generally try to experiment your way through challenges first as thats likely the reason you bought this game to begin with. Expect that Dark Souls will punish any whiff of impatience or sloppy play every time you let it happen. Playing the game when youre already frustrated probably wont lead to much progress. Sometimes you have to put the controller down before you throw it through a wall.

Game Mechanics
Humanity Stats Poise Magic schools Upgrading equipment Covenants Humanity
A second currency Two sources Four uses Dark Souls has two currencies that are used to buy different things. Your primary currency, of course, is the souls you get from killing foes or eating the consumable souls you sometimes find along the way. You use these souls to increase you stats at bonfires and you use them to buy items from vendors. You lose any saved souls if you die and fail to get back to your soul sign before dying again. Humanity is the second currency of the game and it shares most of these traits. It is tracked by a number on your HUD look in the top left corner instead of the bottom right. It is acquired either from killing enemies or from using consumable items you find along the way. You also lose it if you die and to recover any banked humanity you need to find and touch your bloodstain (not your soul sign, thats for getting back souls) before dying again. Most of the time you will have zero humanity and the number in the upper left corner will read 00. Humanity is much more scarce than souls. The most common source of humanity is consumable items you find or buy along the way these are fairly expensive when found in shops (5000 or so souls) and are only sold in limited numbers, after that they run out. These items are called Humanity or Twin Humanities and respectively grant you one or two points of humanity in your counter in the upper left when they are consumed. These Humanity items also are somewhat rare drops from certain enemies the rats in the Depths (an area of the game) are the most commonly farmed source. You can also randomly get a point of humanity from killing foes but this only occurs in areas where the boss is still alive. The first source of humanity is usually called hard humanity and the second soft, free, or liquid humanity by the Dark Souls community. Along the way you will find items called Fire Keepers Souls and the in-game description these are a type of hard humanity, however these items have another very important use so dont eat them for their humanity points (see the Donts section on page 38 for more information about that). Humanity is used for de-hollowing, Kindling, farming, and for certain Covenants. When youve been killed and are in zombie form you are hollowed and there are certain things hollowed characters cannot do. The most important thing is that hollowed characters cannot summon in other players for help in boss fights or difficult sections of the game through the mulitplayer system (which is described more in-depth on page 16). Hollowed characters also cannot interact normally with some NPCs in the game world there are others who require you to be hollow to interact with you as well, though. Finally, hollow characters cannot kindle Bonfires. The act of Kindling a Bonfire costs one point of humanity and increases the number of Estus flasks you get from resting there by five because Estus is your only practical mid-battle method of healing and because Estus is normally limited to five flasks per bonfire this is a huge benefit to have in difficult areas of the game. If youre in a hard area and get a point of free humanity its often a good idea to go back to your nearest Bonfire immediately and use that point to de-hollow, then consume one of your hard humanities in order to kindle that fire otherwise you will probably die and lose your free point entirely. The other two uses of humanity are easy to explain. Banked humanity marginally increases your item drop rate when farming. There are declining returns here so in general the sweet spot for farming is two to six humanity depending on how much you have to spare, and there are other items that increase your drop rate, too, of course. Lastly, certain Covenants ask for you to donate humanity to them to show fealty. 4

Stats
Changes from Demons Souls Increasing your stats The eight stats Most of these stats will govern at least somewhat expected aspects of the game for people used to RPGs. Before I get into listing what each individual stat in Dark Souls does, let me first basically outline what has changed from Demons Souls. First of all the magic system has been reworked quite a bit Second, most stats are much more oriented toward meeting the requirements to use certain pieces of equipment in Dark Souls rather than increasing the damage of weapons in general stat scaling has been greatly reduced in Dark Souls and in one type of magic eliminated entirely. Lastly, there is now a Resistance stat whose effects were bundled in to Endurance in the previous game. You can increase your stats at any bonfire if you have enough souls to do so. Each time you increase a stat the next one costs more souls to upgrade than the last one did. The memory for this is global, so if you increase Strength five times and then increase Endurance once or if you do each three times you will spend the same total amount of souls no matter where any of those stats started. This global number of increases is referred to as your Soul Level and it is visible in your Stats page note that some characters start at a higher Soul Level than others. Heres what you can expect to spend to reach the stated Soul Level from the level below, you can use this chart to estimate how many more souls you need to scrape together before running for a Bonfire. You can continue leveling until all of your stats are at 99 each, which puts you at SL 792. Practically speaking, 120 should be enough to get through at least one normal and one NG+ playthrough.
Level Cost 10 811 15 1445 20 2601 25 3970 30 5567 40 9505 50 14,535 60 20,777 80 37,377 100 60,265 120 90,401 792 12 mil.

All stats generally have strongly declining returns on investment once they start getting up to 40 or so. In general in Dark Souls you want to build your relevant stats fairly evenly you probably shouldnt have any one stat at 50 if some other stat that relates to your character type is still at 12. You wont be able to just level up your attack and superblast your way through everything, and especially early in the game you should concentrate on diversifying your characters abilities to cover useful bases. For my specific advice in this regard you can consult page 41 for a My First Character PvM starter build, but for now just build your useful stats evenly. Dont move anything to 20 until everything worthwhile is at 10, dont move anything to 30 if anything worthwhile is still below 20, etc. The following sections below should help you decide what levels are worth it, but just as rule of thumb know that while you can take any stat to 99 in general the highest you want to go is 50, so consider that the cap even for stats you really care about.

Vitality
This increases how much HP you have. More HP is very useful in Dark Souls, especially when it means a difference between getting one-shotted or not. This is a good stat to increase early, to 20 or so. Here are some sample values, but if you care the HP gained per level of Vitality is basically a bell curve starting at 10 and ending at 50 with the greatest gains per point in the middle zone, just before 30, and the smallest gains at the low and high ends. Above 50 each point of Vitality only increases your HP by 8 or 9 points, in the late 20s you get about 30 points of HP per point of Vitality.
Vitality HP 10 572 20 792 30 1100 40 1325 50 1500

Attunement
This stat determines how many slots you have for spell memorization. Most spells require one slot to be memorized, others require more, and this process of memorization is done at bonfires from among the spells you have found or purchased. There are no longer separate slots for different families of spells. If you want to equip two Sorceries and a two Miracles you need enough Attunement to have four total slots. Heres a table of how many slots you have at what Attunement levels, note the dropoff rate after 16.
Attn. Slots 9 0 10 1 12 2 14 3 16 4 19 5 23 6 28 7 34 8 41 9 50 10 99 10

Endurance
This is perhaps the single most important stat in Dark Souls and only a pure mage could afford to ignore it entirely (and pure mages have been made less viable than they were in Demons Souls, see the Magic section on page 9 for details as to why). Endurance has two major functions and one minor one. The first major function is that it increases how much Stamina you have. Stamina is the green bar at the top of the screen and is used every time you attack, block, roll, or sprint its the lifeblood of melee combat and it increases as you increase your Endurance until it caps out at 40. For this reason alone Stamina is a good stat to increase early as it lets you attack more, block more and evade more making it defense and offense in one stat. The second major function is that Endurance determines how high your Equip Burden is. Equip Burden is how many kilos of equipment your character can feasibly wear at one time. This number doesnt include consumable items like Firebombs or poison healing herb or arrows, its what you wear on your back and hold in your hands. Youre given a fairly generous total level of Equip Burden but there are big rewards for not filling it up all the way. If you are over 100% of your burden you cannot roll at all nor can you sprint and your Stamina refills slowly youre a big fat sitting duck, basically, and are dependent on your probably extremely heavy armor to survive. If you are below 25% of your total burden you have a very nimble roll and use very little Stamina when running around and run faster to boot, however youre probably clad mostly in cloth and will feel every little thing that comes your way. Your Equip Burden is equal to 34 plus your Endurance. Most players seem to keep to the 25.1% to 50% range as less than 25% is hard to obtain even using light armors and as the Medium Roll is only slightly slower than the Quick Roll. The minor function is that Endurance increases your resistance to the bleeding effect. This is an incredibly minor concern very few foes have a bleed effect and in Dark Souls its the enemy in front of you thats going to kill you most of the time, not some BS effect he manages to inflict. Before I give you the tables theres one rumor I want to deal with. Theres a ring in Dark Souls that gives you a different, faster, further reaching roll animation when it is equipped. This animation is also bound to your Equip Burden and has four levels just like the normal roll does. Getting the handspring roll to begin with, however, is purely a question of wearing that ring neither relative Endurance levels or Dexterity levels have anything to do with it. I will repeat this in the Dexterity section as well as many players have been burned by this rumor already.

Equip Burden Effect Endurance Stamina Equip Burden Bleed Resist

<25% Quick roll 10 91 44 40

25.1%-50% Medium roll 20 110 54 73 30 133 64 100

50.1%-75% Slow roll 40 160 74 107

75.1% to 100% Sluggish flop 50 160 84 114

>100% Stumble only 99 160 133 150

Strength
Strengths main function is to meet stat requirements of various weapons. In Demons Souls there were upgrade lines that allowed your damage output to scale heavily with Strength but in Dark Souls these upgrades are no longer present. Instead there are a larger variety of high base damage weapons with very high strength requirements of up to 50 points. 16 strength is a common early goal. There is a rumor that the swing speed of your weapon is modified by your Strength. It is just that, a rumor. The animations you see for the heavier weapons remain the same as when you find them no matter your Strength level so long as you meet their requirements if you dont meet their requirements there is a slower, more labored way of using them but since you dont meet the requirements you do almost no damage with them anyway so thats inconsequential. This rumor probably came about because some of the heavier weapons have a very pronounced stagger-like animation when you take a practice swing with them. If, however, you actually hit something with your swing this break in your animation doesnt occur and your character will ready his next attack fairly quickly. This is probably the source of the rumor and is obviously a balance decision by From.

Dexterity
As above, Dexterity is now mostly a weapon requirement stat as there arent many weapons whose damage scales significantly with your Dexterity for it to matter. Katanas mostly require Dexterity to equip but no longer have the horizontal sweeping animation that made them so versatile in Demons Soul. 14 Dexterity will give you enough to try out most small Dexterity based weapons. There are also a few large Curved Greatswords now that require a lot of Dexterity to use. Let me reiterate something I mentioned above. There is a ring in Dark Souls that causes you to get a new, faster, farther moving roll animation. This animation has nothing to do with your Dexterity level. There is a rumor online that having more than 30 Dexterity will allow you to do this special roll but its not true.

Resistance
You can think of this stat as basically being innate armor. Its strongest influence is over physical, fire and poison damages. A consensus has not emerged about how useful it is yet and the internet seems to think it doesnt cause armor protection to scale or anything like that your Resistance is thought to have an additive effect only. A lot of people are basically ignoring this stat presently, but perhaps things will change. Rewards for investing in this taper off (numerically) quite rapidly after 30. 7

Intelligence
Intelligence has three major effects. First of all, it determines, largely though decent stat scaling, how strong your Sorceries and potentially Miracles are. Many of the Catalysts used to cast Sorceries (which are mostly blueish projectile type magic) scale strongly in the assist they grant your spells from your Intelligence. There is also one Talisman used to cast Miracles that scales strongly according to your Intelligence instead of your Faith like most of the others do this is Velkas Talisman, which is sold by the merchant who shows up in the Undead Parish after you ring the first bell. Second, the one weapon improvement that still seems to have decent stat scaling, Enchanted, increases that magic damage done by a melee weapon fairly strongly according to your Intelligence. Third, and this is probably the biggest change, is that Sorceries now have a minimum required Intelligence so that they can be cast. The game will still let you buy and memorize any spell, but if you dont have the spells required Intelligence you wont be able to cast it youll get that Gee, Im confused animation instead. Note that I didnt say Pyromancies scale with Intelligence. The Pyromancer Flames that are used to cast this third type of magic can be improved by forging (this is not true of Catalysts or Talismans) and while Flames list a high Intelligence scaling in fact this only applies to the horrible punching animation thats an option with a Flame in your hand if you use a strong attack. Please also note that while there is a Talisman that scales with Intelligence, miracles now require certain minimum amounts of Faith to cast successfully, just like Intelligence is required for sorceries. 14 Intelligence will give you enough to cast all of the early available sorceries, but there are a few spells now that require up to 50.

Faith
Faith has a triple use the same as Intelligence. It governs how powerful your miracles are via strong stat scaling inherent in most Talismans. It is a requirement to successfully cast miracles and the amount required varies by miracle 12 is enough to equip Heal which is useful for any character but the strongest Miracles require up to 50 Faith, as was the case with Sorceries for Intelligence. The damage scaling from Faith is not great (its gone from a typical A or S in Demons Souls to a typical C or B in Dark Souls only one extremely heavy weapon scales at A in Faith now) so if you are Faith based you can no longer expect to be just as powerful in terms of raw damage as a character focused on Dexterity or Strength. Beginning players will benefit a lot from having the Heal miracle available as healing is otherwise done with strictly rationed items in Dark Souls instead of plentiful purchaseable herbs. Using Heal requires only 12 Faith so consider hitting that benchmark with any PvM oriented character the Great Heal spell only carries on charge (vs. Heals six, though) so its not really worth the extra two points. There are also a few very good offensive miracles now (lightning bolts that you throw like javelins, some powerful area of effect spells) so the overall utility of miracles has been improved a good deal. The flavor of Faith has also changed a bit before Faith only applied to being good and holy, however in Dark Souls there are a number of malevolent gods and Faith can refer to your fealty to them now as well, so there are miracles and Faith scaling weapons that are powered by evil gods now instead of just good ones. This allows weapons that dont seem very Faith-y as per Demons Souls (like the Schythe) to obtain decent Faith scaling through the Occult upgrade line. Faith also has a respectable effect on your defense against magical and fire based attacks.

Poise
Superarmor source How do you get poise? The terms hyperarmor and superarmor originally came from the fighting game world but were used extensively when talking about combat in Demons Souls, especially in PvP, and this has lead the Dark Souls development team to make it a bigger issue. In Demons Souls certain attacks by certain weapons are not interruptable. Once you got to a certain point in the animation it would carry through and these attacks were said to have hyperarmor. The Great Axe was notorious for this, with its weilders standing up to someone hovering over them with two katanas and just spamming light attacks that were not interruptable, the result being a continued combo from the Great Axe that would interrupt the combo of the lighter weapon user. In Dark Souls this property is no longer tied to weapons. Your un-interruptability is now a scaling property tied mostly to your armor. Poise has been used, essentially, to make heavy armor an enticing option whereas in Demons Souls heavy armor was mostly a hindrance. The lightest sorts of armors, those usually made of cloth, have zero Poise, a stat that is visible in the item menu if you page through info about a piece of equipment. They dont gain any Poise when theyre upgraded at smiths, either. However, medium weight and heavy weight armor have at least some Poise and that amount scales as you have a smith improve your armor. When you are struck the amount of your Poise is compared to the damage of an incoming blow through some as-yet-unknown mechanic and the result is that if you have an extremely high cumulative Poise from all your armor pieces almost nothing will be able to knock you out of your attack animations, potion drinking animations, or slow your advance. This is a particular advantage against foes using lighter, faster attacks, both human and AI controlled. A super heavy chest piece might have about 40 inherent Poise to it. The lighter pieces of medium armor (like chain mail) might have eight or so. There is also a ring you can find that will add 40 flat points of Poise to your character, plus a ring that increases your Equip Burden by a large amount so that you can wear heavier Poise-possessing equipment if you need to, plus a Pyromancy spell that adds a lot of effective Poise to your character for a limited time (at the cost of mobility, of course). Whether Poise is worth it vs mobility and fast roll is largely situational. From has done a good job of balancing Poise vs. evasion and mobility in Dark Souls, so if evading isnt working for you in a particular situation you might want to try tanking up instead. How Poise vs. the fast roll will work out in PvP is long from being determined. The last thing I want to say here is that shields have a stat called Stability if you check their descriptions. Stability is a different thing entirely from Poise. Stability determines what percent of an incoming attack is negated, and the rest of the incoming damage will go after your Stamina bar and, if it depletes that, it will then go after your HP. For more info on Stability check the Preferred Shields section on page 26.

Magic
Charges system Sorcery Pyromancy Miracles There is no longer a mana bar and instead you are given a certain number of charges to each spell you memorize at a Bonfire, and these charges can only be refilled by resting at a Bonfire. Weaker spells have more charges and most of the more powerful spells have only one cast to them. Sometimes you may be able to buy more than one copy of a spell scroll (such as during NG+ or when your character starts with one copy and another is available for sale) and in these cases you can memorize a spell twice to double up on 9

your charges between Bonfires dont forget that you must first own two copies to equip two copies, though. All of these spells compete for memorization slots granted your character based on his Attunement stat. To actually use a spell you must 1) Attune it at a bonfire, which requires having at least one slot to Attune it into, which in turn requires having at least 10 Attunement, 2) equip the correct casting medium for the spell you want to cast so a Catalyst for Sorceries or a Talisman for Miracles, and 3) press R1 or L1 to cast the spell once your casting device is readied. If you still dont cast the spell ensure that you meet its minimum requirements. Pyromancies have no requirements but individual Spells require Intelligence and Miracles require Faith; if you dont meet the requirements of your desired spell you can still buy and equip it but will just get a head scratching animation instead of a spell when you try to cast it. Each type of magic has its own flavor of spells and increases in power in different ways. The three types of magic are Sorceries, Pyromancies, and Miracles. They each have their associated casting tools, as described below the only generalization I can make about them here is that while these tools do also have attack animations they are universally horrible melee weapons and they cant even parry if placed in the left hand.

Sorceries
These include a lot of blue, twinkling arcane type projectiles that do the magic type of damage. Only a few monsters have appreciable resistance to this sort of magic making it a fairly universal sort of solution. Also included here are various camouflaging spells and a few debuffs to be cast at foes. Sorceries increase in power mostly via stat scaling from Intelligence as most of the Catalysts used to cast Sorceries scale fairly strongly off of that stat. Once you kill the Hydra and the hidden secondary boss behind it you can also find another spell vendor who sells a Catalyst with higher base damage but worse scaling for those characters who want to use a few spells but dont want to invest too heavily into Intelligence. If you have a lot of Faith you can also build a Tin Darkmoon Catalyst that scales the power of your Sorceries off of your Faith instead of your Intelligence. The Sorcerer, of course, will leave the Tutorial with a simple spell and a basic Catalyst. Other characters can obtain these very early by going down the stairs that the depressing blue guy in Firelink Shrine is looking at, taking the elevator all the way down, and then looking around on the right once leaving the basement building for another staircase leading down. Lots of great spells can be purchased from several different vendors in the game, but many of the strongest spells are had through Covenants (page 17) or plot events.

Pyromancies
These are mostly fire based attack spells including both thrown projectiles and various gouts of flame. They do not scale with any stat and instead you increase the strength of your Pyromancy by leveling up the item used to cast them a glove with a burning ember embedded in the palm called a Flame. These upgrades require no materials, just souls, so they are quite easy to make. This makes it possible to have very strong Pyromancy quite early and independent of your stats. Some enemies are very weak against fire as well, but there are also those who are strong against it. The Pyromancer starts with the Fireball spell and a basic, non-upgraded Flame. Other characters will have to advance three or four hours into the game to find the first Pyromancy trainer / vendor. Hell be trapped in an upright stone pot with his head sticking out behind a couple of butchers in the Depths area, dont attack the pot to free him though as this will cause him to flag you as a foe use your roll to break the pot instead. 10

He will go back to the Firelink Shrine area on his own and you can find him there. When you talk to him hell ask you if you have anything against magic. Answer NO to his question and hell give you a Flame if you didnt start with one and sell you some spells (if you accidentally answered Yes you can just wait a while and talk to him again). He can also upgrade your Flame up to +15. Later you can find another trainer who can ascend your Flame which enables you to put five more levels into it. Ive heard that this new Flame does scale the power of your Pyromancies with your Intelligence stat but have not had a chance to try to confirm this myself. Pyromancy makes at least decent attack magic available to all character types. Most of the strongest spells in this family are had through gifts from Covenants (page 17).

Miracles
Miracles have the predictable heal and cure spells included but now also have very good attack spells such as tossed lighting bolts or huge malevolent eruptions from below foes, depending on if the Miracle is associated with a nice god or a nasty one. Either way, your Faith stat largely determines the strength of your cast Miracles as most Talismans scale strongly with your Faith. All of the attack spells are gained through various Covenants (again, page 17), however, so expect to work a bit in order to unlock them. The presence of heal spells is quite a bit more important in Dark Souls than in Demons Souls as healing items are in such short supply this time around. If you dont begin with a Talisman (ie: as a Priest) you will have to sign up with the fat holy knight guy in Firelink shrine to get access to a vendor / trainer. You can back out of this Covenant later simply by asking the vendor who appears in the Undead Parish after you ring the first bell to let you out of it he does it for free and will do the same for other covenants as well, getting back in again can sometimes be an issue, however so dont do this all willy-nilly. Early on you can buy the Thorolund Talisman from the fat knight in Firelink which has strong, non-scaling power if you just want something to cast basic heals with and dont want to invest heavily in Faith. Also, if youre a character with a lot of Intelligence you will want to pick up the Velkas Talisman from the vendor I just mentioned above in the Undead Parish which scales in power in relationship to your Intelligence instead of your Faith, though you will still need the required levels of Faith to successfully cast the Miracles in the first place. Dont forget that if you buy multiple copies of a spell you can also equip multiple copies to get more total inter-Bonfire charges. So just because you started out a Priest with the Heal miracle doesnt mean you should pass on buying another copy of it if you use it a lot.

11

Upgrading Equipment
Universalized system Different stones Different smiths An upgrade tree Generalizations The first thing I want to mention is that equipment upgrades have been almost entirely universalized in Dark Souls. Any weapon that can be upgraded can be made into a Faith oriented weapon or a fire imbued weapon or a Magic imbued weapon or whatever. Also, any piece of armor can be upgraded as well. What the upgrade limits and paths and whatnot are are much more complex, as are the branch points for these upgrades, but the chart near the end of this section should clear that up once you understand the basics. The actual process of upgrading is usually done by visiting one of the several smiths present in the game world, but you can also buy an item that lets you do certain, generally basic upgrades from any Bonfire as well. The various upgrades are fueled by a few special upgrade stones or materials you can find in the game world plus a few souls. The basic sort of upgrade stone is called just plain Titanite and comes in different sizes. Shards are the smallest, then there are Large Shards, then Chunks, then Slabs. This basic Titanite doesnt really change the nature of the weapon youre upgrading, it just makes it stronger at base and sometimes lets it scale a bit better with your stats. Its also used to upgrade most of the armor you find, and, in general, when you use this basic Titanite you can upgrade a particular item from +0 or its base state to +15, burning up more and more Shards and Large Shards and Chunks and Slabs as you work your way up the ladder. Its an especially good way to upgrade most shields. Anyway, the stones themselves you can sometimes buy, sometimes farm, and some of the rarer ones can only practically be found hidden away here or there or farmed through extremely rare drops or monsters that dont respawn or even bosses. There is, however, more than one type of upgrade stone. In addition to plain Titanite there are also various colored Titanites (such as Green or Blue Titanite) that generally improve weapons as you would expect them to. For example, Blue Titanite it required to add Magic damage to a weapon, Yellow Titanite is required to make it a Lightning weapon. The only ones that dont make apparent sense is that Green Titanite allows for a few different sort of upgrades, Twinkling Titanite is used for improving unique weapons, and Demon Titanite is used on items made out of boss souls. The only other stone related hitch is that you cant use the non-plain sorts of Titanite on base +0 weapons, you generally have to upgrade the weapons a little bit using basic Titanite first, generally to +5 or +10 depending on the desired final upgrade, and then start building from there, using your colored Titanite, to reach your final destination point. All of this will make sense when you consult the upgrade chart on the next page. At a future date I will try to add a chart listing favorite sources for the various types of needed stones, but as of now just note what creatures drop what stones along the way for when you decide to go back and do some farming. The only remaining complication is that not every smith can do every sort of upgrade. All of them can do black and green Titanite upgrades but only the Parish smith can do Raw, Divine and Occult upgrades, only the New Londo Ruins smith can do Magic, Enchanted and Crystal upgrades, and only the Giant Smith later in the game can do Lightning upgrades and forge weapons for you using boss souls. These smiths will (mostly) not be able to do these upgrades when you first meet them as their forges arent yet properly equipped. You will find items called Embers in the game world that unlock these upper tier upgrades (which may or may not be better for your character than lower tier ones, depending on your stats and the individual weapons and other factors). Bring the Embers to the smiths to enable those forges. Ive summarized this info in tables at the end of this section as well, and describe where to find the Embers. The question reguarding should I spend souls on levels or on upgrades is a totally situational one, but in general I recommend a balanced approach. Anyway, on the next page is the promised upgrade tree. 12

What each upgrade does actually varies a bit from weapon to weapon. Generally they increase the base damage, some upgrades do this more than others, of course. They also increase the degree by which weapons scale in power according to your stats this can be thought of as bonus damage in addition to the weapons base damage. In typical Japanese fashion scaling is ranked with letters, from weakest to strongest, as D, C, B, A, and S. When you upgrade a weapon the scaling rules and base power of the upgrade totally overwrites the old values. Some weapons start with a D rank in scaling for Strength. If you push them through the tree and make them Lightning weapons they no longer get any bonus power from Strength and instead will have high base physical and base lighting damage. This makes Lightning a stat independent upgrade type whether it is stronger than a scaling option or not depends on your stats and the individual weapon. Ive made some suggestions as to which weapons to use depending on your characters stats starting on page 13

29. Briefly, though, heres a basic description of what each upgrade type does. Base: Called Base because its unlabeled in the game these items appear simply as Item +1 or Item +4 or whatever. Enhances the item along the lines you found it in. Scaling is left in place and whatever its base damage was gets a bit stronger. These weapons can be buffed in battle. This is usually a good way to upgrade shields as the amount of stamina consumed by an incoming blow is decreased only on Base upgrades to shields. Most armor pieces can only be upgraded along the Base (or Found Unique, depending on the armor) line as well. Raw: Think of them as raw damage weapons. Greatly increases the items base damage but lowers the contributions from its scaling stats. These weapons can be buffed. Crystal: Massively increases the weapons base damage and leaves its scaling intact. These weapons, however, can never be repaired and eventually will break. There is a unique crystal shield you can make from a boss soul you find along the way thats the only exception it can be repaired. Lightning: Huge increase to base physical damage and strong added Lightning damage. These weapons usually do a tiny bit more damage overall than Fire weapons do but are obtained later on, too. These weapons can not be buffed. Shields upgraded this way get extra resistance to Lightning. Magic: Adds magic damage and increases the base damage, and also adds good scaling with your Intelligence. These weapons cannot be buffed. Shields upgraded this way get extra resistance to incoming Magic attacks. These cannot be buffed. Enchanted: These are similar to Magic weapons but provide less of a boost to the base damage and more of a boost to stat scaling. Unbuffable and suitable for characters with extra high Intelligence. Divine: This upgrade adds magic damage and increases the base physical damage, and it also ensures that you get some scaling from Strength, Dexterity, and okay scaling from Faith. Divine weapons also will permanently kill enemies who are self-ressurecting. They cannot be buffed. Occult: What Enchanted is to Magic, Occult is to Divine. Less of a buff to base damage but stronger stat scaling, this time for Faith. The scaling here is generally not as strong as what Enchanted provides (B instead of A or C instead of B, depending on the weapon) this is probably to compensate for the fact that Faith also boosts magic and fire defense whereas Intelligence does not. Occult weapons also do not permanently kill self-resurrecting foes and cannot be buffed. Fire: Similar to Lightning. All scaling is removed and you get high base Fire and physical damage instead, and shields upgraded this way get bonus fire resistance. Unbuffable. Chaos: These are a different flavor of Fire weapons. They have high base fire and physical damage, though not as high as similarly upgraded Fire weapons do. They also do not scale with your stats at all, however, they do scale with your Humanity. How much power is added depends on the weapon and it caps out when you have 10 Humanity in the counter next to your HP. At this point Chaos weapons usually do more damage than Fire weapons do. Whether its worth it or not depends on how good you are at holding on to your Humanity, of course, as you will lose all 10 of those points if youre carrying them around and die by any means. Chaos weapons are unbuffable. Found Uniques, Forged Uniques, and Dragon Uniques: Everything can be upgraded, but Found Uniques, Forged Uniques and Dragon Uniques dont use regular Titanite for their upgrades. You obviously find the Found Uniques and they use Twinkling Titanite for their upgrades this includes many of the rarer sets of armor in the game. Forged Uniques are initially made by taking a +10 Base item of a particular sort and a bosss soul to the last smith you find which rewards you with a unique weapon that requires Demon Titanite to upgrade. Dragon Uniques are usually won by hacking off a bosss tail during a battle and then picking up the item that appears when you do so you hack off the tail by attacking it instead of some other part of the bosss body and these items upgrade using the Dragon Scales you find here and there. All of these upgrade items are much rarer than the ones required for most of the steps above. 14

Let me close out this section with a table re-summarizing which smiths do what upgrades and a table on where you can find the Embers generally needed to unlock the higher tier upgrades:
Smith Andrei of Astora Vamos Rickert of Vinheim Giant Blacksmith Forges Raw, Divine, Occult Fire, Chaos Magic, Enchanted Location Annex attached to the Undead Parish. Leave the Cathedral and go across the long walkway. At the very bottom of the spiral staircase in the Catacombs. Drop down using the projections. Turn right when you get out of the elevator buildings in New Londo Ruins. Bottom of the stairs there. Notes Sells unlimited Titanite Shards for 1000 souls* Sells nothing Sells a few sorceries and a catalyst.

Lightning, Crystal, Toward the end of Anor Londo. Near the boss door Sells some giant gear. Forged Uniques look for an archer and use the stairs on the right. Large Shards of Titanite can be bought in Sens Fortress as can Green Titantie Shards. Forged Uniques require some +10 Base Weapon and a Boss Soul.

Ember Large Ember Very Large Ember Divine Ember Large Divine Ember Dark Ember Large Flame Ember Chaos Flame Ember Large Magic Ember Enchanted Ember Crystal Ember

Needed For Base +6 to Base +10, Raw +0 to Raw +5 Base +11 to Base +15 Divine +0 to Divine +5 Divine +6 to Divine +10 Occult +0 to Occult +5 Fire +6 to Fire +10 Chaos +0 to Chaos +5 Magic +6 to Magic +10 Enchanted +0 to Enchanted +5 Crystal +0 to Crystal +5

Location Depths. Near the table with the raw meat that the butcher is chopping on. New Londo Ruins. After draining the water go back to the first building with the elevator and go to the bottom floor. Look around down there. Darkroot Garden. After the Moonlight Butterfly boss fight go up the far tower and look around for a glowing spark. Tomb of Giants. Just past the first bonfire theres a ladder that leads down to several skeletons. Look around behind the skeletons. Painted World of Ariamis. Get the Annex Key and enter the annex. Search for a frozen blacksmith inside that area. Demon Ruins. Near the boss door on the left is a hallway. The Ember is past the cluster of gigaworms. Demon Ruins. Its behind the horde of Taurus Demons at the end of the lava field. Will probably have to die to get it. Anor Londo / Crystal Caves. Finish the boss in the caves for good, the return to the room where you first met him. Darkroot Garden, rear area. There is a small pond with two mushroom parents guarding a chest. The ember is inside the chest.

Dukes Archives. Near the lever that opens the stairway to the Crystal Caves is a chest between two rows of bookshelves. Vamos will upgrade a +5 Base weapon to a +0 to +5 Fire weapon using Green Titanite, no Ember is needed. Rickert will upgrade a +5 Base weapon to a +0 to +5 Magic weapon using Green Titanite, no Ember is needed. The Giant Smith can make Lighting Weapons and Forged Uniques without any additional Embers as well.

15

Multiplayer
General idea Helping others Hunting others A variety of new options

In an interview about Demons Souls, the parent game of Dark Souls, the games director Hidetaka Miyazaki was asked where he got the idea for the multiplayer system that that game had:
The origin of that idea is actually due to a personal experience where my car suddenly stopped on a hillside after some heavy snow and started to slip. The car following me also got stuck, and then the one behind it spontaneously bumped into it and started pushing it up the hill. That's it! That's how everyone can get home! Then it was my turn and everyone started pushing my car up the hill, and I managed to get home safely. But I couldn't stop the car to say thanks to the people who gave me a shove. I'd have just got stuck again if I'd stopped. On the way back home I wondered whether the last person in the line had made it home, and thought that I would probably never meet the people who had helped me. I thought that maybe if we'd met in another place we'd become friends, or maybe we'd just fight. You could probably call it a connection of mutual assistance between transient people. Oddly, that incident will probably linger in my heart for a long time. Simply because it's fleeting, I think it stays with you a lot longer. -Hidetaka Miyazaki in an interview published May 27, 2010 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/souls-survivor?page=3

In Dark Souls this basic principle has been unfolded and expanded upon. The essential feel of strangers whose faces you never see literally bumping into eachother on a snow night remains for all of the encounters, but in Dark Souls theyve managed to add variety of twists to this idea. Lets take two basic examples of how multiplayer works. The first option available to you is to put a sign down using your White Sign Soapstone which Solaire of Astora will give you when you first find him early in the game hes on the porch near the first big dragon. When you do this Dark Souls Peer-to-Peer system looks for players who are close to your Soul Level (+/- 10% currently, but expect From to expand this range in the near future) who are currently not Hollowed and playing the same area as you are. If these conditions are met your sign appears in their world and they can walk over to it and stand on it to get a picture of your character and your PSN / Xbox Live name, plus the option to summon you into their world. Once there your attacks wont be able to hurt the host but you will be able to join him in fighting the foes in his world. Killing them will net you a good amount of souls and if you see the host through to killing a boss you get a large soul bonus (often in the five figure range) and are sent back to your own world. Soon, a second option will open up. Youll come across an item called a Cracked Red Eye Orb. When you use it the P2P network again searches for a player in human form who is near your soul level in the same area as you, but this time you wont invade as a friend. The enemies in his world will not try to attack you at all as youre one of them, bent on destroying a fellow player who is probably only trying to progress through the game. Your reward for killing him is a goodly portion of souls plus a free point of Humanity. These two basic options have been expanded upon with the help of various Covenants. These are explained in the next section, but for now know that theres a way to assault players with your undead servants, ways that summon you to defend certain areas from tresspassers, a way to hunt notorious PvP players in Dark Souls, and a few ways to increase the stock of friendly phantoms available in your world. 16

Covenants
What are Covenants Consequences of leaving The nine Covenants Covenants are special deals you can make with different NPCs in the game, generally putting you in the service of a particular diety or organization. Doing so often applies a few extra rules to your play (being unable to attack allied faction memebers is a common on) and violation of those rules usually gets you kicked out of the Covenant. The benefit, of course, is that these dieties and organizations are generally in possession of certain rare weapons, items, spells and abilities that they can bestow upon you should you demonstrate an appropriate level of fealty to them. In short, Covenants are task based factions that reward you with unique stuff. You get some of these by ranking up within your covenant by completing certain tasks the ranking covenants have four ranks, from a +0 basic member to a +3 top level adherent. Many (but not all) of the tasks asked of you have a strong focus on the multiplayer elements of the game. In a true homage to D&D there are nine covenants aligned roughly as follows (note that this doesnt govern inter-Covenant interactions or anything like that, it just looks better than a list):
Lawful Good Neutral Evil Way of White Warrior of Sunlight Gravelord Servant Neutral Princess Guard Forest Hunter Path of the Dragon Evil Blade of the Darkmoon Chaos Servant Dark Wraith

If you betray a Covenant (generally by attacking other associated members or by leaving them for another Covenant) you acquire Sin. Sin does two main things. First of all, sinful characters cannot rejoin their old covenants. Second of all, the Blade of the Darkmoon covenant members receive as an item a hitlist of particularly sinful players and can invade them willy-nilly to punish them for their transgressions. Sin also may have an influence on your interactions with certain NPCs depending on how awesome or awful they think sin is. You can absolve your sins by visiting the vendor who appears in the Undead Parish after you ring the bell there (a major, early plot point). He charges you 2000 souls for every Soul Level you have to do this and this amounts to a very hefty fee even later in the game. Absolving your sins also will de-aggro any NPCs you may have pissed off along the way, generally by accidentally slicing their face open with your sword, thereby allowing you to interact with them normally again. Below Ive given a description of each Covenant, how to join it, the rewards you get for joining, and the items or actions required to rank up. If youre going for a completionist run be aware that by far the hardest covenant to join is the Dark Wraith one and you may want to read that section before you play too far into the game however for your first playthrough I heavily suggest just joining and leaving Covenants as you please and generally just playing around them rather than trying to grind rank or anything like that. Many obasically require a good knowledge of the game and an understanding about the PvP meta (especially where you can usually find people to invade or people to help depending on your Soul Level targets and compatriots must be within 10% of your Soul Level) before you can smoothly complete them, so do yourself a favor and complete at least one casual playthrough before taking Covenants too seriously.

17

Way of White
This Covenant is all about being a goody two-shoes, helping others out, and killing horrible monsters because theyre perverted scum. Its the easiest one to sign up for and, in fact, both the Priest and the Knight starting character classes actually come out of the gate already assigned to this faction. Its also an interesting one to stay signed up with if youre playing offline as it supplies optional helpers for many of the boss battles that you can summon in if youre un-Hollowed (you do this by spending a humanity point at a Bonfire) look around near the various boss fog doors for any white writing on the ground and approach it to summon the helpers if you want. How To Join: Petrus (in the Firelink Shrine area) or Rhea (whom you rescue from the Tomb of Giants) will happily sign you up even though theyll make snide comments about you being undead if youre currently Hollowed. The Knight and Cleric also begin the game pre-aligned with the Way of White. Ive tried hard not to spoil any major plot points in this guide but I have to warn you here that Petrus has a grudge against Rhea and will kill her shortly after you rescue her if he is still around. If youre interested in this Covenant I suggest joining early, buying everything off of Petrus, and then killing him and then paying to have your sins absolved before finding Rhea to avoid any bumps in the road. You can also optionally kill Petrus immediately after saving Rhea but this is risky as he kills her after you load any two areas of the game other than the Undead Parish and the one your rescue her in and this means you have to walk directly to her (she returns to the Undead Parish) after saving her or else hell get there first. Rewards and Restrictions: A member of this Covenant gets early access to Petrus and later Rhea as vendors. They sell most of the miracles in the game and a few unique Talismans. This Covenant also influences your availability for online interactions it makes invasions of your world very unlikely and it increases the chance that youll see the white soul signs that other players in this covenant have left when they are trying to make themselves available to you, generally near Bonfires that are close to a boss as they get big soul rewards for helping you kill a boss. If you see a white soul sign lying around go ahead and summon someone up! There is also a punishment of -1 Estus Flask for betraying the covenant but to get your Estus back just rest at a bonfire (or absolve your sins). Ranking Up: This covenant has no ranks to climb, a base membership grants you all of its benefits.

Princess Guard
Being a part of the Princess Guard isnt very demanding, all you have to do is just not attack other members. This faction encourages more online cooperation and grants you a few tools to enhance your player vs. boss gangbangs, most notably big group heals, which are actually pretty important for big multiplayer sessions this time around as White Phantoms dont have access to their Estus Flasks and depend on either the host or their own Miracles for HP replenishment. How to Join: After the big boss battle in Anor Londo (about 3/4ths of the way through the game) you will meet Princess Gwynevere. She will give you an important plot item whether you decide to serve her or not, but at this point you can also sign on to her faction. Rewards and Restrictions: Upon joining you receive the Princess Ring which increases the power of your Miracles a bit. The high powered Miracles Bountiful Sunlight and Soothing Sunlight become purchaseable from Picasa upon joining. Both require very high faith to use (36 and 48 respectively) and each will eat up two Attunement slots to equip. Bountiful Sunlight heals you over time at a fairly high rate and Soothing Sunlight casts a huge area heal thats about as effective as Great Heal on any 18

friendly characters within its radius. You lose access to these miracles if you leave the Covenant. Ranking Up: The Princess Guard Covenant also has no ranks.

Blade of the Darkmoon

This makes you a servant of Lord Gwyn himself. Gwyn has a strong desire to eliminate competition and will make you a vengeful assassin seeking in particular those who have sinned against the gods of the land. A lot is asked of you in this Covenant but its quite unique and offers several compelling benefits as well. How to Join: You can only can begin the process to join this Covenant quite a long ways into the game. To prepare you first need to find the Dark Moon Seance ring in the Catacombs and then go to the second bonfire in Anor Londo which is near the bottom of the stairs available by rotating the tower. With the ring on a statue near the Bonfire will vaporize, approach the fog near there and wait for an action prompt do NOT actually enter the fog, doing this at any time will cause you to get kicked out of the Covenant. When the prompt appears press X to kneel (you dont have to know the kneel gesture to do this). You will then be asked if you wish to join the Covenant. If you do enter the fog on accident and you want to be a part of this Covenant just let the person inside kill you and then go absolve your sins and try again. Most Covenants actually lock the related god away from your aggression (and therefore halt progression in that area while you play around with the Covenant) but this one does not, so be careful about that fog door. Rewards and Restrictions: Immediately upon joining you are presented with a Blue Eye Orb and a ring called The Blade of the Darkmoon Covenant. The Orb can be used to try to invade players in any spot in the game, but they must have some accumulated sin to be targets (and be within your soul range, of course). The ring, when worn, will summon you into Anor Londo when sinful players enter there who are vaguely near your Soul Level and unlike the other invading methods in the game when you invade by means of this ring your target is not warned that youre coming. Ranking Up: Sometimes when you slay a target for Lord Gwyn they will drop a Souvenir of Reprisal. Carry these back to the fog to rank up. To reach +1 in the Covenant you need to donate 10 of them, to reach +2 you need to give 30, and to reach the last rank of +3 you need to donate 80. The only rewards are had at +1 (reaching +2 and +3 actually grants you nothing extra) where you are supposedly given the Darkmoons Light Sword and the Darkmoons Talisman. The Darkmoon Talisman is the strongest Talisman in the game. I havent seen any information about the sword online or in the Futurepress guide, so perhaps thats just a rumor.

Warrior of Sunlight
The sunlight warriors come from a neighboring country and are here to clean up Lord Gwyns mess, whether he likes it or not. Solaire of Astora belongs to this covenant, so if he seems like a cool guy to you go ahead and join up. This covenant emphasizes helping as many players as possible purge demons and other villainous scum from existence. It offers some pretty nice rewards, too, most of which stick with you if you leave the Covenant later on down the line. How to Join: To prepare you need a Faith stat of at least 50, or else you will have had to already helped many other players defeat bosses. For each boss youve killed while being a white phantom for another player (use the white soapstone you find early on near bonfires near bosses, or near the doors to bosses, and hope they summon you in) you get a five point discount on the Faith stat, so if you start as a Pyromancer with a Faith of eight youll have to kill nine bosses to meet the 19

requirements. Once you have your resume ready find the broken altar to the right of the Bonfire thats under the dragon spewing flames all over the bridge early in the game its out in the sunlight. Approach the altar and press X when prompted to in order to join (you dont need the Pray gesture). Rewards and Restrictions: Upon entering youre granted the Lightning Spear Miracle. This is a powerful and useful projectile spell that requires 20 Faith (but which can also be found as drop in Sens Fortress) and has 10 casts. When you rank up to +1 you are also presented with the Great Lightning Spear which also has 10 casts but requires 30 Faith, and your are given the option to exchange Lord Gwyns soul for the Sunlight Spear Miracle which requires 50 Faith, has 5 casts, and uses two Attunement slots. The Sunlight Spear is by far the strongest of the three but you also lose it if you leave the Covenant you can keep the other two. Ranking Up: When you are in this Covenant your summon sign appears as gold rather than white. If you help a player kill a boss after theyve summoned you in you are presented with Sunlight Medals which you can turn in at the altar back in the Parish. Also if you summon in anyone of the Sunlight Warrior Covenant to help you with your boss fight you will get a free medal as well, so even if you arent in the club go ahead and bring in gold soulsigned people if you might join later. Note that Solaire of Astora counts as a Warrior of Sunlight and if you bring him in for boss battles (as youre offered to do from time to time, look around for his soul signs near certain boss doors) and win you get a medal as well. It takes 10 medals to reach +1, 30 for +2 and 80 for +3, but all of the rewards become accessible at +1 so the others are just for show.

Forest Hunters
Alvina of the Darkroot Wood is a giant communicable cat, and she doesnt care to have a bunch of loot seeking adventurers traipsing around in her woods. If you agree to help keep her woods free of this sort of nuisance shell reward you with items that make it easier to do to so. How to Join: Joining this Covenant is quite easy. All you have to do is find the small stone house behind the sealed door in Darkroot Garden and peek inside. Alvina will be perched up in a window (dont shoot at her or shell call you a moron and disappear until you cleanse your sin) and will sign you up if you agree to her terms. Shell ask you if you will agree to not hunt other members of her Covenant and if you will agree to kill those who are not of her Covenant. Once youre in its fairly easy to get kicked out. Characters you can lock on to can still be attacked, even in the woods (there was an early rumor running contrary to this) but if you crash into or accidentally attack any of the Stooges or NPC humans residing around Alvinas house you will be discharged from the Covenant. Also, if they run off a cliff, as theyre prone to do (hence the name Stooges) you will probably be blamed for it so try to keep them away from the edges of the area by not drawing any targets theyre aggrod on to near there. Its also important to Quit and then Reload your character immediately after joining the Covenant to prevent the Stooges from attacking you when you leave the house, which they sometimes do if you dont bother with reloading your character. Rewards and Restrictions: Upon joining youll be presented the Cat Covenant Ring. If you put this on youre put into a queue and once your number comes up youll be called to the Darkroot Wood to hunt any non-Hollowed player who has trespassed there while not being a part of Alvinas covenant. Human form players in the Darkroot Woods will sometimes find that they receive a steady stream of invaders trying to off them, frequently with more than one coming in at a time. The ring can be worn anywhere in your world and if youre successful in killing your target you will be returned to where you left off with your Estus and spells refilled (if youre not successful that means you got killed and therefore will show up at the last Bonfire you rested at). You are given no tokens for offing offenders but Alvina keeps track of how many you have killed. 20

Ranking Up: After you kill your first target you receive a Divine Blessing item which is a onetime use full heal that also clears any negative statuses you have. After three kills Alvina will present you with a Ring of Fog that you get to keep (you can also trade your Skull Lantern, a unique weapon you can find in the Tomb of the Giants once per playthrough, for a Ring of Fog at the crows nest back in the Asylum). The Ring of Fog is currently the most overpowered PvP item out there it makes your character nearly invisible, and, whats worse, it prevents your foes from locking on to you which means if theyre a mage or using a stabbing weapon theyll never hit you even if they see you comin Id expect From to patch this out soon so enjoy it while it lasts. This effect can also be had with the Sorcery Hidden Body which you can buy from Dusk of Oolacile after freeing her from the rear of the Hyrdas lake her soul sign resides back at the lakeshore if you want to buy it. Anyway, after youve killed five forest invaders Alvina will let you know that she despises the wolf that lives further into the woods and, of course, would like you to kill him. There is no reward for doing so, but if you fail to do it you will be kicked out of the Covenant. There is a persistent rumor that you can spare the wolf during your fight with him to get a different reward but so far no one has been able to get this to happen, despite his limping animation when he is low on HP probably this is just a rumor but it is also possible that the Spare Him dialog or whatever is currently bugged and will be fixed in a future patch. Right now killing the wolf is your only option anyway.

Chaos Servant
The Daughters of Chaos dont really give a damn about whats going on or which god wants to do what, all they know if that they like eggs and they like to burn shit. If you like eggs and like to burn shit then this is probably the Covenant for you! How to Join: Far below the Undead Parish youll find a giant swamp. At one end of the swamp theres a giant snarl of tree roots and at the other is a huge spiders nest. After you beat the boss inside of the nest you can then speak with an egg loving fellow you can find by knocking down a section of wall. The section youre looking for is in the little room one story down from the lever you pull to ring the second bell (a major plot event). Dont attack the burdened guy just behind the wall talk to him instead and hell allow you access to the chamber where you can speak with his mistress, the Ancient Spider Witch. She will ask you ..? and if you say Yes you are now a Chaos Servant. Rewards and Restrictions: Eingyi, the egg covered guy, finds it rather odd that youre not into eggs. If you ally his suspicions by going and getting an egg attached to you hell brighten up considerably and offer to sell you the Pyromancies Poison Mist and Toxic Mist (three and one casts, repsectively) as well as a cure for the egg that has chosen a rather unfortunate part of your body to inhabit. To get an egg just proceed further down into the lava filled area and punch some of the mobile Eingyi-like critters down there and then stand there facing them while blocking eventually one will grab you and implant you with an egg, you know youve been successfully implanted if your character starts itching when hes idle. The egg will grow up over time (it has three or four stages and it takes four to ten minutes for it to develop from stage to stage) and will consume half of your incoming souls while its growing. Once it reaches its adult stage youll get a new Kick animation you can try out it is, however, unfortunately worse than your old one as far as combat goes. The actual rewards for the Covenant, however, are had simply by donating Humanity points to the Ancient Spider Witch. Of course, youre not to attack any of the other Daughters of Chaos while a part of this Covenant, nor the Spider Witch herself. The Spider Witch is also a Firekeeper and can upgrade your Estus if you have a spare Firekeepers Soul on you and, of course, if you kill her the nearby Bonfire goes out. Ranking Up: Upon joining the Covenant youre presented with the Pyromancy Great Chaos Fireball 21

(four casts, requires two slots). After you donate 10 Humanity youll rank to +1 but receive no reward for this. With 30 Humanity you reach +2 and are granted the Pyromancy Chaos Storm (one effective cast, requires two slots) which is the biggest, most random version of Firestorm youve ever seen. At this point a shortcut down to Lost Izalith also shows up. If you give 68 Humanity you reach rank +3 but this rank has no rewards associated with it.

Gravelord Servant
The Gravelord Nito has a few rules he lives by. The first is that the living would be better off dead. The second is that if the living must live they should not do so easily. The third is that those who help him right the mistaken state of things should be rewarded. If this all sounds good to you then pay him a visit. How to Join: This Covenant is a bit tricky to join. If you dont join before you complete the Tomb of Giants youll be completely unable to until NG+, so you have to do it fairly early on. Nito has a fascination with an item called the Eyes of Death and to sign up you have to have at least one in your inventory when you go to talk to him you can find three of these behind the Titanite Demon in the Catacombs or you can farm them as a very rare drop from the Basilisks (aka the Curse Frogs) in the Depths if youre going to farm the frogs I heavily suggest finding the Gold Serpent Ring in Sens Fortress first as it provides a much needed huge boost to your item discovery rate. To open a conversation with the big guy go to the bottom of the Catacombs into the long hallway with the Titanite Demon and find the coffin sticking out a bit. Hop in there (approach it and press X when prompted to do so) and wait about 30 seconds and a cutscene will play. You do not have to be Hollowed to join. After the cutscene go find the napping Nito and talk to him to be offered the chance to joing. Rewards and Restrictions: Upon joining youre given the Gravelord Sword, a fairly powerful curved greatsword requiring 24 Strength and 13 Dexterity to use which also inflicts the Toxic status. Nito also gives you the Miracle Gravelord Sword Dance which causes eruptions of Nitos weapon to burst through the floor at your foe the Miracle requires no actual Faith and has one effective cast and is quite powerful, especially against groups of foes. Nito also empowers you to use the Eyes of Death yourself. When you do so the location at which you used it will spawn an evil gate in three other randomly chosen playerss worlds. While this gate is present in their world they will have to deal with additional very strong monsters that appear concurrently with the gate and to rid their world of this presence they have to locate the gate and step through it, which will cause them to invade your world offering you one more chance to kill them it is, of course, possible that all three of your targets will find the gate at about the same time and you will have to deal with the three of them at once, so try to place your Eye of Death in a hard to find spot. Ranking Up: Nito wants more Eyes of Death, so its off to farm Curse Frogs you go. Having a high curse resistance is of course helpful (the Antiquated Set that appears at the rear of the Hyrdas cave after you rescue Dusk and tell her that Yes you think magic is cool has massive curse resist, the Channelers Set from Blighttown has decent curse resist, and you can also find a Cursebite Ring in the Valley of Drakes or the New Londo Ruins to up it a ton) and having a high item discovery is mandatory (see page 29 for recommended farming items, the ring mentioned above is the most important one to have, though). Patches also sells Eyes of Death for 3000 each, but Im unsure whether he sells an unlimited amount or not. Giving Nito 10 eyes ranks you to +1 at which point he bequeaths upon you the Gravelord Greatsword Dance, an upgrade of his previous Miracle. 30 more eyes gets you to +2 which is apparently the highest level, however there is no reward for reaching this point. People have a very hard time getting the eyes to drop, so be warned. 22

Path of the Dragon

When I was eleven I wanted to be a rad dragon and breathe fire. Nothing wrong with that, you gotta have dreams, right? Anyway, if you still want to be a rad dragon and breathe fire then heres your chance. How to Join: You want to talk to the Great Stone Dragon who resides at the end of Ash Lake. You can also beat a sword out of his tail, and you can do this without aggroing him or preventing you from joining this Covenant. Getting to him is a bit of a pain, though. You have to go down to the Great Swamp, from there make your way to the bottom of the Great Hollow, and then run your ass through Ash Lake avoiding the threats there to the final structure at the end of the area. Pray to the resident dragon to join. Rewards and Restrictions: Upon joining you receive the Dragon Eye and the Dragon Head Stone. The Head Stone you equip to your item bar and then remove your helmet and you can now use it (by selecting it and pressing Square) to breath bitchin dragon fire for as long as your Stamina bar will let you. The Dragon Eye is used to invade other playerss worlds in order to help collect the items needed to rank up in The Path of the Dragon, which are Dragon Scales. This item will present a mark of challenge in any nearby players world who currently possesses a Dragon Scale and if he accepts the challenge you will enter to duel him if he loses you take his scales. Unfortunately there isnt much in it for the person presented the challenge and currently its very hard to collect Dragon Scales this way I would expect From to patch this soon to make Dragon Eye invasions involuntary. Ranking Up: 10 Dragon Scales gets you to +1 which grants no reward, 30 gets you to +2 at which point you are granted the Dragon Body Stone. Equipping this in your item bar will remove your armor and allow you to do a powerful shout that staggers foes and buffs your attacks for a period of time. 80 Dragon Scales gets you to +3 which has no reward associated with it. The other two ways to get Dragon Scales are to simply collect the few that are scattered around in the game world or to farm the Blue Drakes in the Valley of Drakes their drop rate for scales is really abysmal though so, again, consult the Farming Equipment section on page 29k for advice on how to make that process a bit less painful.

Dark Wraith
Im not the sort of guy who likes to just randomly show up and fuck people over. At least, not in my day to day life. When I play games like Dark Souls Im exactly that guy. What does that mean? That means this is the Covenant for me! Its also a notoriously difficult Covenant to join so if youre interested be sure to read below to understand whats required of you to do this. It was actually intended as a hidden Covenant by the developers, but in the days of the Internet noting is really that hidden, is it? How to Join: There are two options and both involve not following the natural course of the game. The first step is to kill the great wolf in the Darkroot Woods to get the Covenant of Artorias Ring that you need to survive the trip into the Abyss. You now need a key and have two ways to get it. The first choice is to completely avoid talking to Framps, get the Lordvessel as normal, and then go talk to Ingward in the New Londo Ruins to get the key to the Abyss. The second choice must be done before you get the Lordvessel and requires you to find and kill Ingward and then pick up his key if you wait until after you have the Lordvessel Ingward will not drop the key when killed. At this point you now are able to enter the Abyss without dying and upon doing so will have to defeat the extremely tough boss there. After doing so you will find a gentleman named Kaathe who will sign you up to the Dark Wraiths if you so wish. Rewards and Restrictions: Upon joining you are granted the Dark Hand, a fist weapon that also 23

turns into a shield if placed on your left hand that does a great job of blocking Magic, Fire and Lightning damage but not such a great job of blocking Physical damage the Dark Hand has no requirements. When used as a weapon the Dark Hand has a grab attack (press R2) that will suck a point of Humanity out of any Player Character targets (but not out of monsters or NPCs). Ranking Up: Kaathes request is fairly simple. He wants you to invade everyone and kill them. After you have assassinated 10 players you will reach +1 and be granted the Red Eye Orb (not cracked!) which can be used indefinitely to invade players as it doesnt break with use. After 30 victims you will reach +2 and can obtain the Dark Wraith Armor Set and the Darksword. The armor is a heavy armor set (about the weight of the Elite Knight Set) providing strong physical protection. The Darksword is a fairly long weapon of the normal straight sword variety (like the Longsword) that can be upgraded along normal lines and is about 20% stronger in all of its upgrades than the Longsword is it requires 16 Strength and 16 Dexterity. Slaying 80 players gets you to +3 and has no built in reward.

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Preferred Equipment
Armor Shields Catalysts, Flames and Talismans Weapons

This section is not meant to be exhaustive. That serves little purpose when the Futurepress guide does a good job of it and soon the online Wikis will do an even better job. The intent of this section is to make an effort at digesting the information provided in those larger sources into a more manageable list of particular items. The different types of equipment Ive enumerated on below will each include a brief commentary section explaining my approach to picking what Ive picked (if necessary) followed by a table with the relevant stats. Sometimes youll see that a table starts with an item whose name Ive listed in italics. When this is the case Ive included that item not as a particular suggestion but as a point of reference. Because this section is based only on my experiences playing the game and what Ive picked up from combing through Dark Souls threads online it will inherently have omissions and misjudgements. Its quite likely Ill miss awesome items here and list items that are actually no good. Additionally, just because I havent found a way to make a particular item work doesnt mean that you cant. What Im saying is please take the following advice as a starting point for your own experimentation rather than as a Bible. You can always send me an email if theres a particular item Ive left out here or there, or something Ive included that actually isnt that hot. The advice below is geared toward selections that are worth shaping your character around or that similarly would justify their stats or be of use throughout NG+ or NG++. This means many of these items will have stat requirements that are beyond what low level characters can reasonably get to. If youre having trouble with the early game Ive made some suggestions on page 38 in the section titled Early Equipment.

Armor
Most armor comes in sets and most of these sets lie on a continuum from lightest to heaviest. The light armors arent necessarily better than heavy, one set is not usually better than the next and really what you use will operate on a fairly fluid scale depending on how much mobility you need vs. how much Poise you need (see page 9 for more about Poise). Most characters will probably eventually pick one set of light armor and one set of heavy or medium armor to upgrade and wear them piecemeal depending on which weapons they want to use at the time, which have their own weights to take into consideration as well. With that said, there is some useful information I can pass along here. Most of these items Ive included because they have special effects beyond just protecting your character so this section has a format with more description and fewer stats than youd expect. I have included a few pieces of gear that stand out for their protective qualities, however, and will probably add a few more of those as the Internet alerts me to them. For those pieces you will see more stats.

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Armor Child Mask Mother Mask Father Mask Dark Sun Crown Symbol of Avarice Crown of Dusk Sunlight Maggot Havels Set Painted Guardian Set Antiquated Skirt Cleric Set Thorny Set Elite Knight Set

Obtained 8000 souls from Patches 8000 souls from Patches 8000 souls from Patches 10000 souls from Domnhall of Zena Rare drop from Mimics not in The Dukes Archive or the Crystal Caves Back of Hyrdas Lake after saving, locating, and talking to Dusk. Answer Yes.

Description Increases Stamina recovery rate Increases HP by 15% Increases Equip Load by 15% Increases all types of magic damage Helmet. Increases Item Discovery by 200 points, a very strong effect. Drains 5HP per second. Increases Magic Attack by 20% and lowers Magic Defense by 30%

Dropped by a visibly different Chaos Bug in a Helm that emits light from your character. Soliare hallway in Lost Izalith late in the game of Astora wears one but does not drop it. Dropped after slaying Havel who resides at the bottom of one of Taurus Demons towers Found in the Painted World of Ariamis late in the game Back of Hyrdas Lake after saving, locating, and talking to Dusk. Answer Yes. Purchased from Patches for 22,000 total A set of extremely heavy armor that also has the highest Poise in the game. Extremely light armor boasting high defense and unparalleld poison resistance, but no Poise. The skirt from the Antiquated set has sky high defense and curse resistance, but no Poise. A medium armor with a good balance of defense, Poise and overall weight

Be human with a live boss to kill Kirk in three Armor that makes your roll do damage (120 total). spots: The Depths, Demon Ruins, Lost Izalith Found in Daugh. of Chaos room if Kirk died thrice. Found on a body in Darkroot Garden. Seems to be the favorite heavy-but-not-too-heavy armor set for use with normal weight weapons.

Shields
For most characters the vast majority of the time the shield is the single most important piece of equipment. Before I get to listing items I first want to talk about how shields actually work, and, in particular, describe the effect Stability has on a shield. To begin with Ill considering two shields that block 100% of the incoming physical damage and a situation where some foe hits you with pure physical damage, which is the vast majority of foes in Dark Souls. Well take two shields as our examples and just focus on their Stability number. A Heater Shield +0 is the most basic shield you can find that blocks 100% physical and it has a Stability rating of 55. A Hollow Soldier Shield +15, which is a shield that you also find early but would have to upgrade extensively to get to +15, has a Stability rating of 85. Lets say Havel or some other hard hitting foe attacks you doing 300 potential damage and you have 40 Endurance which nets you the maximum possible 160 points of Stamina (represented in game as a bar rather than numbers, but the number in this case actually is 160). In each case the shield totally negates whatever percentage of the incoming damage is covered by its Stability number this means that the Heater Shield negates 55% and the Hollow Solider Shield negates 85%. The numbers work out to the Heater Shield not negating 165 damage and the Hollow Soldier Shield not negating 45 damage. This damage is then applied against your Stamina bar. In youre using the Heater Shield what happens is that all of your Stamina disappears, you take some damage and probably stagger, leaving you totally 26

defenseless and open to the next blow, unable even to dodge. If youre using the Hollow Solider Shield you lose about of your total Stamina and thats it, no HP is lost, no stagger animation occurs, your character doesnt flinch, and you can continue to try to position yourself better or counter attack. What this means is that Stabilty is of primary importance when choosing a shield, its what preserves your Stamina and in combat in Dark Souls your Stamina is just as important for keeping you alive as your HP is as without it you cant move well, attack or defend. Since so many foes do pure physical damage in Dark Souls having a shield with high Stability that blocks 100% of incoming physical damage is very useful. Sometimes you will run into foes that do lots of magic, fire, or lightning damage. There are no shields in the game that block 100% of any of those damages and in those cases what happens is the leftover unblocked part goes directly after your HP while the blocked percentage works its way through the block algorithm as above. In practice this means you will switch to these shields when you need them and whats usually considered a virtue in these swaps is that they block as much of the incoming elemental damage as possible. With those mechanics understood, in my mind these are the standout shields in Dark Souls:
Shield Hollow Soldier +15 Crystal Ring +5 Black Knight +5 Lit. Gargoyle +5 Eagle +15 Silver Knight +5 Dark Hand * Requirement Stability Str Dex 11 10 16 12 16 14 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 85 40 74 56 84 83 ? Damage Reduction % Phy 100 70 100 85 100 100 80 Mag 30 90 25 40 55 40 80 Fir 75 70 95 75 45 75 80 Lit 50 40 65 84 75 65 80 Weight 3.5 3 6 4 6 5 0.5 Obtained / Notes Rare drop from shield bearing Hollowed Forged: Moonlight Butterfly Soul* Drop: All Black Knights Drop: Parish and normal gargoyles Found: Blightown. Cannot parry. Drop: Spear and sword Silver Knights Covenant: Dark Wraith**

Litn. Bloodshield 10 0 53 100 30 70 56 3 Found: Painted World of Ariamis*** Instead of parrying this shield shoots a ring out that does whatever damage the weapon in your right hand would do. This can be abused and will probably be patched out soon. Forge it from any Buckler sized shield +10. ** In your left hand this acts as a shield. Its not upgradeable. The Dark Wraith Covenant is a ton of work to join. *** The Futurpress guide says this shield increases Poison/Bleed/Curse resistance by 50%. The Interent says it negates bleed damage. I havent tried it. People use it with the Lifehunt Schythe, mostly. Upgrades are limited to just the first level of Crystal/Lightning/Magic/Divine/Fire, none of which are improvements except Lightning.

Cataylsts and Talismans (and Flames)

There are only a few of these to choose between but Ive listed them below anyway. For the most part when choosing a Catalyst or Talisman theres a right choice is you have both low Intelligence and low Faith, a right choice if you have high Intelligence, and a right choice if you have high Faith. In the charts below these are referred to as the Low, Int, and Fth choices respectively and youll see why when you scan over to the scaling section. There are only two Flames in the game which I have not listed. These are the base one that you usually get from freeing the Depths Pyromancer from his pot (use your roll to free him, not a weapon) or can get later on as well, and a second, more powerful one you get from the master Pyromancy trainer Quelanna. The first Pyromancer will upgrade your Flame up to +15 at the cost of (only) a boatload of souls. Once you have an upgraded Flame (at least +10) and only if you havent yet killed the Bed of Chaos Quelanna will appear 27

sitting next to a pillar sort of near the big web mound in the Great Swamp. She can ascend your flame to a Strong Flame and then bump it up five more times the normal flame has a Magic Strength between 100 and 250 depending on its level, the Strong Flame is between 254 and 270. Read the textural description of the item in-game to confirm that she has upgraded your flame as it doesnt show up in just the items name. Catalysts and Talismans cannot be upgraded.
Catalyst or Talisman Low: Oolacile C. Int: Tin Crystal C. Fth: Tin Darkmoon C. Low: Thorolund T. Int: Velkas T. Fth: Darkmoon T.** Requirement Int 3 32 0 0 16 0 Fth 0 0 16 10 0 24 Stat Scaling Magic Strength Str Dex Int Fth 19-180 19-315 19-240 19-150 19-220 19-240 E E E C S A A D A Obtained 1000 souls from Dusk of Oolacile Complicated plot drop involving Big Hat Logan* Made from a Sorcerers C. and Gwyndolins soul 5000 souls from Petrus or Patches 5000 souls from Oswald in the Parish Covenant: Darkmoon Blades

* Free him from Sens Fortress. Get Lordvessel and either place it or talk to Logan. Free him from the Dukes Archives, then leave the area and come back again. Locate him in the Archives again and buy all of his stuff and kill Seath (can be done in either order). Talk to Logan one more time. Leave the area and come back to find a chest, then go to where you first encountered Seath. Finish off your foe, get your item. ** The Ivory Talisman, which you can get through Petrus events or buy from Patches for 5000 souls has as Magic Strength of 19-234 and an A scaling with Faith and doesnt require going through Covenant hoops.

Rings
Rings can make a big difference and because they are mostly interesting for the miscellaneous effects the format of the following chart is the same as the one I used for armor. You should expect to change your rings out as you go around to different areas depending on your purpose. The following list isnt exhaustive, its the just rings I find particularly useful or interesting. The first four are rings you can find early on, the rest are in alphabetical order.

Ring Ring of the Evil Eye Poisonbite Ring Cursebite Ring Bellowing Dragoncrest Cloranthy Ring C. Gold Serpent Ring C. Silver Serpent Ring Dark Wood Grain Ring Havels Ring Hornet Ring Ring of Fog

Obtained Found near Curse Frogs in the Depths 15,000 souls from Oswald in the Parish Found: Valley of Drakes or New Londo Ruins 20,000 souls from Griggs Found: Great Hollow or in Ash Lake Found in Sens Fortress Found in The Tomb of The Giants Slay Shivas invisible bodyguard Slay Havel Found: Darkroot Garden / Basin Hunter Covenant or give Skull Lantern to Hawk

Effects Heals 30 HP for each foe slain Quadruples poison resistance Quadruples curse resistance Increases all sorcery damage by 20% Increases Stamina recovery rate Gain 200 Item Discovery (~3x base) Get 20% more souls for kills Changes the roll animation for the better Gain 50% to Equip Load Increases Critical Damage 50% Makes you clearish and untargetable

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R. of Suns Firstborn Rusted Iron Ring Speckled Stoneplate R. Slumbering Dragoncrest Wolf Ring Old Witch Ring

Found: Anor Londo Found when you revisit the Undead Asylum Slay or do plot events for Sigemeyer of Catarina Drop: Griggs, but only in Sens Fortress Found Darkroot Garden / Basin Gift

Increases all miracle damage by 20% Normal movement in swamps and water Gain 25 Mag/Fire/Lit defense Silences your movements Gain 40 Poise Can understand Daughters of Chaos

Farming Equipment
In Dark Souls there will be times when you decide to go farm a particular monster for a certain item. Often this will be Titanite bits, but some covenants require large amounts of certain rare items and there are certain weapons that can only be had from rare drops as well. In all of these cases putting on some farming equipment can greatly speed things along. There are only a few things that can really boost your Item Drop rate, which starts at 100 (ie: if you have zero banked humanity). Banked Humanity refers to what the number in the upper left corner reads.
Item C. Gold Serpent Ring Symbol of Avarice Banked Humanity of 1 Banked Humanity of 2 Banked Humanity of 3 Banked Humanity of 4 Banked Humanity of 5 Banked Humanity of 10 Banked Humanity of 20 Banked Humanity of 30 Banked Humanity of 99 Obtained Found in Sens Fortress Rare drop from Mimics not in The Dukes Archive or the Crystal Caves See page 4 on Humanity See page 4 on Humanity See page 4 on Humanity See page 4 on Humanity See page 4 on Humanity See page 4 on Humanity See page 4 on Humanity See page 4 on Humanity See page 4 on Humanity Effects Gain 200 Item Discovery Helmet. Gain 200 Item Discovery. Drains 5HP per second. Gain 20 Item Discovery total Gain 25 Item Discovery total Gain 29 Item Discovery total Gain 33 Item Discovery total Gain 38 Item Discovery total Gain 59 Item Discovery total Gain 90 Item Discovery total Gain 110 Item Discovery total Gain 110 Item Discovery total

Weapons
There are a variety of ways I could format this section depending on how finely I wanted to digest my own experimentation and the Internets apparent opinions about the various weapons out there. Ideally I would have some bizzare comparative piece involving the quality of the attack animations, reach, stamina consumption and, of course, the power of the contestably top tier weapons. I dont, however, have enough time on my hands now (nor probably will I ever) to make such a comparison. I think the best compromise is for me to just list a selection of weapons based around where your characters stats are and then let you play around with the other stuff. This is because your stats largely determine both your damage scaling and what weapons you can equip and so they present a good bottleneck on which weapons will be practical for you. Because of the way upgrades work basically Ive decided to split this Preferred Weapons category into five 29

sections. Unspecialized or is for characters who are either at low levels or who are at higher levels but who have spent most of their points in stats that dont help with weapon strength like Vitality and Endurance which is not to say these are underpowered characters at all (in fact, at the present time these may be the strongest overall sort of PvM character for Dark Souls well see what From tinkers with in their patches). The others, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Faith refer to whichever stat your character has really porked out on. People have yet to playtest this stuff for Dark Souls but if the mechanics have washed over from Demons Souls much expect returns on weapon scaling damage to severely decline after you get your damage stat to 50. In other words, no matter how magic-y you wish to be stop pumping Intelligence at 50 and go and invest in Vitality or Endurance or Resistance or something else. Youll get a lot more out of it. One thing I didnt list below is that almost all weapons have 100 Critical Damage which is only applied when you either backstab or parry/riposte a foe (or for bows when you shoot them in the head for crossbows you wont be able to aim at the head since only bows can be finely aimed using L1, so thatll never happen with them, really). The only weapons that have more are the Mail Breaker (120), the Rapier (110), the Dagger and Parrying Dagger (131), the Ghost Blade (127) and the Bandits Knife (147). So I guess if you want to backstab beat a Bandits Knife out of one of the Undead Assassins near Capra Demon, who drop them occasionally, or start as a Thief. Often the table starts with a few variants of the same item on a grey field this is merely to give you a general perspective of what you options are between closely similar variants of the same weapon. Ive tried to pick the most normal weapon of its sort for this variant listing which is rarely the strongest overall choice, so dont take my repetition to mean dominance. Its just there so you can see things like oh it looks like Occult does a little bit less base damage but scales better, okay, I get it. However, this actually changes very slightly with some weapon types so dont send me angry emails if I list an Enchanted Schythe but you look at the variant item and decide hah he made a mistake Magic is better and then you make a magic one and realize its stats dont line up with the variant items stats exactly and it turns out I was right all along. Anyway, aside from the variant item at the head of each table the singly listed items are what I think is the best choice for that weapon, given your stats, overall. All weapons are always listed at their top grade and if I make a typo and list a weapon thats not at its top grade just assume I meant to do so, there are no cases where a not-fully-upgraded weapon does more damage than a fully upgraded one of the same type. Damage is listed as Physical / Magical / Fire / Lightining. Stats are always listed as Strength / Dexterity / Intelligence / Faith, when there are parentheticals after Strength thats because I thought it would be useful to list how much Strength the weapon requires two handed to find this number for other weapons just divide its one handed Strength requirement by 1.5 and then round up to the nearest whole number (reduce by 50%). The grades of scaling are E, D, C, B, A, and S from least to greatest. The contribution of scaling is relatively untested at this point, however if mechanics from Demons Souls have carried over you can expect that one S is worth more than two Cs and that lower base damage weapons with high scaling overtake high base damage weapons with low scaling typically when your relevant stat reaches 40 or 50 if the weapon scales at an S or A rate, respectively. Weapons that inherently carry anything other than physcial damage can not be buffed. Also note that Reg or regular damage is a different type than Slash or Strike. Bonus refers to special effects like poison, bleed, or toxin or whatever. B. Power is the power of the bonus, listed as something like 30 to 5/s which reads as 30 points of buildup per hit to five damage per second once it takes effect. Or, for another example, 40 to 30% which reads as 40 points of buildup per hit to 30% of their HP taken once built up. Once you play with a bonus effect item these descriptions will make sense to you. Hum dep. here means Humanity dependent and usually applies to Chaos weapons. It scales with your banked Humanity and the bonus caps at 10 Humanity a lot more playtesting is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of all of these sorts of bonus damage. 30

In the Notes section 1H means one handed, 2H means two handed and R means Rolling and S means Sprinitng. So 1H R R1 shoots a carrot out of your crotch means that if you do a rolling one-handed R1 attack a carrot will shoot out of your crotch instead of the normal attack animation occurring for that weapon type. Many unique weapons shoot shockwaves and stuff for certain attacks instead of what their parent weapons did, so try them out usually abuse of these attacks is limited by them costing your weapon some durability each time you do them which in turn costs you souls to fix them up. Also I realize many people are playing this on Xbox and dont have R1 or R2 keys but have shoulder and trigger keys or some damn thing instead but I dont have an Xbox so Im not going to worry about translating that stuff over and cluttering up my tables with it. Youll see a couple of vendors mentioned a lot below. Shiva is a vendor who first appears in the area behind the sealed door in Darkroot Garden (buy the seal to unlock that door from blacksmith Anrei for 20,000 souls). You have to be a member of the Forest Hunters Covenant for him to sell to you. See page 20 for information on that covenant. The other vendor of note is Patches, who is back from Demons Souls. To get him to open his shop requires a lot of work and can be screwed up fairly easily. You will probably first meet him in the Tomb of the Giants after the coffin slides (on the right), but its possible to meet him in the Catacombs one time before that if you avoid talking to Rhea, Nico or Vince in Firelink until after you meet him. Each time you meet him he may ask you if youre a Cleric you must answer NO, even if you are a Cleric, or Patches will never sell anything to you. Patches hates Clerics. Hell pull some jerk moves on you as well and each time he does you can make your way back to him and complain about it to get a minor prize resist the urge to stab him in his gut, though.

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Weapon Lightning Longsword +5 Fire Longsword +10 Chaos Longsword +5 Longsword +15 Raw Longsword +5 Lightning Bandits Knife +5 Drake Sword +0 Drake Sword +5 Lightning Claymore +5 U N S P E C I A L I Z E D Lightning Flamberge +5 Lightning Zweihander +5 Lightning Flachion +5 Lightning Shotel +5 Lightning Estoc +5 Lightning Battle Axe +5 Divine Reinforced Club +10 Lightning Winged Spear +5 Lightning Partizan +5 Lightning Great Schythe +5 Lightning Halberd +5 Titanite Catch Pole +5 Lightning Caestus +5 Dark Hand (not upgradeable) Quelaags Furysword +5

Damage Damage Type(s) 200 - - 224 Reg / Thrust 224 224 - Reg / Thrust 187 187 - Reg / Thrust 200 - - Reg / Thrust 184 - - Reg / Thrust 140 - - Slash 200 - - Reg 300 - - Reg 283 - - 288 Reg / Thrust 275 - - 280 Slash 357 - - 364 Reg 225 - - 229 Slash 225 - - 229 Slash 206 - - 206 Reg / Thrust 261 - - 266 Reg 162 200 - Strike 236 - - 240 Thrust 220 - - 224 Reg / Thrust 275 - - 280 Slash 302 - - 306 Reg / Thrust 180 217 - Reg 165 168 - Strike 200 - - Strike 90 - 270 Slash

Scaling Reqd Stats - - - 10 10 - - - - 10 10 - - - - 10 10 - C C - 10 10 - D D - 10 10 - - - - 6 12 0 0 - - - 16 10 - - - - 16 10 - - - - 16 14 - - - - 24(16) 10 - - - - 9 13 - - - - 9 14 - - - - 10 12 - - - - 12 8 - D E - C 12 - - - - - 13 15 - - - - 13 12 - - - - 14 14 - - - - 16 12 - D D D 16 12 - - - - 5 8 - - - - - - - E B - 11 13 - -

Bonus B. Power Hum dep. Bleed 30 to 30%

Wt. Dur.

Obtained Notes

3 200

1000 Souls from Andre the Blacksmith

1 200 6 360 6 200 6 160 10 200 2.5 160 1.5 100 3 150 4 250 4 100 4.5 140 4.5 160 5 130 6 200 6 200 0.5 300 0.5 999 3.5 600

Rare drop from Undead Assassins Critical Damage of 147 (vs the norm of 100) Shoot the ail off the first dragon. Bring about 100 arrows. Popular starting weapon. 2H R2 shoots a linear shockwave that costs you 30 durability. Found near the first dragon in Undead Burg 10,000 Souls from Shiva of the East Found in Firelink Shrine area 1H and 2H R2 is a running slash Found in Blighttown Drops from Catacombs Skeletons Shiva 10,000. Found in Sens Fortress. Ignores shields somewhat. Popular in PvP. Found to right of start of New Londo Ruins. Can attack from behind raised shield. Andrei for 1000 Male Undead Merchant for 350. Best skeleton perma-killer. Stronger than Mace. Found near Firelink Shrine. Can attack from behind a shield. Longer / slower vs. Estoc. Found in Darkroot Garden in narrow passage. R2 attacks are horizontal sweeps. Found in Catacombs. Fastest polearm. Found near the large flight of steps near the Armored Boar in Undead Parish. Rare drop from Prowling Demon near Blacksmith Andrei Andrei for 200 souls Darkwraith Covenant. 1H R2 is a grab that steals Humanity from human players. Forged by Andrei from Quelaags Soul and a curved sword +10 (such as a scimitar)

Bleed 36 to 30% Bleed 30 to 30% Bleed 30 to 30% Hum dep.

Remember that most of these Lightning weapons could potentially be swapped for Fire / Chaos / Raw / Base +15, similar to the Longsword. Why Lightning instead of Fire? More creatures resist Fire, especially late in the game, but you do what you want buddy.

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Weapon Large Club +15 Lightning Large Club +5 Raw Large Club +5 Man-Serpent Greatsword +15 Stone Greatsword +5 Demon Great Machete +15 Dragon Greatsowrd +5 Black Knight Greatsword +5 S T R E N G T H Butcher Knife +15 Demons Greataxe +15 Dragon King Greataxe +5 Black Knight Greataxe +5 Mace +15 Great Club +15 Grant +5 Demons Great Hammer +15 Dragon Tooth +5 Gravelord Sword +5 Smoughs Hamer +5 Dragon Bone Fist +5

Damage Damage Type(s) 300 - - Strike 330 - - 336 Strike 276 - - Strike 275 - - Reg 222 150 - Reg 332 - - Reg 540 - - Reg 307 - - Reg / Thrust 225 - - Reg 285 - - Reg 540 - - Reg 319 - - Reg 227 - - Strike 337 - - Strike 187 195 - Strike 345 - - Strike 435 - - Strike 382 - - Slash / Thrust 412 - - Strike 135 - - Strike

Scaling Reqd Stats A - - 26(18) - - - - - 26(18) - - D D - 26(18) - - B - - 24(16) - - C C E 40(27) 10 - B - - 40(27) - - - - - 50(34) 10 - B E - 32(22) 18 - B - - 24(16) - - A - - 46(31) - - - - - 50(34) 8 - B E - 36(26) 18 - B - - 12 - - B - - 28(19) - - B A - 50(34) - - B - - 46(31) - - D- - 40(27) - - E E - 24(16) 13 - D - - 58(39) - - A - - 20(14) - - -

Bonus B. Power

Wt. Dur.

Obtained Notes

Poison 30 to 3/s

11 250

Rare drop from Infested Barbarians in the entry to Blighttown.

Steals 5HP per strike Toxin 30 to 5/s Steals 10HP per strike -

10 300 18 800 18 600 24 400 14 300 10 250 22 600 24 400 16 300 4 250 12 250 24 600 22 600 18 999

Drop from Serpent Soliders in Archives. Shiva for 10,000 or Stone Knights in Garden. 2H R2 emits enemy slowing shockwave. Shiva for 10,000. Rare drop from Capra Demons in Demon Ruins. Chop off the Stone Dragons tail in Ask Lake. 2H R2 emits shockwave and costs 50 durab. Rare drop from Greatsword Black Knights. Has unique 1H and 2H R2 attack animations. Drops from Maneater Mildred. Be in human form and run around outside Qeelags door. Shiva for 10,000. Rare drop from Taurus Demon boss. Cut off the Gaping Dragons tail. 2H R2 is an AoE magic nuke. Rare drop from Black Axe Knights. Its moves all can combo fairly well. Patches for 3,000. Find in Catacombs. Found in the Great Swamp near the two rock tossing Barbarians in the corner Drop: Paladin Leeroy 2H R2 is an AoE shockwave Dropped by Asylum Demon if you beat him without running away first. Try in NG+. Find in Anor Londo. Never loses durability. Forged from Nitos Soul and a +10 curved sword, such as a Scimitar.

18 600 8 999

Forged from Smoughs Soul (must kill him last in the fight) and +10 Large Club Forged from +10 Caestus and Iron Golems Soul. Badly underpowered.

Note that many players find they get more damage from the items with options by going with Lightning +5 and dropping the stat scaling than sticking with +15 and keeping the scaling. Spec in strength if you want to try out a huge variety of equally huge weapons.

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Weapon Uchigatana +15 Lightning Uchigatana +5 Bandits Knife +15 Priscillas Dagger Balder Side Sword +15 Falchion +15 D E X T E R I T Y Painting Guardian Sword +15 Quelaags Furysword +5 Washing Pole +15 Iaito +15 Ricards Rapier +15 Great Schythe +15 Lifehunt Schythe +5 Whip +15 Notched Whip +15 Claw +15 Black Bow of Pharis +15

Damage Damage Type(s) 225 - - Slash / Thrust 247 - - 252 Slash / Thrust 140 - - Slash 120 - - Slash 200 - - Reg / Thrust 205 - - Slash 190 - - Slash 90 - 270 Slash 225 - - Slash / Thrust 220 - - Slash 175 - - Thrust 250 - - Slash 247 - - Slash 200 - - Reg 190 - - Reg 162 - - Slash 85 - - Thrust

Scaling Reqd Stats - B - 14 14 - - - - 14 14 - E B - 6 12 - - A - 6 20 - E B - 10 14 - E B - 9 13 - E A - 7 20 - E B - 11 13 - D D - 20(14) 16 - - B - 14 20 - E B - 8 20 - E B - 14 14 - E B - 16 14 - - B - 7 14 - - B - 8 16 - E B - 6 14 - E S - 9 18 - -

Bonus B. Power Bleed 33 to 30% Bleed 30 to 30% Bleed 20 to 50% Bleed 30 to 30% Hum dep. Bleed 30 to 30% Bleed 33 to 30% Bleed 30 to 30% Bleed 40 to 50% Bleed 33 to 30% Bleed 30 to 30% -

Wt. Dur. 5 80 1 200 1 100 3 120 2.5 160 1.5 100 3.5 600 8 60 5 80 2 100 5 130 6 100 1.5 200 2 200 1 150 1 100

Obtained Notes Shiva for 5,000. Drops from male undead vendor in Undead Burg. Buy the good stuff first, obviously. Rare drop from Undead Assassins Critical Damage of 147 (vs the norm of 100) Beaten out of Priscilla the Crossbreeds Tail in the Painted World. Rare drop from Elite Undead Guards in Undead Burg (the cape guys) Found in Blighttown Drops from Catacombs Skeletons Rare drop from Painting Guards in Painted World or Ariamis Forged by Andrei from Quelaags Soul and a curved sword +10 (such as a scimitar) Shiva for 20,000 Longest katana, shitty scaling though Found on a Blighttown roof, jump from the long entry ramp. Medium size katana. Drop: Undead Prince Ricard. Strong attacks are multiple quick thrusts. Found in Catacombs Forged from a Schythe +10 and Priscillas Soul Found in Blighttown, drop down inside the vertical concrete tunnel. Cannot backstab. Dropped by King Jeremiah. Be in human form with boss unkilled in Painted World. Shiva for 5,000 souls Drops from Pharis. Be in human form with the boss unkilled in Darkroot Garden.

As with strength, please note that many players find they get more damage from the items with options by going with Lightning +5 and dropping the stat scaling than sticking with +15 and keeping the scaling.

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Weapon Enchanted Falchion +5 Magic Falchion +5 Enchanted Bandits Knife +5 Enchanted Balder Side Sword +5 Enchanted Darksword +5 Enchanted Claymore +5 Moonlight Greatsword +5 Enchanted Shotel +5 Enchanted Uchigatana +5 Enchanted Estoc +5 Velkas Rapier +5 Enchanted Club +5 Enchanted Winged Spear +5 Enchanted Partizan +5 Enchanted Halberd +5 Enchanted Great Schythe +5 Enchanted Whip +5 Enchanted Notched Whip +5 Enchanted Caestus +5 Enchanted Claw +5 Enchanted Composite Bow +5

Damage Damage Type(s) 148 153 - Slash 155 167 - Slash 100 104 - Slash 144 148 - Reg / Thrust 148 153 - Reg 184 190 - Reg / Thrust - 196 - Reg 148 153 - Slash 163 167 - Slash / Thurst 134 139 - Reg / Thrust 90 145 - Reg / Thrust 156 162 - Strike 156 160 - Thrust 144 148 - Reg / Thrust 199 204 - Reg / Thrust 180 185 - Slash 144 148 - Reg 136 141 - Reg 108 111 - Strike 117 120 - Slash 98 102 - Thrust

Scaling Reqd Stats E E A 9 13 - E E C 9 13 - E E A 6 12 - E E A 10 14 - E E A 16 16 - E E A 16 10 - - - A 16 10 - E E B 9 14 - E E B 14 14 - E E B 10 12 - E C B 8 16 - E E A 10 - - E E B 13 15 - E E B 13 12 - E E B 16 12 - E E A 14 14 - E E B 7 14 - E E B 8 16 - E E A 5 8 - E E A 6 14 - E E A 11 12 - -

Bonus B. Power

Wt. Dur. 2.5 160 1 200 3 120 6 200 6 200 6 300 1.5 100 5 80 3 150 2 130 3 250 4.5 140 4.5 160 6 200 5 130 1.5 200 2 200 0.5 300 1 150 1 100

Obtained Notes Found in Blighttown Drops from Catacombs Skeletons Rare drop from Undead Assassins Critical Damage of 147 (vs the norm of 100) Rare drop from Elite Undead Guards in Undead Burg (the cape guys) Covenant: Darkwraith Found near the first dragon in Undead Burg Beat out of the tip of Seaths tail. R2 attacks are shockwaves or orbs. Shiva 10,000. Found in Sens Fortress. Ignores shields somewhat. Popular in PvP. Shiva for 5000. Drops from Male Undead Merchant in Undead Burg. Found to right of start of New Londo Ruins. Can attack from behind raised shield. Found in Painted World of Ariamis. 2H R2s are replaced by vertical slashes. Undead Merchant for 150 souls. Found near Firelink Shrine. Found in Darkroot Garden in narrow passage. R2 attacks are horizontal sweeps. Found near the large flight of steps near the Armored Boar in Undead Parish. Found in Catacombs Found in Blighttown, drop down inside the vertical concrete tunnel. Cannot backstab. Dropped by King Jeremiah. Be in human form with boss unkilled in Painted World. Andrei for 200 souls Shiva for 5,000 souls Found near the little tower that connects Valley of Drakes to New Londo Ruins.

Bleed 30 to 30% Bleed 33 to 30% Bleed 30 to 30% Bleed 33 to 30% Bleed 30 to 30% -

I N T E L L I G E N C E

Intelligence heavy characters have a broad choice of light weapons with decent scaling to choose between, but dont generally get much to choose between among the larger, specialized weapons that are available for Strength and Dexterity heavy characters.

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Weapon Occult Longsword +5 Divine Longsword +10 Occult Bandits Knife +5 Occult Darksword +5 Occult Claymore +5 F A I T H Occult Falchion +5 Occult Shotel +5 Occult Demons Great Axe +5 Occult Large Club +5 Occult Great Schythe +5 Occult Caestus +5 Occult Claw +5 Occult Long Bow +5

Damage Damage Type(s) 143 150 - Reg / Thrust 135 165 - Reg / Thrust 98 105 - Slash 145 155 - Reg 184 192 - Reg / Thrust 145 155 - Slash 145 155 - Slash 202 215 - Reg 213 225 - Strike 179 187 - Slash 106 112 - Strike 116 122 - Slash 65 67 - Thrust

Scaling Reqd Stats E D - B 10 10 - D E - C 10 10 - E D - B 6 12 - E D - B 16 16 - E D - B 16 10 - E D - B 9 13 - E D - C 9 14 - E D - A 46(31) - - E D - B 26(18) - - E D - B 14 14 - E D - B 5 8 - E D- B 6 14 - D D - S 9 14 - -

Bonus B. Power

Wt. Dur. 3 200 1 200 6 200 6 200 2.5 160 1.5 100 22 600 11 250 5 130 0.5 300 1 150 1 100

Obtained Notes

1000 Souls from Andre the Blacksmith

Bleed 30 to 30% Poison 30 to 3/s Bleed 30 to 30% Bleed 30 to 30% -

Rare drop from Undead Assassins Critical Damage of 147 (vs the norm of 100) Covenant: Darkwraith Found near the first dragon in Undead Burg Found in Blighttown Drops from Catacombs Skeletons Shiva 10,000. Found in Sens Fortress. Ignores shields somewhat. Popular in PvP. Shiva for 10,000. Rare drop from Taurus Demon boss. Rare drop from Infested Barbarians in the entry to Blighttown. Found in Catacombs Andrei for 200 souls Shiva for 5,000 souls Found in path between Darkroot Garden and Basin. Dropped by skeletons in Tomb of G.

Faith offers the lowest overall scaling options, Ive left out most of the weapons that only scale at C. Only the Demons Great Axe scales at anything higher than B. Maces and hammers arent really Faith weapons any more, surprisingly, as aside from the Large Club they scale at C.

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Specific Advice
Curing curse De-aggroing NPCs Donts Early equipment Farming souls A PvM build to ~SL25 Sticking points Curing Curse
Female Undead Vendor sells the cure The Curse Frogs got you, huh? Pretty nasty little buggers. You probably need to buy a Purging Stone to rid yourself of the HP penalty. Oswald in the Undead Parish sells them for 4000 souls. You can also get them from the Female Undead Vendor behind the grate in the shortcut leading down to the depths, its easier to get to her but she wants 6000 for each one. Later on you can farm them off of the giant angry clams and, if youve managed to get all the way to Ingward in New Londo Ruins (which is quite far into that ghost hell) you can buy the Resist Curse Sorcery which does the same thing a stone does and requires 16 Intelligence. The other option is to trade a Cracked Red Eye Orb to the Hawk Girl who started squawking at you back in the Asylum when you went near her nest. To get back there you have to have the elevator that goes from the Undead Parish to Firelink Shrine and back unlocked (just use it once from the Parish and there you go). A short ways up from Firelink you can jump out onto some roofs. Look around up there for a broken column you can jump on to. From that column you can make it to the big crows nest, once you get to the nest youll be asked if you want to Curl up into a ball and once you do the crow will take you back to the Asylum. You get two stones for every cracked red eye orb you find and there are a few orbs to be had in Firelink Shrine in a treasure chest that you can get to by jumping out a small window. I suggest buying a few curse cures before you bother going in to the Depths. Those Curse Frogs reappear in the Great Hollow and theres boss later on who will curse you as well (if you let him). Most armor has terrible curse resistance. The only real exceptions that you can get early on are the Antiquated Set you get in Darkroot Basin and the Crimson Set you find lying around in Blighttown. To get the Antiquated Set you have to kill the Hydra, walk all the way to the back of his lake avoiding the dropoffs, kill the thing you find back there, talk to the lady that shows up, the leave the area and come back. Find the lady again at the lakeshore (look for a white signature), talk to her, say that Yes differences between Sorceries are pretty interesting. Then you have to leave and come back again, and then hike all the way to the back of Lake Hyrda where a corpse will have appeared with the Antiquated Set on it. Moral of the story? Curse is a pain in the ass.

De-aggroing NPCs
Oswald in the Undead Parish will do it for a hefty fee Oswald shows up after you ring the Parish bell. Hes the guy that looks like he really wants a hug. One service he offers is to Cleanse your sins and it costs 2000 souls per soul level for you to do this (so if youre level 25 itll cost 50,000 souls!). Once you pay for this service your sin counter (which you can see 37

on your stats page) will reset to zero, but more importantly any NPCs youve accidentally struck will stop being angry at you and any gods whose Covenants youve betrayed will give you another shot at signing up and showing that youre not a jerk. There are obviously a few bugs with this process so if theres a particular NPC whose stuff you need or a particular Covenant you really want to do try to get it right the first time.

Donts
Common mistakes This is just a list of stuff I suggest you not do, which I will hopefully add to as different things become an issue in Dark Souls for the general population: Dont eat Firekeeper Souls. You can give these to Firekeepers or to Covenant leaders to strengthen your Estus flasks. Theyre only worth five humanity if you eat them which you could get a number of other ways. Estus is precious! Dont bash everything you see. Many of the vendors look pretty nasty when you first meet them and some NPCs are trapped in a vulnerable position and wont be happy if your clumsy ass cuts their arm off trying to get them out. The rule of thumb is that if you cant lock on, dont attack. Try a roll. Dont be stubborn. If being mobile and dodging isnt working try tanking up with Poise and heavy armor. If your heavy armor is getting you killed take it off. Dark Souls will often require you to go against your first instinct to get past certain obstacles, so experiement. Dont let Petrus live too long. This is the jerk cleric guy in Undead Parish. After you buy what you want from him its not a bad idea to just kill him as he can often kill another miracle vendor you probably want access to later on if you dont do the plot points involving that just right. Dont run around everywhere Hollowed! This is a big change from Demons Souls. There are lots of special NPC invasions you miss if youre never in human form and there are tons of people who want to play multiplayer but dont have any humans around to make that happen on the other end. Dont be too stingy with your Humanity if you have five or so saved up thats fine, start spending your extra ones and have a little fun. Dont overspecialize. I think I covered this pretty well in the stats section but theres absolutely no reason to have 75 Intelligence and only 20 Vitality. Slow your roll a little bit and at least keep Endurance and Vitality roughly in line with whatever stat it is you think is going to kill monsters best.

Early Equipment
A leg up early on The first areas are definitely the easiest ones, but you probably wont realize this your first time through. If you need a little help early on here are a few things you can collect to ease things up a bit: The Drake Sword. Go buy a bow (not a crossbow) and make sure you have the stats to use it, if you dont then get them. Halfway across the dragon bridge on the right there are some stairs going down, sprint to those stairs before you get burnt up. Look around under there for a vantage point where you can see the dragons tail wiggling around. Get as close as you can, then take out your bow, make sure your arrows are equipped, and after readying the bow press L1 to enter fine aiming mode. Shoot the tail until you get a message saying youve gotten the sword. For most people this takes about 40 38

arrows but for me it took nearly 100 so I suggest buying about 125 good quality arrows before coming down here the male Undead Merchant back in the Burg sells arrows. The sword requires 16 Strength and 10 Dexterity to use its basically the Crescent Falchion of Dark Souls. If you dont plan to ever have the stats to use it then I suggest getting to work upgrading whatever weapon it is you do want to use post haste. The Hollow Solider Shield. Its light, it blocks 100% of incoming physical damage, and its free. You can get it as a rare drop from the Undead Soliders in either the Parish or the Burg, any of the ones carrying a large triangular shield can drop it (spear or sword). It has one of the highest Stability ratings in the game so its well worth upgrading (see page 26 for why Stability is important). If you cant get it to drop you can find a Knight Shield on a little projection in the maze of hallways attached to the area you fought the armored boar in. The Heal Miracle. Petrus of Thorolund is hanging around in the Firelink area. Hell want you to join the Way of White before selling to you you can always leave it and come back to it later if you want (at the cost of some souls see the introduction to the Covenants section on page 17 for more info about that) but for now you might as well. Heal gives you six charges every time you rest at a bonfire and requires 12 Faith to use. For most of the early part of the game that will more than double the amount of healing that you can do between bonfires. You need at least 10 Attunement to have a spell slot to equip heal to (Attune your magic at the bonfire to do this). Great Heal requires 14 Faith but only carries one charge so its not worth going out of your way for. Basic sorcery. The morose blue knight guy in Firelink is staring at some steps. Go down those steps then look around by the bars for another set of steps winding off the other way. At the bottom of these is an elevator. This elevator takes you to an area of the game you wont actually do much in until nearly the end, but if you go down there and exit the stone building you can find one more staircase (and an Estoc!) on your right. It stops abruptly so dont run off of it into oblivion, theres a jailed vendor there who can do some smithing and who will sell you a basic Cataylst and two Soul Arrow spells for not many souls. The basic Soul Arrow has 30 charges, shoots quickly, does okay damage, and only needs 10 Intelligence to use (plus one Attunement slot as described above in The Heal Miracle. Itll give you a more options against clusters of enemies. Basic pyromancy. Pyromancies dont require any stats for you to use and they get most of their power from non-scaling stuff as well which makes them great for low level characters. You meet your first Pyro trainer just after the room with the two butchers in the Depths. The door that leads down there is one you found that you couldnt open after the first dragon a bit come back to it once you find the Basement Key. Down there youll find a guy trapped in a pot, free him with a roll and then go find him back at Firelink shrine to get going on this. By the way, No, you dont have a problem with magic.

Farming Souls
White phantoming Thanks, Mr. Dragon Darkroot hedgeclipping The three Stooges One of the best ways to get souls early on is to put down your white soul sign (using the White Soapstone that you get when you first talk to Solaire of Astora on the big porch that the dragon bridge leads down on to) and run around killing mooks while waiting for someone to summon you. Help that person kill the boss and you get half of the souls (they still get the full amount) that the boss normally gives! Popular places to do this early on are near the entry to Taurus Demon, near the door leading to Capra Demon, and the big one is the bonfire near the slime hallway before Gaping Dragon. The slimes can be farmed for regular and Green Titanite while you wait to get summoned in for the last one, which will net you 12,500 souls upon death. 39

After you make it halfway across the dragon bridge once and open up the ladder shortcut down the stairs there you can use the dragon to farm souls. To do this you start at that Bonfire under the ladder, go up the ladder, then up to and out of the stairs onto the bridge again. The spearmen will press on you at the top but if you just walk steadily through them its usually easy to slip past. Once you get past them sprint to the front of the opposite nook from the one that has the stairs in it and the dragon will roast the bridge, killing all the Hollowed along it and netting you 300 souls. You can then sprint back across the gap, go down the stairs, rest at the bonfire and redo the whole process. Sometimes the Hollowed drop items usually these are just bullshit pieces of armor but they do drop the Hollowed Solider Shield (which is nice) and once in a great long while a Titanite Shard, so if theres an item glowing there you may want to risk picking it up if you havent yet amassed a ton of souls. If you cant seem to get summoned regularly probably the best place to grind souls out early on is the Darkroot garden. You find this place past the smith under the Parish. Theres a large demon just beyond this smith who you can ignore for now and just sprint past into the lush area beyond. In this area youll get attacked by bipedal bushes that give 100 souls per kill be warned that they have a grab attack that will kill you through your shield, though, so if you see them rear back and raise both arms either get far away or else hit them quickly to prevent this attack (and if they do grab you with it wail on L1 and R1 and maybe you can get out before they finish you off). Keep going into this area, mostly straight, until you come to a big stone door with a glowing seal on it. Whack the stone wall to the left of this seal (there will probably be a message showing you the right place) to open a secret door leading to a bonfire. From this bonfire you can run around slaying bushes. The bushes also drop lots of purple and red moss which is used to cure poison and bleeding, and youll need plenty of those soon anyway so this is a good place to farm. The last place is actually through that stone door with the glowing seal I mentioned above. To open that door go back to the smith and buy the seal off of him for 20,000 souls. Just inside the door is a sorcerer who starts madly casting soul arrows at you, but he isnt the only one in there. All of the foes inside have a lot of HP, do good damage, and they often work together, so instead of fighting them were just going to make them run off a cliff. The way I do this is to enter the door from the secret bonfire, run straight past the sorcerer and around the flat log lying there on the ground, then run back toward the stone steps I came in on. This will usually cause the sorcerer, a cleric, and a nearly invisible thief to start chasing you these are the Three Stooges. Instead of running up the stairs run onto the narrow ledge to their right, all the way to the back, so youre standing on a foot of earth next to a steep cliff. The Stooges usually decide that the best way to get you when youre standing there is to run up the stairs, then sprint off of them over your head and fall into the abyss, netting you 2000 souls each. Sometimes the thief gets lost in the woods and sometimes the sorcerer just stands there blasting away at the cliff but the Bonfire is right there so if you only get 2000 instead of 6000 just go back to the fire and run your circuit again. Note that theres also a Bandit back there but that he only gives 1000 souls and is too far away to be worth messing with. Also note that theres an invisible archer back there if youre in human form this one drops a rare bow so dont trick him into running off the cliff. Later on some people farm Silver Knights or certain demons in the Demon Ruins but the Stooges is probably faster than either of those methods. If theres a particular rare drop youre looking for, though, you might as well farm those monsters (once you have increased item drop gear see page 29 for that) instead of the Stooges all day.

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A PvM Build to ~SL25

How to build your stats early on for good benefit What follows is of course just a loose suggestion. If you find a particular item you want to use (a spear or halberd maybe?) you could stop between any of these steps and build up the stats for them. The following, however, represent for most people the major changes in the abilities for their characters to handle more serious threats or to deal with certain foes that their default setups arent well equipped for. Depending on what character you start with you will already have some of the suggested stats more than covered by the time you get to that particular step. Thats fine, of course. You can start with any character and still do this. You can also leave any of the below steps out if you dont want to do a certain type of thing with your character and still be able to get through the game just fine, of course.

First Step Shield, bow, arrows Stats Vit -Att -End -Str -Dex 12 Res -Int -Fth -Buy a100% physical blocking shield, short bow, and 125 standard arrows off Undead M.

Second Step Get the Drake Sword Stats Vit -Att -End -Str 16 Dex 12 Res -Int -Fth -Go under the dragon bridge and shoot the dragons tail off with your bow

Third Step Get Heal Miracle Stats Vit -Att 10 End -Str 16 Dex 12 Res -Int -Fth 12

Fouth Step Get Soul Arrow Stats Vit -Att 12 End -Str 16 Dex 12 Res -Int 10 Fth 12

Fifth Step Increase Vit / End Stats Vit 16-20 Att 12 End 16-20 Str 16 Dex 12 Res -Int 10 Fth 12

Sixth Step Get Pyromancy Stats Vit 16-20 Att 14 End 16-20 Str 16 Dex 12 Res -Int 10 Fth 12 Free pyromancer from butchers in Depths. Visit him in Firelink for Flame and spells.

Talk to Petrus in Go down the Firelink Firelink. Join Way of elevator, find Rickert in White, buy Heal and a New Londo, buy cheap Talisman Catalyst and S. Arrow.

Grind souls, get stats.

Sticking Points
Having trouble with a section or a boss? Part of the satisfaction of Dark Souls is figuring out how to overcome obstacles on your own so I suggest using this section sparingly. However, if theres something you cant get past check in here and maybe theres some advice. Taurus Demon: The first demon you fight out of the Asylum. When you enter his area do a 180 and go up the ladder to take out the jerks up there. Then go across the bridge until the demon shows up. Run back to the tower and climb up it, then quickly go to the edge, lock on the demon (who will be staring up at you angrily) and run off the edge and attack him while you fall. These diving attacks do huge damage even with crap weapons. Run away to the other end of the bridge to bait him away from the ladder, then rush past him when you can and repeat the cycle. If you dawdle around on top of the ladder tower hell jump up there to fight you so hurry up once you get up there. The Dragon Bridge: Youll probably get hit but your goal is not to die. First draw the soldiers out 41

from off the bridge with your bow or whatever. The raise your shield and spring (hold O) across the bridge aiming for the right side. Halfway across there are stairs in a widened part of the bridge. If you can get into that widened part you will only lose about of your health instead of all of it, if you can get down the stairs you wont get hurt at all. Down the stairs theres a ladder you can kick down to loop back to an earlier bonfire and create a really useful shortcut, but you have to make it over the bridge (halfway!) at least once. Gargoyles: Work hard on killing one first before going after the other. Bring some spells, like Soul Arrow, or even throwing knives or firebombs or whatever for when they get close together and overlap their fields of (literally!) fire. Stay away from the edges of the roof. If youre in human form youll either be able to summon other players or Solaire of Astora, either of whom being present should make this fight very easy. Curse Frogs: After you kill the Giant Rat in the sewers stick to the left side of the effluent ramp to make it over the gap and avoid dealing with the goddamn curse frogs entirely. Youll also have to be careful to not fall down any holes while roaming around. However, there is a really nice ring down there (heals 30HP every time you kill an enemy) so its worth going through the area once really well. If you get cursed see the beginning of this section (page 37) for help. Gaping Dragon: Before you start the fight look around upstairs and kill the Channeler thats up there or hell cast magic at you and actually buff the dragon during the upcoming fight. The dragon itself is really quite easy once you figure her out. Learn the range of her flop attack, bait her into doing it, and then charge around to the cleft between her back leg and tail to get a few shots in. When she flies up into the air or pukes run far away and restart this process. Try to chop her tail off first (attack the low part instead of the butt part) to take away her most dangerous attack, the tail sweep. Solaire will help out for this fight again, too, if you are in Human form and find his soul sign. Moonlight Butterfly: Shes easy. If you dick around for a while shell land and you can wail on her. If you dont want to mess with that bring firebombs or some Pyromancy. Hydra: Hes actually quite easy. Run to the lakeshore with a shield equipped that has good Stability and 100% physical resistance. Hide behind that rock there and lock on to the Hydra while keeping your shield up. Wait for him to finish a volley of beams and then leave your rock shelter and approach the shore. When he roars back up a bit and watch his head plunge into the earth in front of you. Cut that head off with a few swipes. Repeat until his heads are gone. The last head (on the far right) dives across the shore and youll have to bait it into attacking you as far inland as possible so you can get close enough to hit it while slogging through as little water as possible to reach it. The Catacombs: Rushing the necromancers and killing them first or using a divine weapon on the skeletons will prevent them from resurrecting every time you kill them. The two knight bowmen in Anor Londo: People seriously hate this part. Lock on to the right one and run up the left side with your shield raised so that if you get attacked you get pushed into the wall instead of to your death. Often times doing this will cause one of them to leap to their deaths and then the other isnt so bad. If you have the Fog Ring or the Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring they have a much harder time locating you to begin their attacks and this section gets much easier. Ornstein and Smough: Try to keep either the pillars or Smough between you and Ornstein while you work on killing the fat guy off first. Hes vulnerable to lightning damage. Once you kill him Ornstein will get more powerful and you kill Smough but his attacks will also get slower so you should then concentrate on rolling away rather than blocking. There are different rewards for killing either one last (requiring at least one NG+ run to get everything) if you want to kill Smough last just keep dashing from one end of the room to the other to draw Orenstein along with you and fight with him while Smough keeps up. Orenstein is vulnerable to fire damage. Bringing your own lightning resist gear to deal with Orenstiens attacks is also a good idea. The Tomb of Giants: Get the Skull Lantern or buy the Light Spell, or, if youre willing to do 42

everything backwards, work your way into the Demon Ruins to get the Sunlight Maggot. Now you can see! Oh boy! To use the Lantern hold it in your left hand and hold down L1. Ceaseless Discharge: Get the one side, get the other, then charge to the middle and take that out in there too. Many people dont realize theres a middle section, somehow. The Four Kings: All attacks here do physical and magical damage so bring a ring or something to help with the magical portion. This is an extremely hard fight. If you want to win it straight up youll have to know all of their attacks. Most of the physical ones are best dealt with by staying very close and rolling. The homing purple orb can only be outrun, its unblockable and will chase you relelentlessly and is a real pain as it often gives the Kings room to breath that you dont want them to have. Whenever a king spins around and starts glowing run away as quickly as you can as hes either going to make a huge blast or try to grab you and both of these will probably one shot you if he catches you with them. Its important to try to kill one king at a time here even though they respawn (youll still be making progress against their overall health bar) as it takes time for them to respawn and during that time youll have less to deal with. The alternative approach to all of this is to put on the heaviest armor you have, augmented by Havels Ring and possibly the Wolf Ring for more poise and just wail on them like you were playing Diablo, healing yourself with Estus when you need to let your stamina bar refill.

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