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About this mod
DS1 is a great game, but has some flaws when played offline, especially in NG+ where all balance just goes out the window. Tired of all your NG+ characters ending up half-naked in a mismatched clown suit running around with the biggest stick they can find? Look no further.
- Permissions and credits
Philosophy:Dark Souls is a fantastic game, perhaps one of the best games to ever come out. The exploration-encouraging level design, the gripping and diverse combat, and the thrill of overcoming great challenges. Truly, it leaves little to be desired...but it isn’t perfect.
Particularly in NG+, the game’s flaws become quite apparent: at least to me. Slapping 2x damage and 1.8x health modifier on the whole game and calling it balanced, whilst retaining scaling soft and hard caps, along with atrocious drop rates of certain items, is where the game – in my humble opinion – ceases to be enjoyable. It’s as if beating Gwyn is more of a disappointment than an achievement, because the NG+ that awaits you is often an unenjoyable experience(at least for me; if you like that sort of thing,more power to you, but you’re not the target audience of this mod.)
To put it in simpler terms, Iam not a fan of every character ending up running around almost naked with the biggest stick or most powerful spell they can find, sitting at 20% hp for RTSR abusing.
This mod is my approach tofixing that: to make NG+ a more enjoyable continuation of your character, rather than the gameplay equivalent of the feeling you get when going to the dentist to get teeth pulled if you were to avoid glitches and hyper min-maxing. While you can still do similar things with this mod, the idea is that won’t feel like you have to or ought to.
What originally started as asimple buffing of armor defensive stats has gradually evolved into a much greater scale of various little tweaks to small parts of the game; though it looks like a lot, you’ll find that it’s still very much in the same spirit as the vanilla game – just better
optimized for an offline, single player experience(it’s without a doubt several facets of the game are balanced around online play, be
it co-op or PvP, leading to conflicts with single player.)
What it is NOT is a change tospawns, boss mechanics, movesets, or any changes to the world map.
These are simply tuning adjustments to what’s already in the game
for the most part, with the biggest changes being towards items that
were useless or near useless in offline play.
So who is this mod for?This mod is for…
People who want to wear armor without feeling like they’re gimping themselves.
People who want a somewhat different experience to regular DS1, without changing any environments or enemies.
People who want a more single-player optimized game.
People who want a somewhat easier, more RPG-like DS1 NG experience.
People who want crap gear andpointless upgrade paths to be at least viable.
People who want more viable build diversity in NG+ and beyond.
This mod is not for…
People who want an evengreater challenge than regular DS1
People who enjoy metagaming/speedrunning(you still can in this mod, but there’s no point)
People who want an overhaul ofmany mechanics, zones, bosses, and existing enemies
People who want new content –this is a tweak mod, not an expansion
Basically, as the nameimplies, it’s a bunch of tweaks built around a long term NG+
single-player experience with a little more emphasis on the RPG side
of the game in the form of new classes.
New in 1.2.1 - Vanilla Classes(optional file.) Though the mod, especially its classes, are designed around NG+, they are a bit "overpowered" for much of the early game on a basic New Game. So, for people who want a steadier, more classic experience, I have made an optional version of the mod with the original starting classes. Starting gifts are still the modded gifts, but the thief does start with the master key. This version of the mod contains all the changes listed below, except for the new classes. Have fun!
**Furthermore, it should benoted that all changes within the mod are intended for a
single-player, offline experience. If you find a way to play it
online, be it through some private means, it will probably be very
broken, with many changes feeling overpowered while somesimply won’t work. Likewise, you WILL get banned fromregular online play. You have been warned.**
(tl;dr –
Armor is better.
Bad weapons and bad upgradepaths have been buffed.
Drop rates for rare itemshave improved.
Multiplayer covenant tokensnow drop from PvE sources.
Some rings have beenchanged to be a bit more useful.
Covenant rings have PvEusage.
Dragon form is worthinvesting time into for more than just glass-cannon builds.
Dex, faith, strength, andint no longer have scaling softcaps.
Snuggly trading altered abit
All-new classes which arehighly distinct from each other.)
Install-Dragand drop msg, param, and paramdef folders into your game directory.
When asked to overwrite, click “Yes to all.” Loadup the game, play and enjoy.
Below are the changes indetail, and my reasoning behind them.
Contents(Ctrl+Fto find each topic):
AA– Armor
BB– Rings
CC– Weapons/Shields
DD– Drop Rates/loot
EE– Spells
FF– Mechanics
GG– Classes/Gifts
AA)Armor:Invanilla DS, armor quickly loses its value in keeping the player alive even in New Game, becoming apparent as early as the first trip to New Londo, and only getting worse from there. Even the most protective heavy armor in the game often feels like it wouldn’t be worth
wearing if not for the poise value, and even then, the value of poise vs more rolling iframes is questionable – not even worth considering in NG+. This is the first and primary reason I set out to make this mod.
Almost every single piece ofarmor in-game has had its defensive values increased in one way or
another.
For medium and heavy sets,base physical defense values have gone up by a very large amount across all sets, with heavy armor seeing the most drastic increase. The idea behind this is to serve as a much fairer compensation for sacrificing roll iframes, movement speed, and stamina recovery for damage reduction.
Additionally, this aims tomake medium and heavy armor sets much more viable in NG+. No longer will you be getting half your health bar taken away in a single hit while wearing full +5 Giant’s!
You won’t be able to just wade through hordes of enemies still, but you should feel like the protection you’re wearing is actually a useful investment, rather than just deadweight.
For light armor sets,almost all pieces of armor which previously lacked poise now at least has some(usually 5 per piece.) No longer will you get instantly stunlocked by a butterfly farting in your general direction. Additionally, light armor now often has more specialized elemental
and status-effect resistances, such as many “robe” type armors now offering exceptional magic, fire, or lightning defenses for their weight.
All changes to armor were made in consideration with their flavor text, lore, and their design in the vanilla game(example, the “black” set is said to have high magic resist, so I focused on that as opposed to arbitrarily increasing everything.)
New in 1.3 - Crystal Armor set:
The Crystal Set in DS1 has always intrigued me. First of all, it cannot be upgraded. Second, it has very steep repair costs and low durability. Third...it's kind of bad in spite of its description. So, I went ahead and buffed it - this is nothing new - however it's a bit different than the conventional defense buffs I gave most armor. It now has extremely good slash and thrust defense for its weight class, but has almost cripplingly poor defense against strike, and almost no elemental defenses to speak of. Additionally, some of the impact and movement sounds have been changed(it was using cloth/robe armor sounds for some reason.) Its weight has also been slightly reduced, down to a total of 26 units for the whole set. So what you have is a lightweight set with good poise and exceptional slash/thrust defense without needing upgrades, but also one with a number of drawbacks, making it a good physical defense set for low-endurance characters, but still not as good as a proper +10 or +5(twinkling) medium or heavy set.
BB)Rings: Rings are where, in my eyes, the most hideous imbalance of Dark Souls exists. Off the top of your head, you can probably think of only a handful of actually good rings in the game(not counting covenant rings which do nothing for offline play.) Worse yet, you only have 2 ring slots, many rings not even worth taking up one when it came to the old havel’s+FaP ring combo for melee, and lingering+slumbering for casters. I intended to break that meta. The changes made are as follows…
Ring of Favor and Protection:1.2x to health and stamina changed to 1.3x, equip load increase removed for the sake of not letting the armor changes be overpowered, no longer breaks when removed. I always had a love-hate relationship with this ring in the unmodded game; it was really good, too good to not have its drawbacks given how essential roll-speed was, but hated feeling locked into using it. It didn't help that most other rings were bad, or only good in conjunction with another.
Ring of Fog:75% visibility reduction changed to 95%. Reasoning for this is because, since this mod is intended to be played offline, the Ring of Fog can be tricky and risky to get otherwise, and in the unmodded game, the ring is pretty much useless. Even with 75% visibility reduction AND the slumbering dragoncrest ring, enemies still detected you very easily, making “stealthy” characters impossible. This ring, rare as it is in offline play, now thusly grants a benefit worthwhile of your precious ring slots.
Stoneplate rings/Steel Protection ring:Eachnow offers 400 resistance in their respective element, up from 50 – the speckled stoneplate gives 200 resistance to all(including physical.) Reasoning for this is because 50 defense/resistance may as well be nothing considering the damage output of PvE opponents; they’re utterly useless trash in the unmodded game, and one of the contributing factors to the “naked guy with a giant stick” PvE meta I hate so much. Now when you slip one of these bad boys on, you really feel its value...and you’ll miss it when you don’t have it.
Tiny Being’s Ring:AKA the “noob trap” of DS, but now you might want to consider using it. Instead of a slight HP increase, it now offers a steady trickle of constant healing. It isn’t much in the heat of combat, but 8hp every 2 seconds will save you a lot of estus and humanity in
the long term.
Poisonbite/Bloodbite rings:Vastly increased resistance multipliers to both, with the addition of poisonbite now offering Toxic protection as well(poison and toxic have different resistance values in the game - poisonbite previously did nothing vs toxic buildup.)
Wolf Ring:Poise value increased from 40 to 60. This makes the ring more valuable on light armor characters and, if you so desire, to become
almost unstaggerable with heavy armor. In the unmodded game, the ring was “okay”, particularly for lightweight builds, but hard to justify over the typical havel’s ring+fap ring combo meta.
Hawk Ring:Range increase with bows increased from 65 to 100. Now you can actually snipe from outside of aggro range, turning this ring from a mere novelty and way to cheese Manus, into something any keen-eyed bow-using character will want to have.
Ring of the Evil Eye:HP leeched from kills increased from 30 to 50. Not a big change, but something to make this otherwise mediocre ring worth considering, particularly during farming sessions far away from bonfires.
Silver Covetous Serpent Ring:Now 1.5x souls gained instead of 1.2x. Why? Because it loses value later in the game...which is exactly the stage of the game you find it at. Outside of forest hunters and painted world, there’s not much in the way of high-ish level soul farming.
Both Tearstone rings:Now activate at 40%HP instead of 20%. 20% HP in Dark Souls is basically dead, making the Blue Tearstone particularly worthless(especially on NG+). The Red Tearstone ring is a fickle beast that’s both useless andoverpowered at the same time, so to discourage abusing it for “loloneshot” builds without making it useless, it’s now 20% damage increase – still good, particularly when stacked with other buffs, but not ridiculous. Now they are good for everyone.
White Seance Ring:Redesigned. Slowly generates soft humanity(1 every 5 minutes.) Reason is because this ring was identical to the Darkmoon Seance Ring, which made little sense why 2 rings did the same thing. Now a starting gift as well.
Darkmoon Seance Ring:Same effect as vanilla, but 2 attunement slots up from 1
Darkmoon Blade Covenant Ring:Redesigned for offline play. Doubles magic damage, disables the player from doing any other type of damage(Magic meaning the damage school, not specifically sorceries.) This is designed not just for sorceries, but also for weapons with split magic and physical damage, offering a means to bring up to parity for high defense enemies(split damage weapons are worse against high defense opponents given how defense is calculated vs incoming AR in DS1)
Cat Covenant Ring:Redesigned for offline play. Reduces fall damage by 75%, and increases total stamina by 20%(stacks with FaP ring.)
New in 1.2:
Calamity Ring: On top of its normal effects, increases soul gain by 2x - stacks with symbol of avarice and covetous silver serpent ring. A high risk-high reward sort of thing, like a ring version of symbol of avarice.
CC)Weapons and Shields:Overall, most weapons in DS are very good so long as they’re used in the right circumstances. Some weapons, unfortunately, are bad no matter how you build your character, or simply aren’t worth the materials to upgrade, or effort to obtain. For most of these, it’s simply a matter of lackluster scaling not fairly compensating for a bad moveset – these were easy fixes, and many previously poor weapons now have good scaling to encourage using them in spite of their clumsy nature. These include whips, scythes, the morningstar, crossbows, and a couple others.
Some weapons, however,received some more special attention. These are as follows…
Divine weapons(all of them):All divine weapons, be it from upgrades or “special” weapons found in the world, now also have a damage increase against demons in addition to their damage increase against skeletons. For divine weapons made through upgrading regular weapons, this amounts to a 10% increase. For special weapons, it depends on the weapon – the % matches the original weapon’s damage increase against skeletons(Grant, for example, does 30%). Additionally, all divine weapons can now hit ghosts. The purpose in this is to make divine a competitive choice compared to occult, while still fitting in their themes.
In the unmodded game, occultweapons were much more useful overall than divine for faith builds, but now with the damage vs demons increase, and the ability to hurt ghosts, divine weapons now have another entire area in the game they’re particularly effective in.
Faith Scaling “special” weapons:Grant, Astora’s Straight Sword, and the Darkmoon bow now stand apart from regular divine weapons in that their damage now does a split between physical and lightning damage,instead of physical and magic damage. This makes these otherwise “mediocre” weapons much more appealing in that few enemies have good lightning resistance, compared to magic resist. Previously, Astora’s was regarded as a fairly bad weapon, as was the Darkmoon bow; Grant was good, but required a massive stat investment to use, making other weapons better when considering leveling points spent. Now all 3 should be much more “worth” using, without being overpowered.
Zweihander:Strength requirements increased from 24 to 30, dex from 10 to 12. Reason being is that such an amazingly powerful weapon obtainable and easy to wield at the start of the game often broke the game for melee characters. This is one of the few “nerfs” I put in. Still worth picking up, but it may be a little while(depending on the class) before you can use it. New in 1.2 - increased str scaling by 10%(also 10% for faith on occult/divine, and int on magic/enchanted) to compensate for the steep requirements.
Great Lord Greatsword:Added a permanent flame visual effect, gave a small amount of fire damage, added D faith scaling, and made it decent at guarding against lightning and fire damage. Finally,it has a 40% damage increase vs “Abyss” type creatures, similar to Greatsword of Artorias. In the unmodded game, the GLGS was an atrocious disappointment unless you built specifically for it, and even then, it was still pretty mediocre given its poor moveset. Now, it should feel like a proper NG+ weapon. Not overpowered, and still requiring some investment to make the most out of it, but nice reward for defeating Gwyn.
GhostBlade/Jagged Ghost Blade:Now have C scaling with dex, and no scaling with strength. Thesehave always been fantastic weapons early on, but fell off somewhat quickly.
Most dragon weapons:Now have a 20% increase against “god” type enemies – this is both to preserve their value in NG+, also as a thematic reason given the rivalry between dragons and gods. Already powerful dragon weapons, such as the MLGS and Priscilla’s dagger, do not have such bonus.
Greataxes:All now do 55 points of poise damage, up from 50. The reason for this is because Ultra Greatswords, with their wide, sweeping light attacks, were always better for PvE than greataxes or great hammers. The lack of cleave makes me believe greataxes and greathammers should do more poise damage to compensate.
Greathammers:All now do 60 points of poise damage. See reasoning above.
Barbed Straightsword:Bleed “damage” increased from 33 to 50. This sword was otherwise useless compared to Katanas. Note that the bleed still does 30% of an enemy’s health as damage – only the bleed status buildup has been changed.
Morning Star:Same as above(funnily enough, both share the same bleed effect – changing one changed both!)
Poison Throwing Knives:Guaranteed to poison the enemy, unless they’re totally immune. Poison damage changed from 3 to 5 damage per tick. Very useful for fragile and quick characters.
Poison Arrows:Poison buildup increased from 50 to 150; it should take only 2 shots at most to poison enemies. Poison damage increase from 3 to 5 per tick. Reason for this and the knives is that I see these weapons as primarily useful for long distance takedowns of tough enemies certain builds may not be suited to melee with. (Noone likes feeling forced to play builds they don’t want to.)
Parrying Dagger:Perhaps the most significant change to a single weapon I’ve done. The parry dagger, when in the off-hand, can now be used to block like a shield. It features a very high stability, but only blocks 50% of incoming physical damage. Additionally, when wielding it, it has the same effect as the Hornet Ring – increasing critical damage(backstabs, ripostes) by 30%. This makes it a viable, and unique, alternative to the buckler and target shield.
Sanctus:Such a cool lookingshieldwith such a pointless effect in the unmodded game. HP tick has been increased from 2hp/2sec to 8hp/2sec. Additionally, it now blocks 100% of physical damage up from 95%, and has seen a considerable increase to fire damage blocking. However, the shield now also requires more faith to wield.
Astora’s Straight Sword:Aside from much better faith scaling and previously mentioned lightning damage, now requires more faith to wield(18, up from 14). No longer a quickly disposed starter weapon, and though easy to obtain, will require a bit of investment to use for allexcept one of the new classes.
Fists...yes,your bare fists:Now have C scaling for both dex and strength. For most characters, they won’t even come close to competing with your primary weapon, however...those who walk the path of the dragon may find this most useful.
Demon’s Great Hammer:Now does a small amount of additional fire damage, on top of its physical damage. Modifying the weapon does not change this.
Crossbows:Now have scaling, favoring strength over dex in most cases, given the draw weight of a crossbow being greater as a cost for being easier to wield. Bows still scale much better, but crossbows have higher base damage.
Greatshields:All greatshields have had their stability increased slightly, and deflection increased from 65, to 75(with a couple unique exceptions.) Additionally, their “bash” function in the unmodded game was greatly underutilized because of its...well...uselessness. Shields which could parry were almost always better than greatshields for experienced players. Now, bashing with a shield does a huge amount of poise damage, likely to stagger most non-boss enemies in a single hit.
Shields in general:Upgrade paths have been enhanced, namely with fire, magic, divine, and crystal paths. Previously, there was no reason to upgrade shields outside of the normal route in most cases. Now greatshields see an increase in fire, magic, and lightning damage reduction when upgraded down those paths like their medium and light shield cousins; additionally, divine and crystal shields now offer new benefits – divine increases lightning protection even further at the cost of drastically reducing magic protection, whereas crystal now greatly increases stability.
Crystal Upgrade Path:A complete waste of titanite in the unmodded game. Now requires twinkling titanite instead of chunks and slabs, making it actually useful in its intended purpose for high-damage throwaway weapons.
Raw Upgrade Path:Useful in the early part of New Game, but never useful afterwards. Now increases critical damage(the idea is that the jagged edges would cause more bleeding...or something, idk.)
A few weapons have also had their wielding requirements adjusted slightly.
New in 1.2 - Stamina and blocking retuning(Significant changes ahead)
Movesets make a big impact on the effectiveness of a weapon, especially in PvP, but in PvE...it's not "as" big of a deal. This means 2handing a weapon is rarely worth losing a shield in the offhand, be it for parries or simply blocking. Likewise, I found it a bit nonsense that typically 2handed weapons were more stamina-efficient with one hand than 2, as in DS PvE, enemies either have almost no poise or so much, that the added poise damage from 2handing doesn't make a difference.
So, in the spirit of "logic", 2handing typically 2handed weapons(greatswords, ultragreatswords, greathammers, greataxes, and most pole weapons), will now cost less stamina than wielding it with one hand, allowing it to compete with having a shield in the offhand. You gain significantly better offensive capability, at a cost of losing the ability to block effectively.
On the notion of blocking, a few weapons have been made a bit less "worthless" for blocking. They'll still be inferior to all shields in the vast majority of cases, but now blocking with some weapons feels like it's no longer pointless - namely polearms and greatswords.
In fact, the bastard sword in particular now has traits to better distinguish from the claymore other than "worse moveset, slightly better damage" - it is now the most "defensive" of the greatswords, featuring 65% physical damage reduction when blocking, high stability, and medium deflection. This reflects the weapon's real life fame for being a versatile weapon for all manner of swordsman duels.
New in 1.2 - Spears have a better defined role.
Spears(and thrusting swords) in DS1 have the unique trait of being able to attack while blocking, but in the unmodded game, it has a massive stamina drain to it, rendering it not very effective outside of some niche PvP situations.
I have changed spears to have equalized stamina consumption for 2hand and 1hand light attacks, but more importantly, they now make much greater use in attacking from behind a shield. Doing so now costs much less stamina(different weapons have different values, of course), increases damage vs blocking opponents, and doubles poise damage, HOWEVER, it also does 10% less damage than a normal attack, trading offense for an efficient sort of crowd-control defense.
Thrusting swords have also received reduced stamina consumption when used in such a manner, but lack the poise/guard damage increase, making them a hybrid of sorts.
New in 1.2 - Dual Wielding is a bit better.
All dagger-type weapons now deal 30% more damage when wielded in the off-hand, and all curved swords deal 10% more damage in the off-hand(barring special off-hand attacks.) This is an attempt, similar in the same vein as the "2handing vs 1handing" thing above, to make more offense feel justified for the loss of defense, just in a different way.
New in 1.2 - Estoc(minor change):
Unique among thrusting swords, it has also received the same treatment as aforementioned "2hand" type weapons, being more efficient in 2hands than 1, true to its real life counterpart basically being a long pointy piece of metal designed to punch through armor.
New in 1.2 - Whips(minor change):
All whips now ignore blocking.
New in 1.3 - Greatbows:
Greatbows in unmodded DS1 were kind of...disappointing. They did decent damage, sure, but a regular bows could easily out-DPS them. So, both greatbows have had a bit of buffing to them to really make them feel like weapons that could take down a dragon. Their base damage has been increased a bit, arrow damage has been doubled for them, and now they do massive poise damage+knockback against opponents. Their stamina consumption and other drawbacks have remained unchanged.
New in 1.3 - Elemental Upgrade Paths:
In unmodded DS1, Lightning and Fire upgrades serve a decent purpose as a fallback melee weapon on characters not invested in melee abilities, and I wanted to preserve that. However, the issue with split-damage weapons is that an opponent's defense values "double-dip" against the damage they deal, meaning a split-damage weapon of the same AR as a single-damage weapon would often do much less than what the AR indicates. So, fire and lightning upgrade paths have been changed a little - the further you advance a weapon down either, the more elemental damage it does at the cost of physical damage. This may seem like a nerf or neutral change, but it's actually a significant buff to fire and lightning weapons because of how defense interacts with AR. Lightning and fire weapons still do not scale, however, and the sacrifice in physical damage means opponents highly resilient to fire or lightning will be almost immune.
DD)Drop Rates and Loot Pools:Modsare generally not meant for online play. Because of that, playing offline with them often means you miss out on a lot of things, namely covenant-related, but also when it comes to trading rare goods. In the unmodded game, drop rates for many items, namely crafting materials and certain weapons, are so atrociously low that you could spend days farmingthem and still not see a single drop. Ridiculous! I have changed drop rates ofmany atrociously rare items to be a bit more fair for an offline, single-player experience, and also made certain multiplayer items now drop from particular enemies. Changes of note are as follows…
Rats humanity drop rate 15%up from 5%
Crystal hollow soldiers drop souveniers of reprisal at a rate of 15%
All titanite slabs and chunks are now much more common from random sources
Blue drakes now drop 5scales at a 50% rate.
Hydras now give 10scales per kill.
Undead dragons now give 20scalesper kill.
Basilisks drop 2 eyes of death at a 15% chance.
Chaos bugs now drop 5 sunlight medals at a much higher rate.
Eye of Death, Sunlight medal, and Dragon scales from “world” sources(chests, corpses,
etc) all increased.
All “rare” weapons previously under 5% drop rate have been given a 5% drop rate from
their respective sources.
Purging stones are less-common from man-eater shells, but twinkling titanite is more
common.
Symbol of Avarice is somewhat more common, but still rare.
A few other, minor tweaks.
New in 1.2 - Frampt weapon feeding values.
Frampt will now grant more souls for modified weapons, and especially unique weapons.
The formula for most weapons is as follows:
Normal/crystal - unchanged
Raw - 500
Magic - 3,000
Divine - 3,000
Fire - 4,000
Enchanted/lightning/occult/chaos - 5,000
This is all based on the availability of embers and upgrade costs. I want to find a way to make "normal" also be more valuable for +6 and +11, but I cannot figure out how to do that at the moment. Special/boss weapons are often much more valuable, usually worth slightly more than consuming the boss soul itself.
New in 1.2.1 - Frampt shield feeding values.
See above - shields follow the same pricing format.
New in 1.2 - "Goodies"
Occasionally, while adventuring through Lordran, you may stumble across the odd rare treasure from seemingly unsuspecting enemies. Perhaps some coins from distant lands, or useful items like pine resins, repair powders, or even poison knives. Not every creature can drop everything, as I've tried keep certain items appropriately thematic, but it's a little something to keep things interesting.
EE)Spells:Sorceries, pyromancies, and miracles have all seen some amount of changes overall, but nothing terribly drastic. Magic in the unmodded game was already fairly powerful, with the only major issue often being that spells lacked enough uses to be useful outside of PvP.
Many sorceries, pyromancies, and miracles have seen their usage count greatly increased. Notable examples are sunlight/darkmoon blade,
magic weapon(all ranks), magic shield(all ranks),lightning spear, and sunlight spear. There are even more, but listing them all would take too long.
Poison and toxic misthave had their poison damage increased. Should be useful spells now outside of cheesing through barriers.
Hidden body now makes you practically invisible, but has not seen an increase in usage count. This distinguishes it from Ring of Fog, as opposed to being “slightly better, but not to any worthwhile degree” as it is in the unmodded game.
Power within now lasts 30 seconds instead of 100, New in 1.2 - no longer drains HP, and even further buffs stamina regen, but when it ends, it places an "exhaustion" debuff on the player that temporarily cripples stamina regen, movement speed, and outgoing damage.
Miracle Synergies now function a little differently. Well...they function the same, technically, but given that this mod is played offline, you don’t get synergies normally, outside of Ring of the Sun Princess. So, I’ve altered miracle synergy level 1 to be the same as level 4 for most affected miracles, but you will have to use Ring of the Sun Princess to gain this benefit.
New in 1.2 - Undead Rapport. Now has a much larger area of effect, and twice the uses, which should make it...not useless. Never personally used this pyromancy, so let me know how it works.
FF)Mechanics:Not much to say here, but there are a couple things to point out. In the Asylum and the first stage of Undead Burg, health values for enemies have been increased by 20%(you’ll see why this matters in the next segment.)
The second mechanical change involves scaling. In the unmodded game, once a stat reaches its 1stor 2ndsoft cap, there’s almost no reason to put anymore points into it. Putting points into strength from 50 to 99 resulted in such a paltry damage increase that it’s never worth it over something like vitality or endurance. It almost seemed like the game didn’t want you to play your character anymore when you factor this in with NG+’s sharply increased difficulty spike.
Now,strength, dex, faith, and int all provide steady growth all the way to 99 for most weapons, having the same curve from 10 to 99.Have fun.
The biggest mechanical change,however, is to Dragon Form. In the unmodded game, the dragon form is a fun novelty for a part of it, but became somewhat pointless around the time you place the lordvessel. The claw damage simply could not cope with higher health pools, and its very short range/lack of cleave made things awful. The torso stone’s damage increase was neat, but was so short lived and drained huge amounts of stamina that it didn’t really get much use in PvE outside of niche one-shot builds. Additionally, the breath attack was largely worthless.
That has all changed.
Now,when roaring as a dragon using the torso stone, the buff lasts 15 seconds at rank 0, 16.5 at rank 1, 19 at rank 2, and 20 at rank 3. Damage increase values have remained the same(from 20 to 30%) for the whole duration, but now you also getdamage resistance and stamina regen bonus for the duration.
Damage resist values are:
0% for rank 0
10% for rank 1
15% for rank 2
20% for rank 3
However, beware; embracing your inner dragon also makes you weaker to lightning for the durationof the buff, true to dragons of the age of ancients. The lightning damage taken increases per rank at the same rate of damage resistance to all other damage.
Additionally, because bare fists now scale with dex and strength, dragon claws now have dex and strength scaling, allowing your claws to be realistically viable through the whole game.
Finally, the breath weapon of the dragon head has seen a modest damage increase to make it more useful in PvE, and not just a meme.
GG)Classes:In the unmodded game, classes didn’t really have that much distinction from one another. You could start as a warrior and end up playing as a caster, which never really sat well with me. Perhaps the closest thing to an “overhaul” I have done with this mod involve the classes, now completely new, each with their own distinct themes, stats, and starting kits. Although not all of them are “lore friendly”, it does better shape each class’ playstyle through the early game; likewise, while still possible to shape any class to however build you like, you may find it more rewarding in the long term to capitalize on their innate strengths.
Fortunately, if you don’t like feeling “pigeon-holed”, I did make a class with fairly neutral stats, and a low soul level, who can basically become
anything. The goal of the mod isn’t to encourage or discourage any build, but to offer more player freedom to play as they want, after all.
It should be noted that they are considerably more powerful than the vanilla classes, but this is to compensate in the long term for NG+
difficulty. The initial boost in stats helps, and I have also increased the health of upper undead burg and the asylum enemies by 20% to somewhat compensate. Below are the listed classes, their starting gear, stats, and covenants.
**“Difficulty” purely refers to the early game – everything from the Asylum to the Capra Demon. The classes all tend to even out at a solid “medium” once they get to Anor Londo, at least in my experience. Most of these will still probably be easier than the unmodded classes.**
1) Black Knight of Gwyn
Starting gear: Black Knight set,black knightsword, black knight shield, flame stoneplate ring.
SL 16
Vit 10
Att 10
End 15
Str 20
Dex 18
Int 0
Fai 10
Res 15
Playstyle: Slow, tanky,hard-hitting melee fighter. High flame resist and physical defense. Ideal for high poise, heavy armor builds.
Covenant:Princess Guard (Covenant removed because of soft-locking player out of Ring of the Sun Princess)
Difficulty: Easy
2) Bonk
Starting gear: Large club,dung pie(x20), cloranthy ring.
SL 10
Vit 15
Att 0
End 20
Str 50
Dex 0
Int 0
Fai 0
Res 0
Playstyle: Throw poop, smashwith big stick. High melee damage, low defense, no magic skills. No thoughts, only smash.
Covenant: Way of the White
Difficulty: Med-hard.
3)Bloodletter
Starting gear: hollow thiefset, large leather shield, uchigatana, east wood grain ring.
SL 10
Vit 8
Att 8
End 20
Str 14
Dex 22
Int 6
Fai 6
Res 12
Playstyle: Nimble andrelentless with a bleed weapon, high potential melee damage, good with bows too, but somewhat frail. Ideal for dex weapons, bows, and curved swords.
Difficulty: Med-hard
4) Assassin
Starting gear: Shadow set,parry dagger, rapier, poison throwing knife x50, slumbering dragoncrest ring, ring of fog.
SL 7
Vit 6
Att 10
End 16
Str 14
Dex 18
Int 6
Fai 6
Res 10
Playstyle: Very fragile, butvery sneaky. Can sneak up on most non-boss enemies with ease. Bosses can prove troublesome early on. Ideal for ripostes, backstabs, and getting into places undetected.
Covenant: Darkmoon Blade
Difficulty: Hard(bosses),Easy(overworld)
5) Adventurer
Starting gear: Adventurer set,crystal straight sword(x2), crystal shield, covetous gold and silver
rings.
SL 5
Vit 14
Att 10
End 14
Str 12
Dex 12
Int 8
Fai 8
Res 6
Humanity 10
Playstyle: Versatile –starts with max item find, low soul level, and high soul gathering, but mediocre stats. Ideal for those who want a more custom build, or don’t want to spend as much time farming.
Difficulty: Medium
6) Londo Archer
Starting gear: Silver Knightset, silver knight shield, silver knight spear, dragonslayer greatbow, dragonslayer arrows(x250), thunder stoneplate ring.
SL 16
Vit 10
Att 8
End 15
Str 20
Dex 22
Int 0
Fai 10
Res 6
Playstyle: High lightning resist, starts with greatbow, high dex and strength, but low stats everywhere else. Ideal for feeling like a mobile anti-tank cannon, or those who simply like spears.
Covenant:Princess Guard (See Black Knight)
Difficulty: Easy
7) Battle Mage
Starting gear: Lord’s bladeset(chainmail coif in place of helmet), longsword, crystal ring shield, tin banishment catalyst, magic weapon, magic shield, homing soulmass, lingering dragoncrest ring.
SL 8
Vit 10
Att 14
End 10
Str 12
Dex 12
Int 20
Fai 6
Res 6
Playstyle: Mix magic andmelee, using spells to augment weapons and shield. Fairly decent defensive gear for a sorcery class, but far from tanky. Ideal for those who like sorcery.
Difficulty: Medium-hard
8) Trickster
Starting gear: Chester’s set, dark hand, pyromancy flame, chaos longsword, poison mist, black flame, ring of the evil eye.
SL 7
Vit 10
Att 14
End 14
Str 10
Dex 10
Int 8
Fai 0
Res 8
Playstyle: Weapon scales withhumanity, use dark hand to siphon it from friendlies like the evil bastard you are. Ideal for pyromancy and humanity farming.
Covenant: Darkwraith
Difficulty: Medium
9) Sunlight Warrior
Starting gear: Ironset(Solaire’s armor), sunlight shield, divine sunlight straight sword, sunlight talisman, replenishment, lightning spear, ring of the sun’s firstborn, sunlight medal(x20)
SL 15
Vit 13
Att 14
End 12
Str 15
Dex 10
Int 6
Fai 23
Res 6
Playstyle: Smite evil, praise the sun, wield lightning and heal wounds with magic. Archetypal paladin gameplay. Divine weapon is strong vs demons, ghosts, and undead. Ideal for miracle builds, and general well-rounded melee capabilities.
Covenant: Warrior of Sunlight
Difficulty: Easy
10) Dragon Adherent
Starting gear: Dragon head andtorso stones, wolf ring, tiny being’s ring, dragon scale(x20)
SL 14
Vit 25
Att 8
End 25
Str 5
Dex 5
Int 10
Fai 0
Res 60
Playstyle: Unleash your innerdragon, shred enemies with claws, burn them with fire, roar with all the savagery of those primordial beasts, and be their tool of vengeance against the gods. Ideal for those who want something a bit different.
Covenant: Path of the Dragon
Difficulty: Easy-medium.
Starting gifts have also been changed. Replaced some of the useless ones with useful ones, and also replaced the master key. The reason why is because the master key is a bit game-breaking on a new game playthrough, and with the newly designed classes and gear, is wholly unneeded. Consider it a balancing decision.(You can still purchase it from Domhnall of Zena as normal, which is fair to have for NG+)
The gift changes are…
1) “None” replaced with White Seance Ring(see Rings for changes)
2) Divine Blessing upped from 3 to 5.
3) Black Firebombs increased to 20.
4) Twin humanities increase from 1 to 5
5) Binoculars replaced with Soul of a Brave Warrior(5,000 souls when used)
6) Pendant replaced with Gold Pine Resin(x3)
7) Master Key replaced with a small bounty of titanite shards(10x small shards)
8) Tiny Being’s Ring replaced with Rare Ring of Sacrifice
9) Unchanged – consider it the new “none” option.
Particularly in NG+, the game’s flaws become quite apparent: at least to me. Slapping 2x damage and 1.8x health modifier on the whole game and calling it balanced, whilst retaining scaling soft and hard caps, along with atrocious drop rates of certain items, is where the game – in my humble opinion – ceases to be enjoyable. It’s as if beating Gwyn is more of a disappointment than an achievement, because the NG+ that awaits you is often an unenjoyable experience(at least for me; if you like that sort of thing,more power to you, but you’re not the target audience of this mod.)
To put it in simpler terms, Iam not a fan of every character ending up running around almost naked with the biggest stick or most powerful spell they can find, sitting at 20% hp for RTSR abusing.
This mod is my approach tofixing that: to make NG+ a more enjoyable continuation of your character, rather than the gameplay equivalent of the feeling you get when going to the dentist to get teeth pulled if you were to avoid glitches and hyper min-maxing. While you can still do similar things with this mod, the idea is that won’t feel like you have to or ought to.
What originally started as asimple buffing of armor defensive stats has gradually evolved into a much greater scale of various little tweaks to small parts of the game; though it looks like a lot, you’ll find that it’s still very much in the same spirit as the vanilla game – just better
optimized for an offline, single player experience(it’s without a doubt several facets of the game are balanced around online play, be
it co-op or PvP, leading to conflicts with single player.)
What it is NOT is a change tospawns, boss mechanics, movesets, or any changes to the world map.
These are simply tuning adjustments to what’s already in the game
for the most part, with the biggest changes being towards items that
were useless or near useless in offline play.
So who is this mod for?This mod is for…
People who want to wear armor without feeling like they’re gimping themselves.
People who want a somewhat different experience to regular DS1, without changing any environments or enemies.
People who want a more single-player optimized game.
People who want a somewhat easier, more RPG-like DS1 NG experience.
People who want crap gear andpointless upgrade paths to be at least viable.
People who want more viable build diversity in NG+ and beyond.
This mod is not for…
People who want an evengreater challenge than regular DS1
People who enjoy metagaming/speedrunning(you still can in this mod, but there’s no point)
People who want an overhaul ofmany mechanics, zones, bosses, and existing enemies
People who want new content –this is a tweak mod, not an expansion
Basically, as the nameimplies, it’s a bunch of tweaks built around a long term NG+
single-player experience with a little more emphasis on the RPG side
of the game in the form of new classes.
New in 1.2.1 - Vanilla Classes(optional file.) Though the mod, especially its classes, are designed around NG+, they are a bit "overpowered" for much of the early game on a basic New Game. So, for people who want a steadier, more classic experience, I have made an optional version of the mod with the original starting classes. Starting gifts are still the modded gifts, but the thief does start with the master key. This version of the mod contains all the changes listed below, except for the new classes. Have fun!
**Furthermore, it should benoted that all changes within the mod are intended for a
single-player, offline experience. If you find a way to play it
online, be it through some private means, it will probably be very
broken, with many changes feeling overpowered while somesimply won’t work. Likewise, you WILL get banned fromregular online play. You have been warned.**
(tl;dr –
Armor is better.
Bad weapons and bad upgradepaths have been buffed.
Drop rates for rare itemshave improved.
Multiplayer covenant tokensnow drop from PvE sources.
Some rings have beenchanged to be a bit more useful.
Covenant rings have PvEusage.
Dragon form is worthinvesting time into for more than just glass-cannon builds.
Dex, faith, strength, andint no longer have scaling softcaps.
Snuggly trading altered abit
All-new classes which arehighly distinct from each other.)
Install-Dragand drop msg, param, and paramdef folders into your game directory.
When asked to overwrite, click “Yes to all.” Loadup the game, play and enjoy.
Below are the changes indetail, and my reasoning behind them.
Contents(Ctrl+Fto find each topic):
AA– Armor
BB– Rings
CC– Weapons/Shields
DD– Drop Rates/loot
EE– Spells
FF– Mechanics
GG– Classes/Gifts
AA)Armor:Invanilla DS, armor quickly loses its value in keeping the player alive even in New Game, becoming apparent as early as the first trip to New Londo, and only getting worse from there. Even the most protective heavy armor in the game often feels like it wouldn’t be worth
wearing if not for the poise value, and even then, the value of poise vs more rolling iframes is questionable – not even worth considering in NG+. This is the first and primary reason I set out to make this mod.
Almost every single piece ofarmor in-game has had its defensive values increased in one way or
another.
For medium and heavy sets,base physical defense values have gone up by a very large amount across all sets, with heavy armor seeing the most drastic increase. The idea behind this is to serve as a much fairer compensation for sacrificing roll iframes, movement speed, and stamina recovery for damage reduction.
Additionally, this aims tomake medium and heavy armor sets much more viable in NG+. No longer will you be getting half your health bar taken away in a single hit while wearing full +5 Giant’s!
You won’t be able to just wade through hordes of enemies still, but you should feel like the protection you’re wearing is actually a useful investment, rather than just deadweight.
For light armor sets,almost all pieces of armor which previously lacked poise now at least has some(usually 5 per piece.) No longer will you get instantly stunlocked by a butterfly farting in your general direction. Additionally, light armor now often has more specialized elemental
and status-effect resistances, such as many “robe” type armors now offering exceptional magic, fire, or lightning defenses for their weight.
All changes to armor were made in consideration with their flavor text, lore, and their design in the vanilla game(example, the “black” set is said to have high magic resist, so I focused on that as opposed to arbitrarily increasing everything.)
New in 1.3 - Crystal Armor set:
The Crystal Set in DS1 has always intrigued me. First of all, it cannot be upgraded. Second, it has very steep repair costs and low durability. Third...it's kind of bad in spite of its description. So, I went ahead and buffed it - this is nothing new - however it's a bit different than the conventional defense buffs I gave most armor. It now has extremely good slash and thrust defense for its weight class, but has almost cripplingly poor defense against strike, and almost no elemental defenses to speak of. Additionally, some of the impact and movement sounds have been changed(it was using cloth/robe armor sounds for some reason.) Its weight has also been slightly reduced, down to a total of 26 units for the whole set. So what you have is a lightweight set with good poise and exceptional slash/thrust defense without needing upgrades, but also one with a number of drawbacks, making it a good physical defense set for low-endurance characters, but still not as good as a proper +10 or +5(twinkling) medium or heavy set.
BB)Rings: Rings are where, in my eyes, the most hideous imbalance of Dark Souls exists. Off the top of your head, you can probably think of only a handful of actually good rings in the game(not counting covenant rings which do nothing for offline play.) Worse yet, you only have 2 ring slots, many rings not even worth taking up one when it came to the old havel’s+FaP ring combo for melee, and lingering+slumbering for casters. I intended to break that meta. The changes made are as follows…
Ring of Favor and Protection:1.2x to health and stamina changed to 1.3x, equip load increase removed for the sake of not letting the armor changes be overpowered, no longer breaks when removed. I always had a love-hate relationship with this ring in the unmodded game; it was really good, too good to not have its drawbacks given how essential roll-speed was, but hated feeling locked into using it. It didn't help that most other rings were bad, or only good in conjunction with another.
Ring of Fog:75% visibility reduction changed to 95%. Reasoning for this is because, since this mod is intended to be played offline, the Ring of Fog can be tricky and risky to get otherwise, and in the unmodded game, the ring is pretty much useless. Even with 75% visibility reduction AND the slumbering dragoncrest ring, enemies still detected you very easily, making “stealthy” characters impossible. This ring, rare as it is in offline play, now thusly grants a benefit worthwhile of your precious ring slots.
Stoneplate rings/Steel Protection ring:Eachnow offers 400 resistance in their respective element, up from 50 – the speckled stoneplate gives 200 resistance to all(including physical.) Reasoning for this is because 50 defense/resistance may as well be nothing considering the damage output of PvE opponents; they’re utterly useless trash in the unmodded game, and one of the contributing factors to the “naked guy with a giant stick” PvE meta I hate so much. Now when you slip one of these bad boys on, you really feel its value...and you’ll miss it when you don’t have it.
Tiny Being’s Ring:AKA the “noob trap” of DS, but now you might want to consider using it. Instead of a slight HP increase, it now offers a steady trickle of constant healing. It isn’t much in the heat of combat, but 8hp every 2 seconds will save you a lot of estus and humanity in
the long term.
Poisonbite/Bloodbite rings:Vastly increased resistance multipliers to both, with the addition of poisonbite now offering Toxic protection as well(poison and toxic have different resistance values in the game - poisonbite previously did nothing vs toxic buildup.)
Wolf Ring:Poise value increased from 40 to 60. This makes the ring more valuable on light armor characters and, if you so desire, to become
almost unstaggerable with heavy armor. In the unmodded game, the ring was “okay”, particularly for lightweight builds, but hard to justify over the typical havel’s ring+fap ring combo meta.
Hawk Ring:Range increase with bows increased from 65 to 100. Now you can actually snipe from outside of aggro range, turning this ring from a mere novelty and way to cheese Manus, into something any keen-eyed bow-using character will want to have.
Ring of the Evil Eye:HP leeched from kills increased from 30 to 50. Not a big change, but something to make this otherwise mediocre ring worth considering, particularly during farming sessions far away from bonfires.
Silver Covetous Serpent Ring:Now 1.5x souls gained instead of 1.2x. Why? Because it loses value later in the game...which is exactly the stage of the game you find it at. Outside of forest hunters and painted world, there’s not much in the way of high-ish level soul farming.
Both Tearstone rings:Now activate at 40%HP instead of 20%. 20% HP in Dark Souls is basically dead, making the Blue Tearstone particularly worthless(especially on NG+). The Red Tearstone ring is a fickle beast that’s both useless andoverpowered at the same time, so to discourage abusing it for “loloneshot” builds without making it useless, it’s now 20% damage increase – still good, particularly when stacked with other buffs, but not ridiculous. Now they are good for everyone.
White Seance Ring:Redesigned. Slowly generates soft humanity(1 every 5 minutes.) Reason is because this ring was identical to the Darkmoon Seance Ring, which made little sense why 2 rings did the same thing. Now a starting gift as well.
Darkmoon Seance Ring:Same effect as vanilla, but 2 attunement slots up from 1
Darkmoon Blade Covenant Ring:Redesigned for offline play. Doubles magic damage, disables the player from doing any other type of damage(Magic meaning the damage school, not specifically sorceries.) This is designed not just for sorceries, but also for weapons with split magic and physical damage, offering a means to bring up to parity for high defense enemies(split damage weapons are worse against high defense opponents given how defense is calculated vs incoming AR in DS1)
Cat Covenant Ring:Redesigned for offline play. Reduces fall damage by 75%, and increases total stamina by 20%(stacks with FaP ring.)
New in 1.2:
Calamity Ring: On top of its normal effects, increases soul gain by 2x - stacks with symbol of avarice and covetous silver serpent ring. A high risk-high reward sort of thing, like a ring version of symbol of avarice.
CC)Weapons and Shields:Overall, most weapons in DS are very good so long as they’re used in the right circumstances. Some weapons, unfortunately, are bad no matter how you build your character, or simply aren’t worth the materials to upgrade, or effort to obtain. For most of these, it’s simply a matter of lackluster scaling not fairly compensating for a bad moveset – these were easy fixes, and many previously poor weapons now have good scaling to encourage using them in spite of their clumsy nature. These include whips, scythes, the morningstar, crossbows, and a couple others.
Some weapons, however,received some more special attention. These are as follows…
Divine weapons(all of them):All divine weapons, be it from upgrades or “special” weapons found in the world, now also have a damage increase against demons in addition to their damage increase against skeletons. For divine weapons made through upgrading regular weapons, this amounts to a 10% increase. For special weapons, it depends on the weapon – the % matches the original weapon’s damage increase against skeletons(Grant, for example, does 30%). Additionally, all divine weapons can now hit ghosts. The purpose in this is to make divine a competitive choice compared to occult, while still fitting in their themes.
In the unmodded game, occultweapons were much more useful overall than divine for faith builds, but now with the damage vs demons increase, and the ability to hurt ghosts, divine weapons now have another entire area in the game they’re particularly effective in.
Faith Scaling “special” weapons:Grant, Astora’s Straight Sword, and the Darkmoon bow now stand apart from regular divine weapons in that their damage now does a split between physical and lightning damage,instead of physical and magic damage. This makes these otherwise “mediocre” weapons much more appealing in that few enemies have good lightning resistance, compared to magic resist. Previously, Astora’s was regarded as a fairly bad weapon, as was the Darkmoon bow; Grant was good, but required a massive stat investment to use, making other weapons better when considering leveling points spent. Now all 3 should be much more “worth” using, without being overpowered.
Zweihander:Strength requirements increased from 24 to 30, dex from 10 to 12. Reason being is that such an amazingly powerful weapon obtainable and easy to wield at the start of the game often broke the game for melee characters. This is one of the few “nerfs” I put in. Still worth picking up, but it may be a little while(depending on the class) before you can use it. New in 1.2 - increased str scaling by 10%(also 10% for faith on occult/divine, and int on magic/enchanted) to compensate for the steep requirements.
Great Lord Greatsword:Added a permanent flame visual effect, gave a small amount of fire damage, added D faith scaling, and made it decent at guarding against lightning and fire damage. Finally,it has a 40% damage increase vs “Abyss” type creatures, similar to Greatsword of Artorias. In the unmodded game, the GLGS was an atrocious disappointment unless you built specifically for it, and even then, it was still pretty mediocre given its poor moveset. Now, it should feel like a proper NG+ weapon. Not overpowered, and still requiring some investment to make the most out of it, but nice reward for defeating Gwyn.
GhostBlade/Jagged Ghost Blade:Now have C scaling with dex, and no scaling with strength. Thesehave always been fantastic weapons early on, but fell off somewhat quickly.
Most dragon weapons:Now have a 20% increase against “god” type enemies – this is both to preserve their value in NG+, also as a thematic reason given the rivalry between dragons and gods. Already powerful dragon weapons, such as the MLGS and Priscilla’s dagger, do not have such bonus.
Greataxes:All now do 55 points of poise damage, up from 50. The reason for this is because Ultra Greatswords, with their wide, sweeping light attacks, were always better for PvE than greataxes or great hammers. The lack of cleave makes me believe greataxes and greathammers should do more poise damage to compensate.
Greathammers:All now do 60 points of poise damage. See reasoning above.
Barbed Straightsword:Bleed “damage” increased from 33 to 50. This sword was otherwise useless compared to Katanas. Note that the bleed still does 30% of an enemy’s health as damage – only the bleed status buildup has been changed.
Morning Star:Same as above(funnily enough, both share the same bleed effect – changing one changed both!)
Poison Throwing Knives:Guaranteed to poison the enemy, unless they’re totally immune. Poison damage changed from 3 to 5 damage per tick. Very useful for fragile and quick characters.
Poison Arrows:Poison buildup increased from 50 to 150; it should take only 2 shots at most to poison enemies. Poison damage increase from 3 to 5 per tick. Reason for this and the knives is that I see these weapons as primarily useful for long distance takedowns of tough enemies certain builds may not be suited to melee with. (Noone likes feeling forced to play builds they don’t want to.)
Parrying Dagger:Perhaps the most significant change to a single weapon I’ve done. The parry dagger, when in the off-hand, can now be used to block like a shield. It features a very high stability, but only blocks 50% of incoming physical damage. Additionally, when wielding it, it has the same effect as the Hornet Ring – increasing critical damage(backstabs, ripostes) by 30%. This makes it a viable, and unique, alternative to the buckler and target shield.
Sanctus:Such a cool lookingshieldwith such a pointless effect in the unmodded game. HP tick has been increased from 2hp/2sec to 8hp/2sec. Additionally, it now blocks 100% of physical damage up from 95%, and has seen a considerable increase to fire damage blocking. However, the shield now also requires more faith to wield.
Astora’s Straight Sword:Aside from much better faith scaling and previously mentioned lightning damage, now requires more faith to wield(18, up from 14). No longer a quickly disposed starter weapon, and though easy to obtain, will require a bit of investment to use for allexcept one of the new classes.
Fists...yes,your bare fists:Now have C scaling for both dex and strength. For most characters, they won’t even come close to competing with your primary weapon, however...those who walk the path of the dragon may find this most useful.
Demon’s Great Hammer:Now does a small amount of additional fire damage, on top of its physical damage. Modifying the weapon does not change this.
Crossbows:Now have scaling, favoring strength over dex in most cases, given the draw weight of a crossbow being greater as a cost for being easier to wield. Bows still scale much better, but crossbows have higher base damage.
Greatshields:All greatshields have had their stability increased slightly, and deflection increased from 65, to 75(with a couple unique exceptions.) Additionally, their “bash” function in the unmodded game was greatly underutilized because of its...well...uselessness. Shields which could parry were almost always better than greatshields for experienced players. Now, bashing with a shield does a huge amount of poise damage, likely to stagger most non-boss enemies in a single hit.
Shields in general:Upgrade paths have been enhanced, namely with fire, magic, divine, and crystal paths. Previously, there was no reason to upgrade shields outside of the normal route in most cases. Now greatshields see an increase in fire, magic, and lightning damage reduction when upgraded down those paths like their medium and light shield cousins; additionally, divine and crystal shields now offer new benefits – divine increases lightning protection even further at the cost of drastically reducing magic protection, whereas crystal now greatly increases stability.
Crystal Upgrade Path:A complete waste of titanite in the unmodded game. Now requires twinkling titanite instead of chunks and slabs, making it actually useful in its intended purpose for high-damage throwaway weapons.
Raw Upgrade Path:Useful in the early part of New Game, but never useful afterwards. Now increases critical damage(the idea is that the jagged edges would cause more bleeding...or something, idk.)
A few weapons have also had their wielding requirements adjusted slightly.
New in 1.2 - Stamina and blocking retuning(Significant changes ahead)
Movesets make a big impact on the effectiveness of a weapon, especially in PvP, but in PvE...it's not "as" big of a deal. This means 2handing a weapon is rarely worth losing a shield in the offhand, be it for parries or simply blocking. Likewise, I found it a bit nonsense that typically 2handed weapons were more stamina-efficient with one hand than 2, as in DS PvE, enemies either have almost no poise or so much, that the added poise damage from 2handing doesn't make a difference.
So, in the spirit of "logic", 2handing typically 2handed weapons(greatswords, ultragreatswords, greathammers, greataxes, and most pole weapons), will now cost less stamina than wielding it with one hand, allowing it to compete with having a shield in the offhand. You gain significantly better offensive capability, at a cost of losing the ability to block effectively.
On the notion of blocking, a few weapons have been made a bit less "worthless" for blocking. They'll still be inferior to all shields in the vast majority of cases, but now blocking with some weapons feels like it's no longer pointless - namely polearms and greatswords.
In fact, the bastard sword in particular now has traits to better distinguish from the claymore other than "worse moveset, slightly better damage" - it is now the most "defensive" of the greatswords, featuring 65% physical damage reduction when blocking, high stability, and medium deflection. This reflects the weapon's real life fame for being a versatile weapon for all manner of swordsman duels.
New in 1.2 - Spears have a better defined role.
Spears(and thrusting swords) in DS1 have the unique trait of being able to attack while blocking, but in the unmodded game, it has a massive stamina drain to it, rendering it not very effective outside of some niche PvP situations.
I have changed spears to have equalized stamina consumption for 2hand and 1hand light attacks, but more importantly, they now make much greater use in attacking from behind a shield. Doing so now costs much less stamina(different weapons have different values, of course), increases damage vs blocking opponents, and doubles poise damage, HOWEVER, it also does 10% less damage than a normal attack, trading offense for an efficient sort of crowd-control defense.
Thrusting swords have also received reduced stamina consumption when used in such a manner, but lack the poise/guard damage increase, making them a hybrid of sorts.
New in 1.2 - Dual Wielding is a bit better.
All dagger-type weapons now deal 30% more damage when wielded in the off-hand, and all curved swords deal 10% more damage in the off-hand(barring special off-hand attacks.) This is an attempt, similar in the same vein as the "2handing vs 1handing" thing above, to make more offense feel justified for the loss of defense, just in a different way.
New in 1.2 - Estoc(minor change):
Unique among thrusting swords, it has also received the same treatment as aforementioned "2hand" type weapons, being more efficient in 2hands than 1, true to its real life counterpart basically being a long pointy piece of metal designed to punch through armor.
New in 1.2 - Whips(minor change):
All whips now ignore blocking.
New in 1.3 - Greatbows:
Greatbows in unmodded DS1 were kind of...disappointing. They did decent damage, sure, but a regular bows could easily out-DPS them. So, both greatbows have had a bit of buffing to them to really make them feel like weapons that could take down a dragon. Their base damage has been increased a bit, arrow damage has been doubled for them, and now they do massive poise damage+knockback against opponents. Their stamina consumption and other drawbacks have remained unchanged.
New in 1.3 - Elemental Upgrade Paths:
In unmodded DS1, Lightning and Fire upgrades serve a decent purpose as a fallback melee weapon on characters not invested in melee abilities, and I wanted to preserve that. However, the issue with split-damage weapons is that an opponent's defense values "double-dip" against the damage they deal, meaning a split-damage weapon of the same AR as a single-damage weapon would often do much less than what the AR indicates. So, fire and lightning upgrade paths have been changed a little - the further you advance a weapon down either, the more elemental damage it does at the cost of physical damage. This may seem like a nerf or neutral change, but it's actually a significant buff to fire and lightning weapons because of how defense interacts with AR. Lightning and fire weapons still do not scale, however, and the sacrifice in physical damage means opponents highly resilient to fire or lightning will be almost immune.
DD)Drop Rates and Loot Pools:Modsare generally not meant for online play. Because of that, playing offline with them often means you miss out on a lot of things, namely covenant-related, but also when it comes to trading rare goods. In the unmodded game, drop rates for many items, namely crafting materials and certain weapons, are so atrociously low that you could spend days farmingthem and still not see a single drop. Ridiculous! I have changed drop rates ofmany atrociously rare items to be a bit more fair for an offline, single-player experience, and also made certain multiplayer items now drop from particular enemies. Changes of note are as follows…
Rats humanity drop rate 15%up from 5%
Crystal hollow soldiers drop souveniers of reprisal at a rate of 15%
All titanite slabs and chunks are now much more common from random sources
Blue drakes now drop 5scales at a 50% rate.
Hydras now give 10scales per kill.
Undead dragons now give 20scalesper kill.
Basilisks drop 2 eyes of death at a 15% chance.
Chaos bugs now drop 5 sunlight medals at a much higher rate.
Eye of Death, Sunlight medal, and Dragon scales from “world” sources(chests, corpses,
etc) all increased.
All “rare” weapons previously under 5% drop rate have been given a 5% drop rate from
their respective sources.
Purging stones are less-common from man-eater shells, but twinkling titanite is more
common.
Symbol of Avarice is somewhat more common, but still rare.
A few other, minor tweaks.
New in 1.2 - Frampt weapon feeding values.
Frampt will now grant more souls for modified weapons, and especially unique weapons.
The formula for most weapons is as follows:
Normal/crystal - unchanged
Raw - 500
Magic - 3,000
Divine - 3,000
Fire - 4,000
Enchanted/lightning/occult/chaos - 5,000
This is all based on the availability of embers and upgrade costs. I want to find a way to make "normal" also be more valuable for +6 and +11, but I cannot figure out how to do that at the moment. Special/boss weapons are often much more valuable, usually worth slightly more than consuming the boss soul itself.
New in 1.2.1 - Frampt shield feeding values.
See above - shields follow the same pricing format.
New in 1.2 - "Goodies"
Occasionally, while adventuring through Lordran, you may stumble across the odd rare treasure from seemingly unsuspecting enemies. Perhaps some coins from distant lands, or useful items like pine resins, repair powders, or even poison knives. Not every creature can drop everything, as I've tried keep certain items appropriately thematic, but it's a little something to keep things interesting.
EE)Spells:Sorceries, pyromancies, and miracles have all seen some amount of changes overall, but nothing terribly drastic. Magic in the unmodded game was already fairly powerful, with the only major issue often being that spells lacked enough uses to be useful outside of PvP.
Many sorceries, pyromancies, and miracles have seen their usage count greatly increased. Notable examples are sunlight/darkmoon blade,
magic weapon(all ranks), magic shield(all ranks),lightning spear, and sunlight spear. There are even more, but listing them all would take too long.
Poison and toxic misthave had their poison damage increased. Should be useful spells now outside of cheesing through barriers.
Hidden body now makes you practically invisible, but has not seen an increase in usage count. This distinguishes it from Ring of Fog, as opposed to being “slightly better, but not to any worthwhile degree” as it is in the unmodded game.
Power within now lasts 30 seconds instead of 100, New in 1.2 - no longer drains HP, and even further buffs stamina regen, but when it ends, it places an "exhaustion" debuff on the player that temporarily cripples stamina regen, movement speed, and outgoing damage.
Miracle Synergies now function a little differently. Well...they function the same, technically, but given that this mod is played offline, you don’t get synergies normally, outside of Ring of the Sun Princess. So, I’ve altered miracle synergy level 1 to be the same as level 4 for most affected miracles, but you will have to use Ring of the Sun Princess to gain this benefit.
New in 1.2 - Undead Rapport. Now has a much larger area of effect, and twice the uses, which should make it...not useless. Never personally used this pyromancy, so let me know how it works.
FF)Mechanics:Not much to say here, but there are a couple things to point out. In the Asylum and the first stage of Undead Burg, health values for enemies have been increased by 20%(you’ll see why this matters in the next segment.)
The second mechanical change involves scaling. In the unmodded game, once a stat reaches its 1stor 2ndsoft cap, there’s almost no reason to put anymore points into it. Putting points into strength from 50 to 99 resulted in such a paltry damage increase that it’s never worth it over something like vitality or endurance. It almost seemed like the game didn’t want you to play your character anymore when you factor this in with NG+’s sharply increased difficulty spike.
Now,strength, dex, faith, and int all provide steady growth all the way to 99 for most weapons, having the same curve from 10 to 99.Have fun.
The biggest mechanical change,however, is to Dragon Form. In the unmodded game, the dragon form is a fun novelty for a part of it, but became somewhat pointless around the time you place the lordvessel. The claw damage simply could not cope with higher health pools, and its very short range/lack of cleave made things awful. The torso stone’s damage increase was neat, but was so short lived and drained huge amounts of stamina that it didn’t really get much use in PvE outside of niche one-shot builds. Additionally, the breath attack was largely worthless.
That has all changed.
Now,when roaring as a dragon using the torso stone, the buff lasts 15 seconds at rank 0, 16.5 at rank 1, 19 at rank 2, and 20 at rank 3. Damage increase values have remained the same(from 20 to 30%) for the whole duration, but now you also getdamage resistance and stamina regen bonus for the duration.
Damage resist values are:
0% for rank 0
10% for rank 1
15% for rank 2
20% for rank 3
However, beware; embracing your inner dragon also makes you weaker to lightning for the durationof the buff, true to dragons of the age of ancients. The lightning damage taken increases per rank at the same rate of damage resistance to all other damage.
Additionally, because bare fists now scale with dex and strength, dragon claws now have dex and strength scaling, allowing your claws to be realistically viable through the whole game.
Finally, the breath weapon of the dragon head has seen a modest damage increase to make it more useful in PvE, and not just a meme.
GG)Classes:In the unmodded game, classes didn’t really have that much distinction from one another. You could start as a warrior and end up playing as a caster, which never really sat well with me. Perhaps the closest thing to an “overhaul” I have done with this mod involve the classes, now completely new, each with their own distinct themes, stats, and starting kits. Although not all of them are “lore friendly”, it does better shape each class’ playstyle through the early game; likewise, while still possible to shape any class to however build you like, you may find it more rewarding in the long term to capitalize on their innate strengths.
Fortunately, if you don’t like feeling “pigeon-holed”, I did make a class with fairly neutral stats, and a low soul level, who can basically become
anything. The goal of the mod isn’t to encourage or discourage any build, but to offer more player freedom to play as they want, after all.
It should be noted that they are considerably more powerful than the vanilla classes, but this is to compensate in the long term for NG+
difficulty. The initial boost in stats helps, and I have also increased the health of upper undead burg and the asylum enemies by 20% to somewhat compensate. Below are the listed classes, their starting gear, stats, and covenants.
**“Difficulty” purely refers to the early game – everything from the Asylum to the Capra Demon. The classes all tend to even out at a solid “medium” once they get to Anor Londo, at least in my experience. Most of these will still probably be easier than the unmodded classes.**
1) Black Knight of Gwyn
Starting gear: Black Knight set,black knightsword, black knight shield, flame stoneplate ring.
SL 16
Vit 10
Att 10
End 15
Str 20
Dex 18
Int 0
Fai 10
Res 15
Playstyle: Slow, tanky,hard-hitting melee fighter. High flame resist and physical defense. Ideal for high poise, heavy armor builds.
Covenant:
Difficulty: Easy
2) Bonk
Starting gear: Large club,dung pie(x20), cloranthy ring.
SL 10
Vit 15
Att 0
End 20
Str 50
Dex 0
Int 0
Fai 0
Res 0
Playstyle: Throw poop, smashwith big stick. High melee damage, low defense, no magic skills. No thoughts, only smash.
Covenant: Way of the White
Difficulty: Med-hard.
3)Bloodletter
Starting gear: hollow thiefset, large leather shield, uchigatana, east wood grain ring.
SL 10
Vit 8
Att 8
End 20
Str 14
Dex 22
Int 6
Fai 6
Res 12
Playstyle: Nimble andrelentless with a bleed weapon, high potential melee damage, good with bows too, but somewhat frail. Ideal for dex weapons, bows, and curved swords.
Difficulty: Med-hard
4) Assassin
Starting gear: Shadow set,parry dagger, rapier, poison throwing knife x50, slumbering dragoncrest ring, ring of fog.
SL 7
Vit 6
Att 10
End 16
Str 14
Dex 18
Int 6
Fai 6
Res 10
Playstyle: Very fragile, butvery sneaky. Can sneak up on most non-boss enemies with ease. Bosses can prove troublesome early on. Ideal for ripostes, backstabs, and getting into places undetected.
Covenant: Darkmoon Blade
Difficulty: Hard(bosses),Easy(overworld)
5) Adventurer
Starting gear: Adventurer set,crystal straight sword(x2), crystal shield, covetous gold and silver
rings.
SL 5
Vit 14
Att 10
End 14
Str 12
Dex 12
Int 8
Fai 8
Res 6
Humanity 10
Playstyle: Versatile –starts with max item find, low soul level, and high soul gathering, but mediocre stats. Ideal for those who want a more custom build, or don’t want to spend as much time farming.
Difficulty: Medium
6) Londo Archer
Starting gear: Silver Knightset, silver knight shield, silver knight spear, dragonslayer greatbow, dragonslayer arrows(x250), thunder stoneplate ring.
SL 16
Vit 10
Att 8
End 15
Str 20
Dex 22
Int 0
Fai 10
Res 6
Playstyle: High lightning resist, starts with greatbow, high dex and strength, but low stats everywhere else. Ideal for feeling like a mobile anti-tank cannon, or those who simply like spears.
Covenant:
Difficulty: Easy
7) Battle Mage
Starting gear: Lord’s bladeset(chainmail coif in place of helmet), longsword, crystal ring shield, tin banishment catalyst, magic weapon, magic shield, homing soulmass, lingering dragoncrest ring.
SL 8
Vit 10
Att 14
End 10
Str 12
Dex 12
Int 20
Fai 6
Res 6
Playstyle: Mix magic andmelee, using spells to augment weapons and shield. Fairly decent defensive gear for a sorcery class, but far from tanky. Ideal for those who like sorcery.
Difficulty: Medium-hard
8) Trickster
Starting gear: Chester’s set, dark hand, pyromancy flame, chaos longsword, poison mist, black flame, ring of the evil eye.
SL 7
Vit 10
Att 14
End 14
Str 10
Dex 10
Int 8
Fai 0
Res 8
Playstyle: Weapon scales withhumanity, use dark hand to siphon it from friendlies like the evil bastard you are. Ideal for pyromancy and humanity farming.
Covenant: Darkwraith
Difficulty: Medium
9) Sunlight Warrior
Starting gear: Ironset(Solaire’s armor), sunlight shield, divine sunlight straight sword, sunlight talisman, replenishment, lightning spear, ring of the sun’s firstborn, sunlight medal(x20)
SL 15
Vit 13
Att 14
End 12
Str 15
Dex 10
Int 6
Fai 23
Res 6
Playstyle: Smite evil, praise the sun, wield lightning and heal wounds with magic. Archetypal paladin gameplay. Divine weapon is strong vs demons, ghosts, and undead. Ideal for miracle builds, and general well-rounded melee capabilities.
Covenant: Warrior of Sunlight
Difficulty: Easy
10) Dragon Adherent
Starting gear: Dragon head andtorso stones, wolf ring, tiny being’s ring, dragon scale(x20)
SL 14
Vit 25
Att 8
End 25
Str 5
Dex 5
Int 10
Fai 0
Res 60
Playstyle: Unleash your innerdragon, shred enemies with claws, burn them with fire, roar with all the savagery of those primordial beasts, and be their tool of vengeance against the gods. Ideal for those who want something a bit different.
Covenant: Path of the Dragon
Difficulty: Easy-medium.
Starting gifts have also been changed. Replaced some of the useless ones with useful ones, and also replaced the master key. The reason why is because the master key is a bit game-breaking on a new game playthrough, and with the newly designed classes and gear, is wholly unneeded. Consider it a balancing decision.(You can still purchase it from Domhnall of Zena as normal, which is fair to have for NG+)
The gift changes are…
1) “None” replaced with White Seance Ring(see Rings for changes)
2) Divine Blessing upped from 3 to 5.
3) Black Firebombs increased to 20.
4) Twin humanities increase from 1 to 5
5) Binoculars replaced with Soul of a Brave Warrior(5,000 souls when used)
6) Pendant replaced with Gold Pine Resin(x3)
7) Master Key replaced with a small bounty of titanite shards(10x small shards)
8) Tiny Being’s Ring replaced with Rare Ring of Sacrifice
9) Unchanged – consider it the new “none” option.