Dark Souls Item Randomizer

Overview:

This program allows you to randomly generate a set of treasures so that your playthrough of Dark Souls will be more interesting, with several difficulty & customization options to tailor the random distribution of items to a desired play-style. Includes the ability to set a seed for the randomizer, so that several people can set the same options with the same seed and get the same item distribution.

Key items are placed by an algorithm that avoids softlocks. For example, the Peculiar Doll cannot be inside the Painted World. The algorithm can also avoid more complicated problems, such as the Key to Depths being in Oolacile but the Broken Pendant is in the Depths. All areas of the game are accessible on each playthrough, but the route through the game may be unfamiliar.

Several customization options include the ability to set the fairness of the Randomizer. The more unfair the setting, the more the Randomizer attempts to hide desirable items, like good weapons, lighter armor, and key items (like keys and embers) in harder-to-reach or lesser known areas. The Randomizer can also spice up the item distribution by exchanging soul consumables for random consumables, and can split apart armor sets so they are not found all together.

Requires the Dark Souls archive files be unpacked using UnpackDarkSoulsForModding.

Installation Instructions:

1. Unpack your Dark Souls archive files using UnpackDarkSoulsForModding.


2. Download the Dark Souls Item Randomizer, and place the executable file in DATA\param\GameParam\, where DATA is your Dark Souls data directory. There should be an existing file, GameParam.parambnd already present.
3. Run the Item Randomizer and select your options. When you are ready to randomize your items, click the Export button to automatically write the modified item configuration to GameParam.parambnd. A backup copy, GameParam.parambnd.bak will be created if it does not already exist. A directory with the current date/time stamp will be created containing information about the item distribution, including a cheatsheet.
4. If you want to inspect a certain item distribution, but not modify your game's item distribution, you can instead input a seed and click the "Write Seed Info" button to generate the same type of folder as above, without modifying the current item distribution. Note that you must input a seed for this to work.
5. Repeat Step 3 every time you want a freshly randomized selection of items. Only do this at the start of a playthrough, never in the middle.

Removal Instructions:

Since the unpacked game runs the same as the vanilla game, this will not cover how to reverse the unpacking process performed by UnpackDarkSoulsForModding. Restoring the default item distribution (so that the items are not randomized) is easy:

1. Check that GameParam.parambnd.bak exists in DATA\param\GameParam
2. Delete GameParam.parambnd from  DATA\param\GameParam
3. Re-name GameParam.parambnd.bak to GameParam.parambnd

Again, DATA refers to your Dark Souls data directory. You will need to turn on file extensions in Windows Explorer if you do not already have them on, so that you can see the files named as above.


The source code for the Item Randomizer is on GitHub.