Dark Souls III - Tips, Tricks and General Help.

Like always, Some people will find it easy while other will find it hard. Let's all join in and help each other over coming the odds and maybe we will get through this with out sanity intact.

so if you're an old timer like me, welcome back. And if you're new comer and this is your first Souls game, well, where the fuck have you been the last 7 years.

Enjoy and feel free to add anything you have learned and helped you along the way.

After having a rather difficult time with Demon's souls back in the day, I adopted a few rules that helped me immensely.

• You are going to die and losing a shit ton of souls. Once you accept it you are pretty much free of all burden and the heartache of losing a shit ton of souls and a shit ton of progress.
• Don't beat yourself too hard about your starting class. As with all souls games, those starting stats doesn't chain you to this particular gameplay style. You can always invest in other areas and try new ways of playing the game.
• When initially leveling up, take care of HP then your Stamina. Once you get those stats to a decent amount, then start working on your build.
• Don't be afraid or too prideful to summon help. It's there for a reason.
• Don't feel too guilty about killing invaders by any means necessary, save for cheats. People are going to try to grief you no matter what. Once you get invaded you have every right to use any tool within your means to try and defeat that invader. Much like how the invader has the same right to try and kill you. There is no such thing as honorable fight.

Dark Souls III specific tips:

Courtesy of @sessh.

• It's now possible to just land and not roll after a jump by stopping to press in any direction as soon as you execute the jump. Quite useful.
• Like with every Souls game it's a good idea to talk to every NPC, whenever you find a new bonfire. Or at least every time you kill a boss.
• Holding down on the d-pad always switches to your first inventory slot.
• You can farm certain covenant items (including Sun Medals) by invading players and killing them.

Well that's me. If you gut more specific ones then like I said before. Feel free to add them.

PS - You can spoilers as long as they are directed at a specific question and please use spoilers block.

I'm using early deaths for exploratory purposes. Grabbing items as I go. I don't think I've went back purposely for a bloodstain once.

There's a rule I always apply: if you have enough soul to level up don't go any further, go back immediately and level up.

Make sure and leave your summoning sign at bonfires!

I spent about 2 hours or so in jolly co-operations clearing out the high wall and surrounding areas, helping people defeat that first boss - was blast! Good luck to whoever that sorcerer was, looked tough.

Plus, it's a great way to grind for souls.

How do you deal with invaders except for just straight up fighting them?

Also, how often are people getting invaded? I have not spent much time cindered (is that the word we're using here?).

No invasions so far but I've seen a couple of summon signs.

@obikwiet: in DS2 I would:

- bow and fight near the bonfire

- sprint to the boss fog door

- equip white ring and generally go about my business

I prefer to just leave my bloodstain where I can reliably retrieve it. Also, a good carry over from Bloodborne:

Lanterns indicate the critical path.

Is the soft cap for dex and strength 40 like it was in DS2?

Also, can you guys recommend me some good melee builds?

Thanks!

I found out today that if your weapon's charge attack has a follow-up, chances are it can be charged as well. I don't think this was in Bloodborne.

This is generally a good idea, but I would say that you should also get your STR/DEX up to the levels you need for whatever early weapon you want to use before you start dumping points elsewhere. Generally, a couple points into your health isn't going to be worth as much as being able to equip a specific weapon.

Also on the topic of weapons, you will probably see more benefit in upgrading your weapon of choice with Titanite Shards than you will by pumping your STR or DEX, at least initially.

And on the topic of stats - all of the stats have levels of soft and hard capping where you will get less benefit (or sometimes no benefit) for putting more points into the stat. For the most part, the point of significant diminishing returns is around 40, though I have read that INT and FTH apparently scale reasonably well up to 60 and that VIG starts to have minor diminishing returns in terms of HP gains after 20 points.

A few tips:

• It's now possible to just land and not roll after a jump by stopping to press in any direction as soon as you execute the jump. Quite useful.
• Like with every Souls game it's a good idea to talk to every NPC, whenever you find a new bonfire. Or at least every time you kill a boss.
• Holding down on the d-pad always switches to your first inventory slot.
• You can farm certain covenant items (including Sun Medals) by invading players and killing them.

Well, considering the game's rule, I will gladly coop an invader. He invaded your world. It's not like it's agreed upon pvp match. So if it means ganking them then so be it. As far as I am concerned, invaders needs to accept that fact.

@rikiguitarist said:

Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Faith all have softcaps at 40 and 60.

Endurance basically stops at 40.

Vitality and Luck both just add a point per level, from 1 to 99, which is added to the base stat.

Vigor is weird. You get 1k at 27, and it slowly goes down from there to 1.3k at 50. Lots of debate at where's a good place to stop right now. 99 Vigor gives you 1.4k, for the record.

Attunement is the weirdest stat. The FP it gives bounce all over the place, though the spell slots go 1 @ 10, 2 @ 14, 3 @ 18, 4 @ 24, 5 @ 30, and basically every 10 after that.

~

As for builds, Strength is proving to be strong early. Many are recommended quality builds for the first playthrough, as many claim magic doesn't truly get good until NG+. I've heard otherwise, but that is the consensus. Basically aim for Vigor and Strength early, and try to have them both at 25 by level 50. This will still give you some room to put points into Vitality and Endurance as needed. From there, see what you like and what you need.

All those are super useful. Mind if I add them on the OP?

I have a question, where's a good place to find large Titanite? I've found tonnes of small and even a few twinkling but no large.

Please, yes. I think I'm just not far enough into the game.

@mordukai: Sure, go right ahead.

@sessh: Thanks :)

Some multiplayer points I noticed. Some of these are similar to previous games:

• Don't chase invaders to dangerous places! Or rather, bait the host to dangerous places if you're an invader. The environment is the invader's tool to turn a 1v3 match into a fair fight.
• Purple "mad phantoms" are basically the new red summons, as far as I can tell. They are white phantoms that can attack the host and other phantoms (and are purple.)
• Some miracles, like the Heal miracle Clerics get from the get-go, also affect nearby phantoms. Stand near them when a casting circle appears to get it.
• As mentioned in another thread on the board, you get half your Estus when you're summoned, rounded down.
• Co-op is fun, and there is almost no risk being summoned, so just leave your summon signs whenever you can (unless you're in a hurry, I guess.) But be careful not to get summoned while you're in a bad spot. If you get summoned while fighting an enemy, expect them to backstab you immediately when you return to your world.

I know I'm probably in the minority but leveling hp always seems like a major waste. There's not really any health regen so if it takes more than an estus flask to get back to full, what's the point? Endurance is far more important. I'm at 15 vigor and just got to the "pretty" part, and even 15 feels like overkill.

My tip to make the game a breeze is to upgrade a weapon asap and make it raw. I have a +4 raw Astora's Straight Sword and I can pretty much just mash attack and win everything.

I've tried something new every Souls game and went for Cleric this time which seems like a huge mistake. I'm doing fine, but it's not because I'm a Cleric. There don't seem to be any worthwhile miracles besides healing and no faith based weapons. Have I missed any offensive miracles somewhere? There also don't seem to be any faith based weapons either. I got the greatsword from the skeleton boss soul but it doesn't seem like it will ever be better than Astora's.

Invest in a way to do ranged damage reliably early on, because the Rotted Deadwood is an absolute fucker and with lock on and good positioning you can hit some of the weak spots safely. My first character is a STR build so I just got a light crossbow and some standard/wood bolts and it definitely made a difference. So did having summons, I can't imagine that thing solo.

@hunkulese: Yes there is the usual lightning miracle in the Farron Keep region. And one of the bosses souls in adjacent area can be used to make a chime/sword. Plus you can always make a weapon holy manually. Boss weapons gain a lot of dmg and scaling from upgrading since they have less tiers, so the starting stats can appear lackluster.

@tennmuerti: Where can I find the lightning and the chime?

@hunkulese: Lightning miracle is at the end of the Farron Keep swamp part, the last bonfire before the doors you have to light torches to open, as you go down the ramp there is a really long ladder to the right that goes up with slugs around it, you should be able to find it from there, there is a small extra area to explore. Chime sword is from the Cathedral of the Deep boss, that whole zone is accessed by defeating the Road of Sacrifices area boss.

Don't know if this is a new feature or not: If you hold down L1 or R1 (depending on which hand you've got your talisman/chime in) while casting a miracle like, say, Heal, your character will stay in position instead of immediately casting the spell - this is very helpful for co-op, as it kind of signals your fellow partners "hey, come over here, free stuff for everyone!"
Also, helping people through the swamp area is just the best feeling all around. :)

@tennmuerti: Thanks. I would have never have found the miracle since I thought I was already done with the stuff on the bridge.

As soon as you save Greirat and he goes back to Firelink, save up 4k souls and buy the kite shield. 100% damage reduction, only requires 12 strength. Heralds start with it, which is ridiculous.

Also Raw gems are useless in the mid-late game because they raise base damage and eliminate scaling. They are, however, pretty OP in the early game when you don't have enough stats to make scaling useful and you're using weapons with lousy scaling stats anyway. Go ahead convert your early game weapon into Raw for a nice damage boost until you start picking up weapons in the mid game that you'll actually want to use on a more permanent basis.

Not looking through in case of spoilers. So how exactly do roll i-frames work in 3? I swear I heard a streamer mention that as long as you're under the fat roll threshold, i-frames are the same no matter what carry weight you're at. The only thing carry weight affects up until the fat roll threshold is the distance you roll and stamina regen. Can anyone confirm?

You can find the Silver Eagle Kite Shield much earlier than Greirat, it also 100% physical resist. Requires 11 STR and weighs 5.0. Location: Under the High Wall of Lothric bonfire, in a chest.

@obcdexter: I believe it's something they implemented on Dark Souls 2

I agree. Raw was made for early play, before you start settling on a build. Once you do that Raw is more of a hamper.

Playing a str/faith build, currently using a +6 heavy longsword. 27 strength gives me good damage with B scaling and it gets nuts when I chuck Lightning Blade on there, but infusing it with a lightning gem would give me A scaling and higher base damage by the looks of it. Buffing would be disabled, but I might potentially hit a lot harder without using a spell slot. Anyone got an opinion on this?

@latinkon: I think the thing to keep in mind when using elemental weapons is that the damage is split, and each type of damage has to go through an enemy's defenses separately.

Were you talking about Deacons of the Deep? I just beat them but the sword is a catalyst.

Done some digging into armour stats and stuff, here's the deal;

Each piece of armour gives a flat bonus to damage reduction.

So you could be wearing a cloth bandanna or or a chainmain helmet, the reduction will still be the same. It doesn't matter what type of armour you have equipped so long as you have something equipped. The difference is in the damage absorption, which is your defence against big heavy weapons. Typically heavier armour means higher absorption, but if you're looking at taking damage from small weapons (swords, knives, etc) it doesn't matter if you're wearing rags or Havels, as long as you have something in each armour slot (And your stats are the same, obviously) the damage you take will be the same.

• Chest: 20% damage resist
• Arms: 6% damage resist
• Legs: 14% damage resist
• Helmet: 10% damage resist

So by not wearing a helmet you're taking a flat 10% more damage regardless of what type of helmet it is.

In terms of damage, if your absorption is less than 20%, the amount of damage you'll take is calculated as;

(base damage - player flat damage reduction) * (100 - player absorption)

Over 20% and the calculation get's a bit weird and random, apparently. So if you're looking to tank up, aim for about 20% absorption. If you're not looking to tank up.... don't get hit? :D

There's a full breakdown over here (thanks to @mike for forwarding it on to me):

@sweep: So it's almost on the same level as Bloodborne? What I mean is that armor only really mattered when it came to specific defenses.

Another interesting bit. When getting summoned as white, You'll always get the max amount of estus use you can have. So even if lets say, you have 6 estus uses. Even if you only have one more use left you'll still get 3 when getting summoned.

For people that beat the game already or put considerable time into it - does Dark Souls 3 favor Dex or Str weapons? I remember going Str in DS2 only to find that all the best weapons required quite a bit of Dex.

@humanity: In my experience, they're both great. You can make any infusable weapon scale with any stat you like thanks to the new upgrade system, so you don't need a greatsword or club to run an effective strength build.

@hunkulese: Ah my bad, it was a bit late last night and I recalled it as a chime. Sorry :(

Okay I just found two large titanite shards, mild spoilers if you haven't reached the middle of Farrons Keep.

Anyone know how exactly the covenants work in this game yet?

I assume you don't loose ranks/points from just switching the covenants, since it's now handled completely differently. At least I'd hope that's the case.

Also does the exact point value carry over to NG+ or just the rank?

@tennmuerti: Yeah, it's too bad. I thought it looked pretty cool so I levelled up, which thankfully only takes regular titanite, then couldn't figure out why it wouldn't cast miracles. Easy mistake to make though since it's a fucking candle and it's called a cleric's something or other.

I just found out you had to equip them. No idea what to do with sun medals yet though.

Also you can leave gestures with your messages. When writing the message hit, Y/Triangle to pull it up and jump for joy!

I found that area last night. I think it's actually kinda cool how they letting actually be on that huge bridge/walkway/highwall, but only showing segments of it. I hope later areas would have much larger sections. I've been a fan of big bridge levels.

Off topic. I keep referring to the Pilgrims as Mystics cause they remind me so much of the UrRu from The Dark Crystal.

Stay embered if you want to fight npc invaders and get their gear.

If you need more ember just engage in jolly cooperation.

Get some form of ranged damage. There are spots where the game seems like it's punishing you for having a big fuck-off sword and no other options, and if I didn't have a bow to kill dudes on ledges/aggro one enemy out of a pack, I could see certain areas getting frustrating. Arrows are dirt cheap too, like five souls a pop for the crappiest one, so there's no reason not to stock up before heading out. Headshots also do more damage and stagger enemies backwards, sometimes knocking them off whatever they are standing on.

@strangestories said:

According to the wiki:

0-30% Equip Load = Fast, far roll, fast backstep, 13 iframes

31-69% Equip Load = Medium roll, medium backstep, 13 iframes

70-99% Equip Load = Fat Roll, short and slow backstep, 12 iframes.

100% Equip Load = No Rolling.

It doesn't look like much difference, but my subjective opinion is that fat-rolling "feels" a lot worse in this game than in previous ones. Enemies are quite a bit more aggressive and have longer, quicker combos. If you fat roll, it takes you so long to get up that you'll avoid the first shot but not be able to get far enough away fast enough to get away from the backswing or be able to get your shield up in time.

I've been sticking with the medium-roll and it seems to be working well. I've tended to find that light-roll isn't much of a benefit in terms of damage avoidance and it has a tendency to take me too far away from my enemy to effectively counter-attack after a roll.

@lawgamer: Thanks! I've been sticking with medium roll as well for the same reasons. Armor actually gives a lot more damage reduction than I thought it would so it's nice to know that I'm not hampering my roll