What should I know going into Dark Souls III?

[Saelune]

DS3 is on sale, bought it, and intend to get all the achievements like I did 1 and 2.

As much as I'd prefer to go in full blind, I know better with Dark Souls. (Me and the wiki basically played co-op together last 2 games)

So what should I know going in, particularly with the goal of all achievements?

Missable spells, important items, merchant characters who try to end up dead on you one way or another even though they are a super useful pyromancer guy who asks confusing yes/no questions!?...ahem...

And also gameplay stuff compared to 1 and 2 to prepare for. Like, how does multiplayer work this time? Humanity, soul memory, degrading HP bars, things of that nature.

I dont want spoilers, but ya know just a basic heads up for things to be aware of.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

There is literally no way to do the character side-quests without a guide next to you. Yes, they are that obtuse, even moreso than Dark Souls 1 and 2, which were already more obtuse than they should be. Seriously, I never even SAW Patches on my first play through of the game (shut up, that's not a spoiler he's in every game).

Make sure to wear a piece of armor for every body part. The way armor works in this game is that wearing ANY armor gives a base bonus to your damage resistance, and then other armor bonuses are added on top of that. So things like taking off gloves and helmet to wear heavier armor doesn't actually do you good anymore, because doing so means you miss out on that base armor bonus. You're better off at least wearing rags than wearing nothing at all.

Poise is basically a worthless stat in this game, so wearing heavy armor isn't all that beneficial. It'll give you a higher damage reduction but it doesn't actually prevent you from getting staggered, at all, so moving around and doing proper crowd control is more important than ever since enemies will easily stagger you.

There are tons of NPC invasions, and the NPC invaders drop unique weapons and armor, so go through each area in your "embered" form at least once before killing the area boss.

Being embered gives you a health bonus, if you die that health bonus goes away.

There are 4 different endings 2 of them are difficult to get, and nearly impossible to get on accident (unless you're me).

The only thing that new game plus seems to change is that you get more and more powerful rings with each NG+ level (and obviously stronger enemies). I found it rather boring and was more interested in making new characters, your mileage will vary.

Other than all this, try to go in as blind as you can, it's worth it.

 

[Saelune]

There is literally no way to do the character side-quests without a guide next to you. Yes, they are that obtuse, even moreso than Dark Souls 1 and 2, which were already more obtuse than they should be. Seriously, I never even SAW Patches on my first play through of the game (shut up, that's not a spoiler he's in every game).

Make sure to wear a piece of armor for every body part. The way armor works in this game is that wearing ANY armor gives a base bonus to your damage resistance, and then other armor bonuses are added on top of that. So things like taking off gloves and helmet to wear heavier armor doesn't actually do you good anymore, because doing so means you miss out on that base armor bonus. You're better off at least wearing rags than wearing nothing at all.

Poise is basically a worthless stat in this game, so wearing heavy armor isn't all that beneficial. It'll give you a higher damage reduction but it doesn't actually prevent you from getting staggered, at all, so moving around and doing proper crowd control is more important than ever since enemies will easily stagger you.

There are tons of NPC invasions, and the NPC invaders drop unique weapons and armor, so go through each area in your "embered" form at least once before killing the area boss.

Being embered gives you a health bonus, if you die that health bonus goes away.

There are 4 different endings 2 of them are difficult to get, and nearly impossible to get on accident (unless you're me).

The only thing that new game plus seems to change is that you get more and more powerful rings with each NG+ level (and obviously stronger enemies). I found it rather boring and was more interested in making new characters, your mileage will vary.

Other than all this, try to go in as blind as you can, it's worth it.

Thanks for the info. Looking at an achievement guide though...ugh, it seems 3 is the "missable"iest Souls game yet... =. =;;

 

[Wrex Brogan]

There's a couple missable merchants - Greirat the Thief and Orbeck of Vinheim. Greirat can be recruited fairly early on, but you can send him on missions to expand his inventory a couple of times, but he'll only come back after you've killed a boss so if there's not a lot of bosses left you can miss out on some decent stuff from him. Orbeck of Vinheim requires a minimum level of intellect to recruit (10, which you can get even if you don't start as an intellect-heavy class by equipping a certain ring) and then you need to find and give him one of the magic scrolls to make him stay (there's two in the area near where you find him anyway, just explore around a bit) otherwise he'll leave after you beat the first Lord of Cinder.

Multiplayer is a lot easier in D3, I've found - Embers are a lot more common than humanity (by the 4th boss I've already got something like 30 embers). Need to be embered to be invaded and to summon help, usual deal, but the 30% hp buff you get from using 'em makes them fairly useful if you play solo anyway (plus you heal when you use them, so if you're ever desperate and out of Estus...).

Gameplay-wise it's a little more Bloodborne-y than 1 and 2 - blocking is still useful, but unless you've got a fantastic Greatshield you're better off rolling. Getting carry-weight below 30% is damn near impossible unless you're doing a very specific build, but mid-rolling is good enough to dodge everything that gets thrown at you anyway, and now that armour has gone a Fashion Souls way (wearing 4 pieces of gear gives a flat bonus, plus whatever stats the pieces have) it's not too hard to stay <70%. Can still be fun to slap on Havel's set and dual-wield great shields, that always seems to fuck with people in PvP.

Now, for all achievements, this is where it gets 'fun' - item grinding. The ending achievements are fine, you might need a guide for one of 'em since it's a bit convoluted, but the real problem is the 'get all of x' achievements, since there's a few rings, spells and pyromancies that are locked behind Covenants. This is an issue since to rank up in some of the covenants requires some unintuitive invading and requires a lot of items to rank up (30 items to hit rank 2, which you need for some of the achievement gear); the only option outside all those invasions (where you'll be ganked a lot, because everyone hates the Aldritch Faithful) is to farm rare drops, which can be insanely time consuming depending on the enemy and area. The Darkmoon Blade and Mound-Makers are the worst for this, since they drop from either powerful enemies (Silver Knights for the former) or enemies far from a bonfire (Skeletal Reapers for the latter).

You can get some decent item-find gear at the very least (luck is utterly worthless to level up for this, mind), but whether you do invasions or you do item-farming it's going to take a long time to get all the Trophies. Also, you're better off doing the item grinding in the first playthrough, since the health-scaling of NG+ can screw over fast-farm builds.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I've only played PvE

- The gameplay leans much more heavily towards Bloodborne's direction. It's much faster, bosses and enemies are more aggressive with faster combos, dodging is way easier and quicker, and blocking every attack (unless you're using very specific gear and augments) is no longer a viable strategy.

- It's in a way the most linear game in the series. The levels themselves are quite big and often offer lots of paths for exploration, but the way through the game overall is pretty much always the exact same, especially when compared to Dark Souls 1's trove of shortcuts and alternate paths.

- A new addition is weapon arts. Holding a weapon with two hands (sometimes only one hand is required) and pressing L2 lets you do special moves that drain the "Focus", ie. magic bar. They don't change gameplay much, but if you're into PvP they might be useful. The moves include things like special movement, damage or defense bonuses, special attacks and so on.

- For achievement hunting having a guide is pretty much a necessity. Some of the covenants, characters and questlines are hidden beneath layers and layers of blink-and-you'll-miss-it special events and unintuitive ways to progress.

- Magic users got hit hard with the nerf stick. Using magic effectively is much harder and leaves you more vulnerable than ever.

- Weapon balance seems pretty borked. There's a chance they've been patched, but last time I played Longswords ruled head and shoulders above every other weapon type.

- A new boss gimmick is every one of them hitting a "second form" around half health, where they get things like damage boosts, a new moveset, helpers and such.

- The main merchant gains new items to sell by you collecting and giving her special items which are often hidden in easy to miss places, so exploration if you want to rely on merchants is nearly a must.

- Embers are much more plentiful and easier to acquire than human effigies or humanity, so don't be afraid to use them.

- There's a few Blighttown-style areas in the game, and there's no Rusted Iron Ring this time. This can be circumvented by holding a Dagger, or any weapon with the Quickstep ability, and just dashing through the muck.

 

[baddude1337]

Sorry for the hijack, but saves making another thread - how's the PC port in terms of performance? I've got an older 765m in my laptop and I've read mixed things about it. Some say they can game on an intelhd integrated, others say even modern cards are having issues.

 

[bluegate]

Leave a Mimic alive so that you can farm / save scum a Symbol of Avarice headgear from it during your endgame.

Aside from that, keep a guide handy that helps you with the NPC side quests as some are quite fickle and easily screwed up and you'll need some to get certain rings and a covenant.

To get all achievements you'll be looking at around three playthroughs because of the Collect all Rings achievement; some rings only drop in NG+, +1, +2 and +3. You can, however, kindly ask a stranger online to drop them for you, if you're feeling cheap.

 

[Saelune]

Leave a Mimic alive so that you can farm / save scum a Symbol of Avarice headgear from it during your endgame.

Aside from that, keep a guide handy that helps you with the NPC side quests as some are quite fickle and easily screwed up and you'll need some to get certain rings and a covenant.

To get all achievements you'll be looking at around three playthroughs because of the Collect all Rings achievement; some rings only drop in NG+, +1, +2 and +3. You can, however, kindly ask a stranger online to drop them for you, if you're feeling cheap.

The 3 (2 and a half) playthrough thing has been a staple. 1 had you do it cause you needed 3 Sif souls, and 2 cause the ghost guy in the big castle sells the last spells at NG++. But generally the first playthrough is the 100+ hours one, the latter 2 being far less combined.

 

[Saelune]

Why is luck always a worthless/counter-intuitive stat in Souls games? I mean, at least DkS1 essentially replaced it with soft humanity, and ten + a ring was about all you needed for max benefit. I remember farming for the Pure Bladestone in DeS for like 10 hours alone, even when I had decent luck. It turned out it doesn't increase the rare drops, but instead all drops. So round and round I went in the caves of 4-2. It was nice for leveling but damn there's got to be a limit.

 

[Kreett]

Basically look up guides and gun for ng++ for the fucking RINGS AND SPELLS AND OH MY GOD

When I got my Platinum it said 0.7% of people had it. It was only mostly totally worth the fucking pain of looking for myself while the guides were being updated daily.

 

[Saelune]

I got all the achievements in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition and Dark Souls II. With Dark Souls III, I stopped caring at 32/43. The game is excessively obtuse and a lazy sequel.

There is literally no way to do the character side-quests without a guide next to you. Yes, they are that obtuse, even moreso than Dark Souls 1 and 2, which were already more obtuse than they should be. Seriously, I never even SAW Patches on my first play through of the game (shut up, that's not a spoiler he's in every game).

This is the main reason I stopped playing after my second playthrough. The quest that made me quit is the one in which you have to upgrade your character several levels for the Dark Sign. If you screw up the complicated quest, which ties into other missable quests, you have to upgrade again on the next playthrough. I didn't like the game enough to play it over and over and over. I hope FromSoftware's next adventure game is structured differently.

Damn you went through DkS's list twice? That's some determination right there. Interesting to note for me personally is I spent only about ten hours less in total on DkS as I did with DeS to Platinum each, and even though the latter requires an entire extra playthrough taking the long dupe-free road. Farming also seemed extremely minimal in DkS, and I probably spent less than half as much time level grinding.

How would you rate DkS2 as far as difficulty 100%'ing vs the others?

 

[Saelune]

Nice collection. If I ever have time to go through that one again, it'll be on PC. I started a game as a Knight and with DSfix found the game actually much more enjoyable than on PS3. I don't really care about colllecting everything on PC/Steam, so it'll be a pure leisurely journey there.

I think I'll go to DkS2 SotFS next and pick Bloodborne back up afterwards. I'm actuallly more curious now than ever about the differences 2 made even for the worse, as well as just to check it off sooner if nothing else. In any case I'm hoping it'll be surprisingly enjoyable enough.

 

[sageoftruth]

There are 4 different endings 2 of them are difficult to get, and nearly impossible to get on accident (unless you're me).

I've found 3 of them (Rekindle, darkness, and Lord of Londor). How do you get the fourth?

 

[sageoftruth]

One thing that went over my head early on was the new Estus system. This is the first Dark Souls game (barring Demons's Souls) where you have a magic bar instead of a casting limit. As a result, you have TWO types of Estus flasks: orange (for health) and blue (for magic/focus). You'll eventually be able to increase your Estus count with Estus Shards, like in Dark Souls 2, but only for your orange Estus. If you want more blue Estus flasks, go to Andre the blacksmith in the hub area and he'll let you change orange flasks into blue ones, or vice versa.

Knowing this ahead of time should save you hours of fruitless searching for an upgrade to your blue estus flask.

Similarly, Attunement is more useful now, since it increases your max focus in addition to giving you extra spell slots.

 

[sageoftruth]

One surprisingly easy to miss NPC can be found sitting on one of the giant thrones (Just left or right of the center one depending on perspective) in the hub area. After acquiring the "Transposing Kiln" from an optional boss, you can see this guy to trade boss souls for boss weapons.

Also, just like Bloodborne, there are a number of bosses or large enemies who cannot be parried, but will enter a vulnerable state if you damage them enough. Listen for that "Kthunk" sound you hear whenever you successfully parry. If you hear it after delivering a successful blow, then stop attacking and run right up to the enemy's front for a riposte-style attack.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Poise is basically a worthless stat in this game, so wearing heavy armor isn't all that beneficial. It'll give you a higher damage reduction but it doesn't actually prevent you from getting staggered, at all, so moving around and doing proper crowd control is more important than ever since enemies will easily stagger you.

This isn't quite as true as it used to be, especially with the recent patch.

It didn't exactly change how poise worked, but it did add hyper armor to many of the heavier weapons. Add that to your poise, and you'll be surprised what you can poise through when you're wearing heavy armor. Also, the damage reduction of heavier armor was increased, and its weight was decreased across the board, so wearing heavy armor is actually not that bad anymore.

Moving and controlling the number of enemies you fight is still vitally important, so keep that in mind.

There are 4 different endings 2 of them are difficult to get, and nearly impossible to get on accident (unless you're me).

I've found 3 of them (Rekindle, darkness, and Lord of Londor). How do you get the fourth?

Spoiler: Big ending spoilers, read at your own risk!

During the End of Fire ending (I'm assuming you mean the darkness ending here), you briefly gain control of your character while the First Flame goes out. You can use this opportunity to attack the Fire Keeper, and gain the Betrayal ending. This one doesn't have an achievement, so it's mostly there for fluff.

 

[sageoftruth]

I've found 3 of them (Rekindle, darkness, and Lord of Londor). How do you get the fourth?

Spoiler: Big ending spoilers, read at your own risk!

During the End of Fire ending (I'm assuming you mean the darkness ending here), you briefly gain control of your character while the First Flame goes out. You can use this opportunity to attack the Fire Keeper, and gain the Betrayal ending. This one doesn't have an achievement, so it's mostly there for fluff.

Well, I know how I'm beating it this time. Of course I have to get through the Ringed City DLC first. Beating Friede was not easy.

 

[Saelune]

For what it's worth -

http://wccftech.com/dark-souls-3-update-1-08-poise-changes-detailed-new-video/


It really seems to be a rare thing to be able to play a balanced game at launch these days. I'm personally happy I haven't played it yet for this reason alone, especially with what Slumlord said.