Playing as the Knight (on PC) is definitely not a guaranteed way of avoiding crashes--I just got one approaching the bonfire in Firelink Shrine (just got back from the first bonfire in the Undead Settlement). I tried Deprived first, but that was Crash City.

If this shit keeps up, I'm jumping board for the PS4 version.

have to dial down everything to low it seems to get (near) constant 60fps at 1080p

8350fx 8gb 1xr9 290 win10 nothing OCed

no crash yet but haven't played much.

for once may try to lock @ 30fps

Woah, surprised to hear people are having problems; I just played on max settings for three hours without a single issue. Here's my set up if it helps narrow things down a bit: FX9370 4.4GHz, R9 290x, 16GB RAM. Hope this helps narrow things down for those of you having problems.

@andrack: I got the DS4 controller to work using DS4Windows, by selecting Hide DS4 Controller in the DS4Windows settings tab.

@gunslingerpanda: curious what resolution youre at and what framerate?

Played for a few hours now since launch. Runs smooth as butter for me. Solid 60 everything maxed, and my PC is not a beast or anything I usually have to fiddle around in more demanding games. The frame rate dips when they do happen are clearly when the game is loading something, like some of the online stuff, or saving. No crashes at all so far.

I am running Win8.1 not 10, and have also not updated drivers for a couple months (980m), no hdmi cables or anything, playing as warrior.

I think it could be beneficial if people who are reporting constant crashes post their setups and the more important software details, it just might narrow the culprit down? Admittedly that's prolly a long shot.

I played for 3 hours and had no problems at all as a Sorcerer. Decent framerate, no crashes, overall pretty smooth.

I then decided to restart and try an Assassin... immediate crash at the first bonfire. GTX 760, for what it's worth.

@artisanbreads: Holy shit man he took me forever! I'm a seasoned player too, maybe it was because I started deprived...

Anyway, I'm running ultra on 60 so far so good (i5 3570k, 970), also seeing the stutter when it autosaves. I've had one crash that actually crashed Steam, not just the game? Which is kind of weird. Made it to Firelink and ran around for a bit without any other crashes.

@magusmaleficus: Try turning lighting to low

@nickhead: Yeah took me a bit to beat him with the dex starting class just tried the knight and fighting the boss and sub-boss and getting to firelink after fighting the champion took me less than 15 mins so yeah knights pretty good

unplayable on gtx 480, even tried at 1280x720 with low settings, it's sub 15fps whenever there's like fog(and there's a buncha fog), then spikes up to 50ish.. dunno if it's optimization or my shit is too old(plays rise of the tomb raider at 40-60fps at 720p with decent settings) but i got a refund and bought the ps4 version instead.

Got it booted up, immediately set lighting option to low given those recommendations going around. Created a character and started immediately crashing to desktop after just a few steps taken from the starting spawn point. Tried putting my shield on my back going 2-hand per some other recommendations and was at least able to make it to the first bonfire without crashing. Still crashed immediately upon respawning there after my next death. On a 780 here running at 1440p. Guess I'm just waiting for a patch.

Edit: someone on neogaf pointed out that the lighting setting doesn't necessarily get saved right if the game crashes, so I booted back up and checked that. Sure enough, it was back on high. Loaded up, put it back on low, saved and quit. Loaded back up again... so far so good after about 10 minutes.

@ripelivejam: 1080p, don't have fraps or whatever to check framerate but certainly seemed 60, no lower than 50 and was super smooth.

I'm reading a lot of people with the same issue GBeast had and the same fix, Knight class. I wonder how many reviewers etc used the knight as a starting class or if this is just the internet talking. I'm tempted to test it some more but i want to be the second game first.

Kinda startin' to sound like anyone with a 700 series nvidia card is sorta fucked.

Been playing for a few hours now. It's been running pretty darn great. I have everything set to High except for motion blur turned off (I just don't like it). So far, running pretty darn good. Solid 60 FPS all around except for some light hitching when loading in areas. I had my first crash to desktop 4 hours in. I've tried to play with Steam In-Home Streaming and that works pretty good too but hits performances a bit but not drastically.

My specs are :

i7-920 OC'ed at 3.2 GHz

Nvidia GTX 770

12 GB of DDR3 RAM.

EDIT : Forgot to mention, running it at 1080p on a 144Hz monitor.

@gunslingerpanda: gah ok thanks.

Playing now at 1080p max and its about bloodborne levels of framerate and still looks good, but this is really making me irrationally want to shell out for a 980.

E: good thing is no crashes so far though im hung up on the samurai zombie outside firelink.

No crashes after I turned lighting to low, have most everything else on high with 60 fps with occasional dips. GTX 760 here, which is about 3 years old now.

Just had my first crash after using a White Soapstone and being summoned. It was working for a minute, then another white phantom came into the world and the game crashed. The next summon to the same host went fine, though.

Getting tons of crashes, but only when I have a shield equipped next to a bonfire.

There's a rumored 1.1 patch to coincide with console release. Also saw on steam forums either downgrading (nvidia) drivers or going to beta Vulcan drivers may help. Ultimately I'm sure the fix will be a combination of new drivers and a fromsoft patch

Getting a bug now where I crash whenever going near a bonfire which I need to pass in order to progress the game. I can fast travel to it, but attempting to move away from it crashes the game. I thought it was having a shield equipped which was mentioned in a bug reporting thread, but that isn't it. Gahhhh

edit: Setting Lighting to Low seems to have fixed it for now.

This is all starting to make me rethink on my decision and simply get it for PS4 instead.

Following up my issues from before: played an uninterrupted 3 more hours with no crashing after setting lighting to low. (probably unrelated, I also changed to windowed mode at 1080 down from fullscreen at 1440) Everything seems to be smooth sailing so far.

Seeing so many people have problems with it is unfortunate. I haven't had any crashes yet, running the game at max on a 980, started deprived. However, I am getting some REALLY BAD stutters, usually whenever I picked up an item. Sometimes the game will lock up during combat, which is terrifying, but then right itself. I've yet to die due to that, thank Christ. I hope the 1.1 patch smooths some of that out, at this point I'm just thankful I can get the thing running.

Chiming in to say that it's running a flawless 60FPS @ 1440p with everything cranked up to max for me.

Not to shit on or rub it in people's faces (I beat the "Arkham Knight is a busted piece of shit" drum as hard as possible), but just letting people know that it is possible to have a good time as of patch 1.03.

I've played about 8 hours, as a Depraved (for the true "fuck you" experience). No crashes yet, about four bosses and three areas in, including the area that is supposed to really smash your framerate, but all's been well.

(4790k @ 4Ghz, 980 Ti G1, driver ver. 358.xx (haven't updated since the reports of drivers bricking cards))

Turning the lighting setting to low and leaving the rest of the settings maxed out has solved my constant bonfire crashes

I wonder if the driver is the issue for most people? I just don't get how these drivers are being released in these states by nvidia

What drivers are people using that are experience crashes? Is it mostly nvidia or is it AMD as well? I wonder if i need to roll back again....sigh

@oursin_360: if it helps, on amd i have had zero crashes in 4 hours playing. I am playing knight and may have not gotten to a point where it purportedly crashes. Latest driver, too.

Besides a seemingly random couple of crashes everything has been pretty good for me.

I binged last night after release for eight hours without issue and wake up to see others are having tons of issues. I have eight hours played without a crash at all high, 1080p and a solid 60 fps (fraps) with a warrior. Here is my setup in case it can help narrow this down:

GTX 970, 4690k, regular-ass HDD, steam controller (some on reddit seemed to think it was controller related), Windows 10

I was on the 364.72 drivers last night and I rolled back to 362 this morning because of the other thread on possible bricking.

I played this both on my monitor at my desk (display port) and on my TV (HDMI).

This. Why are all the Dark Souls games like this? Beyond annoying.

750Ti here and it's running quite well. Certainly not a solid 60, but it doesn't really drop below 30 ever. No crashes yet either though I've only played 2 hours so far.

It's a holdover from the console versions that it seems some of the Japanese developers never bother to remove/change. MGS5, Dragon's Dogma come to mind from recent memory. (games exiting to a title screen only)

Just from my personal experience, I played for 3 hours last night and no crashes! Looks frickin' fantastic, max settings, a consistent solid 60 on a i7 980x + AMD R9 280x.

Finally got a crash, when getting summoned.
Tried again, got summoned, no crash.

I had a similar experience to you at first. Game was running great, no crashes or problems during the first several hours. My first crash happened after being summoned. After that, I started crashing at every bonfire.

Setting Lighting to Low does seem to help, but the game will reset my setting to Max every time I restart it. Seems like as long as I remember to change that back to Low before doing anything, it's fine. We'll see.

I have been playing for about 3 hours on max settings with basically no issues at 60fps.

I'm running an i5-2500k, 8GB ram, and a Gtx 980ti

I did not however upgrade to the new nvidia drivers as those seem to be causing major issues for people.

Such a bummer. Drivers were the reason I never went with AMD and I became a green guy. Sees like they really have lowered the ball on their drivers in recent years

It's working fine for me. I run a i7-4790k, GTX 980 and the game installed on an SSD, everything maxed. No framedrops, no hitches, loads in seconds. I do run the latest NVIDIA drivers which seem to run fine.

So I've started to have more crashing. It really seems tied to using weapons besides the default knight longsword and also wearing the knight helmet.

I'll try lowering the lighting.

@sirdoomsday: I was trying to do this yesterday but kept getting an error. I just now thought to google the error and found out Teamspeak was preventing this from working. So now I got my DS4 working AND turning the lighting to low fixed the bonfire crashes.

I'm good to go!

Edit: False alarm. I still crash a lot.

@andrack: @artisanbreads Something very similar was happening to me. It turns out that the game was resetting my lighting settings to Max every time I started it up. Now, whenever I start the game, I go to System and set lighting to Low before hitting Continue. No crashes since then.

@mike Is there an INI file you could edit and set to read only? Really seems annoying, kinda glad i'm still on the second game right now.

@oursin_360: There is an XML file in the same AppData folder as the save games, but Dark Souls continuously autosaves to that file as well as the current save. I don't want to mess with it.

@mike: I thought something else must've been going on. Thanks for the tip!

Perfect performance here, no crashes, max settings at 60 FPS even running at high DSR which is beautiful. You can't assume anything from people complaining on forums or threads about the game. You're always going to here from the few having issues, and based on some of the comments in this thread alone, that fault is usually with the person's system config and generally inept software setup.

I played for about an hour last night, and made it to Firelink Shrine. It's running great so far at max settings, no crashes or stuttering or any other bullshit. Time will tell if it will continue to run well.

i7-3770, GTX 980, 16GB RAM, 2560 x 1440 g-sync

I'm using nvidia driver version 362.00.

There are many hundreds of people, if not more, on Reddit complaining about the same bugs - primarily crashing when approaching or leaving a bonfire. Setting Lighting to Low sometimes fixes it. I'm having the exact same issue...I guess they mostly have a bad "system config" or "inept software setup?" And by the way, this is a perfectly functioning PC in every other case that I built myself, has a fresh install of Windows, updated BIOS and drivers, etc. Don't assume that just because others are having problems that they must be doing something wrong. You should just be counting yourself lucky that you weren't one of the unfortunate people affected by one of this game's many problems.

Please review the PC Support Megathreads over on Reddit before commenting on this issue any further, because you're just going to unnecessarily agitate other users with comments like that which really don't help anything anyway. Thanks.

My friend said there has been talk of 700 series card problems. So posting here.

I went for the 60fps and pretty shadows talked about in the Quick Look. Also my friend said he was going PC so I decided to too. I was walking towards the first campfire and it froze my entire workstation and I had to hard reboot. This machine has a 7 series Titan. The drivers are probably a few months old on that machine.

Now i'm installing the game and latest drivers on my other machine which has a 580. I'm hoping that machine is more stable, although won't have the GPU power the 7 Titan has.

I probably should have just got it for PS4, like I did Bloodborn.