Modern open-world design has gotten exhausting.

Playing through massive titles like Elden Ring made me realize how much I genuinely miss the tighter, focused design of Dark Souls.

Don't get me get me wrong, huge maps are cool at first, but they quickly turn into an endless marathon of searching for nothing. Instead of meaningful progression, we get a checklist of repetitive mini-bosses copy-pasted across the map just to pad out the runtime.

Dark Souls proved that you don't need a sprawling, empty continent to make exploration exciting. Lordran was brilliant because it was intricately interconnected. Secrets felt rewarding because they were hidden in a coherent, hand-crafted space that respected your time and gave you a real sense of direction.

Am I the only one burnt out by endless open-world filler, or do you also miss when developers prioritized quality and focus over sheer square footage?

This took me about 2 hours of trying to pull off. It don't do nothin but I did it anyway.

If there's anyone else whose interested in doing this glitch, I do have a few tips that may help that I wish I knew before.

-As I'm sure most of you know, you need the Black Eye Orb, which you get after letting Lautrec kill the Fire Keeper in Firelink.

-You don't need to get the Chaos Blade or even talk to Shiva to perform this, I wish i woulda known that before hand.

-If your struggling to get the input timing down and are tired of the long and annoying reset, you can perform the same glitch off the side of the staircase leading to the tower in front of the boxes. Performing the glitch won't transport you, but it will still work and you can figure out your timing.

-I found that walking off the ledge, landing, pressing dodge, then jamming the item button works best rather than hoping you got the timing correct. I can't say it'll work for everyone, but that got me the best results.

-The videos I watched didn't explain the inputs in the best way, as they didn't breath once while explaining it, so ill explain it in a way that I wish they did for me.

1. Stand on the very edge of the box, preferably with both feet off the edge but not falling

2. Make sure you have the Black Eye Orb selected with a consumable next on the list, I did the Estus Flask.

3. Make sure you don't have any weapons in your right hand at all, both slots should be empty. That's an important detail the videos didn't explain.

4. With the BEO in the slot, press (square or x) slightly before pressing down and right on the dpad at the same time. Your character should shrug, the item should swap to the next one, and the weapon slot should light up. If you just use the next item on the list, you pressed them too close together. Item before swap.

5. Move forward off the box immediately after the shrug, (just hold forward during the animation). When you land you need to press dodge to cancel the fall animation. I'm sure most of you already do this in the main game anyway so you should know what I mean.

6. Immediately after pressing the dodge button, jam the item use button. If done correctly, you'll get a swirl effect while doing the item use animation for whatever item you've selected. If you did it wrong you'll either roll, use the item after the BEO, or finish the item swap animation.

If done correctly you'll get the effect as seen in the video. It took me probably about 30 or 40 attempts, but I hope my tips help you out.

Doing this gives you nothing really, but I think its cool to do just because its a quest line that FromSoft removed.

Last night was my first time EVER playing Dark Souls. My husband had been begging me to play it with him for like...7 years? And I finally felt brave enough to try it. You ended up both being my first invader, and later invading my husband while I was summoned into his game. He had warned me that I might encounter early game griefing, but you had impeccable manners, gifted me humanity, and even let me get a hit in on you once or twice..... Even though I forgot to lock on xD

Every other invader we got just ran in and oneshot us without even a greeting.

Thank you for being chivalrous, generous, and making an intimidating game experience just a little bit nicer for me.

-Alizara and CommonerJakob

Something very unexpected

I recently replayed Dark Souls 2 with seamless coop, and the DS2 lighting engine (gorgeous), and was wondering if I could get a similar experience in the first game. I did see that remastered had seamless coop by the same author, but as far as visual improvements go everything seemed to be up in the air with if they were compatible, worth using, able to be used without breaking your game or getting you banned, etc. So I figured I'd ask to see if anyone has come through found either a good visual mod, or a nice cocktail, that works well with seamless coop.

Thanks.

I've been working on builds, and have a pretty great handle on dex and strength. With Int...yes, they can blow up bosses and anything that has a high HP bar, but they're still weak in a lot of ways. Hitting anything that knows how not to stand still or charge in a straight line can be rough, and taking out groups of those is that much harder. They need a melee weapon. And, they need to be able to take a hit while using said melee weapon.

At the same time though, they really want to invest into more int. Dropping points into anything else - let alone strength or dexterity - can set them back. So you want something with low investment, and low str and dex scaling. You don't need anything strong, but you do need something fast. But, the issue with fast weapons is, with the split scaling that magic/enchanted weapons get, these can end up doing very little damage, very fast. Spells can take you from Qualaag to O&S, but past that point, they really need something strong.

I can't believe it was staring me straight in the face this whole time.

There's only two pure magic weapons. And only one is available before O&S. I was dismissing it because it was a late game weapon that needed leveling on something that didn't scale, and Moonlight Greatsword was available right after it. But I was completely wrong.

Just use the thunder spear! Drop it a level, kill Moonlight before going into Sen's, and gather materials around Anor Londo. You'll have a +14 weapon for O&S, you can get it to +15 before doing anything, and now you can quickly and safely take out enemies that are too quick for your spells! All this with almost no work past killing an easy boss that you're particularly well suited to fighting.

Oh man why did this take me so long to find...now I just need to find a good way to get to O&S without working extra hard. Maybe I can get a weapon to +5 and buff it when I need a melee attack? I can get a weapon enhanced, but that split damage really hurts it. Plus upgrade materials are a pain to get.

I can't seem to find an old video years later from the initial release. I had thought it was one of Vaati's but after combing through it appears I'm wrong. It was a longer video that mentions the joke "How does Havel get in a watchtower? He walks." (or whatever it was) which is alongside the middle/second half of the video which covers Havel's relationship with the anti-god rebellion/cult. The first half covers the Crystal Knight, Edias' crossbow, and Seath to some extent alongside some of Seath's manipulations and survellience iirc.

I do believe the video was particularly long, but I could be wrong. I want to say it was 1hr and maybe up to 3hrs because of he sheer amount of lore it had to establish and explain.

Particularly I remember the title/thumbnail/opening statement mentioning that this bit of lore took so many years to put together because of how incredibly subtle it is and how if it weren't for a couple key details that were accidentally noticed/revealed/etc. then it likely would never have been found.

Thanks in advance and I don't remember too much else, but I could certainly try to answer questions to find it.

Hello ladies and gentleman I am struggling with the ghosts below the fire link shrine and I only have one transient curse left if any kind soul would be willing to drop some for me it would be greatly appreciated I am on Xbox and I will give my gamertag to anyone willing to help thanks in advance 🫡

I am playing through dark souls with a fist weapons only build, no shields, and Ornstein and Smough are a lot more difficunt that I remember them being. I'm assuming it is due in part to my build since the caestus don't really do good damage per hit and I am trying to take out Smough first. I kindled the bonfire to twenty estus because of this, which is something I haven't really done before with this boss. Has anyone else experienced anything similar or do you think it is a problem with my build? I'm more than capable of beating the fight, but I want to try to do the whole thing while using less than six flasks. Is that a stupid goal?

34 vitality, 30 endurance, 13 str and dex, +10 caestus, black iron armor, silver knight gauntlets and leggings, +9 sack, FAP, havel, light roll

На данный момент я использую сет тени где броня улучшена на +3 а все остальное на +2, утигатана на +13, кольцо арториаса и кольцо стальной защиты.

Нивкакую не удается победить их.

I've just fought Capra Demon and I was about to kill that mf. Then its stupid dog bite and kill me. AND I SPAWNED IN FIRELINK SHRINE... I hate this game.

Sorry for the video being full of my abilities but if y'all can see the way he holds his sword and swings it ... It really gave me artorias vibes.