OK OK OK, Hondommond, first of all, I am foremost a lover of difficult games. From the very first Castlevania, to M.U.L.E., to the first Resident Evil on hard mode, even unbeatable games like the first Gauntlet for NES or even classic arcade module Pac-Man. Let me say, for the record, that Dark Souls, second only to the first Dead Space, is the most difficult and also the best game I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
After putting over three full work weeks into my first DS character, I soon found out about this "bottomless box trick". With no intention to rob myself of difficulty or replay-ability, I decided to attempt this glitch for myself. First of all, the soul duplication "glitch", in which one must first ring both bells of awakening and then speak with King Seeker Frampt, is an exploit. Designed into the game with the specific intention of; A. Rewarding those with enough attention to detail to see that Frampt pays more souls for basic arrows, fire bombs, and prism stones, and B. to allow completion of a character to lvl 100. If you have ever played the game, then you know as well as I do, that to level a character that far, without first completing the game and starting a new game+, is utterly impossible.
Second, with no intention to discredit you, to fully complete ten characters in less than 20 years (even with the soul "duplication glitch") is physically, chronologically, and irrevocably impossible. For the player to go from Firelink Shrine, through Undead Burg to the merchant, buy 99 fire bombs and 999 wood arrows, then to run back through Undead Burg, up the sewage hall, talk to the female undead merchant, buy 99 prism stones, and run back to King Seeker Frampt, sell the items for souls (which i believe only gives you about 25,000) takes at the very least 5 minutes per run. THERE IS NO WAY AROUND THAT.
Furthermore, unless you really feel like spending FOUR HUNDRED HOURS duplicating the soul of gwynn, you wont be able to complete more than one character using this method, before you get carpal tunnel.
And as for the controvercial bottomless box glitch... well, it has been said that this is a means of holding your hand to improve playability, it has also been said that we as dedicated players just shouldn't do it. Well, (pardon my french) I think that is a bunch of horse shit. First of all, if this was a means to make first time players want to keep playing, then the designers would have made the opening and the attainment there of much less difficult. Think about this for a moment. In order to purchase the bottomless box, (before the most recent binge of updates, anyway) one has to first: escape the Undead Asylum, (a task most first time players never got past) then FIND Undead Burg, (a task which caused FOUR of my friends to stop playing the game, much to my dismay) defeat Taurus Demon (a task that made me break one perfectly good pc conroller)
then find their way up through the Undead Parish, (which took me over three hours when I first started, mainly because of the warthog demon thing, and I tried to kill Knight Lautrec of Carim) Defeat the Gargoyles, Ring the bell, find the key to the basement, run through lower Undead Burg and kill Kapra (one of my favorite and most hated parts of the game because of the level of difficulty) and this is the most important part. KILL KAPRA, who in my humble opinion was more difficult than most later game bosses. And what do you get for killing KAPRA?!?!?!? Why of course you get cursed in the depths, and wander about trying to fucking find a cure. (purging stones are sold in only two places in the entire game. Sold namely by the priest in the first bell tower and also by the female undead merchant, another incredibly difficult detail to discover without a google search). For those keeping track, this takes at the very least three hours. I've done it like thirteen times, I should know that it is no walk in the park. After traversing the depths, and finally accquiring the bottomless box, you dont even have a reason to use the glitch, because you dont have jack shit to transfer to another character aside from the drake sword and some early game armor. The only real reason one may have to use this glitch, is an over abundance of crafting materials. Even then it would be wise to wait until at least Anor Londo, where one may first smith an elemental/boss weapon.
THE DRAKE SWORD IS THE ONLY MECHANISM EXPLICITLY DESIGNED FOR MAKING THE EARLY GAME EASY. Period. Even that is an overstatement, since it isn't even that powerfull.
Something tells me that the ONLY REASON for adding a feature like the bottomless box (which is disorganized and unmanageable) is for this purpose, seeing as how there is no weight limit and it is more profitable to just sell unused equipment to Frampt.
But the REASON the bottomless box glitch was left in the game, is this. Without the bottomless box glitch, it is IMPOSSIBLE to fully upgrade more than one boss\special weapon, let alone a full set of armor without starting a new game+. Take Twinkling Titanite and the Outfit of the Sealer for example. Total in one play through, (granted I don't know everything about the game) I found at the most I think nine pieces of twinkling titanite. This means, that I could only upgrade the equipment so much before the game automatically by default limited me, despite the theoretical potential of the upgrade system. This wasn't meant to be a means of "twinking" your characters, it was meant as a mechanism for those who wished to achieve absolute perfection with this game, as that is what it deserves. Not to mention, on my first character, when I got around to fighting Ceaseless Discharge, I was for a time absolutely incapable of defeating him by any means other than using the bottomless box glitch. (Granted, I went back as an EXPERIENCED PLAYER, and beat the game innocently, and it was all the more rewarding.) All together, the only reason to beef with this glitch is because you got ganked by an experienced invader. There is nothing about the game that wasn't intricately thought out, for better or worse. Dark Souls for life yall!
