So I just got invaded for the very first time last night, I was never invaded in Demon's Souls so this was a pretty big deal, and it may have been the most intense experience I have ever had playing a game. It was incredible exciting and terrifying all at the same time, and I'd really like to hear other people's stories of PvP encounters.

I was making my way through Blighttown to fight Queelag again after she had thoroughly stomped me as a hollow. I noticed that it seemed like it would be incredible simple to beat her if one person could pull aggro and just dodge, so I decided to risk going human. I kindled the fire, the first time I had done so my entire playthrough, because at this point I had become incredible cautious of Blighttown and all of its mother fucking bull shit.

I made it to the swamp floor after one brave phantom sacrificed his life for the greater good by jumping into a pile of three enemies, RIP, and was about halfway to Queelag's lair. I pulled aggro on one of those giant fucking fire bugs with my bow and noticed I had two mosquitoes flying in behind me.

And that's when I got Invaded.

A huge red prompt flashed across the screen as a demonic form began to take shape from the earth itself. It was a red phantom in the form of a Deprived wielding a huge butcher's knife. It immediately charged at me, completely bewildered all I could do is block the its assault with my shield and quickly move away from this new antagonist. Once I got my bearings I moved back in, taking a few stabs at it with my divine spear. I immediately realized that my foe seem ill prepared to fight a foe who could attack from behind a shield, quickly retreating back into the throng of monsters behind her as the final blow struck its mark. Hope returning, I summoned my Pyromancer's flame and threw out a huge fire ball, taking out the mosquitoes and dealing an immense blow to my opponent. She then lunged at me with her gigantic knife, taking advantage of my moment of weakness as I recovered from my spell. I quickly ran backwards as fast as I could and managed to get off an Estus Flask and she made another charge at me. I blocked just in time and dealt the finishing blow, her body erupting into a fountain of ethereal red mist as my screen exploded with prizes. I finished off the remaining baddies and then accepted my reward, her humanity and butcher's knife.

I then went on to finally conqueror Queelag with none other than my would-be assassin by my side now in the guise of a white phantom.

I bowed to her upon re-acquaintance as any good rival would, I am a gentleman after all.

Man, these stories are always great. Is this what will finally make me give in?

@LordXavierBritish: Not to be a part pooper but I think that's an in game Red Phantom.

Okay What. You killed her and got to keep her weapon afterwards? And she returned into your game as white phantom assisting you after you killed her?

Yeah... that wasn't a real player, dude.

@AlexW00d said:

@LordXavierBritish: Not to be a part pooper but I think that's an in game Red Phantom.

I want to believe.

I was on my way to kill Gaping Dragon. It already killed me before and I kinda gave up on killing it all by myself. So I became human to summon other players. While I was killing some frogs, I saw a message that says "A Black Phantom Has Invaded You" or something like that. Never been invaded before and the word "Black Phantom" was pretty intimidating. Naturally, I freaked out and put my shield up. All of a sudden this guy appeared from no where and started attacking me. I kept my shield up but I ran out of staminas since I was killing those damn frogs before he invaded me. Eventually, he managed to stab me and my character got knocked down. I thought "Well... that's over" and I realized my health did not even go down by a quarter. So I rolled and went to him and just started attacking him, just to see how much I can hurt this jackass. After a couple of successful attacks, one third of his health was gone. I regained my confidence and just went all berserk on this guy. He did not even stand a chance and I killed him. I was screaming and jumping in happiness because it was first PvP and I won. I got his sword, which was disappointingly crappy, and gained 7,000 souls.

Yes, that was an in game red phantom named mildred the maneater......I also had a similar red phantom experience in the sewers, I thought it was a PVP battle but only realized it wasn't until later on. Needless to say i thought my heart was going to explode when it happened because I just escaped the curse frogs and had built up like 20k souls.....intense.

Yeah.. I mistook a red phantom as a player in Demon Soul's. I was also super psyched about defeating it...

@nohthink: You got his sword? Does that mean he lost his sword? If so, that's a pretty extreme risk.

There was this one time I invaded someone's session and I killed him. That was fun, but nothing remarkable happened. My target tried hiding from me in the forest, so I had to run around a bunch to find him and by deducing that he hadn't engaged the tree enemies on the regular path, I knew he went down the cliff. Sure enough, I eventually encountered him there with his huge shield in front of him, walking towards me. I shot a few Soul Arrows that caused nice amounts of damage even with his protection, and that apparently scared him as he started running away from me and tried to consume an Estus Flask. I shot again while he was unprotected and killed him. 
 

I got invaded by somebody yesterday while running through the Depths, right near the Gaping Dragon fight. I was scared shitless as I saw him charging at me with zero fear, two handing his longsword. I accidentally pushed the wrong shoulder button in my hesitation. Parried his first attack and then riposted for all of his health with my drake sword.

Easiest 8,000 souls I've ever made.

@Akrid:

@FluxWaveZ:

I have no idea. I'm assuming he did lose his sword. There has to be a risk reward thing for invading other people's games though, right?

I took the forest hunter covenant, and was being constantly called to action to the forest to kill players.

The first time I put on the ring it was like 2 hours until I was summoned, I was literally swinging my final hit on the hydra miniboss. Oi vey.

The second time, the guy handily killed me with the help of his estus flask. I was outplaying him, but he was able to heal and I was getting chipped away. While the screen displayed "YOU DIED" and my character dropped to his knees, an enemy from the area came behind him and backstabbed him and I still got credit for the kill :D.

I also killed someone who was running away from 4 of those tree monsters. He must have swung the camera behind him to see if they were gaining on him because he ran right into my chest and I slashed once and he died. I ended up sending him a message apologizing because I would have preferred a fair fight.

All the other times I've been summoned for the forest have been people a lot higher level than me, wielding crazy lightning weapons and some huge samurai looking armor.

@Akrid:

@FluxWaveZ:

I have no idea. I'm assuming he did lose his sword. There has to be a risk reward thing for invading other people's games though, right?

@Artemesia: Oh wow so parrying does work on players too huh? Does that mean even backstabbing works?

I was in the secret area of Anor Londo where Pavel's Armor is when I got invaded by a guy decked out in said armor wielding the Dragon Greataxe. I was barely able to beat him by running away, hiding, putting on super light armor, and dodging the minute he did anything that even looked aggressive while keeping my shield up. The battle took about 10 minutes, but a bunch of lucky backstabs and drop attacks let me walk away a victor, at least until a Silver Knight 2 shotted me

The same dude invaded me three times in a row. I felt bad for the guy, he kept trying to get close enough to use combustion on me but I had the worst possible weapon for that, Halberd. I just poked at him, he couldn't get anywhere near me D:

@nohthink said:

@Artemesia: Oh wow so parrying does work on players too huh? Does that mean even backstabbing works?

Yes sir. Unfortunately, the hitbox for pulling it off is still stupidly difficult to find.

I was on my way to fighting Douchebag Smough and his stupid sidekick, just about to hit a white summon sign and probably just beat the boss with all that manpower...then I get invaded by a guy who doesn't even do a courtesy by letting me kill the giants in the room. Dude didn't play DS or something - that's kind of an unwritten code.

Really annoying, man.

So do you guys go around as humans all the time? I mean i die every 10 minutes in many areas and no way do i have enough humaity to turn human each time.

@MrMuscle said:

So do you guys go around as humans all the time? I mean i die every 10 minutes in many areas and no way do i have enough humaity to turn human each time.

If you're soul farming an area you're comfotable with it's a good idea to go human because you get a better drop rate and if you're going to go kill a boss and want the help you'll go human too but on average I never just explore in human form because unlike Demons Souls theres no advantages.

I got invaded by someone who seemed to have no idea how the combat worked, because they didn't block any of my strikes or try to heal at any point.

These stories remind me of when I use to play Ultima Online. You get the same nerve racking feeling when you encounter a PKer. Except for the part where I run like hell cause I was just a blacksmith.

@Humanity said:

@MrMuscle said:

So do you guys go around as humans all the time? I mean i die every 10 minutes in many areas and no way do i have enough humaity to turn human each time.

If you're soul farming an area you're comfotable with it's a good idea to go human because you get a better drop rate and if you're going to go kill a boss and want the help you'll go human too but on average I never just explore in human form because unlike Demons Souls theres no advantages.

Yeah that makes sense, i do that myself as well. But i just got a ring from Sen´s castle that boosts my item finding stat to 300. So just equipping that has given me some nice drops on its own.

Nobody has invaded my game thus far, and I don't plan to invade anyone else's game. Come to think of it, I was never invaded in Demon's Souls either...

so here's a tale of my very first invasion ever (never got invaded in demon's souls).

I was drudging in the depths farming those stupid frog things for easy souls (wanted to buff up my char a bit before attempting another go at the gaping dragon), when suddenly my screen shouts at me that i'm invaded! My heart skips a beat and panic sweat starts to form on my skin. I was fucking terrified, cause i had 5000 souls on me (i know not that much but hey) and didn't want to lose them. My heart starts racing like mad.

I turn the corner and i see the phantom charging at me, i block and move to the side, hitting him with my drake sword. He recovers and tries hitting me again, i keep my shield up and block his attacks constantly. He get's annoyed i presume and starts wielding his weapon two handed to try and break my block, i notice his change in change and start just rolling to his side, he swings three times and by the third time he's exposed for a bit cause of the heavy two handed swings. I take my chances and start swinging at him and hitting him successfully, by this point i got him in a corner and he just needs one hit to go down, and down he goes grating me another 5k souls and a humanity!

I never lost any hp in that fight, after the initial scare i just decided to keep my cool and act like he was just another enemy who's weaknesses i had to find and exploit. But hell that first moment was so terrifying. I must say that the chance of being invaded and losing all that progress you made up that point is amazing, it adds so much to the already very tense atmosphere of the game.

The invaders mistake was to want to rush things, he was so impatient and made mistakes that got him killed. I could feel his frustration through my TV haha.

Last time I was in the forest as a human it was seemingly never ending fight against people with the forest covenant. I fought 3 people in a row but the third one back stabbed me to death in one hit.

...that's an NPC. Mildred is an encounter that automatically invades your world in Blighttown when you're human

I joined the forest covenant and I've been invading every 10 mins now, its awesome!
 
It was actually, until some 2handed dude 1shotted me ><

Some of you didn't get invaded in Demon's Souls at all? Wow. I got invaded several times. And I invaded much much more than that. That was fun as hell. Always sucked when you would invade someone just to see that they had 2 doods helping them...so 3 on 1 basically.

@MagusMaleficus said:

Nobody has invaded my game thus far, and I don't plan to invade anyone else's game. Come to think of it, I was never invaded in Demon's Souls either...

I was playing Demons Souls a month ago to brush up on the game mechanics with a new character for Dark souls and oh man at this point in time I was getting invaded by people that were super specked out for such early levels - completely destroying me

This morning I experienced my first invasion. I had reversed my Hollow so I could get Solaire's (and possibly another player's) help when I took on the Bell Gargoyles. I ran into the Undead Parish and took out the Rapier Undead on the stairwell. I had noticed that the elevators leading down to Firelink were shrouded in white light, but I didn't think much of it. I ran up the stairs to aggro the Ghoul horde, and suddenly a message flashed on my screen saying I was being invaded, and sure enough, behind the rush of undeads heading down the narrow hallway I spied a shadowy red figure.

I lobbed a fire bomb down the hallway to clear out some of the Ghouls, and luckily the dude got a bit spooked and ran away. I was panicking so I was taking a decent amount of damage from the Ghouls, but I stood strong and punched through them with my Halberd. I sprinted back down the stairs to fight him on more open ground, and noticed him outside the parish, actually taunting me. I threw a black fire bomb in his face to make sure he knew I was serious about not losing my hard-earned Humanity.

The fight that ensued was pretty grueling. He was a lot faster than me, and had some weird... cartwheel move that he kept using. However, eventually I figured out he couldn't match my Endurance, and even when he managed to get a backstab on me with his spear, it didn't do that much damage. I then resolved to just punch through his shield and drain his Endurance, which let me start chipping away at him. Eventually, he got pretty squirrely about approaching me head-on, so while he hesitated, I used another black fire bomb and finished him off. Sadly, he only had one Humanity on him, but I kept my Human form, and after a quick trip back to the bonfire, proceeded to utterly destroy the Bell Gargoyles.

It was a good morning.

I was fighting a bunch of the larger rats in the depths, when some guy invaded me wielding a mace and shield. Freaked me the hell out because i suddenly had 4 opponents and one of them was potentially dangerous. He was way too aggresive though, it was a quick fight in my favor. But it was still so exhilirating. I wanna try invading some people tomorrow, though I joined way of the white, will that have any impact?

Okay so I got a real fucking story this time.
 
I was making my way into the forest to join the Forest Hunter covenant when I was invaded by two spirits. I don't exactly remember why I was human because I knew this shit was coming, but I was prepared to take them down so I rushed in after clearing the NPCs from the area. The first I found just idling next to a pond so I quickly took him out with two Chaos Fireballs to the face. After that another spirit was summoned, and this one was a little more proactive. He charged me down as soon as I found him and we locked blades almost immediately. I tried to hit him with a few fire balls but he swiftly dodged out of the way. He then tried the same tactics with me but shit was giving either way. Eventually we just restored to the old sword and shield routine, and what an epic conflict it was. Thank god phatoms can't heal, he countered my spear once but I was able to get a flask off before he could finish me off and I was then able to get a few more hits in with my lightning spear and save the day, well my day.
 
After that I tried to leave the area so I could come back when I was undead, but I realized I had still not found the third phantom that was summoned almost at the beginning of the encounter. I tried looking everywhere, killing almost every monster in the area, I even tried hard quitting the game but no dice. Eventually another phantom was summoned and I was just exhausted at this point. It was one of those Fog Ring mother fuckers and although I was able to get a few good hits in with my remaining Chaos Fireballs he quickly finished me off as I could only block an opponent I couldn't lock onto for so long.
 
So the moral of the story if the Fog Ring fucking breaks PvP.

I joined the Forest Hunter covenant for the hell of it and have been sent to invade two players' worlds thus far. The first killed me right when I spawned. The second was located far below me--I was on a bridge high above him, and the only way to reach him was to climb down a long ladder. I know he would have killed me had I tried, so I didn't...I just stayed up on the bridge, raining down arrows to piss him off. Eventually he fell into a ravine and died, giving me victory even though I didn't touch the guy. :P

I'm playing as a level 44 darkwraith (+2) so I've been invading a whole hell of a lot. I usually stick to the pre-boss area of Anor Londo. One thing I find really annoying is that there seems to be a constant slight lag on my end (since I'm connecting to their game peer-to-peer) and it makes for some really awkward melee combat. Sometimes I'll get poked by a spear that is 10 feet away, get backstabbed when they are clearly directly in front of me (infuriating), fireballs that hit a moving target dead on to no effect, etc etc.

Today though, I took a guy down reletively quickly and netted my usual humanity for doing so, but then the souls kicked in. Dude let me walk away with 130,000. Considering I dicked him over in the first place, walking away with more souls than I had ever currently held at one time was pretty fucking awesome.

I was invaded by someone who looked to be wearing fairly light armour, yet would take damage like a fucking tank. My weapons suck, and my main is this Raw Claymore+5, but I was still literally doing like 10-12 damage with each strike. I backstabbed him, which done 500 damage, but that took only around half of his health. I was in Anor Londo as well and he used the knights to his advantage--something I've always disliked about the invasion system and how enemy NPC's are neutral to player phantoms--and managed to chase me to the roof. I killed the NPC Knight he had with him, but he managed to sneak in a backstab and kill me with one shot. I had full health.  
 
Fucking unbelievable. 
 
Another occasion was when I was invaded by two player phantoms... I didn't even know they allowed that! I was swiftly beaten and they both done the ''hurrah'' emote as my body dissipated.

If you guys wanna get invaded you should hang out in the area through the sealed door in the forest. Tons of PvP going on in there, both from the cat covenant, and just players invading for fun.
 
I've been fighting against 2 people in there taking em on, my lightning katana is wrecking shit! 
 
Also, the chameleon spell. I am a fucking tree waiting for you.

A few questions: 1. How can you tell if an invader is a player or an NPC phantom? I got invaded in UD parish right before bell gargoyle and was getting the better of the dude zone ran into the front of the church and tried to activate the Knights to make things more complicated. However as much as he bumped them they wouldn't turn around. Is that a giveaway that he was an NPC? (the fact that NPCs wouldn't. React to him?) After trying to crossbow mw from the front of the church for like 5 mins, eventually he followed me out to the back patio where to his surprise, I had just summoned another fellow white covenant member. We swacked him quickly and then went upstairs and waxed the gargoyles together. 2. Do invading phantoms not have access to their Estus Flask while in another's game?

Another question: in PVP scenarios on PS3 does the system use your PSN ID or your name you create for your player in the beginning of the game?

The two times I was invaded I destroyed them. They have no idea who there were fucking with.

Another question: in PVP scenarios on PS3 does the system use your PSN ID or your name you create for your player in the beginning of the game?

A few questions: 1. How can you tell if an invader is a player or an NPC phantom?    

 2. Do invading phantoms not have access to their Estus Flask while in another's game?

I've only been invaded once, it was in the forest but sadly the dude was afk :(

@FluxWaveZ said:

2. Do invading phantoms not have access to their Estus Flask while in another's game?

They do have access to their Estus Flasks.

No, you don't. Invading phantoms have to rely on healing spells to heal. They do not get to use estus flasks.

Also, I took out two more dudes holding 100k+. lol, I'm rolling with nearly 400k right now. I have no idea what to spend it all on

@FluxWaveZ said:

2. Do invading phantoms not have access to their Estus Flask while in another's game?

They do have access to their Estus Flasks.

No, you don't. Invading phantoms have to rely on healing spells to heal. They do not get to use estus flasks.

Also, I took out two more dudes holding 100k+. lol, I'm rolling with nearly 400k right now. I have no idea what to spend it all on

@FluxWaveZ: Definitely can't, unless there is some odd loophole where Darkwraiths can't and phantoms using cracked red eye orbs can. I doubt it though.

I got invaded by some guy when I was in blight town. I had 25% health left at the time and no more healing items. I was also completely out of ranged pyromancy and only had my combustion spell left so I was freaking out pretty hard when the guy showed up. Luckily, he decided to be a gentleman and bow at me. I quickly took advantage of his good sportsmanship and hit him with combustion 3 times and killed him! I felt kind of bad afterward but I was looking to lose 20 000 souls so I was really panicking at the time.

@yoshimitz707 said:

I got invaded by some guy when I was in blight town. I had 25% health left at the time and no more healing items. I was also completely out of ranged pyromancy and only had my combustion spell left so I was freaking out pretty hard when the guy showed up. Luckily, he decided to be a gentleman and bow at me. I quickly took advantage of his good sportsmanship and hit him with combustion 3 times and killed him! I felt kind of bad afterward but I was looking to lose 20 000 souls so I was really panicking at the time.

You did the right thing man. That guy had nothing to lose and you had everything.

Never feel bad. Ever.

So far the three that have joined have been so low level I don't even bother blocking. They normally end up running away, so I just kinda chill out and they think im afk or something.

If you are stupid low level compared to the dude you are invading, don't waste his time by running away for 10 minutes.