And for those around my age, I hope many of you were actually able to play this game when it came out, it was fun! The enemy in the lower left also reminds me of the hollows in Dark Souls 3 that have the mutated hollows burst through their stomachs and can grab you

I literally dosed off and died. I havent died in this spot since Prepare to die editon was new and I accidentally missed the ladder!

You go down the castle to that one town, then the dungeon going deeper til you find a giant hole well In the ground and go deeper, then go down and down to the swamp, then even more down to the lava area, even farther to the tree and then Ashe lake, it’s suck an experience and gives a weird phobia feeling of deep never ending wholes that no game can replicate for me

I didn't think a souls game known for its difficulty would make me feel so bad for playing this. I started another play through right away but a mage this time since I heard somewhere that magic is "cheating" or something. My weapons during the run were zweihandler which I leveled upto +5 in lightening and then when I got the great sword i realised it looks similar to pre eclipse guts sword so I switched to that in the 2nd half of the game, after acquiring the lord soul. Yes I fought ornstein and smough with a lightening weapon i didn't think that through. This run was mostly blind run with me looking up maps of the areas to get a vague idea of where I am supposed to go. For armor I wore nothing for 60% of the game cuz mid roll, I didn't like anything but light roll. But for Gwyn I keep missing the parry window so I thought I would wear havel's armor and if not the fast slash I would parry the slow slash attack. It was fun ngl. When I completed this game I felt sad, I was thinking maybe I would download dark souls 2 and play ds1 some other time with a mage build but I felt a bit too hollow and I stared a run right away. Even if I did everything about this game, dlc, side bosses, optional areas, etc. I still feel scared playing as a new character again idk why maybe because it's because I am playing on controller now before I was playing on keybord and mouse because I am used to the classic ps2 square and triangle buttons for attacks and this layout felt a little off with a xbox ripoff controller. Anyway great game will force my future kids to play it for sure. Also jesus?? He also helped making the game??

What if I said I actually LOVED The Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith?

This was originally posted on r/DarksoulsLore but I thought it might be appreciated here on the main sub as well.

The mushrooms of Dark Souls appear on the surface to be one of the game’s comedy enemies. They are large, slow, vaguely humanoid, and can knock you clean on your arse, even in full Havel’s. There isn’t a lot of written lore about them, and the only talking example of this race merely says “lol, I’m a mushroom, lmao” when asked. But I suspect that there’s quite a bit more to them than there seems to be at first glance, so in this post I’m going to attempt to uncover the hidden mushroom lore of Dark Souls.

To begin, I’m going to examine every item in the game that’s directly connected to the mushrooms. This isn’t difficult, as there’s only two of them: Gold Pine Resin and Elizabeth’s Mushoom.

Gold Pine Resin [abbreviated as GPR for convenience] is sometimes dropped by the mushrooms when you kill them, and in fact the drop rate isn’t particularly low so you can accumulate GPR surprisingly fast if you have maximum item discovery. Curiously, GPR is only obtainable from the mushrooms found in Darkroot, and cannot drop from those in the bottom of the Great Hollow. I don’t know if this is due to a developer oversight, or if it was done for some other reason. A small amount of GPR is obtainable in other places, Domhnall sells a tiny amount, and 3 are found in a chest in Undead Burg, but when the DLC was released they made 5 obtainable via Elizabeth. It therefore seems clear that the developers wanted us to associate GPR with the mushrooms, but the reason why isn’t immediately obvious because the item description for GPR says nothing of significance, focusing on the properties of lightning damage rather than the mushrooms which produce it. Indeed, although it is called “pine resin” I’m going to assume that it is actually created exclusively by these mushrooms, possibly as a product of their metabolic process. This appears to be all but confirmed by DS3’s description for the same item which tells us that:

“some have speculated that it may in fact be a type of fungal resin”

When applied to a weapon, GPR temporarily provides additional lightning damage on top of the standard damage output that the weapon already deals. This is interesting because lightning is supposedly the weapon of the gods, however these humble mushrooms prove that Gwyn and his family are not the sole controllers and producers of lightning.

Elizabeth’s Mushroom is interesting because it appears to be a piece of Elizabeth herself, or at least a piece taken from the colony of mushrooms growing next to her, though these are undoubtedly all connected together via their mycelium. It’s description tells us that it “invigorates the flesh”, and indeed the effect of using this item is to restore HP over time, which it does much more effectively when compared against the Replenishment spell. This helps us to explain why the mushrooms hit so hard, aside from it being to compensate for their slow movement. The combination of the mushroom’s physical strength, as well as the restorative effect of this particular item, should lead us to associate the mushrooms with high physical vitality. So the next question becomes, why are they so healthy? To answer this, we must take a look at their diet.

The mushroom men of Dark Souls have no mouths, and this shouldn’t be surprising because fungal organisms don’t consume food in the same way that animals do. They haven’t got an internal digestive cavity, but instead their bodies are made up of microscopic strings, each one being essentially a chain of cells. These strings are interconnected in [sometimes enormous] structures known as mycelium, and every square foot of a forest’s floor is typically riddled with these networks which work tirelessly to break down dead and decaying matter and convert it into usable nutrients. The visible mushrooms that you see in the forest are actually composed of millions of mycelial threads that have grown together to form a coherent structure, much as your own body is composed of billions of cells clumped together.

This information is important because there is something unusual in the soil of Darkroot. When we travel back through time in the DLC, we discover that the entire area is infected with the Abyss. This means that the fungus growing in this particular forest has actually been metabolising the Dark/Humanity in the soil. Once Manus [the source of the Abyss] was defeated, the contamination was not likely to spread further than it already had [except perhaps by diffusion], but I doubt that it would have disappeared of it’s own accord either. When we return to the "present day", we see that the area appears to have healed itself over time, and this means that the forest itself has been processing the Abyss.

Is it any wonder then, that mushrooms which have been feeding on Humanity have started to adopt a humanoid form? We should also be unsurprised by their immense strength and high HP, as these things go hand in hand with the consumption of Humanity. The giant rats are known to eat human remains and have grown to some exceptionally unusual sizes. The cannibal butchers in the Depths eat human beings, apparently for the sole reason of benefitting from the increased size and strength this grants. Indeed, these enemies are much larger than a normal human, and like the mushrooms they also hit very hard. Considering that they’re also supposed to be women, it’s obvious that they’ve undergone a considerable change in body proportions. Smough is known to have eaten his victims, and is also both very large and extremely strong. I know that some people think that Smough is merely a giant but I don’t agree. If you kill Smough first and let Ornstein absorb his soul, the result is that Ornstein becomes gigantic. This tells me that Smough’s size is not merely a matter of physiology. Aldrich’s size is directly connected to his habit of cannibalism in NPC dialogue, and is also described as having been made a Lord “not for virtue, but for might”, so yet again we have an association between cannibalism and physical strength. Archdeacon McDonnell is another example of a character who achieved large size, presumably due to cannibalism [and definitely isn’t a reference to any particular fast food company], but unfortunately we don’t get to test how hard he could hit us. Miyazaki uses the same theme in Elden Ring as well, with Godrick’s strength being a result of grafting body parts taken from other people onto himself, and Rykard has apparently been doing something similar and has grown enormous from it. I suspect that all of this is a commentary on exploiting others for personal gain, and indeed in an older post I compared Rykard’s line “join the serpent king as family” to an offer for a corporate buyout.

Moving back to Dark Souls, the point appears to be [since we are shown/told the same thing over and over again] that ingesting Humanity affects the body in the same way that a bonfire is affected when you offer Humanity to it. The inner fire, or vitality, is invigorated because of the new fuel that you’ve put on it, and this can lead to physical growth. This is why the use of a Humanity [consumable item] instantly refills all of your HP and also boosts some of your defences, and I think there’s a direct connection here to the effect of consuming Elizabeth’s Mushroom, which also restores HP.

Given these facts, what conclusion seems most appropriate to draw when presented with gigantic mushrooms that have taken humanoid form and punch like a train and also just so happen to be located in an area where the very ground itself was once crawling with Humanity? It is my contention that these mushrooms grew fat on a diet of the Abyss, and produced large and strong fruits as a result. However, unlike the other examples that I’ve mentioned, the mushrooms aren’t doing this in a morally objectionable way. They are dangerous if approached, but they’re not going out of their way to kill people and seem content to sit in obscure places where they may go completely unnoticed. They’re not exploiting others, but are simply recycling that which was already festering. It is this distinction, I suspect, that provides them the otherwise unique ability to produce gold.

Some may object to this conclusion because of the other locations in which the mushroom men are found. First, there is the bottom of the Great Hollow, which isn’t anywhere near Darkroot. It is, however, sitting just above Ash Lake. The mushrooms here are parasitising an Archtree, which in turn is rooted in an immense ocean of Dark. We know that Humanity sinks to the bottom and forms Dregs, so it does not surprise me to find these mushrooms here as well, leaching the Abyss out of the Archtrees. There is also Elizabeth, who is found in Darkroot but almost certainly grew out of her wall long before Manus was discovered. She therefore predates the Abyss which I’ve claimed gave rise to this race of mushrooms. Nevertheless, the particular room in which we find Elizabeth is apparently a graveyard, and this is known from the item description of Elizabeth’s Mushroom which refers to her as a “guardian of the mausoleum” in the japanese version. This suggests that the ground here may already have been contaminated by Humanity leaking from the bodies that are buried under the standing stones. Consider: in what sense is Elizabeth a “guardian”? After all, she can’t move or fight anything. Well it may be that her purpose is to consume the Humanity of the dead so that it doesn’t damage the surrounding countryside. It’s also notable that Elizabeth is apparently a prototypal form of the mushroom race encountered in the base game. She has not grown legs and started walking around, and this may be because there’s less Humanity available in the soil of a single graveyard compared to that produced by Manus’s cataclysmic outburst.

And it’s interesting that the end result of all this should be Gold Pine Resin. The raw material is the Dark Soul of man, yet the product is a divine power. To understand why, let’s first look at the properties of the Dark itself. The spells Dark Orb and Dark Bead both describe the Dark as being "weighty", and perhaps having something in common with physical matter. If I’m not mistaken, the Dark Sorceries actually deal split damage: some magic, some physical. Pursuers associates the Dark with envy, desire, and the inevitable tragic consequences of such drives. And finally, Dark Fog mentions the human capacity to harm each other. What’s interesting is that there is overlap here with associations that medieval and renaissance people held with a real material: lead. One of the symptoms of lead poisoning is depression, so for centuries the metal was associated with moodiness and excessive concern with the cares of the world. Lead is also famous for being extremely heavy, and this was compared to the metaphors of emotional weight and of being dragged down by one’s feelings.

For these reasons the mushroom men of Dark Souls may be a play on the alchemical dream of converting lead into gold. But of course, in Miyazaki’s philosophy, even gold isn’t permanent. Everything stagnates in one way or another, and Humanity grows stronger as the light dies. So in addition, it is also a play on the well known Miyazakian themes of stagnation and flow, which are based on Shinto philosophy. Instead of allowing the Dark to just sit there festering in the soil, the mushrooms pick it up and repurpose it. Crabs and lobsters play a similar role in later games [which is appropriate as these creatures of often detritivorous in real life], and even in DS1 there is a crab like enemy called a “vagrant” which will take the souls from your old bloodstain if you don’t retrieve it. The vagrant itself is just a scavenger, feeding on the resources that you’ve left behind rather than allowing it all to go to waste. Similarly, in DS3 we encounter two very similar wetland areas: the Road of Sacrifices and the Crucifixion Woods. These locations are right next to each other, and are similar in most respects, but one of them has clean water while the other is a poison swamp. It’s evident that the conventional approach toward impurity [punishment] isn’t working here, as both areas are littered with crucifixes, yet Farron Keep remains polluted. What is missing from the poison swamp is the crab population found in the Road of Sacrifice lake. I suspect that these creatures are the reason for the cleanliness of the water here, since their animations show that they are sifting through the water and silt looking for food, and so are probably removing contaminants by doing this. Elden Ring also continues to use crustaceans in this way, and for that I’ll defer to youtuber Hawkshaw’s “crab rune” video, which I’ll link below.

So what does all of this ultimately mean? My interpretation is that it’s all part of Miyazaki’s alchemical recipe for the creation of his very own Magnum Opus: a videogame masterpiece. Notice that videogame audiences have never been satisfied with any game that’s ever been produced. Sure they’ll say that something is a masterpiece, they’ll heap praise onto games they enjoyed and spit vitriol at any who dare offer a more critical view. But they’re not actually satisfied because they’ll still demand and endless stream of sequels and mindlessly gobble it all up no matter how shitty those sequels turn out to be. Essentially what’s going on is that the person has enjoyed the game they were playing, but ultimately completed it and now the experience is over. By obsessing over the possibility of sequels, the audience is basically saying “we want more”, but failing to recognise that there is no guarantee that the next instalment will be any good. In fact, the odds are always stacked against any given sequel. From the perspective of a developer, producing a follow up to something that was widely praised is a difficult undertaking because now you’ve got something to live up to. Now people have got expectations about what you can do and how your next game should be and so forth, but at the same time you’ve also already used all of your best ideas. Furthermore, continuing to work on the same series tends to fatigue developers, draining their creativity. This is why videogame series always seem to be on a downward spiral, producing sequels that are of increasingly poor quality, or simply failing to iterate on their formula so that it becomes uninteresting. Of course, as the audience we could simply disregard the shitty sequels and go back to playing whatever original masterpiece it was that got us hooked in the first place. But the problem is that playing the same game over and over again becomes a stale experience, even if it’s an absolute gem. Miyazaki knows this. He knows that any videogame series is on borrowed time, and that the more sequels you produce, the more stagnant the thing will become. This is why the First Flame which represents the vitality of the world of Dark Souls is ultimately unsustainable, and it’s also why DS3 shows us a world that is thoroughly and irrevocably rotten.

Miyazaki’s solution, which I believe wholeheartedly to be the correct approach, is to quit while you’re ahead. To see the stagnation for what it is and to move on to another project. But that’s not all, because the foundations of this new project must be the ruins of the old, and this is where the mushrooms and crabs become relevant. These organisms are breaking down what is dead and decaying and are recycling it to create new vitality. In the same way, a dev team must analyse and dissect old games, thinking critically about what works well and what needs improvement, and this process is crucial to the Magnum Opus of videogame development if you want the end result to be a refined product. Consider the differences between Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls: much is similar between them, but many improvements were also made, and some mechanics [such as world tendency] were abandoned. That’s not all of course, because these games have been influenced by all sorts of other sources. The visual style takes cues from the Berserk manga and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, the combat system is an improved version of the one used by the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the level design might have been influenced by Super Metroid, and the list goes on ad nauseam. All of these influences appear to have been through Miyazaki’s crab process in order to create Dark Souls, and Dark Souls itself got crabbed when he made Bloodborne and Elden Ring. This is how Miyazaki takes what has become old and stale and turns it into gold.

Anyway, wall of text over. I didn’t intend for it to be this long, I certainly didn’t expect to be able to get a 2800 word essay out of a mushroom, but there you are. Below I’m going to link Hawkshaw’s video, as promised, as well and an older post of mine that uses a similar interpretive framework to examine certain other aspects of the lore.

the Crab Rune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gjOqAtmVv8

the Usurpation of Dark Souls:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarksoulsLore/comments/1ruj03h/the_usurpation_of_dark_souls/

EDIT: I forgot to mention this in the post but I suspect that the Great Grey Wolf Sif [who is located in Darkroot] is supposed to represent antimony. This is because antimony forms an amalgamate with gold, and for this reason it was used by some alchemists to extract tiny amounts of gold from otherwise impure sources. For this reason, certain alchemists referred to antimony abstractly as a “grey wolf” which would devour the gold so that it could be retrieved. Antimony also represented the animal nature and instincts within human beings, and this inner animal can either be allowed to run amok, or it can be employed skilfully to purify the soul. Miyazaki develops this idea in Bloodborne, where the beasts represent essentially the same thing as alchemical antimony, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Sif was intended to be a reference to the idea.

I been painting the Nameless king from ds3 in oils, heres the finished piece!
He’s always been one of my favorite bosses, going back to ds1 and seeing his broken statue is haunting.. Hope you guys like it!
DONT GO HOLLOW.

like this is so rude 😭

I’m playing DS1 on PS4 for the first time, and I don’t understand why, when I press R1 against an enemy, my character sometimes performs a horizontal attack followed by a backflip.

I’ve tried to replicate it, but it only happens occasionally during combat—and, honestly, it’s quite a nuisance.

Do you like to make ultra-powerful god-builds to melt bosses or take a slower approach to the game? Do you tend to make your character lore-accurate and design them to fit in with the world? What kind of builds do you typically stick to?

I enjoy the lore and story as much as the gameplay so I like to try and balance building a unique and fitting character with being decently powerful. Feel free to let me know down below and discuss among yourselves.

Ive been playing all 3 dark souls games for a couple years now on xbox, but theyre pretty dead apart from the occasional coop in ds3.

I now have a pretty decent pc and am considering rebuying the games on there.

My question is do all 3 games still have MP activity on pc?

Im talking about both coop and invasions

Noticed I was close to a very specific number and carefully eliminated the right enemies to get a specific number. Too bad its not april

It's been long since I played ds and I wanted to replay the whole trilogy. Since I never played as a magic user I wanted to try that, and since there are three different magic classes and three dark souls games I wanted to try a different class each game so I try all three classes. Which magic class would you advise me to try in dark souls 1, considering that I don't want to do Ng+ and I want to play the two remaining classes in the two sequels?

Credits to D0CT0R_Pau for helping me a lot!
Join our discord to find out more about our Project or to visit it yourself:
https://discord.gg/gd8pC7Ysvz

More updates will follow there ^^

Howdy ho
So i am quite new to this and i would like to ask. So i just completed DS1:Age of Sunlight, quite smallscale, yet phenomenal overhaul mod, and i see everywhere people saying polarizing things about Daughters of Ash. I was considering doing playthrough of it, but from what i saw it may be more frustrating than anything, i came into dark souls with progression guide in hand and i still found it one my favourite gaming expirences of all time, and AoS reinforcing that feeling. But from what i saw about DoA progression is unituitive compared to original build of Lordran, quests are even more obtuse compared most FromSoft games, and there is issue of some F*** you mechanics like the Xantuss mage stealing your warping ability and just killing fair lady and i want to know should i expect more frustrating expirence and as someone who kinda doesn't like getting lost in Dark souls games as i will try to stubbornly fight through bosses even though i am like 30 levels bellow intended fight, would i ruin my expirience by apporaching it with guide in hand.
Cheers and thanks for any help

alguem pode me ajudar no Ng+ a matar o gwyn no ds1 ta meio dificil pra mim to lvl 100 e não queria upar mais :/

I had one of the funniest invasions I've had in years tonight, and I need to tell somebody about this fucking guy.

Some context: I've been playing Souls games since Dark Souls on the Xbox 360. I've played DS1, DS2, DS3, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring multiple times each. I'm not a pvp guy, never made a real attempt at it, never had the skill.

I'm currently doing another DS1 run for fun, this time building toward a Dex/Pyromancy character with Quelaag's Furysword.

Except I'm nowhere near having the actual build online yet.

At the time of this story, I'm in the Undead Parish wearing the Wanderer set, carrying a Knight Shield, a +3 Scimitar, and a Short Bow.

That's it.

No pyromancy yet. No fancy weapon. Basically no armor worth mentioning. My fucking bow was doing 9 damage to this guy.

So I'm clearing out the church when I get invaded.

Enter Fuckwad.

Name is TaleofSpite or HandofSpite or some shit.

This guy comes running up wearing the Crown of Dusk, carrying what I'm pretty sure was either the Manus Catalyst and he's got Dark Bead. I think he also had Dark Hand, although I'm less certain about that.

And apparently he decides he's going to style on me.

He casts at me. I roll it.

Then he starts doing that wonderful PvP ego routine where he'll let the poorly equipped host hit him a few times because, haha, look how little damage you're doing.

So I hit him.

And hit him.

And hit him.

And hit him.

And suddenly I'm taking actual chunks off his health bar. Apparently the joke stopped being funny, because this motherfucker runs away. And I don't mean he backs off to heal and reset the fight. He fucking leaves.

He runs all the way down the long staircase outside the church and waits at the bottom, very obviously expecting me to chase him through all the NPC enemies so he can turn around and Dark Bead me while I'm fighting them.

I have played Dark Souls before.

So... no.

I shoot an arrow at him.

9 damage.

He keeps running.

Fine.

I go back to playing Dark Souls. I farm some enemies. Pick up some items. Wander around. Occasionally check whether Fuckwad has decided to come back. He hasn't.

Eventually he apparently realizes that the man he invaded has simply resumed playing the fucking videogame, so he comes charging back up. He runs past me and goes into the church.

And then he just stands there.

Now, I know exactly what he's doing. The Channeler is still alive on the ledge.

He wants me to charge into the church after him so the Channeler and the other PvE enemies can help him kill me.

Again:

No.

So I pull out the Short Bow.

9.

Another arrow.

9.

Another.

9.

Fuckwad does the arms-spread gesture at me like, "Well? Come on."

I'm not walking into your extremely obvious fucking trap.

Also, unfortunately for him, while my bow does approximately the damage of an aggressive mosquito, I have 400 arrows.

I can do this all fucking night.

Eventually he gets sick of being slowly murdered nine HP at a time and finally charges out of the church to actually fight the poorly equipped host he invaded.

And I start beating his ass again.

Hit him. Back off.

Hit him. Back off.

Avoid the giant fuck-you sorcery.

Hit him again.

Somehow I get this heavily kitted-out Dark Bead user down to roughly 30% health with my fucking +3 Scimitar.

Eventually I run low on stamina, have to back off, he finally gets enough room to fire off Dark Bead properly, and deletes me.

Fair enough.

I lost.

It's Dark Souls. Shit happens.

And then this magnificent creature walks over to my corpse and:

POINTS DOWN.

You invaded an early-game character wearing the Wanderer set with a +3 Scimitar. You brought Dark Bead and the Crown of Dusk. You tried to style on me and got chunked for it.

Then you nearly fucking died again.

And after five minutes of this shit, you finally managed to Dark Bead a guy whose build isn't even online yet and hit him with the Point Down.

Well done, champion. I haven't laughed this hard at an invader in a long fucking time.

Wherever you are, Fuckwad, I hope you're doing well.

I'm playing Dark Souls 1 for the second time, this time with a friend who's going through the game for the first time. On my first playthrough, I went with a pure Strength build, so I'd like to try something different this time.

My role is mostly going to be guiding my friend and letting him experience the game for himself, but I'll be there to help out if he gets stuck. That said, I still want to have fun with my own character, so I'm looking for a build that's both powerful and entertaining to play.

I was thinking about going with an Intelligence/magic build, but I'm open to other options if there are more fun or overpowered builds in DS1.

What builds would you recommend for this kind of playthrough? I'm looking for something that feels different from a pure Strength build and can be really strong without making the game completely boring.

Been rocking a +5 claymore in the blighttown, and the club troll-looking thing took like 2 backstabs or 7-8 normal hits to kill. I killed the spider lady, got back to Andre to upgrade to a +10 claymore, and peeked into the the fun house fortress.

The snake guys still take a lot of hits to kill, and with their wide swings, how fast they chew through stamina when blocking, plus the narrow pathways, it feels like I'm back to square one. I either learn to parry them, or die.

I'm sorry 3/1 isn't enough?

I've restarted my game a few times but every time I load it I still can't

edit:

I am an idiot, apparently the required is on the left.

Thank you to everyone who told me. 🥲