15 Things I Wish I’d Known Starting Dark Souls
By: Scott Harper
Tags: Gaming, Help, Listicles, Newbie, Dark Souls

After years of on-again-off-again trying to play it’s now one of my favorite games of all time. Here are some things I’ve thought that might’ve helped me get there sooner.

I recently started a new character. I’ve never finished the game before, but I feel like this is finally the time. I remember the first time I fought the Asylum Demon, how many times it took me to finally beat him, and how I felt like nobody could possibly get past him — and he was the first boss of the game! But this time, as I fought to him, my brain went the other way, wondering how anyone could possibly think he was a hard boss! This article is an attempt to help bridge that gap for other people who, like me, might want to like this game and just can’t, no matter how many times they come at it.

It’s not a “normal” game. It doesn’t give players the kind of preferential treatment that we’ve come to expect from most modern games, and it’s definitely not the kind of balls-to-the-wall action spectacle of games like Halo or God of War, designed to make you feel like a badass right from the get-go.

It’s a game about rewarding actual development. You’re not meant to be good at it initially, and that makes your success all the more real. It’s like a game full of MMO raids. When players first step in, they have no idea what’s coming — but with study and planning and coordination, there’s a clear path toward victory, and it feels REALLY good when you, as they say, “git gud.”

But you do have to learn to control yourself as much as the game. This isn’t meant to be some kind of zen philosophy per se, but the game is going to ask you to do a lot of things that don’t come naturally to you, and you need to be patient with yourself and recognize those things and learn to control them. But let’s be more specific.

1. It’s Basically a Puzzle Game

Like, yes, it’s an “action RPG,” but if you approach it like that, you’re gonna have a bad time. Even levels aren’t THAT important — they increase your health and defense and resistance, yes, but you can technically beat the game without ever leveling up. So grinding levels is not likely to make your life significantly easier (unlike in most RPGs).

Despite being one of most famously hard games in modern memory, many people have beaten various bosses their first try. As I’ve been playing through most recently, I’ve been acing bosses first-time having only ever watched people beat some of these bosses. Practice isn’t required if you know what to look for and how to react.

Bosses (actually nearly all enemies) always telegraph their moves. The key is recognizing their telegraphs, and then figuring out how to avoid them or otherwise not be in a position where you end up getting slammed to death. This means you have to study the bosses a little bit. What kinds of attacks can they do? How quickly can they turn? What do the various attacks look like? How much time after a given attack do you have before you need to be able to escape/dodge again?

Just like speed cubers learn to recognize color patterns and moves to get certain faces in the right position, Dark Souls players have to learn to recognize attack patterns and how to react to them to maximize their success. Most enemies and bosses (with exceptions — lookin’ at you, Kapra Demon!) have plenty of space around them to observe their attacks and try to spot openings. Try to see if you can bait certain attacks in a way that lets you take advantage of openings. (Also keep in mind that many bosses have moves specifically designed to close long distances quickly, so picking a safe distance but not TOO far can be a useful skill to practice as well.)

Even the stages are laid out like puzzles. Enemies are not only placed consistently, but they respawn every time you rest/heal at a bonfire (and with limited exception, they ONLY respawn when you rest). This means that you’re meant to figure out how to get from one bonfire to the next within your limited means. Again, it’s not the game being mean or “invalidating all that work” you did killing enemies — it’s the game telling you that you need to solve the puzzle of how to get to the next bonfire, and that includes navigating or defeating all the enemies along the way.

2. It’s Kind of Like Old-School Mario

It’s helpful for me to consider the routes between bonfires as their own stages: Stage 1–1 is the route from Firelink to the Undead Burg tower (before the bridge with the dudes throwing firebombs at you). Stage 1–2 is the Undead Burg to the Taurus Demon, who is the first miniboss of World 1. 1–3 might be the unlocked ladder from 1–2 in the Undead Burg to the cathedral roof and the Stone Gargoyle and the first bell of awakening (with “secret” checkpoints back to Firelink and the blacksmith). And so on. Each route is its own challenge, and just like how in Super Mario Bros., if you die in Stage 2–4, you have to redo the whole thing. Bonfires are your stage boundaries. They’re your in-game checkpoints. You’re expected to make it from one to the other without dying.

3. It’s Also a Strategy Game

Dark Souls makes heavy use of risk/reward mechanics. This means employing strategy in how you proceed.

Attacking commits you to a set of animations, and the bigger your weapon’s damage, the more time you spend in animations and the longer you are vulnerable to being hit.

Attacking uses stamina, and the bigger your weapon’s damage, the more stamina it uses.

Blocking uses stamina, and the bigger the hit you take, the more stamina it uses.

Dodging uses stamina.

You can take any actions if you have even a sliver of stamina, but your stamina kind of goes negative by the whole amount of the action you take, and you can’t do anything if you don’t have a positive amount of stamina.

Many enemies — and basically all bosses — will poise through your attacks and not stagger. This means that their attacks are going to happen and so you need to use your time wisely and get out before

Even different enemies will have different weaknesses, and they will have openings. They will tire themselves out. They can be attacked from behind.

You only get so much estus between bonfires, and going back to heal just means you have to either fight or dodge all the enemies again. So sure, you could maybe squeeze that one extra hit in, and it might off the enemy a bit sooner, but it might also result in taking an unprotected hit yourself, which means that you don’t have that extra buffer to help you survive the next encounter.

4. Don’t Be Greedy

In action games you generally go in and smash up the enemy until they die. When an enemy is close to death, you probably just want to rush in and finish them off real quick. Waiting psychologically becomes harder the closer you are to something. (How many people wait on an escalator right until the point where you have to get off? Next time you’re on one, watch how far up people are when they start walking. The closer you get to the top, the more likely you are to just take the last few steps yourself. We hate waiting.)

The longer you stay in an enemy’s range, the more likely they are to attack you. It’s sometimes almost painful to back out when just one more hit could finish an enemy/boss off, but that’s risky. You’re absolutely going to fall victim to this, and you need to recognize that and learn how to avoid it.

Time spent waiting for another opening is always less than time spent redoing all that work because you let yourself get greedy and started taking risks.

Even traveling between bonfires, you could maybe squeeze that one extra hit in, and it might off the enemy a bit sooner, but it might also result in taking an unprotected hit yourself, which means that you don’t have that extra buffer to help you survive the next encounter. You need to keep that urge well in check.

5. Embrace Suicide Runs

Losing all your souls can be frustrating, but it can also be liberating! When you don’t have enough souls to bother recollecting them, you can freely get yourself killed without worrying about negative consequences!

Use these opportunities to explore the level, enemy placement, or try new tactics or weapons. It can often be quite useful to just run through an area — shield up and no reservations — just to see what enemies are around and see if you can pick up any items. There are a lot of dead ends that can be safely ignored once you have the item they hold, and it’s good to know where NOT to bother with just as much as where you should be heading.

Suicide runs will alert you to surprise enemies, traps, detours, and even help you get a feel for what enemies you can honestly just run past without engaging. As already stated, each path is a stage — a puzzle — and you can’t plan the best route through unless you know it already.

Multiple suicide runs in a row can even get you to the next bonfire, as you learn where to go in one run, then further and further on successive runs. Even if you decide to make a proper go (killing dudes along the way), the routes and enemy placement you learn on a suicide run will be immeasurably useful in helping you pick where to go and how to tackle each room and hallway.

6. Souls are Illusions — Don’t Get Attached

Souls are basically the all-currency of the game. You use them to buy items and weapons, they’re spent as part of all upgrades, and you use them to level up.

You also drop them when you’re killed, and if you don’t collect them before getting killed again, they’re gone.

But that’s okay because they were never yours to begin with. At least, you shouldn’t think of them as such.

It’s true that enemies drop souls as you kill them, and eventually (if you have a long run) this can add up to a decent amount of souls. Enough for a level (or two!) perhaps, which isn’t something to sneeze at. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s important to keep a hold of these souls. The only souls you get to “keep” are the ones you spend on items or levels (and they can’t really be converted back into souls).

Think of the souls you get along the way more like a completion bonus — sure, they can get added to your total if you make it to a checkpoint (or shop, if there’s something you want to buy), but the majority payoff is from bosses. Bosses drop a TON of souls. In a normal playthrough, unless you’re spending hours grinding, each boss will likely drop at least a couple levels’ worth of souls for you. And since most bosses drop you pretty close to a bonfire anyway, you should be able to pretty easily spend them. And do spend these guys.

If you happen to pick up enough souls from killing enemies along the way that you’re worried about losing them, you can always backtrack to the last bonfire. If you’re not sure that you can get back (safely or in general), that’s what Homeward Bones are for. The game gives you plenty (I have like 11 halfway through the game) and a few of the vendors sell them to you for pretty cheap. Don’t bother hoarding them — if you have enough souls that you want to spend them, use a bone and do it. (One level is probably not enough early on in the game to justify going back, but later in the game you might want to, as levels get pretty expensive. I wouldn’t bone for less than a level, though.)

You also get a ton of souls-giving items (the white ones, not the yellow ones) which are there to get you that extra little bit of souls you need if you’re close to another level or an item you need/want. My advice is to not pop them all, but save them for when you only need a few hundred extra souls to get another level. Play it smart, but I always try to leave a bonfire with as few souls as possible after leveling up.

7. Soft Humanity Doesn’t Really Matter

Kind of like with souls, but with even more reason to not worry about losing them: “soft” humanity (the number that shows up in the top-left corner), it’s only really good for three things:

Unhollowing at a bonfire (which mostly only allows you to summon other players and get invaded, so if you’re playing by yourself it’s not really worth caring about; but you do need to be un-hollow in order to kindle a bonfire — see below). Kindline a bonfire to get more estus when you rest (which you can only do once per bonfire until later in the game once you find the Rite of Kindling). If you’re hollow, you’ll need 2 soft humanity to kindle — one to go unhollow and the other to do the actual kindle. But you almost never need more than 2 at once. Farming items. Up to 10 soft humanity will increase your item dropping odds. So if you’re trying to farm titanite or something, it can be useful to splurge and pop a ton of humanity to increase your effectiveness.

That’s about it. So for the most part, it’s not worth caring about your soft humanity on your first playthrough. If you need it, you get a bunch of humanity items throughout the game that you’re meant to use. I have been kindling every bonfire I hit, and I have plenty of humanity items left. Also, if you run low, rats drop these things fairly often, so you can go somewhere with rats and farm them for a while to get your inventory back up.

8. An Item in the Inventory is Worth More Than Souls

Items don’t go away when you die. Any glowing particle orbs you pick up are yours. You keep them and you can do with them as you please. Use them, hoard them, or (after ringing both bells) feed them to Frampt for souls, they’re yours to keep even if you die.

In many ways, these should be your main goals.

Along the same lines, there are some enemies which DON’T RESPAWN when you kill them. Often, these are the hardest of the normal baddies, but the payoff is that they won’t foul up your future forays into the field once they’ve been offed. Killing these guys (often big black knights or fancy-looking spellcasters, and those effing stickmen poison blowdart jerk-holes from Blighttown) is at least as important as collecting items.

Again, focus on the things you can keep rather than the things which are tantalizing but ephemeral (souls and soft humanity).

9. Keep Your Shield Up… Except When You Shouldn’t!

If your stamina is full, keep your shield up. Sometimes enemies just shoot things at you and you won’t know where they are at first. Having a shield up while just freely exploring is always a good idea. But don’t keep your finger glued to the shield button. There are some key times when you definitely DON’T want your shield up.

You recharge stamina WAY faster when your shield is down. This is a strategy thing from above — blocking attacks drains your stamina, and if you run out of stamina, attacks will stagger you and leave you open to massive damage. But blocking an enemy’s attack will often stagger them a little (btw, this goes both ways, as you can get staggered if your attack is blocked). This gives you some time to either attack or recover stamina. I often find myself now releasing my shield immediately after blocking an attack in order to regain as much stamina as I can. Also, after I execute a few attacks, I’ll often step back and lower my shield in order to recover faster and be better prepared to block more incoming damage.

Also, YOU CANNOT BACKSTAB WITH YOUR SHIELD UP. I’ve probably spent a few hours of my life now just circling skeletons to get a backstab, and at some point I finally realized that I was flubbing so many attempts because of always keeping my shield up. I am now the backstab master (not really), and my life is so much better.

10. Invulnerability Frames are Amazing

Certain actions come with periods of complete imperviousness to attacks, called “i-frames.” Dodging is an obvious example, but there are some others, and these are your best friends:

Riposte —After a successful parry, you can riposte if you attack at the right time. Not only do you deal massive damage from this, but you’re completely immune to enemy attacks the whole time.

Backstab —Same deal, and a heck of a lot easier to pull off. My favorite is getting a backstab on someone in a group of enemies, and while I’m invulnerable, the rest of them biff their attacks, and then they’re grouped together so that I can block their next attacks right after my animation ends and then slice them once or twice all together.

Opening Doors/Traversing Fog Walls — At some point, you’re going to want to just run past enemies to get to a boss rather than wasting time and life on fighting them. That’s it’s own puzzle to solve, but the beauty at the end is that as soon as you hit the fog wall (or get to the door you need to open), you can hit the button and all the dudes chasing you just swing wildly and it doesn’t affect you at all. Relish these moments, because usually you have to fight a boss next.

11. Don’t Spread Your Stats Too Thin

Especially for a first-time player, you’ll want to focus primarily on one damage-dealing stat. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Strength — This is for the heavy damage, slower weapons. The move-sets are a bit less forgiving (you won’t get as many attacks of), but the armor you will wear and the damage you deal will for-sure make up for that. You can also crank up your Endurance to keep your movement and dodge speeds up even with heavier armor. Strength weapons, being large, also tend to have the longest reach.

Dexterity — These weapons are fast and more forgiving and use less stamina, but they’re also up-close and personal. You have to get closer to enemies to damage them, and you have to spend more time hitting them. You’ll also likely have less armor on you, to protect from damage, as you need the added mobility to safely get all your hits in.

Intelligence — This stat is for spells and pyromancy. They can both be quite useful, but at the same time you only get a limited number of them between bonfires. So you’ll want to aim for a bit higher Attunement as well to let you equip more spells so you don’t run out. Spells can be OP, for sure, but the limit kind of balances that out. Not recommended for absolute beginners.

Faith — Basically the same thing as Intelligence, but for “miracles” like healing and such. There are damage-dealing miracles, also, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone recommend Faith as a primary build. Also not recommended for beginners.

In addition to your primary stat, you’ll want to boost your Health and Endurance. I try to keep them around 2/3 of my primary stat (stair-stepping), but if you’re doing fine with your health and endurance, feel free to ignore them and ramp up your primary damage stat faster.

Most weapons have damage-scaling based on one or two stats (represented by a letter grade next to stat icons near the bottom of the weapon stats page). The higher the grade, the more your stat boosts the overall weapon damage. Weapons with scaling of A and B are often really good if you have that stat high, and some of the best weapons later on have pretty high stat requirements. So really you’re much better off sticking to just one primary damage stat until you know what you’re doing.

Don’t be afraid to start multiple characters and try out different stat focuses, either. In a game where you’ll likely have to spend a few hours retrying and learning one boss or another, taking a few hours to try some different weapons isn’t a bad way to go. (I recommend Bandit and Pyromancer as interesting starters. Sorcerer is also interesting if you still want to try a magic build, but the pressure of running out of spells is real, and you can’t buy new ones until you find and rescue a guy several hours into the game.)

12. Kill the Guy with the Gold Armor

You may run across someone in a jail cell on your way to the Bell of Awakening above the cathedral. Go ahead and rescue him. But as soon as you’re done with the gargoyle fight and the bell, head back to Firelink, find him across from the Firekeeper’s cell. Talk to him, get the dumb item he gives you, and then kick him off the cliff. (You can kick him back twice really easily, whereas if you attack him, he’ll fight back and it’s harder.) Quit the game and reload, and there’ll be a yellow item orb to pick up.

There are two reasons for this, the second of which is a minor plot spoiler.

He drops a super useful ring which boosts your stats way up and makes the whole game easier. Technically, if you ever unequip this ring it will be destroyed, but honestly, just keep it on. It’s so ridiculously useful that it’s worth it. Your life will be a lot easier. SPOILER: If you leave him for too long (I think the second bell?), he’ll kill the Firekeeper, extinguishing the bonfire, and making Firelink almost useless. The process for recovering her is tedious and hard, and all you get for it is the same ring you can get for kicking him off early. Technically, it restores the Firekeeper’s tongue so she can talk now, but she isn’t exactly grateful to have it back, anyway. And that ring… is so worth having early on.

13. Don’t Get Angry

It doesn’t help. This is the really hard one for most people who’ve been chased away. All of the points above are intended to help mitigate this one, but at the end of the day, you’re going to feel moments of anger due to frustration.

If you can, recognize this, take a deep breath, and calm yourself. Thing about what you learned. How can you step back and observe better? How can you keep from getting surrounded? Can you take out the enemies one at a time? Could you use an arrow to trigger one to attack you before the others all show up? Is there a different path you could take? What did the boss do right before that mega attack that killed you? Are you trying to chain too many attacks together and not leaving yourself with enough time to get out? (Remember, it’s not about how quickly you kill a boss, but whether or not you can live to make another hit on them!)

And if you’re getting too frustrated, then take a break. Go for a walk, watch some Netflix, play another game, etc… Our brains do a LOT of processing and reinforcing learning while we’re not paying attention to it. There’s a VERY good chance that, if you’ve tried and tried and can’t succeed, that while you’re taking a break, your brain will be sorting out all the patterns you’ve been learning and you can recognize them better when you come back to it better rested.

14. Feel Free to Use the Community

Finally, basically everything is known about the game and present on the wiki. Feel free to use this. If you’re not sure where to go after ringing the first Bell of Awakening, check the walkthrough. It’s not a perfect game, and sometimes you’re expected to go back and find a random door that was locked that you have probably forgotten about a long time ago. You can argue if that’s a flaw or not, but it’s certainly frustrating, and the game is old at this point; and finding random doors to unlock isn’t at all what makes the Dark Souls experience so strong and memorable.

Are you having trouble fighting a boss? Watch some videos of different strategies and try to replicate them. I don’t think it’s cheating to research Chess strategies when learning to play, and I don’t think it’s cheating to see what other people have done that works in Dark Souls. It can be fun to learn the bosses yourself, but if that’s not your thing, don’t get hung up over it. There’s a good chance that if you can make your way through one Souls game, then that will open up the joy of the rest of them to you, and you’ll be better equipped to solve the puzzles on your own in the future!

15. It’s Not For Everyone

Technically, I didn’t exactly need to know this one for myself. I wanted very badly to love the games. I could kind of SEE the fun there, just out of my reach for so long. I wanted to find and experience that joy, and it’s taken me several years and many attempts to get there. If you have a similar longing, then hopefully this will help. For a while, though, it wasn’t for me.

And if you have no interest, don’t feel bad about that. People play games for different reasons, and if the payoff that comes from practice and mastery isn’t something you want from a game, this is not the series for you. Just like mastering Street Fighter isn’t for everyone, it takes practice and study, and sometime all you want is to walk into a room and gun down demons, and that’s awesome!

It’s okay not to like it. But maybe this will have helped you see the fun in it. Let me know if you get inspired to try again and manage to find the fun for yourself! :)

Cheers!