Dark Souls III/Gameplay

About the game

Dark Souls III hates your guts and tries to kill you on every occasion. You will see the Game Over-screen a lot! The three main problems, that a new player will face, is the lack of knowledge of the controls of the game, the general mechanics and the specifics of the enemy and/or environment.

Keep in mind

The tutorial area gives you a general idea of what to expect. All enemies - even the incredibly weak ones- can still kill you in a moments notice. This applies to any stage in the game.

The game is unfair. Enemies have environemntal advantages, bum rush you while you use your healing item, have more stamina, poise, range, etc. To overcome these disadvantages is part of the challenge. A classic example is a well hidden enemy that pushes you over a legde, while you trespass a narrow path.

Secrets are everywhere. While the game is totally beatable with a character on his starting equipment without ever leveling him up, this is a challenge for veterans. Every area has side trails that have good items, which you can use to improve your character. Depending on the starting class, your equipment can range between descent and viable for most of the game or total garbage and should be swapped out as soon as possible. Some of the side trails even lead to complete different areas with new stuff to get and new enemies to defeat.

Take your time with enemies. Only take one enemy at one time. Use throwing items to lure single enemies to your position and fight them without interference. Especially at the start it is hard to deal with more than one enemy. You will come across situations, where you can't avoid this, but those tend to be weaker enemies, that die fast.

Don't give up. If you have the urge to bite into your gamepad or keyboard, quit the game, do something else and return later. There are many players that came across the same obstacle and spent hours on it. Almost every boss has a pool of attacks that need to be learned before you can beat them. And while there are lots of players, that have considerably less problems with many aspects on their first playthrough, they probably have some experience with similar games.

The World of Dark Souls

The following paragraphs recap the basic concepts and lore of the previous two games. If you haven't played Dark Souls I or II, you'll probably miss on many of the small references. The opening cinematic will also help only little on understanding of what's going on. A bulk of the lore is hidden in item descriptions, vague dialogue and can be interpreted in many different ways.

In a nutshell

The world started out without life or death. The only thing existing were immortal dragons, that ruled everything. Similar to the story of Prometheus came life in form of a flame, that brought up living beings, that built several civilizations. Three of those found the Souls of Lords one of which was Gwyn, who with the help of others, fought the immortal dragons and defeated them. The Lords, who won, settled for their own kingdoms and proclaimed themselves Gods. Gwyn himself settled at the Golden City Anor Londo.

After an undefined amount of time the flame began to fade. There were attempts to save it, but they failed, until Gwyn decided to sacrifice himself to refuel the flame. This process called "linking" makes Gwyn cindered. For the time being the flame was saved, but not for long.

Mankind was given birth by a Lord called Furtive Pigmy, who took a weaker soul the Dark Soul to create them. Also as the God Souls began to lose power, the Dark Soul began to gain it. Similar to Greek Mythology, as Kronos feared to be ursurped by his children (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades) the same way he defeated his father Uranos, Gwyn feared the ursurpation by humanity the same way he and his kin defeated the dragons. This led him to the decision to link the fading flame to prevent an age of darkness.

With the use of the Dark Soul and the creation of mankind, that holds the potential for both good and bad came also the creation of the Abyss and it consumes everything. It is presented as a formless, pitchblack void.

During the events of the game, the player will only come across undead people - the player included, which is caused by The Undead Curse. Every undead is destined to hollow at some point, a central mechanic in both Dark Souls I and Dark Souls II, that gains him points with each death. Once hollowed the character is seriously crippled gameplay wise and the effect needs to be reversed with a mechanic, called humanity. However this is not the case in Dark Souls III, where it became simply a minor mechanic. A hollow is basically a mindless zombie and they are the most basic enemy in the game.

Lord of Cinders

Anyone who relinks the first flame is called a Lord of Cinders. Both the protagonists of the two previous games achieved this, if the player chooses to. Gwyn is the first Lord of Cinders and there have been more. There have been more.

Unkindled

For everyone who succeeded in linking the first flame, there have been many who failed to link it, because they weren't strong enough. The flame burnt them to ashes and they became known as Unkindled or Ashen ones. The protagonist of Dark Souls III is one of those.

Playing Online

One of the central aspects of the game is the invasion. These can happen to any player. Players that choose not to interact with other players, can play offline (see Network Configurations below) and only interact with NPC invasions. Even if a player chooses to play online, they can stop incoming invasions by simply not embering up. A player can use the item Ember to get into the kindled state. This gives him visual ember streaks all about his body an armor and gives them 30% more health. This state is kept until the character dies.

Deaths, Saving and Exiting the Game

The game saves automatically. Upon death, your character drops all the souls he holds and returns to the last bonfire. All items aquired prior to death are kept. Once your character returns to their old position, where they died, you can pick up the souls that dropped earlier and resume as normal. If you however died again without picking them up, they are lost for good.

If you want to quit the game, open the Start-menu, swap to the Quit game tab and click on Quit game. If you close the game without this option, the game will issue a warning and may or may not return your character to the last bonfire while losing all progress.

Configurations

You find the game configurations in the Main Menu under System or in the game by pressing Start, then chosing the right tab (cog wheel symbol). The following table gives an overview over the most important settings. There are others, that include the controls and camerasettings.

Tab	Setting	What it does	Notes
Graphics	Screen Mode	Full Screen or windowed	On Windows OS you can swap between those modes with Alt+Enter.
	Auto-detect best rendering settings	Changes your settings based on your PC's performance.	Turn OFF, if you have a low performance.
	Auto Quality Settings	Changes overall quality based on chosen option	If you don't know about the advanced settings, just customize graphics here.
Advanced Settings	miscellaneous	Changes graphics quality on specific aspects.	If you don't know what the specific options do, just change Auto Quality Settings instead.
Network Settings	Cross-region play	Allows or disallows playing with players in other timezones.	Keep this option ON. If you don't want to play with/against other players at all, use another option.
	Password Matching	Allows to summon players outside of your level range.	If you ask for help, they ask for your password. Give them the password, you have set here.
	Summon sign visibility	This is about the amount of summoning signs you see.	It restricts the signs on your screen down to five or six.
	Voice chat	Whether or not you can talk with other players for co-op	Voice chat only works, if both players have it on.
	Launch setting	Online: play with others, Offline: don't interact with others	If you play offline, all the other Network settings don't matter. Reload the Main Menu after changing.
Sound and display	Blood	Display of Blood: On, off, or Mild
	Subtitles	Subtitles for all dialogues.	Audio is English in every language setting.
	HUD	When the HUD isn't shown. The HUD includes HP/FP/Stamina bar, equipped Weapons, etc.	Auto hides the HUD for screenshots.
Game Options	Toggle auto lock-on	Locks-on to new target, if the previous died.
	Auto-target	Locks targets, that are attacked in close range, if no target is locked.
	Manual attack aiming	In how the game gives your melee hits a direction.	Use OFF, and you can give your attacks a directional input yourself.