Tips and Tricks Dark Souls 3 Doesn’t Tell You

Tips and Tricks Dark Souls 3 Doesn’t Tell You

Dark Souls 3 is an action dark fantasy role playing video game from Dark Souls Franchise. Dark Souls 3 offers a world with dark environment and enemies with faster gameplay and great combat intensity.

In Dark Souls 3 the boss conflicts and other common enemies offer a real challenge that completely puts players in battle of life and death for about 60 hour of gameplay. The game has a tremendous amount of replayability, as all the areas in the game look stunning and multiple character builds allow players to experience different characters in new areas.

Like previous games in the series, Dark Souls 3 is not a forgiving game either, especially when the boss fights and combat are concerned. Dark Souls 3 is more punishing and hard than its predecessors; first the game will brutally test your patience and then reward you for it.

Regardless, you are a newcomer to the series or a die hard fan of the franchise, in Tips and Tricks Dark Souls 3 Doesn’t Tell You we will provide you some great tips and tricks that should save you being butchered by your enemies.

10. Free Items In Firelink Shrine

If you are new to the dark souls series, chances are that you will be engaged thinking that everything in the game is just trying to slaughter you than enjoying how you can talk to different people in the Firelink Shrine who can provide free items that can help you in most of your Dark Souls 3 encounters.

If you want free items in the Firelink Shrine then you should talk to all the characters that appear at the Firelink Shrine. For example in the image above you can see Hawkwood sitting on stairs in the Firelink Shrine he can be very resourceful in this regard. Every time you defeat a boss, come back to the Firelink Shrine and do a quick search in the the main chamber and also go through bottom caverns; you will be gifted with different items such as coins and rings that can really boost your item/stones discovery. After that you can bring those items/stones to Andre the Blacksmith and he will craft various better weapons for you.

9. You Can See Your Character As You Change Different Items

You Can see your character as you change different items as they are applied. Just hit the R3 button to reorder the windows and there you can see your character standing behind, as you are then free to compare armor, gloves, headgear and other different items as you like.

8. Create Items and Weapons With Boss Souls

In all the Dark Souls games you are given the ability to transform a boss soul into a particular weapon or item once you have defeated him, bu the Dark Souls 3 makes this thing pretty easier. Every time you defeat a difficult boss or a creature, take his soul to Ludleth who is sitting on the throne in the middle of Firelink Shrine as you can see from the above image. He will present you the option to transform this soul into an item or a weapon.

But first you need to kill Curse-Rotted Greatwood in Undead Settlement area to activate the ability; when you kill the Curse-Rotted Greatwood he’ll give you Transposing Kiln. Give this item to Ludleth and afterwards whenever you give him a soul, he will give you a new piece of item/equipment for free.

7. You Can Use Weapon Skills With Shield

Now this thing is not for all the shields in the Dark Souls 3, if a shield has its own weapon skill then you can see this at the top of inventory screen, when equipping a shield. Various shields can deflect attacks as primary L2 or LT ability, but for shields that do not have any defensive abilities, other hand’s skills will take this place.

This will allow players to defend in standard shields-up position by using the L1 or LB, but when you press the left trigger, the character will assume a stance that is used for right-hand weapon, but remember one thing that it will cost you the ability to parry.

6. Instantly Use Your Estus Flask

The number of times you will die in Dark Souls 3 simply because you can not select your Estus Flask fast enough has been a cause of misery for many players. So always have your Estus Flask in the first slot of your inventory. Always!

See Also: Dark Souls 3 All Estus Flask Shard Location Guide

If you are in the middle of a battle and has many items in your inventory, it would really take your precious time to cycle through the inventory to find Estus Flask. But you can avoid all this because whatever you place in your inventory’s first slot will undoubtedly be selected whenever you hold the ‘Down’ button on your D-pad. So you can stuff other slots with all kinds of bombs or throwing knives without any care because your Estus Flask is only one tap away.

5. Jump Without Rolling

In previous souls games if you press a button for jump, it would trigger a jump but with rolling at the end. Sometimes its good but other times when you want to reach a particular spot in the world to loot some items it will definitely cause problems as it will just roll you to the other side or you cannot reach the surface where you wanted your character to similar to the above image where you want to jump on the stone. but don’t worry Dark Souls 3 has a good solution.

Whenever you initiate the jump, just take your hand off the D-pad or direction button and your character will land really steady, instead of rolling through. This is really important for some tricky puzzle that involve jumping in the game.

4. Parry Effectively and Parry From Behind

Dark Souls 3’s tutorial works as you have to find markings on the ground, which can easily be if missed you are not careful. And you may not find a tutorial explaining all there is to know about parrying.

Parrying animations in Dark Souls 3 have slightly changed, now it is not just about pressing the left trigger. Instead, in Dark Souls 3 now the timing windows are very tight as compared to the previous game, and now you have to line up your shield’s physical arc while parrying with attacks of your opponents.

It is really hard to perfect but not impossible, first try this against smaller and weak enemies. Luckily, if you hit parrying too late, the animation will not be interrupted and you will still be able to deflect enemy’s attacks. Another thing we have found is that you can parry from behind too, I do not know if that’s a bug or in game combat mechanics but it works really well. You can see from the above image that character is parrying an enemy attack from behind.

3. Perform Combos With Charge Attacks

Dark Souls 3’s combat is a real dance of death where you have to be precise and accurate with your attacks and defenses all the time because if you are not careful in this world filled with dark and evil creatures the death is imminent.

With that said, you can chain your attacks together provided that you have the appropriate reserve of stamina to perform combo attacks that deal more damage and looks really cool too. But another form of combo is more lethal that normal ones, holding R2/RT button at any time during a combo will perform a charged attack of a that particular move.

See Also: Dark Souls 3 How to Find Astora Straight Sword

This is really useful in your online duels where you are against other human players, because the A.I. in the game is less exposed to being tricked by this kind of charged attacks, humans on the other hand, can be tricked and you can land more devastating attacks.

2. Use Hollowing to Get Bonus Levels

When save a character named Yoel on the Undead Settlement bridge, you can bring him to the Firelink Shrine. Here in the Firelink Shrine when you talk to him, he will give you extra character level. With this additional character level he will also provide a Dark Sigil, which will make a Hollow stat in your status screen when you die.

Do not worry about this because it has no affect on your gameplay, instead you will just look like a zombie. If you do not want this zombie look or hollow status, you can find the ‘Fire Keeper Soul’ and then give this to a Fire Keeper who can be found near the main bonfire Firelink Shrine. You can find this Fire Keeper Soul in the tower which is located behind the Firelink Shrine. You can buy the key for this tower from Shrine Handmaid for a whopping price of 20,000 souls.

That’s where our next tip comes…

1. Grind To Level Up

This may not be the best but is really one of the important ones. In Dark Souls 3 as we know that resting at the bonfire will restate all the enemies and opponents that you have previously killed which means you can kill them again for more souls and can get valuable items before moving on to the next area.

one thing to note that some large creatures and enemies can only be killed once, but other vast majority of enemies will definitely re-spawn giving you enough opportunities to grind.

Are there more tricks and tips that we missed? Let us know in comments below!