Hi. I have a question regarding the online part of Dark Souls. I can't really wrap my head around the online function. I'm really looking into buying it, but I read in the IGN review (I know, lol) that at times it can be near impossible to advance without help from someone else. If that's the case, are people still playing it?

I have also tried to read up the humanity part, and still doesn't know what it's all about. Anyone care to explain?

Thanks

J

It is not impossible to advance without help from someone else and people are still playing it. I suggest you read more than one review before making a judgement on a game or else you'll get bad information like that. Well I guess it's not bad, but inaccurate depending on how well you play.

The online function is simple. You are always online. People can invade your world anytime they want and can hunt you down, but that's only if you're a human. Most of the time you will be in hollow (zombie) form, so you don't have to worry about invasions from other players. But you can only summon for help if you are human also. But it's not like selecting people from a list, there will be signs on the ground usually in front of boss gates that you can interact with to summon people.

No its not near impossible. I did my first play though alone. You just need to be careful. And ya people still play it.

Humaniy is used to return to human form. You can only be summoned to other peoples world if your human. However in human form others can invade you and you can invade them. It also ups the drop rate of certain items.

When you spend a point a humanity point to become human you are basically just creating a multiplayer server (in a sense), allowing you to let others join your game and also allow people to invade without your consent. When you are human you can see summon signs on the ground which are other people looking to join anothers 'server'. Once you have defeated the boss of that area you can no longer summon anyone to help you however you can help others by dropping a summon sign.

You can drop a summon sign while undead, but you can't get others to help you unless you are human. You cannot be invaded while undead.

Humanity is basically tied to the multiplayer aspects of the game, it has a few other limited uses but they are the major ones.

You don't need to be human to be summoned. You only need to be human if you want to summon phantom or if you want to invade. If you are undead or human you can drop your white summon sign and go into someone else's world.

Flip that sorry. You need to be human to summon others.

Yeah, I've read multiple reviews, but IGN:s review specifically mentioned that in a pretty big way, so I just wanted it confirmed that IGN was wrong (hence the lol-part in my previous post). As far as I've read (sources unconfirmed), you can complete the game at level one if you are skilled enough. Which is cool. Thanks for the info on the online part.

@golguin, @the_laughing_man, @dark Thanks for clearing humanity up.

I played alone first time easily. Just take your time and watch attack patterns. The hardest thing youll hit is the two gargoyals.

There are also NPCs that you can summon for help during boss battles if you fulfill certain requirements. So even if there isn't anyone playing online, you can still summon for help. Just remember you have to be human to summon them though.

@minipato:

Ah, ok. Good to know.

For the record, It's never near impossible to continue alone. I'm not even good at games and managed it well enough several times.

@jfunkhouser: Yes people are still playing and no you do not need people to help you beat it. BUT don't get yourself into trouble with NPC's and be another victim of the i killed the blacksmith thread. then you will be screwed and will likely give up on playing altogether.