Dark Souls 3 Beginner’s Guide

Dark Souls 3 Beginner’s Guide

Dark Souls 3 is an action RPG and dark fantasy open world video game, its the latest title released in the critically acclaimed Dark Souls game series. Dark Souls games are well known for their hard and punishing gameplay difficulty. We present you Dark Souls 3 Beginner’s Guide to make your dark adventurous journey somewhat easy.

There are a plenty of things in the Dark Souls’ world that want to kill you as you make your way through Darkness. Being the hyped-up and newest Dark Souls game, it will surely draw more newbies to its world. Don’t lose your cool even if you die a lot in this game just read the below tips and it will definitely come in handy when you are facing your worst nightmares in the dark wastelands;

Timing is Really Important:

Timing in the Dark Souls 3’s combat is really important, keep one thing in mind as you face different enemies in the kingdom of Lothric that every enemy has his own movesets, attack pattern and weak spot. Some enemies will stab their spears in your guts, while others use shield bash to force your shield away. And some enemies will use strong charged attacks, giving you enough time to dodge or roll out of the way.

In the below image you can see an enemy charging his attack, just wait until the last moment to dodge or roll out of the way and land your own attack before he can recover from his own attack. You need to quickly observe your enemies and their movements so that you can get hold of the combat. The enemies in this game are really strong and quick as compared to previous games.

You just need a good timing in blocking your opponent’s attacks as well as in landing your own attacks. You should know when to dodge and roll out of the way of an attack or when to use your shield to block one. It is also very important to learn attack speed of your weapon so that your attacks won’t blocked by your enemies all the time.

Guarding or Blocking:

Guarding or Blocking can be an really useful to ensure survival, but it can also work against you and become your greatest enemy. It is tempting to hold your shield all the time, waiting for your enemy to attack. Never do this, instead you will want to wait until you notice that your enemy is moving to attack. Then you should pull your shield up and block the enemy’s attack. This way you will have plenty of Stamina in case you have to roll away from the attack and land your own attack instead.

Let Your Shield Hand Rest:

This tip falls in line with the previous one (Guarding or Blocking). You would be surprised by the number of people who run all the time with the shield up, as if they were under attack by dangerous creatures. Do not fall prey to this false safety that your shield gives off.

Holding your shield up will make your stamina recovery slower and if you are in the middle of a fight, the result will be your death as you need stamina to attack and roll away from an attacks.

Dodging Attacks:

Rolling away or dodging attacks is as important as blocking attacks. Most of the classes in the Dark Souls 3 that you will choose to play, mostly rely on rolling the attacks instead of blocking. Both rolling and blocking attacks, require stamina, however rolling may require less stamina than blocking heavy attacks. Rolling is also very useful to get behind opponents from where you can perform critical attacks such as backstabs.

Sneaking and Backstabbing:

When you approach your opponent from behind and attack them from a point blank range, you perform what is called ‘backstab’. This attack activates an animation, which will kick your enemy down onto the ground when completed. This attack deal a massive damage to enemies, and also give your character a great opportunity to prepare for the fight.

While backstab can be performed during normal combats by rolling behind enemies and attacking them in close range, it can also be performed by sneaking up on an unsuspecting enemy. To do this simple walk forward slowly and approach your target. If you move slowly enough, and are not too loud, you will be able to approach any enemy and perform high damage attack.

What to Upgrade: Stats or Weapons?

In Dark Souls 3 everything cost Souls, and it can be very intimidating when you try to figure out what to upgrade weapon or stats. We suggest that you hold on to upgrading stats, unless you need more HP or Equip Load, and instead upgrade weapon to increase its attack power.

We are suggesting this because you will amass more attacking power from your weapon by upgrading it with Blacksmith than upgrading your stats. many weapons that you will find in the Dark Souls 3 has Attribute Bonus system linked with the stat that range from S to E as S being the highest and E being the lowest.

For example a Battle Axe may have an Attribute Bonus of Rank D for both Dexterity and Strength stat, which means that each time you upgrade Dexterity or Strength attribute you will be rewarded with extra Attack Power on this weapon.

Now the best way to build your character is to upgrade its Dexterity and Strength if you want to hit your opponents with more deadly attacks using Battle Axe weapon. Meanwhile, other weapons might have Attribute Bonuses for Faith or Intelligence, in that case you will want to build your character around those attributes.

Unlike other RPGs, Dark Souls 3 mostly relies upon you building a character around the weapon. If you want to take down more deadly and dangerous enemies/bosses in this game you should learn this system and always follow it in leveling up your character.

How to Upgrade Stamina?

Stamina is your best ally in this game because your main Stamina bar is the basis for how often you can attack, roll, block or sprint. In the game your Stamina is controlled by the number of points you have into the Endurance stat of your character. This makes it very important stats that you can acquire, and when completely leveled up to a level 99 this stat will give you max Stamina at 170.

Be Aggressive, but not Always:

Dark Souls 3 features an improved and fast paced combat system than the previous Dark Souls games. This is really good if you are just start playing the Dark Souls games for the first time as this game allows you to be more aggressive than you could be in any previous game.

The art of being aggressive is really hard to learn, however, you don’t want to run blatantly into group of enemies. Being aggressive means you will want to learn when is the best time to be aggressive. A boss that is transforming into second phase is a good time to rush forward and land high damage attacks before you are forced to your defenses.

Parry and Riposte:

Parrying an enemy attacks can give you an enormous advantage on the battleground in the Dark Souls 3. Unlike guarding, parrying needs precise timing and great amount of patience. Just bring your shield up before an enemy land an attack. There is no easy way to explain this other than to watch your enemy’s attacks and pay close attention to their attacking patterns. If you successfully parry an enemy attack, you can then quickly attack to riposte (counterattack) the enemy and deal a good amount of damage.

Do Not Hoard Souls:

Souls are required for many things in Dark Souls 3. You can get Souls from killing enemies and exploring the world. It can feel appetizing to hold on to Souls before heading back to the Firelink Shrine and use them to upgrade weapons or skills and buy new ones. Do not fall for this obvious trap.

Souls are really easy to obtain, enemies will respawn when you rest at Bonfires, so farming souls is pretty easy. We suggest that you spend your Souls on weapons, items, weapon upgrades and stat upgrades whenever you have handful of Souls. If you have plenty of Souls on you, you will be risking all of them when you die. Whenever you have a reasonable amount of souls, head back to shrine and spend them on different upgrades.