123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Demon's Souls FAQ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 2.0 05 Nov 2009 For PS3 by Lee Beng Hai a.k.a. Volume a.k.a. Cold_Drake PSN ID: Cold_Drake Google Wave: benghai@googlewave.com My lastest email address can be found at http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/recognition/684.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This FAQ is meant for personal use only. You may host this document on your web site if you like. There is no need to seek my permission. You can find the latest copy of this FAQ at http://www.gamefaqs.com/ The info in the FAQ may be in conflict with the official deluxe guide I wrote for Atlus. Please take note the deluxe guide has a lot more stuff and is more accurate than this guide, especially the portion of World and Character Tendency. Unfortunately, I will not be able to "copy" those information into this guide due to legal issues. (c) Copyright 2009 by Lee Beng Hai. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01. Introduction 02. Soul level 03. Weapon rating 04. Character Build - Assassin Build 05. Weapon upgrades 06. Magical and Physical Damage Enhancement 07. Soul and Body Form 08. World and Character Tendency (WT & CT) 09. World Tendency Events 10. New Game+ 11. Combat 101 12. Walkthrough 13. Game Patches 14. Asian vs NA version 15. Game play video 16. Acknowledgement 17. Revision History --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01. Introduction --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a very unique game and is mainly for very hardcore gamers. Unlike recent games where the gamers are well pampered, there is only one word to describe this game: BRUTAL. You will be forced to actually build up your gaming skills if you ever want to do well in the game. After spending an hour with the game, most of the well pampered gamers will probably give up and look for an easier game. On the other hand, for those gamers who wanted to prove to others that they are real gamers, they will persist and eventually defeat the game. After achieving it, restart a new game with a fresh character and you will find that everything had became so easy. And you wonder why did you ever had any difficulty with the game earlier on. Such is an experience any true gamers would like to experience. The saying "What don't kill you make you stronger" is so true in this game. Demon's Souls will torment you over and over again until you are strong enough to survive the experience. So, flee now and don't read further if you are looking for an easy game to earn your platinum trophy. Note: A portion of this material was posted in the english Demon's Souls earlier using my PSN ID Cold_Drake. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02. Soul Level --------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the game starts, you are unable to gain any soul levels until you had defeated the first Boss, Phalanx. After that, talk to the Maiden in Black, then look for the Monumental at the higher levels of the Nexus. Once you had spoken to the Monumental, the Maiden in Black will let you raise your soul levels. Take note that after all Bosses in the world were defeated, the Maiden In Black will not let you gain any more soul levels until you start the next game cycle. The amount of souls that are required to gain soul levels increases gradually until it get harder and harder to reach the higher levels. So, please do some homework and have an idea of how your final character will look look, those stats points should not be used casually. Here’s some figures to illustrate my points: To reach soul level 10 from 9, you need 825 souls. To reach soul level 100 from 99, you need 60625 souls. To reach soul level 150 from 149, you need 161295 souls. To reach soul level 207 from 206, you need 329477 souls. To reach soul level 315 from 314, you need 961115 souls. To reach soul level 712 from 711, you need 8844424 souls. For those melee type characters, they may want to invest points into Vitality, Endurance, Strength and Dexterity. For ranged characters with a bow, you will want points in Dexterity. For mage, you will want points in Magic and for priest, you want points in Faith. The way soul levels are computed is as follows: At level 0, you have a total of 80 stats points. At level 712, you have a total of 792 stats points giving you full stats of 99 in all 8 stats. Each time you gain a soul level, you get 1 point to add to your stats. It is reasonable to assume that you will get to around soul level 150-200 when you are done with the game without too much grinding. If you grind a lot, you can get to the range of soul level 200-400. Anything beyond that, you probably make use of the soul glitch. For those who just want to plough through the game without too much problem, you can create a level 712 character easily. However, I will not discuss the so called soul glitch method in this FAQ. There is another approach which some gamers used to redistribute their stats when they want to adjust certain stats point that was put into the wrong stats. This can be done using the de-leveling trick. The basic idea is that you lose 1 soul level when you invade another player’s game as a black phantom and get yourself killed but not by the host. You can always invade and jump off a cliff. The stats removed will be a random stats, it cannot goes below your initial class level. Another popular method is to let False King cast Soul Sucker on you to drain your soul level by 1. I was told that this allows you to get negative stats. So if you have a Luck of -99, those extra 99 points can be placed elsewhere. The de-level trick however will never reduce the Vitality stats. Any points placed there will stay there permanently. So, if you made a mistake putting the stats wrongly, you can adjust it later with the exception of Vitality. Take note that you will have to gain back those lost levels by collecting more souls. It may also disallow you to equip certain items because your stats no longer met the requirements. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03. Weapon Rating --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this game, the weapon came with some ratings, indicated by S, A, B, C, D and E. S is the best stats modifier you can find in the game. It is indicated in the form of Str/Dex/Magic/Faith. A ‘-‘ means the corresponding stats had no effect on the modifier. Some weapon had a few stats modifiers, e.g. E/E/-/-. The dominant stats for your weapon are Str, Dex, Magic and Faith. If you look at your weapon, there is base stats that is fixed and another modifier beside it indicating the ratings bonus. e.g. base attack 100, modifier +10. If your stats is unable to meet the basic requirements of the weapon, you will get negative modifiers. An exception to this rule is when you wield the weapon two handed. In this case, the stats requirement is lowered. The modifier ratings can be roughly estimated as follows: S - +200% +/- ? of base stats A - +100% +/- ? of base stats B - +80% +/- ? of base stats C - +60% +/- ? of base stats D - +40% +/- ? of base stats E - +20% +/- ? of base stats Note: the above figures assume you have a stats of 99. Here’s some weapon to illustrate the point. Mirdan Hammer +10 Physical Attack 190 +176 (Str 99, Dex 99) C/D/-/- 176 is 92.6% of 190. C + D is 100%. You get a bit less than expected. Quality Winged Spear +5 Physical Attack 149 +199 (Str 99, Dex 99) C/C-/-/- 199 is 134% of 149. C + C is 120%. You get a bit more than expected. Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 Physical Attack 68 +114 (Str 99, Dex 99) E/S/-/- With Heavy Arrows: 68 +342 (Str 99, Dex 99) 342 is 224% of (68 + 85 base attack of heavy arrow) E + S = 220% You get slightly more than expected. As you can see, the above formula is just a rough guide but should be considered a reasonable estimation. Here’s an attempt to calculate the modifier when your stats is lesser than 99. A rough guide is that at around 30, you should be getting about 50% of the modifier at 99. This is because the effect of adding points to a stats diminished after a while. So if you expect to get +100 at Str 99. Here’s how it may look: Str 30 - +50 (50%) Str 31 - +50 Str 32 - +51 Str 33 - +52 Str 34 - +52 Str 35 - +53 ... Str 99 - +100 (100%) Again, this a rough estimate. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04. Character Build - Assassin Build --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Different gamers have different set of skills. Some had superb reflexes and can handle large number of foes without getting a scratch. While others may prefer to keep their distance from the enemies and try to take them down with a more cautious approach. In Demon’s Souls, even if you had attained the higher levels, it is still better to take a more cautious approach. Always keep your shield up while moving or running. There are many places where enemies can ambush and kill you if you let your guard down. If you fell off a cliff, even a Dex of 99 will not save you. In my walkthrough, I used a very specialize character that focus on dealing the maximum amount of damage possible. Since the main focus is on the damage output, he/she will have very low vitality and endurance. With a low endurance, you don’t expect to wear those heavy armor tailored for Male character. The build also relies on special item such as the Clever Rat’s Ring which boost your physical and magical damage when your HP is <30%. This further reduces the effectiveness of adding stats point to Vitality. My character focused mainly on ranged attacks and spells. My play style is in general more cautious and prefer to kill enemies from far. In close range, I will try to ambush my enemies. As such, I call it the Assasin Build. I used a Female Royal as the base character since she begins at level 1 and have stats closest to my final build. She will be using the Clever Rat’s Ring most of the time so her HP will be <30% most of the time. You will probably get killed easily if you are not careful. To do well in this build, you need to able to block and dodge well. If you have difficulty doing that, you may want to add some point to Vitality or try another build. Stats allocation for my Assassin Build Vitality 8 In Body Form, you have 530 HP. In Soul Form, neutral character and world tendency, you have 265 HP. When using Clever Rat’s Ring, at <30% HP, you have 79 HP. As you can see, you will be at 79 HP or less more of the time. So you better keep your distance and take the enemies out before they get near. If you have problem playing the game using this style, you should stop following my guide and go for a melee build. For melee build, since you are near the enemies most of the time, you should have a Vitality of around 30 to 40. Endurance 8 In order to roll, you need to keep your equip weight less than 50% of the total equip weight. You will not be expected to wear medium or heavy armor for this build. Take note that if you go for a melee build, endurance need to be increased since you may want to wear heavier armor and wield heavier weapon. It is recommended to stop increasing Endurance once you have max your Stamina at 160. Will 12 Increase it gradually until you have 200 MP. If you wear the Silver Coronet, you only need to aim for 167 MP. If you want to wear the Monk’s Head Collar, you need more points here. 200 allows you to cast Rage of God (100 MP per casting) twice. Strength 9 Increase it to 22 and stop. This is the basic requirement for Purple Flame Shield. Dex 12. Increase it to 30 gradually and then stop. If you increase it further, you will find that the damage output started to decreased from here. Before Dex 30 you get +6 damage for each point, after 30, you get +2 damage. This observation is done using a Viscous Compound Long Bow +5. Is an additional +138 damage worth 69 stats points. IMO, I will just shoot another arrow. Arrows are cheap, stats points are not. Magic 13. Increase it gradually. No limit. Since the benefit tapered off after a while, it is recommended to keep it close to Faith to made use of the D/-/C/C rating of the Talisman of Beasts. Faith 12. Increase it gradually. No limit. Since the benefit tapered off after a while, it is recommended to keep it close to Magic to made use of the D/-/C/C rating of the Talisman of Beasts. Luck 7 Increase it to 8 and then stop. I am not sure whether it is a glitch or not, but a character with Luck 8 had a better rare item drop than a Luck 99 character. In general, a Luck 99 character will get more drops but most are lesses quality drops. On the other hand, a Luck 8 character will have less drops, but on average, the drop are much better in term of quality. Main weapons for my build. Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 (Wt. 2.0) (upgrade from Compound Long Bow +3 at Blacksmith Ed) Moon Winged Spear +5 (Wt. 3.0) (upgrade from Winged Spear +6 at Blacksmith Ed) Purple Flame Shield +10 (Wt. 8.0) Adjudictator's Shield +5 (Wt. 3.5) Talisman of Beast (Wt. 0.2) Ammos: Heavy Arrows, Light Arrows, White Arrows. Miracles: Rage of God, Evacuation Spells: Soul Arrow, Soul Light, Moving Soul Arrow, etc. Depends on the situation. Armor Head - Silver Coronet (Wt 0.9) (+20% MP) Arm - Black Gloves (Wt 0.7) Body - Black Leather (Wt 1.2) Leg - Black Boot (Wt 0.7) Miscellaneous items Crescent Falcion +5 (for MP regeneration) (get Crecent Falcion +1 at 4-1) Blessed Mace +5 (for HP regeneration) (get Blessed Mace +1 at 5-1) Regenerator's Ring (for HP regeneration) Fragrant Ring (for MP regeneration) (you get it if you start with a Royal) Thief's Ring (most useful Ring for my build) Ring of Avarice (for farming only)(don't wear it with the Thief's Ring or you loses the Hide ability) Silver Bracelet (female only) (for farming only) (don't wear it with the Thief's Ring or you loses the Hide ability) Magic Sword "Makoto" (for reducing your HP to <30%) Morion Blade (for increase damage) (for my build, you will get it in New Game+) (boost damage further when HP <30%, limited usage) Point allocation scheme Focus on getting the stats so that you can equip the main equipment. Increase Luck to 8. Increase Str to 22. Increase both Magic and Faith to 18 for Talisman of Beast. Increase Dex to 30. Add points to Magic and Faith, keep them almost the same until you reach Magic 99 and Faith 99. Increase Dex to 99. (Quite unlikely) Increase Str to 99. (I doubt you can reach this stage) How to use my build effectively. Basic setup: Left: Viscous Compound Long Bow / Purple Flame Shield Right: Mooned Winged Spear / Talisman of God For the first time through the game, the enemies don’t hit so hard. So wearing a Cling Ring (+40% current max HP) helps a bit. In New Game+, you can replace it with another ring such as Clever Rat’s Ring or Ring of Sincere Prayer. Always wear a Thief’s Ring unless you have something better to replace it. Wearing this ring make you almost invisible to enemies and this allows you to get a first strike with a spell or arrow. If you power it up with Clever Rat’s and others, you may be able to kill the enemies before they have a chance to attack you. This approach will keep you free from most danger. You have to know the level by heart. The enemies are situated at fixed spot including those ambush spot. If you were caught by surprise, you have a higher chance to get injured or killed. For enemies that are in range of a bow. Find a good spot to snipe them. You may not be able to kill them with a single heavy arrow at first. But with the help of the Clever Rat’s Ring. You can almost do it all the time in the first time through the game when your Dex reaches 30. For those enemies with lots of HP (e.g. the Giants in 5-1 and 5-2), after firing an arrow, run away from your last position when they started to chase after you. When they started to walk back, return to the previous position and snipe them again. Rinse and repeat until they were dead. By the time you got the miracle Rage of God. You can almost be certain that you can kill almost anything in the first play through with a blast from it when you use the Clever Rat’s Ring + Ring of Sincere Prayer at <30% HP. In New Game+, you can get the Morion Blade that further increase your physical and magical damage output. It is however of limited use because in order to use it, you will need to give up your shield. So you only used it in well controlled setup. In certain situation, the Assasin build function exactly like a high level mage since their Magic and Faith stats are really high. You can basically plough through the game with Soul Arrows, Soul Light or Moving Soul Arrows. You can further enhance the magic output be equipping the followings: Clever Rat's Ring Ring of Magical Sharpness Morion Blade / Kris Knife +5 Monk's Head Collar Talisman of Beasts Take note that you will want to bring lots of spices or equip MP regeneration item if you decided to take this path. Personally, I would prefer to use arrows since you don't have to waste time to eat spice. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05. Weapon upgrades --------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are 2 blacksmiths in the game that will upgrade your weapons. Boldwin can be found in the Nexus sitting next to Stockpile Thomas. He provide low level upgrades. Ed is in Stonefang Tunnel at the bottom of the moving platform beside the filthy man near the 2-1 archstone. You need to find a switch to activate the moving platform in order to reach Ed. He initially provide some weapon upgrades, however to unlock the high level upgrades you need to give him the Red Hot Demon's Soul. You can get this soul from the 2-2 Boss, Flamelurker. Note: Blacksmith Ed can be accidentally killed if you cast Rage of God near the 2-2 archstone. You can hear the sound of the moving platform when you are near him. Upgrading of weapon mainly requires ores that you can find all over the place. They ranged from Splinters, L. Splinter, Chunks and Pure. When you are upgrading your weapons, you don't need to bring the ores along with you. Just leave them with Stockpile Thomas. In this section I will cover the ores upgrades, in the next section I will discuss the special weapon upgrades. You will need to upgrade at least one weapon using a particular ore to the maximum in order to unlock a trophy. If you have problem doing so, you can take part in co-op games and hopefully someone will drop for you. You just need to pick it up and wait for about 5 seconds to unlock the trophy. Always remember to return the item after use and thank the person helping you. It is recommended that you talk to Blacksmith Ed when you are trying to do your weapon upgrade. Boldwin will not provide the higher level upgrade option. Supposed you are given a chance to upgrade at +3, do not upgrade it to +4 or that particular upgrading option will be gone. If that happened, either find a new copy of the weapon or use the meltstone to downgrade your weapon to the basic version. Note that any previously invested ores will be gone as well. Certain weapon can be upgraded at +0 so don't blindly upgrade and miss a particular upgrade option. Hardstone - no prefix (max +10) +10 - C/D/-/- This upgrade is quite good when you reached +10. However the weapon does not have magic attack. Shield, Battle Axe, Mirdan Hammer and Halberd. They are usually dropped by mini-Phalanx, Miners with Flame weapon and crystal geckos in world 1 and 2. World 2 vendor sell Splinters and L. Splinters. Pure Hardstone can be found on a dead body in 2.2. Sharpstone - no prefix (max +10) +10 - D/C/-/- This upgrade is quite good when you reached +10. However the weapon does not have magic attack. Sais, Scimitar, Winged Spear They are usually dropped by mini-Phalanx, Miners with Pickaxe and crystal geckos in world 1 and 2. World 2 vendor sell Splinters and L. Splinters. Pure Sharpstone can be found on a dead body in 2.2. Clearstone - Quality (max +5) +5 - C/C/-/- In general, a Quality +5 weapon is good in physical attack. It is usually better than the basic +10 version because of it's better weapon rating. Short Bow +3 Long Bow +3 Compound Short Bow +3 Compound Long Bow +3 Dagger +3 Paring Dagger +3 Secret Dagger +3 Short Sword +3 Long Sword +3 Knight Sword +3 Broad Sword +3 Bastard Sword +3 Claymore +3 Flamberge +3 Great Sword +3 Shotel +3 Scimitar +3 Falcion +3 Kilij +6 Uchigatana +3 Mailbreaker +3 Rapier +3 Estoc +3 Curved Rapier +3 Guillotine Axe +3 Battle Axe +3 Crescent Axe +3 Great Axe +3 Pickaxe +3 War Pick +3 Claws +3 Mace +3 Morning Star +3 Iron Knuckles +3 Short Spear +3 Winged Spear +3 Sais +3 Halberd +3 Mirdan Hammer +3 They are usually dropped by assassin (1-3), crystal geckos (world 2). World 2 vendor sell Splinters. Chunks can be found on dead bodies in world 2. Pure Clearstone can be gotten from Ostrave the 3rd time you rescue him. Greystone - Crushing (max +5) +5 - S/-/-/- This weapon is mainly for those players who prefer Str over Dex. In general, a Quality +5 is better than a Crushing +5. Short Sword +3 Long Sword +3 Knight Sword +3 Bastard Sword +3 Claymore +3 Great Sword +3 Guillotine Axe +0 Battle Axe +3 Crescent Axe +3 Great Axe +3 Mace +0 Morning Star +0 Iron Knuckles +0 Halberd +3 Mirdan Hammer +3 They are usually dropped by Miners with Hammer and Sand Worms. Chunks can be found on dead body in world 2. Pure can be gotten from Body Form Scirvir at Pure White World Tendency by showing him the Keel Smasher. Bladestone - Sharp (max +5) +5 E/S/-/- This weapon is mainly for those players who prefer Dex over Str. In general, a Quality +5 is better than a Sharp +5. Dagger +0 Paring Dagger +0 Secret Dagger +0 Broad Sword +0 Flamberge +0 Shotel +0 Scimitar +0 Falcion +0 Kilij +0 Uchigatana +0 Mailbreaker +0 Rapier +0 Estoc +0 Curved Rapier +0 War Pick +0 Pickaxe +0 Claws +0 Winged Spear +0 Sais +0 Spiked Shield +6 They are usually dropped by Skeletons. Pure Bladestone can be dropped by the Black Phantom Dual Katana Skeleton at 4-2 in Pure Black World Tendency. It can also be dropped by the Dual Katana Skeleton in the hidden passage at 4-2. According to the official guide, the drop rate is 0.05%, i.e. 1 out of 200 drops. Dragonstone - Dragon (max +5) +5 - -/-/-/- Fire Dragon weapons add fire damage and is not effected by weapon rating. Against enemies who are weak against fire, Dragon weapons are great. Short Sword +3 Long Sword +3 Knight Sword +3 Bastard Sword +3 Claymore +3 Great Sword +3 Guillotine Axe +3 Battle Axe +3 Crescent Axe +3 Great Axe +3 Mace +3 Morning Star +3 Iron Knuckles +3 Halberd +3 Mirdan Hammer +3 They are dropped by bearbugs. Splinters are sold by the Fithy Man venodr at 2-2. Chunk of Dragonstone can be found on bodies in 2-2 and 2-3. Pure Dragonstone can be found on bodies in 2-2 and in 2-3 Boss archstone. Suckerstone - Tearing (max +5) +5 - E/S/-/- Bleed Add bleeding damage to weapons. May be resisted. Bleeding halves healing effects. Broad Sword +3 Flamberge +3 Shotel +3 Scimitar +3 Falcion +3 Kilij +6 Uchigatana +0 War Pick +3 Claws +3 Sais +3 They are usually dropped by Slugs in World 4 and 5. They are also found on dead bodies in World 5. The best place to farm them is at the location of the Moonlight Sword and casting Rage of God to kill all the slugs that are gathering there. Mercurystone - Mercury (max +5) +5 - E/C/-/- Poison Add poison damage to weapons. May be resisted. Poison halves healing effects. Dagger +3 Paring Dagger +3 Secret Dagger +3 Broad Sword +3 Flamberge +3 Shotel +3 Scimitar +3 Falcion +3 Kilij +6 Uchigatana +3 Mailbreaker +3 Rapier +3 Estoc +3 Curved Rapier +3 War Pick +3 Claws +3 Short Spear +3 Winged Spear +3 Sais +3 They are dropped by facebugs. They also found on dead bodies in 3-1 and 3-2. Pure Mercurystone is found on the dead body in 5-3 Boss area. Pulpstone - Fatal (max +5) +5 - E/A/-/- Critical 100 Increased chance of inflicting critical damage. I am not exactly sure what it means. It could be something to do with backstabbing or parry and riposte. Dagger +3 Paring Dagger +3 Secret Dagger +3 Mailbreaker +3 Rapier +3 Estoc +3 Curved Rapier +3 Short Spear +3 Winged Spear +3 They are dropped by the Red Balloon Bugs and Mosquitos in World 5. Pure Pulpstone is found on the dead body in 5-3 Boss area. Moonlight Stone - Moon (max +5) +5 - E/E/C/- Magic Attack Add magical damage to weapon. They are especially strong against enemies who are weak to both physical and magical attacks. For enemies with high magic resistance, use the +10 or quality +5 weapon instead. Short Sword +6 Long Sword +6 Knight Sword +6 Broad Sword +6 Bastard Sword +6 Claymore +6 Flamberge +6 Great Sword +6 Shotel +6 Scimitar +6 Falcion +6 Kilij +6 Uchigatana +6 Guillotine Axe +6 Battle Axe +6 Crescent Axe +6 Great Axe +6 Claws +6 Mace +6 Morning Star +6 Iron Knuckles +6 Short Spear +6 Winged Spear +6 Sais +6 Halberd +6 Mirdan Hammer +6 They are usually dropped by Crystal Geckos in World 3. Splinters are sold by the Once Royal Mistress at 3-1. You may find Splinters and Chunks on dead bodies in World 3. Pure Moonlightstone is only dropped by Crystal Geckos. Darkmoon Stone - Crescent (max +5) +5 - -/-/A/- Magic Attack, MP regen Add magical damage to weapon. Add MP regen to weapon, regen rate is highest at +5. Dagger +6 Paring Dagger +6 Secret Dagger +6 Broad Sword +6 Flamberge +6 Shotel +6 Scimitar +6 Falcion +6 Kilij +6 Uchigatana +6 Mailbreaker +6 Rapier +6 Estoc +6 Curved Rapier +6 Splinters are sold by Graverobber Blige in World 4. They are usually dropped by Reapers and Crystal Geckos. Chunks are dropped by the Black Phantom guarding Urbain in 4-2. Faintstone - Blessed (max +5) +5 - E/E/-/A Magic Attack, HP regen Add magical damage to weapon. Add HP regen, regen rate is highest at +5. Short Sword +6 Long Sword +6 Knight Sword +6 Bastard Sword +6 Claymore +6 Great Sword +6 Guillotine Axe +6 Battle Axe +6 Crescent Axe +6 Great Axe +6 Mace +6 Morning Star +6 Iron Knuckles +6 Halberd +6 Mirdan Hammer +6 They are usually dropped by plagued creature and crystal geckos. Splinters are sold by the Filthy Woman in World 5. Splinters and Chunks can be found on dead bodies in World 5. Chunks are dropped by the Black Phantom with Meat Cleaver in 5-2. If you have Faith 20, talk to Urbain's female follower to get a Pure Faintstone. You can do this once per game cycle. Spiderstone - Viscous (max +5) +5 - E/S/-/- Increased Range Increase the range of bows. They are the best upgrade for Bow at Viscous +5 when you unlock the S rating for Dex. Short Bow +3 Long Bow +3 Compound Short Bow +3 Compound Long Bow +3 They are dropped by the Miners without weapon and crystal geckos. Pure Spiderstone can be found in the 2-1 Boss Archstone. Cloudstone - Dark (max +5) +5 - Increase magic damage cut% Reduced magical damage taken but physical hit resistance stay at base level. Heater Shield +6 Purple Flame Shield +6 Steel Shield +6 Knight's Shield +6 They are dropped by the Flying Mantas in World 4. Pure Cloudstone can be found at 4-3 Boss archstone. Chunks can be found on the dead body near Stormruler. Special weapon upgrade Only Blacksmith Ed is able to do the special weapon upgrade. You need to give him the Red Hot Demon's Soul from Flamelurker in order to unlock it. If he didn't ask for it, you need to select the talk option to exhaust all his dialog. Scraping Spear - Lead Demon's Soul (Phalanx) Short Spear +7 Winged Spear +7 This weapon reduces opponent's equipment durability. Good in PvP. North Regalia - False King's Demon's Soul (False King) Demonbrand + Soulbrand Damage bonus depends on CT. Max bonus at either Pure Black or Pure White CT. Lava Bow - Hard Demon's Soul (Armor Spider) Short Bow +7 Long Bow +7 Compound Short Bow +7 Compound Long Bow +7 Shoot fire arrows. Needle of Eternal Agony - Mixed Demon's Soul (Maneater) Dagger +7 Paring Dagger +7 Secret Dagger +7 Mail Breaker +7 Rapier +7 Estoc +7 Curved Rapier +7 Absorb 20 souls on each hit. Insanity Catalyst - Yellow Demon's Soul (Old Monk) Wooden Catalyst Silver Catalyst Halves max MP. Meat Cleaver - Swollen Demon's Soul (Adjudicator) Club +0 Great Club +0 War Pick +6 Mace +6 Pickaxe +6 Morning Star +6 Iron Knuckles +6 Mirdan Hammer +6 This has the highest weapon rating. Drain opponent HP. Patch 1.02 reduce the rating from S/S/-/S to S/S/-/A. Patch 1.03 remove the draining of HP. Large Sword of Searching - Hero Demon's Soul (Old Hero) Claws +8 Broad Sword +8 Flamberge +8 Shotel +8 Scimitar +8 Falchion +8 Kilij +8 Uchigatana +8 Sais +8 Double base item drop rates. Effective even in the offhand. Morion Blade - Storm Demon's Soul (Storm King) Short Sword +8 Long Sword +8 Knight Sword +8 Bastard Sword +8 Claymore +8 Great Sword +8 Damage bonus with your HP is less than 30%. Dozer Axe - Grey Demon's Soul (Vanguard) Battle Axe +6 Guillotine Axe +6 Crescent Axe +6 Great Axe +6 Halberd +6 Blueblood Sword - Pureblood Demon's Soul (Maiden Astraea) Broken Sword +0 Damage bonus from Luck stat. There are certain special weapon that can be upgraded up to +5 using Colorless Demon's Soul. As follows: Baby's Nail Kris Knife Rune Sword Penetrating Sword Large Sword of Moonlight Keel Smasher Blind Gripless Magic Sword "Makoto" Geri's Stiletto Epee Rapier Brand Hands of God Istarelle Phosphorescent Pole White Bow Rune Shield Dark Silver Shield Tower Shield Large Brushwood Shield Adjudicator's Shield The number of Colorless Demon's Soul are limited per game cycle. They can be obtained from: 1. Primeval Demon at Pure Black WT (1 per world). Drop rate is not 100%. 2. Exchange with crow in 4-1 using Gold Mask and Talisman of God. 3. Mephistopheles quest. You get 1 each for killing Biorr and Patches. 4. In 1-1, on a beam at the stairwell with Miralda can be found. Thus, the maximum you can get per game cycle is 10. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06. Magical and Physical Damage Enhancement --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this section, I will cover weapon enhancement. After you had upgraded your weapon to their highest level. You can add more points to the appropriate stats to increase it slightly. However it is a very slow process and more of us are not that patient. And even when you had reach 99 in all stats, there are still ways to increase your damage output. There are 3 spells in the game that will boost your weapon damage. They are Magic Weapon, Light Weapon and Cursed Weapon. Magic Weapon - cost 5000 souls to purchase - cost 20 MP to cast, last 60 seconds. - require 1 Magic slot Light Weapon - exchange it using Silver Demon's Soul. - cost 50 MP to cast, last 60 seconds. - require 2 Magic slots Cursed Weapon - exchange it using Silver Demon's Soul. - cost 100 MP to cast, last 60 seconds. - require 3 Magic slots - when active, your HP will reduces over time. Note: please do not consume the Silver Demon's Soul, talk to the correct magic teacher to learn them. Weapon with magic effect on them cannot be enchanted directly, e.g. Moon Winged Spear. Bows and Crossbows cannot be enchanted directly as well. Typically, this is how to set it up. Left hand: Magic Catalyst Right hand: Weapon to be enchanted Select the enchantment spell and press L1 to enchant the weapon on your right hand. There is however an alternate way to enchant your magical weapon, in particular the Viscous Compound Long Bow +5. Typical setup. Left hand: Talisman of God / Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 Right hand: Dagger A Dagger is used simply because it is light, 0.5 Wt to be precise. Left hand: Talisman of God Right hand: Dagger Enchant the Dagger normally, then switch the left hand to the Bow. Left hand: Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 Right hand: Enchanted Dagger With this setup, your Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 will be more powerful than before the enchantment. You can get a better enchantment if your Magic stats is high. If you are using Talisman of Beasts, then both Magic and Faith stats are used to enhance the damage dealt. There are 3 items that can enchant your weapon as well: Turpentine, Black Turpentine and Sticky White Stuff. The enchant process is simple. Left hand: Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 Right hand: Dagger Put the item in the quick item slot. Use it to enchant the Dagger on your right hand. Left hand: Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 Right hand: Enchanted Dagger The Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 will get the benefits from the enchantment from the right hand as well. Magical melee weapon can also be enchanted similarly. However, since we usually put the main weapon on the right hand, there is a slight change in setup. In this example, I will use a Moon Winged Spear +5. Left Hand: Dagger Right Hand: Talisman of God / Moon Winged Spear +5 Left Hand: Dagger Right Hand: Talisman of God Select the enchantment spell and press R1 to enchant the Dagger. Left Hand: Enchanted Dagger Right Hand: Moon Winged Spear +5 Now the Moon Winged Spear +5 is enchanted and can deal more damage. Enchantment consideration. You may use the following as the catalyst Wooden Catalyst E/-/C/- Silver Catalyst E/-/C/- Insanity Catalyst E/-/A/- Talisman of Beasts D/-/C/C In term of effectiveness, a Talisman of Beasts with 99 Magic and 99 Faith will produce the best results. Next is the Insanity Catalyst with 99 Magic. Before the patch 1.03. When your HP is less than 30% HP of your current maximum HP, you enter critical mode. To enter critical mode, you can equip the Magic Sword "Makoto" to drain your HP slowly. If you put on the Clever Rat's Ring while in critical mode, both your magical and physical damage went up. The way you can tell is by observing a Rat symbol and a powerful aura surrounding your character. It can be further enchanced by placing Morion Blade in your offhand. There are some confusion over the meaning of offhand so I will provide an example. Left hand: Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 Right hand: Morion Blade When you press the R1 button, the Morion Blade is no longer selected. I refer to this as the offhand, i.e. turned off. There is an announcement from the official team that the Clever Rat's Ring enchantment on Bows will be enabled again in a later patch. So what I mentioned here will be useful again when that happened. In the mean time, you can use the weapon enchantment spells of buffs. Remember, you can still use Buff such as Clever Rat's Ring on top on whatever enchantment you had. Depending on your stats, certain way of enchantment may be more beneficial to you. It is also dependent on the weakness of the enemies as well. Here's are some combination that may yields the best effect for Bows: Setup #1 < 30% HP Left Hand: Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 Right Hand: Dagger enchanted with Cursed Weapon (offhand) Clever Rat's Ring Enchanted with Talisman of Beasts with 99 Magic, 99 Faith Setup #2 < 30% HP Left Hand: Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 Right Hand: Morion Blade (offhand) Clever Rat's Ring Enchanted with Talisman of Beasts with 99 Magic, 99 Faith So, how much damage will we be expecting with the ultimate setup? In patch 1.02, with Setup #2, in 1-4, shooting the Blue Dragon at close range deal 700+ damage per Hard Arrow at Soul Level 712. You can bring the Blue Dragon to less than 50% HP with just a few arrows. Similarly, you can take down Black Phantom NPCs at ease from any sniper spot. A similar setup can be done for melee weapon. Good weapons to try it on are Meat Cleaver and other power weapons. Next, I will cover Magic and Miracles damage boosting. For Miracles, you have the followings: Clever Rat's Ring (only active when HP is < 30%) Ring of Sincere Prayer Talisman of Beasts Morion Blade (only active when HP is < 30%) For Magic, you have the followings: Clever Rat's Ring (only active when HP is < 30%) Ring of Magical Sharpness (increase Magic attack, decrease Magic defense) Monk's Head Collar (increase Magic attack, decrease Magic defense) Kris Knife +5 (increase Magic attack, decrease Magic defense) Morion Blade (only active when HP is < 30%) Talisman of Beasts Increasing the damage dealt is as simple as equipping the corresponding items. The increase is much more prominent with spell dealing large amount of damage such as Rage of God and Fire Storm. So, how much damage are we looking at? With the following setup: Clever Rat's Ring (only active when HP is < 30%) Ring of Sincere Prayer Talisman of Beasts Morion Blade (only active when HP is < 30%) You can deal around 2200+ damage with Rage of God very consistently at Soul Level 712. With Fire storm, you can deal somewhere between 3000 to 5000 damage depending on whether the pillar hit the enemy. Do take note that it can deal zero damage if the pillars missed the enemy. Lastly, on top of all that, you can increase your damage further. The way to do it is quite simple. Maintain at all time a Pure White Character Tendency. This is preferably best practiced after you are done with the Pure Black Character Tendency events. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07. Soul and Body Form --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's are some short form I will used in this FAQ/Walkthrough. WT - World Tendency CT - Character Tendency The game have 2 modes: Body and Soul Form. In Body Form, you have full HP but your damage output is reduced. If you get yourself killed in Body Form, you became Soul Form which gives you 50% of your HP in Body Form if you are in neutral character and world tendency. When your character tendency is black or pure black, your HP reduced further. Similarly, in a world with black or pure black tendency, your HP reduces further. E.g. Vitality 8 In Body Form, you have 530 HP. In Soul Form, you have 265 HP with Neutral WT and Neutral CT. In Soul Form, you have 215 HP with Pure Black WT and Pure Black CT. At 30% HP. In Body Form, you have 159 HP. In Soul Form, you have 79 HP with Neutral WT and Neutral CT. In Soul Form, you have 64 HP with Pure Black WT and Pure Black CT. Vitality 99 In Body Form, you have 1900 HP. In Soul Form, you have 950 HP with Neutral WT and Neutral CT. In Soul Form, you have 769 HP with Pure Black WT and Pure Black CT. At 30% HP. In Body Form, you have 570 HP. In Soul Form, you have 285 HP with Neutral WT and Neutral CT. In Soul Form, you have 230 HP with Pure Black WT and Pure Black CT. As you can see, if you want to use the <30% HP damage boosters, vitality is not going to help you much. So is playing the game in Body Form beneficial? In the pre-patch version of the game, playing in Body Form is better. After patch 1.02, playing in Soul Form is better. I will explain this in more details when we discuss WT and CT. To get to Soul Form from Body Form, just get yourself killed. To get to Body Form from Soul Form, you can do any of the followings: 1. Kill a Boss. 2. Invade and kill a Host. 3. Use a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes 4. Get summoned as a Blue Phantom and kill the Boss. 5. Get summoned as a Blue Phantom and resurrected by the Host. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08. World and Character Tendency (WT & CT) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this game, certain events happened at different WT and CT. There are 5 worlds in this game: World 1 - Boletarian Palace World 2 - Stonefang Tunnel World 3 - Tower of Latria World 4 - Shrine of Storms World 5 - Valley of Defilement Each world keep track of their own WT. When you do something that shift WT, it impacts only the world where the event took place. WT is indicated by the color of archstone corresponding to the respective worlds. At Pure Black WT, the color of your archstone should look like the broken archstone. At Pure White WT, the central portion of the archstone grows pink in color. There are varies shade in between. In general, using visual confirmation is fairly inaccurate. The color of a Pure White WT and a White WT archstone is almost identical. The only reliable way is to use the WT events as confirmation. CT on the other hand is always active. The color of the statue is a visual guide to your CT but it is imprecise. You can find out your exact CT with the help of items such as Soulbrand, Demonbrand and North Regalia. Those weapon gives a modifier based on CT. Demonbrand have a physical attack of 130 and a magical attack of 110. At Pure White WT, it’s modifier is -130, reducing the total damage to 0. At True Neutral, it’s modifier is 0, the total damage is 130. At Pure Black WT, it’s modifier is +130, doubling the total damage to 260. The magical attack have similar modifier. Soulbrand is the opposite of Demonbrand. Soulbrand have a physical attack of 120 and a magical attack of 130. At Pure White WT, it’s modifier is +120, doubling the total damage to 240. At True Neutral, it’s modifier is 0, the total damage is 120. At Pure Black WT, it’s modifier is -120, reducing the total damage to 0. The magical attack have similar modifier. North Regalia is a special sword that is forged with both Demonbrand and Soulbrand together with the False King’s Demon’s Soul. You can only get this weapon in New Game+. North Regalia have a physical attack of 135 and a magical attack of 135. At Pure White WT, it’s modifier is +135, doubling the total damage to 270. At True Neutral, it’s modifier is 0, the total damage is 135. At Pure Black WT, it’s modifier is +135, doubling the total damage to 270. The magical attack have similar modifier. Clearly, this weapon is superior to the previous ones since it had the best of both worlds. WT also adjust your HP while you are in Soul Form. In Pure White, White and Neutral WT, you have 50% of your HP in Body Form. In Black WT, you get a 5% penalty, so 95% of 50% = 47.5% In Pure Black WT, you get a 10% penalty, so 90% of 50% = 45% CT effect your Soul Form’s HP similarly. The WT and CT effects stack. I In the worst case, at Pure Black WT & CT, your Soul Form’s HP is calculated to be 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.50 = 40.5% of your Body Form’s HP. The stats of enemies are affected by CT and WT as well. They are weakest at Pure White WT & CT and strongest in Pure Black WT & CT. When you get a Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 later, you can compare the damage by shooting the first Reaper in 4-2 at various WT & CT. This is a good comparison method because the damage dealt is very consistent. During the first play through. At Dex 30, in Pure White WT & CT, you can kill the Reaper with 1 arrow. At Dex 30, in Pure Black WT & CT, you can kill the Reaper with 2 arrows. This also means that you can kill Silver Skeletons with 1 arrow, avoiding any need of melee with them. If your stats is low, you can boost your damage further with the use of Clever Rat’s Ring. However, you can’t do it before you get the Magic Sword ‘Makoto’. If you are farming the Reaper, it will be a waste of time to reduce your HP to <30%. Just use 2 arrows for the job to save time. Killing Black Phantom NPC will shift your CT towards white. E.g. Killing Black Phantom Scircir move you from -130 to -104. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09. World Tendency Events --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Pure Black WT, certain Black Phantom NPCs appears. If you are able to spot those particular NPCs, you are 100% sure you are in Pure Black WT. These Black Phantom NPCs are as follows: 1-1 Miralda 2-2 Scirvir 3-1 Rydell 4-1 Satsuki 5-2 Selen Vinland Primeval Demons always appears in Pure Black WT. They may drop a Colorless Demon's Soul. The drop rate is pretty high in general but you may get a miss once in a while. Also, it is not confirmed whether they will appears in Black WT. Many people try to use Primeval Demons as a means to confirm Pure Black WT but usually find out that the Black Phantom NPCs didn't appears. In short, Primeval Demons is not a good way to confirm Pure Black WT. With Black WT, a number of Black Phantom enemies appears in addition to the usual enemies. They have more HP and hit harder. Other then that, they are the same as those normal enemies. Boletarian Palace There is a gate on the left of the beginning 1-1 archstone. The gate will be opened in Pure Black or Pure White WT. Once unlocked, it may remain opened in Black or White WT. There is a building inside where you can find a Colorless Demon's Soul on a beam. To reach this particular beam, you need to find a broken beam and use it to drop to the beam below. Take care to keep your orientation straight so as to land properly. There is a Brushwood armor set at the bottom. You need to be able to carry an extra 58 Wt. in order to pick it up. In Pure White WT, Miralda will appears in Body Form and attack you the moment you step inside the building. Killing her will let you get the Binded set (female only) and Master's Ring. Your WT will also get a -3 so that you will be back to Neutral WT. In Pure Black WT, Miralda will appears as Black Phantom. She drop a Guillotine Axe when killed. With Pure White WT, both dragons will not appear in their nest at 1-1. The Red Dragon will not be there to breathe fire at you at various places in 1-1 and 1-2. The Primeval Demon appears at 1-3 at the area over looking the 3 Red Eyes Knights. Stonefang Tunnel In the area where you fight the Dragon God, there is a section with some rubbles. You can see a weapon inside. Those rubbles will be gone if you managed to attain Pure White WT. The weapon is Keel Smasher, a heavy weapon that can knock your opponent on the ground easily. This weapon can also be enchanted making it even more powerful. In PVP (Player vs Player) mode, this weapon can easily send the opponent flying. Wanderer Scirvir can be found in a place that is quite hard to reach. From the 2-2 archstone, take the right path through the miners. After that, jump down to the lower region carefully (please refer to the walkthough section for more detail). You will spot 2 Crystal Geckos in a blocked tunnel. Scirvir will appears in Body Form (Pure White WT) or Black Phantom Form (Pure Black WT). If you show Body Form Scirvir the Keel Smasher, he will give you a very heavy Pure Greystone (Wt. 10!). On the other hand, Black Phantom Scirvir will drop the precious Talisman of Beasts. The Primeval Demon is at 1-1 at a area below the moving platform below the 2 Rock Throwers. Tower of Latria In Pure White WT, the debris near Rydell's cell will be gone. You can get the Three-Corned Hat and the Venerable Sage's set in the cells there. The gate at 2F East is also unlocked, you can find the Paring Dagger, Rogue's set and 2 chunks of Mercury Stones in the cells there. At the location where you lowered the first chain in 3-2, there is a bridge that will appears in Pure White WT. The spiral staircase leds to a place where you can find the key to unlock Rydell's cell. Freeing Rydell will get you the Dull Rat's Ring. You need this Ring in order to unlock the Rogue's trophy. In Pure Black WT, Black Phantom Rydell will appears outside his cell. Killing him get you the Phosphorescent Pole. The Primeval Demon is at 3-2 in the swamp below. Shrine of Storms In Pure White WT, in the place where you rescue Saint Urbain, you can find the Magic Sword "Makoto" on a body. Near the beginning archstone, you can find Satsuki in Body Form (Pure White WT) or Black Phantom Form (Pure Black WT). If you have the Magic Sword "Makoto" with you, Body Form Satsuki will ask you to give it to him. If you give it to him, he will try to kill you with it. You have to kill him to get it back. If you don't give it to him, he will attack you forcing you to kill him. Either way, killing him will gives you a -3 to World Tendency reducing it to Neutral WT. Black Phantom Satsuki will attack you the moment he spotted you. Killing him will give you a Gripless. The Primeval Demon is located in a hidden area at 4-2. There are 2 sets of staircase next to the first Reaper. Stand at the Reaper position facing the exit, the correct staircase to take is the one on your right. Look at the wall carefully, one of them is moving slightly. Just attack it with a weapon and a passage will appear. Kill the dual katana Skeleton guarding the path. The Primeval Demon can be found if you follow the path. Valley of Defilement In Pure White WT, there is a ladder that will appears near the first Giant at 5-1. Climb the ladder and kill 4 more Giants to reach the Istarelle. Istarelle is a spear with high poison resistance. You need this weapon if you want to obtain the Solder's Trophy. In 5-3, Black Phantom Garl Vinland will appears in Pure White WT after you had defeated Maiden Astraea and collected the Pureblood Demon's Soul. Black Phantom Garl Vinland drop Brand and Crest of Vinland when slain. Brand (Wt. 36!) is a very heavy weapon that can knock your opponent down easily. In 5-2, after passing the first fog, you can jump down the wooden plank to look for Selen Vinland. She appears in Body Form (Pure White WT) or Black Phantom Form (Pure Black WT). If you give Body Form Selen the Crest of Vinland, she will reward you with a Ring of Devout Prayer. Black Phantom Selen will drop Blind if killed. Blind is a weapon that can bypass shield and extremely light (Wt 0.1). The Primeval Demon is located in 5-2 near the Slug Nest. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. New Game+ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In subsequence game cycle, commonly referred to as New Game+, New Game++, etc, enemies have more HP and deal much more damage. Your damage output is reduced since enemies have stronger resistance and defense. Your soul level, character and world tendency will be carried over. The amount of souls you owned, inventory items, items in the stockpile are carried over as well. However, quest related items such as keys will be removed and need to be acquired again. An exceptional case is the Minister’s Hat which will stay with you. If you want to get the Platinum Trophy with a single character, you will need to reach New Game+++ since some Demon’s Souls had 4 different usages. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. Combat 101 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this section I will discuss about the combat aspect of the game. Let's start with the Bow since most people don't know how to use it to it's fullest. You can wield the Bow on your left or right hand or even both. Let's assume that you have a Bow on your left hand. In order to use it, you need to select it. Press L1 to wield it. Notice that your right hand weapon is now dimed, we call that the offhand (meaning turned off). Items in the offhand effect your Bow. Here's some items that you want to put in your offhand. 1. Morion Blade increases your damage when your HP is less than 30%. 2. Large Sword of Searching double your item drop rates. 3. Non-magical weapon enchanted with Magic Weapon. 4. Non-magical weapon enchanted with Light Weapon. 5. Non-magical weapon enchanted with Cursed Weapon. 6. Non-magical weapon buffed with Turpentine. 7. Non-magical weapon buffed with Black Turpentine. 8. Non-magical weapon buffed with Sticky White Stuff. 9. etc To enter target mode, press L1. Press the up and down on the D-pad to adjust your zoom. Use the L3 or R3 thumbstick to adjust the crosshair. When using L3, your character move physical, when using R3, your character stay put. There are two ways to shoot an arrow. 1. Press and release R1. This will draw the bow to the fullest and then fire an arrow. It is hard to hit moving target in this way. 2. Press and hold R1 to draw to bow to the fullest. You can use the L3 thumbstick to track the target. When the target is in sight, release R1 to fire the arrow. This way of shooting pull a bit more stress on your fingers but is better against moving targets. You can also shoot an arrow without entering target mode. Just click on R3 to lock on to the target. Use the L3 to select your targets. Against those sand worms, you can select the head or torso. Press R1 to shoot the arrow immediately. You can also press and hold R1, then release R1 to time your attack. Next I will touch on weapon switching. This is easily done with the D-pad. Pressing left on the D-pad will swap the weapon on your left hand while pressing right swap the right hand weapon. A typical setup is as follows: Left Hand: Purple Flame Shield / Viscous Compound Long Bow Right Hand: Moon Winged Spear / Talisman of Beasts If you are wearing the Thief's Ring, you can shoot arrows at the enemies, then quickly switch the Bow to a Shield. When deciding on how to handle the enemies, you can quickly switch between melee and magic. Use this setup to farm for Crystal Gecko Left Hand: Large Sword of Searching Right Hand: Viscous Compound Long Bow Use this setup to farm for Pure Bladestone Left Hand: Large Sword of Searching Right Hand: Talisman of Beasts (Soul Sucker and Evacuate) I will discuss the Spear + Shield Combo that is my preferred style of combat. The setup is simple. Left Hand: Purple Flame Shield Right Hand: Moon Winged Spear Every shield have some attribute on them that are written in A/B/C format. A - damage reduction from physical attack B - damage reduction from magical attack C - damage reduction from fire attack (hidden attribute) Purple Flame Shield - 100/30/90 (Wt. 8) Dark Silver Shield - 100/100/70 (Wt. 5) Large Brushwood Shield - 100/30/100 (Wt. 30) Adjudicator's Shield 90/50/10 (Wt. 3.5) Dark Purple Flame Shield +5 100/70/90 (Wt. 8) There is another attribute called HitRes. When you blocked an attack with a shield, the damage is first subtracted from the HitRes, than the rest will reduce your stamina. If your stamina is totally drained as a result, you stagger and is open to attacks. Take note that when an enemy attacks hits your Shield, in most cases, they will stagger and be stunned for a short while. When that happened, take the opportunity to launch your attack. Here's some shield that had the best HitRes in the game. Tower Shield +5 HitRes 85 (Wt. 30) Purple Flame Shield +5 HitRes 82 (Wt. 8) Steel Shield +10 HitRes 82 (Wt. 6) Large Brushwood Shield +5 HitRes 80 (Wt. 13) Dark Silver Shield +5 HitRes 65 (Wt. 5) Dark Purple Flame Shield +5 HitRes 60 (Wt. 8) Which shield to bring along depend on the opponents you were expected to face. Now back to the controls. Press and hold the L1 button to keep the Shield raised. Noticed that your stamina recharged slowly when you keep the shield raised. If you are able to keep a distance from the enemy, you can lower the shield to recharge your stamina quickly. When your Shield is raised, pressed R1 to do a short jab with your Spear. It had longer range than most weapon and your Shield remain raised. Noticed that your body stay at the same position. If your Shield is lowered, pressing R1 with still jab with the Spear but your body had moves slightly infront. In high places such as Tower of Latria 3-2, you can fall to your death if your body slowly inch forwards while fighting those flying gargoyles. This is especially true when using a sword. So if you are in dangerous places, keep your Shield raised and you are less likely to fall out the cliff or edges. Pressing R2 will perform a heavy attack which unfortunately will lower your Shield. It also uses most of your stamina compared to the simple jab with R1. In Demon's Souls, it is very important to manage your stamina well. A Shield is totally useless if your stamina is low. Make sure you know how much stamina is needed to perform your attack. For example, with Endurance 8, you can jab with a Spear 4 times but you can only do the heavy attack 2 times. Take note that near the time of your attack, your Shield will be weaken. It is best to test the strength of the enemy attack before you decide to do an all out attack. For example, if an enemy attack on your Shield only reduces your stamina by 1/4, then you are safer to keep at least 1/4 stamina to keep your Shield at 100% functionality. Tap Circle without holding on to any direction will let you jump backwards. If you push L3 towards any direction while pressing Circle, you will roll towards that direction. If your equip weight is more than 50% of your total equip weight, you will roll very slowly. Rolling around will used up your stamina, so don't do it blindly or your Shield won't protect you. Wearing heavy armor also slow down your stamina recovery rate. Wearing the Eternal Warrior's Ring (Old King Doran's drop) will speed up stamina recovery. A Spear is totally useless if you didn't lock on to your target. Without the lock on, you will miss most of your attacks. On the other hand, you can use the Spear to attack through wall! To do that, try to estimate where the enemy will be, then just jab at the wall. In most cases, you can killed them before they find out where you are. You can also attack through pillars, fire braziers (my favourite way to kill Maneater), etc. Depending on where the tip of your spear lands, you may get a damage bonus. For Spear, that sweet spot is quite near you and it look as if you had impaled the enemy. If you are good with such attacks, you may want to consider the Master's Ring (increases sweet spot damage but decreases damage for all other attacks). When you are attacking an enemy from the back, instead of a normal attack, you will perform a fatal attack that deal much more damage than usual. When you are using a small shield such as the Dark Silver Shield, you can perform a parry by pressing the L2 button. You need to time the parry well or you are very vulnerable. Immediately following a Parry, you can perform a Riposte using the R1 button to score a critical hit. Personally, I am not good with such feats, but a master of this technique is very deadly. Now that you understand the concept, it's time to put them into practice. I will illustrate a bit using my Assassin build. Different people will have some variation on their character so what I mentioned may not be viable. When you are wearing the Thief's Ring. Enemies are less sensitive to you so you can get quite near without them noticing. There are various type of enemies. So I will cover them. #1 Target Practice If you are at a position where the enemies cannot reach you, then it is really simple. Just shoot arrows and kill them. For example, Black Phantom Scirvir, Black Phantom Selen. #2 Shoot and Hide Against strong enemies that may chase after you if you get too near. For example, Giants, Black Phantom Rydell. First, get as near to them as possible. Aim and shoot an shoot at them. Exit target mode, and quickly run away. Open your ear and listen. You can tell exactly when they had stopped chasing you. When that happened, just repeat the steps above again. Rinse and repeat till they were dead. #3 Sitting Duck This is mainly for enemies that are separated from you by some kind of obstacles like a wall. For example, Black Phantom Miralda, certain Red Eyes Knights, etc. This strictly speaking should not be classified under combat. Just equip the Ring of Sincere Prayer, Clever Rat's Ring, Morion Blade, etc. Stand near them (separated by a wall) and cast Rage of God. If your stats is high enough, you killed them in a single casting. If not, cast it twice. #4 Close Range Melee Now, this are those enemies that you have to take out at close range and are highly mobile. For example, skeletons, Black Phantom Satsuki. First of all, you want to get close and shoot an arrow at them to soften them. When they are on the way to you, time yourself and jab them before they get near. In most cases, the weaker enemies are killed by now. Those that remains generally hit really hard and have lots of HP. Keep yourself lock on to the enemy, wait for them to attack. You can either block the attack, step back, roll or strafe. Follow that quickly with a short jab. Now, wait for your stamina to recharge, then wait for an opening to jab again. Do this until the enemy is killed. Now, what should you do if you prefer to use another weapon other than the Spear? My suggestion is still the same. Just watch your stamina and then wait for an opening to strike. In term of how much damage you can deal to your enemies, it very much depends on their resistances and weaknesses. You are going to have an easier time if you choose the right weapon to use against certain enemies. Here's a list of enemies and their weakness. Knights - shield block 100% physical attack, weak against magic Miners - weak against thrust attack Bearbugs - strong physical resistance, weak against magic Skeletons - strong magical resistance, weak against blunt weapons. Remark: I am sure many people have better ways to fight certain enemies. If you want me to add those in, you are welcomed to send me an email. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12. Walkthrough --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this walkthrough, you will be able to obtain all 5 Pure White and Pure Black World Tendency Events as well as getting both Pure White & Pure Black Character Tendency in a single game cycle. Character creation I choose a Royal because it is the easiest class to get pass Area 1-1. You have a choice of male and female character. Female character level up slightly faster because they can wear the Silver Bracelet which give an extra 20% more souls when defeating enemies. Certain armor set can only be worn by a particular gender. If you want to try out all of them, you should have 2 characters with different gender. You start with the Fragrance Ring which regenerates your MP gradually. The Soul Arrow spell cost 5 MP to cast and deal decent damage. First you need to know that tapping the Right Thumb stick auto-locked the target. Your spell will be then be cast at the target. If the target moves, there is a high chance the spell will miss. So, practice lining up the target and learn when is the best time to release your spells. You can only auto-lock when you are near an enemy. This is generally not a good idea for Mage with low HP. Without an auto-lock, your spell will be cast in the direction you are looking at. Use the right thumb stick to aim higher or lower if you didn't have auto-lock. When you get a Bow later, you can switch to targeting mode and then switch back to cast your spell at the spot you are previously targeting. Most enemies in Area 1-1 can be killed with 1 or 2 hit of Soul Arrow. If you run out of MP, find a safe spot, just take a break and wait for the MP to recharge fully. There are a few Slave Soldiers at the starting area near the large gate that led to the first Boss, Phalanx. You need to find a way to open it. On the left and right are 2 gates that can be opened from the other side. Take the left path and kill the enemies near the pit. -- Bonus section -- The next time you come to this area, a new body will appears with the Old Raggedy armor set and a Jade Hairpin. You can force this by loading the game on the spot. By loading the game, I am referring to selecting the Load option from your menu. There is no need to quit the game. The Jade Hairpin can be given to Stockpile Thomas in the Nexus in exchange for a Ring of Herculean Strength. You must select the Talk option and use it to exhaust his conversation in order to trigger this event. Note: If you are a female Barbarian, you can put on the Old Raggedy armor set. ------------------- Go into the building. There are a few Slave Soldiers waiting to ambush you inside. Make you way up the top. A Soldier will roll a stone towards you. It will crash the bottom area exposing a Bastard Sword. At the top area, you can find a Blue Eyes Knight and some soldiers. Kill the other soldiers first before fighting the Blue Eyes Knight. There is a section with some broken wall which you can jump down to get a Light Crossbow and some bolts. They are not very useful compared to bows. The Blue Eyes Knight shoudld be easy to take out with Soul Arrows. The Fog will leads to the next area but I suggest you move to the building near the Blue Eyes Knight. There is a stairwell full of Slave Soldiers with Flaming weapon. In the middle of this stairs, you will see a terrace like place with 2 chains on it. Destroy both chains. Once you get to the bottom of the stairwell. Open the gate to unlock a shortcut. There is a dead body with a Cling Ring on it. Make sure you take it. It increases your current max HP by 40%. Typically, in Soul Form, you have 50% HP, so with a Cling Ring, you will have 70% HP. On the other side of the upper region is a place guarded by a Red Eyes Knight. Normally, you can only kill it when you are at least soul level 30. However, I strongly advise you to kill it with a Soul Level 1 Royal. Am I out of my mind? No. The way to kill it is quite simple. In the stairwell area there you had unlocked the shortcut, clear the enemies there first. There are 2 barrels at the top, make sure they are intact. Next, clear the enemies at the upper region before looking for the Red Eyes Knight. Once you move near him, he will start chasing after you. Lure him to the stairwell area. If he fall behind, stop and wait for him. Go pass the 2 barrels very carefully and then take up position in the next wooden platform facing the barrels at 45 degree. The Red Eyes Knight will attempt to get pass the barrels and it's AI will tell it to walk straight towards you. And what is between you and him? Correct, there is nothing but air between you and him so obviously he will fall to his death. Collect 2000+ souls and get his loot at the lower region. Occasionally, the AI is able to navigate through the barrels safely, in that case he will fell to the bottom later. But the problem is that the lower height will not kill him. So you have to go all the way to the bottom and try to lure him into the pit. Doing that is the same as the barrels method. Just try to let him walk straight into the pit while try to walk straight towards you. The reason you are doing all this is because you need some souls to buy a Short Spear from the Dregling vendor in 1-1. After killing the 1-1 Boss, he will relocate to 1-2. So it is best to do it now. Back to the upper region. Enter the Fog behind the Blue Eyes Knight. Look around and you should see Ostrava in Golden Armor. You can jump down to his location but don't do it first. Instead, clear all enemies in this area. First of all, there is a soldier near some flame barrel, if you get too near, he will throw a fire bomb that explode the barrels. Take a right turn and kill the 2 soldiers there. On the right side are some planks that can be broken. There is a Dregling merchant here. Buy a Short Spear from him for 1500 souls. Continue along path, you should be facing a wooden structure that you can climb up. Go up and kill the crossbow soldiers and the Blue Eyes Knight. Now, head towards the bottom and clear the area till you see Ostravia. The Slave Soldiers are unlikely to kill Ostrava but the Blue Eyes Knight may kill him. It is better to clear every enemy in this area before saving Ostravia. He will give you a Brass Telescope for helping him. If you enter the Nexus later, you will find him sitting on a beam between the archstone for World 1 and World 5. After saving Ostrava, escort him around and make sure he is safe. Now, back track to the original location where you see Ostrava. There is a place you can climb and jump down. Take the Thief's Ring there. This ring is probably the most important ring of all since you will be wearing it most of the time. Move to the wooden structure and make your way to the top. There is a rolling stone trap on top. If you attack it with a weapon on the side, the stones will kill the enemies waiting below. You need to stay away from the front as well if you don't want to get injured. Run down the path. Take a right turn. If you proceed straight ahead, you will find a Red Dragon patrolling the area. If you go left, you will find 2 Dragons guarding some items. I would suggest that you get these items later. Return to the part of the castle where the Red Dragon is guarding. First you need to get rid of most of the soldiers, you can lure and take them out one at a time. Once you had cleared most of them, it time to run across. To sprint, you need to make sure your equip weight is 50% or less then your total equip weight. Press and Hold 'X' or 'O' depending on your game’s region code to sprint. It will drain your stamina in the process. Once across, enter the building and activate the switch to open the Large Gate below. Make your way to the bottom of the stairwell to open a gate that is just beside the Large Gate. At this point, you should return to the Nexus to unload any excess items that you had collected. The large gate is now covered with Fog. Equip the firebomb as one of the quick slot. Wait for your MP to recharge fully. Enter the Fog to fight the first Boss, Phalanx. Phalanx is basically harmless but it had 40 mini-Phalanx that protect him. Their spears can be deadly if you didn't block it with a shield. Their shield will protect them from physical damage. Attacking them from the front will deal very little damage, instead attack behind them. They are however, weak against Fire. You can throw Fire Bombs to damage many of them when they are clattered together. Magic can also kill them fast but you are likely to run out of MP in doing so. Once you had defeated enough of them, Phalanx will expose part of it's soft body. Attack the exposed area until it is dead. You will be revived after killing it. Walk to the archstone and pick up the Hard Demon's Soul. Return to the Nexus. Talk to the Maiden In Black. She will ask you to talk to the Monumental located at the top area. The Monumental will be sitting on the floor amongst the dead monumental next to a burning candle. After talking to the Monumental, you can talk to the Maiden In Black to raise your stats. At this point of time, you have access to 1-2, 2-1, 3-1, 4-1 and 5-1. You can complete them in any order. The next part of my walkthrough is going to focus on completing all Pure Black and White WT and CT. If you were killed in any of the 5 Worlds in Body Form, you will get a -1 to World Tendency. You should only do this if it is exactly what you want. Otherwise, you may make certain WT or CT unattainable in the first play through. Getting yourself killed in Soul Form is completely safe after patch 1.02. It would not reduce your world tendency. However, the pre-patch version will reduce world tendency, so please patch your game as soon as possible. Since it is not safe to suicide in all 5 worlds, the only safe place is the Nexus. To do it, take the stairs up until you see 2 ledges. Jump down from one of them. Be sure to look down before you jump. You want to choose a spot that will not let your body land on the NPCs. Another word of advise, if you had found some nice weapon or spells. You Should test it out in 1-2. If not, you may harm the NPCs in the Nexus. They will never forgive you until the next game cycle. After you are in Soul Form. The next step is to gather the necessary equipment. Let’s take a look at their required stats. Royal starting stats (Str 9, Dex 12, Magic 13, Faith 12) Temporary equipment Heater Shield (Str 11) Short Spear (Str 11, Dex 10) Long Bow (Str 15, Dex 12) Final equipment Winged Spear (Str 14, Dex 12) Purple Flame Shield (Str 22) Compound Long Bow (Str 22, Dex 12) Talisman of Beasts (Str 4, Magic 18, Faith 18) Buy a Heater Shield from the Blacksmith in Nexus for 2000 souls. Your initial melee weapon will be the Short Spear you bought from the Dregling in 1-1 earlier. If you need more souls, you can go back and kill the Red Eyes Knight in 1-1 If you don’t have the required stats to use the equipment, farm the Red Eyes Knight to level up until you can equip them. Both Winged Spear and Purple Flame Shield can be dropped from the Red Eyes Knight but it is quite rare. If you managed to get from him, you can skip the steps below. Let's start with the Winged Spear. It will be quite tough to get a drop from the Red Eyes Knight with Luck 8. So let's pick up the one that is on a dead body in 1-2. Getting past the mini-Phalanx is easy for a Royal. Just block their attack with a shield than cast Soul Arrow to kill them. The next thing is the Red Dragon. You need to find a Bow to kill it. There are various ways to get a Bow. 1. Long Bow (Str 15, Dex 12) You can buy a Long Bow from Graverobber Blige in Shrine of Storms, 4-1 for 3000 souls. You need to find a Copper Key to unlock his cell. Here's the way to find the key: from the archstone, go up the stairs and you will see 2 skeleton archers. Search the right wing for the key. As for Blige, go down the hole somewhere in the area where you fight Vanguard (the tutorial Boss). Enter the passage inside the hole and go straight and you can find Blige locked inside his cell. skeleton archers 2. Compound Short Bow (Str 18, Dex 10) After getting pass the mini-Phalanx, take the stairs to the lower section and go through the passage to reach the second tower. There is a Compound Short Bow in a body on top of the second tower. 3. Light Crossbow (Str 10) (Not a Bow but can still do the job) In 1-1, at the top region where you can find the Blue Eyes Knight. There is a broken part of the castle wall. If you jump down from there, you can find a body with a Light Crossbow on it. Take note that crossbow do not have a target aiming mode so it would take some practice if you want to use it to kill the Red Dragon this way. To get past to the first tower is quite easy; just sprint across after the Red Dragon had breathed fire. Go to the top of the First Tower. Here’s a perfect spot to do target practice with the Red Dragon. You arrows should be doing not much damage, so you need roughly 150+ arrows to kill it. Aim at it's head. If it is a hit, a HP bar will be displayed. You bring along another 100 arrows in case you have problem timing the shots. -- comment from Ezzekhiel -- This works great, did it yesterday. Once you're on the tower, place yourself at the middle crenel and go into sniping mode (use bow 2 handed + L1), aim for the top of the tunnel's arch you came through before crossing the bridge. Now when the dragon comes down, shoot when the dragon's left wing is in your cross hair. You should be hitting him every time (if you look closely you'll see a small blood trail). Takes approximately 100 arrows to down him. ---------------------------- After you killed the Red Dragon. Search the bodies along the path for a Winged Spear. Go back to the Dragon Nest in 1-1, the Red Dragon is gone now. You can safely pick up the Purple Flame Shield on one of the bodies. The Blue Dragon is guarding some loots, those are not that crucial. You can always collect them after you killed the Blue Dragon later. At this point, you need to level up quite a bit in order to use the Purple Flame Shield. Next, we will need to find the Compound Long Bow (Str 22, Dex 12) in 4-1. Take the archstone to 4-1. Those Silver Skeletons in Shrine of Storms are very nasty. Once they spotted you, they will roll towards you quickly and them unleashed a series of quick attacks. You should be wearing a Thief’s Ring to reduce the chance the enemies will detect you. First, fire an arrow at the Silver Skeletons to weaken them. Later on, the first arrow will kill them with 1 hit with a Viscous Compound Long Bow +5. They will then to roll towards you, poke them when they are near to kill them. Take out the remaining skeletons along the steps similarly. There is a Dual Katana Skeleton guarding the Crescent Falcion +1 at the initial area. Just go to the location of the first Silver Skeleton (Bow) you killed. You can shoot the Dual Katana Skeleton without any danger from there. Once it is killed, go to its location to pick up the Crescent Falcion +1. Note: Dual Katana Skeleton are always guarding something important. The Compound Long Bow is on a body near a lone Silver Skeleton (Bow) on top of a tower. Getting past to it is tricky because you need to face some Silver Skeletons in some narrow passages. If you have problem, upgrade your Purple Flame Shield (can go all the way to +10) and Winged Spear (stop at +6 since you want to change it to Moon Winged Spear later). Note: Specialize upgrading option are only given at a particular level. Once you upgraded beyond that, the specialize upgrading option is gone forever. You can farm the mini-Phalanx at 1-2 to gather the Splinter and L. Splinter of hardstones and sharpstones. Once you managed to get pass the Silver Skeletons, you should be able to get the Compound Long Bow. -- remark from Luhaine -- Do not upgrade the Compound Long Bow beyond +3. Doing so will force you to either get another and upgrade it to +3, or using the smeltstone to bring it back to the default value and having to upgrade it to +3 again, thereby wasting valuable material. It needs to be at +3 in order for you to be able to upgrade it to a Viscous Compound Long Bow. ------------------------- -- remark from Volume -- Thanks for the advice. Yes, it is important not to over upgrade the Compound Long Bow. It is also not recommended to upgrade the Viscous Compound Long Bow gradually, instead upgrade it to Viscous +4 at least since Viscous +1 to +3 don't give you much advantage. ------------------------ Next step is to upgrade it to the Viscous Compound Long Bow +5. Note that it is not recommended to upgrade the Viscous Compound Long Bow gradually since Viscous Compound Long Bow +3 is weaker than a Compound Long Bow +3. You should gather the necessary Spiderstones and upgrade it to Viscous +4 or +5. The next area to visit is 2-1, Stonefang Tunnel. Put on your Thief's Ring. Basically, this ring should be worn 99% of the time in this game. Also, remember don't wear any items that increases the amount of soul you gained. Doing that seemed to make the enemies more alert to your presence. Once you came up from the Archstone 2-1, you should see a Crystal Gecko on your left. Keep your distance and kill it with 1 or 2 arrows. Alternatively, you can roll towards it and kill it with your Winged Spear or Soul Arrow. You need to have a good judgment of how much damage you can deal to the Crystal Gecko. Without the Thief's Ring, the Crystal Gecko will run away 100% of the time. There is a Filthy Man here that sell you Splinter of Hardstone and Sharpstone for 500 souls each. He can be found in 2-1 as well with better goods. Take note of the elevator behind him, the Blacksmith Ed is below it. Ed is able to perform high level weapon upgrades and can use Demon’s Souls to forge special weapons. You should see a building with 2 Miners throwing rocks at you. Just take out your Compound Long Bow and shoot at them. Once injured, they will move back into the building. The 2nd Rock Thrower is hard to hit so you may want to skip him. Alternatively, you can save your arrows and sprint toward the building. Once inside the building, you will see a control that you can use to activate the moving platform. It leads to the 2 Rock Throwers and a Fat Minister. They are guarding a Crushing Battle Axe +1. At the lower area is the location of the Primeval Demon. Only 1 Primeval Demon exists for each World for each game cycle. It appears when the World reaches Pure Black World Tendency. Remember this location as you will need to came here later. Here, the Miners moves very slowly, with the Purple Flame Shield and Winged Spear, you should have no problem dealing with them. Just beware of those with Pick Axe since they can be quite deadly. One hit will break your guard and the next hit will probably kill you. Take note of those Miners with sacks. They will drop a lot of ores when they were killed and will not respawn again until the next game cycle. If you are unable to carry certain loots, they will be dropped on the floor. Once you leave the World or Load the game, it will be gone forever. If you are low in carrying capacity, you should return to the Nexus to unload. If the items is already dropped, you can put on your Ring of Herculean Strength to hope that it is sufficient to help you pick up them up. Remember, in my build, there will be no extra point going into Vitality, so you need to know how much you can carry or you will lose items. Once past the first group of Miners, the next area have more Miners and there will be a few dogs as well. Be sure to block their attack and they are quite easy to kill. There is a Fat Minister in the building where the dogs rush out from. Just shoot him with arrow, when he is about to cast his Fireball, move to the left and his spell will hit the wall. There is a short passage that you will be going through. Be mindful of Miners with Pick Axe that hide behind corners. Always keep your shield raised when going through unfamiliar grounds. Climb up and you should see a Fat Minister. Use the Fire brazier to block his Fireballs and shoot arrows at him. There is a plank towards him but it will fall apart when you step on it. You can walk carefully along the narrow piece of wood left, just know that you may get killed if you fall. The treasure on the body is a Soldier's Soul so it is not really worth the effort. The onward path is blocked by a Gate. You need to jump down to those Miners below. It is a one way path to a switch that unlock the gate. Take note of those Miners without weapons, they dropped Splinter and Chunk of Spiderstones which you need later. Once past the Gate, you can find a Splinter of Meltstone. This item allow you to downgrade a weapon to it's basic stage. There is really no real advantage of doing this since all ores consumed are never refunded. Proceed ahead and you can see an area covered with steam. Those steam need to be turned off so that you can cross. There are 3 Miners with flame Blade ahead. The path on the left leads to the location to turn off the steam but first we want to go straight ahead to unlock a shortcut. Most importantly, we want to visit the Blacksmith, Ed. Once you get past the Miners, you will reach the outside, from the left, you can shoot arrow at the 2 Rock Throwers. On the right, you can find a switch to turn on the moving platform. At the bottom of the area is the Blacksmith, Ed. He will be able to provide high level upgrade. Once you upgrade to Compound Long Bow +3, he can upgrade it to Viscous Compound Long Bow +1. You will need 25 Splinter of Spiderstones, 9 Chunk of Spiderstones and 1 Pure Spiderstone to get it to +5. Note that you don't need to bring your ores to the Blacksmith to upgrade your weapon. Just leave them at Stockpile Thomas. You should upgrade to Viscous +4 at least otherwise, it damage capability will be less than a Compound Long Bow +3. From now onwards, you should take this shortcut to save time. From the Fog at the steam area, there are a small group of Miners here. Once past them, make sure you have your Thief's Ring on. There is a Crystal Gecko that will drop the Splinter of Spiderstone, Chunk of Spiderstone or Pure Spiderstone. This is the only Crystal Gecko that dropped them in the entire game. You have a total of 4 chance to hunt them per game cycle. At late game, you can cast Rage of God to kill it but at this point of time, it can be quite tough to kill it. If you run towards it, the Miners will attack you and may kill you or distract you long enough for the Gecko to escape. Alternatively, you can take a right turn and go up the stairs behind the wooden barrels. At the extreme corner of the upper region, you can jumped down to a ledge and kill all the Miners with arrows. Jump down and hopefully the Crystal Gecko is still there. It will be quite a distance from it, you can try to use range attack and try to sprint to it. Since the distance is quite far, the chance of success is rather low. Make your way up to the fire geckos. When you aer going down the stairs, be prepare to face some dogs. Remember to keep your shield up. Not far ahead is a switch to turn off the steam. Return to area that is previously blocked by steam. You should be able to find a Kris Knife if you search the upper region. This item will increased the damage done by your spells but you have to give up your shield. Go to the platform and activate the switch to go down. Note: If you come here later and find out that the platform is at the bottom, there is a switch to bring it up on the side, look carefully. 2-1 Boss, Armored Spider. This Boss is very easy to kill, just keep to the left and shoot arrows at it. With a Thief's Ring on, his fireballs will not hit you. It's web attack will damage you a bit, but you have a lot of time to eat grass. Once you killed it, touch the 2-2 Archstone to get a Pure Spiderstone. There is a Chunk of Spiderstone near the Archstone. Search carefully. Killing a Boss will increase the number of Crystal Gecko count in this world by 1. So you can back track to the crystal gecko that drop spiderstones. Once you reach there, noticed that the Crystal Gecko is not there, and the Miners were already killed. Don't worry, position yourself at a strategic location. Load the game. The Crystal Gecko will appear and you have very limited time to kill it. Pray that you get the Chunk of Spiderstone. From the 2-2 Archstone, there are a group of Miners on the right. At this point of time, I would suggest that you farm those Miners without weapon to try to get Splinters and Chunks of Spiderstones. I cannot remember exactly where are all the location of the Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. Just search every bodies from everywhere and you end up with lots of them. Later on, you can farm those Giants and Crying Babies in the Valley of Defilement for more Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. Once you managed to gather 5 of them, you can start working on World Tendency. Stonefang Tunnel - preparations Before you start doing that, you need to activate the Fog that led to 2-2 Boss, Flame Lurker. Doing so enable you to go to Scirvir's area, and from there return to 2-1 without the need to commit suicide. If souls are not very important to you, please skip this step. In New Game+, Black Phantom Scirvir drops 23280 souls when killed. The bearbugs are rather immune to Physical weapon, only weapons that deal Magical damage can hurt them. You can either cast spell and use a magic weapon. You can use the Crescent Falcion +1 you found in 4-1 or you can upgrade your Winged Spear +6 to a Moon Winged Spear. If you decide to get a Moon Winged Spear, you need to visit 3-1 Tower of Latria to get some Moonlightstones. Let's just assumed that you can make do with Soul Arrow and the Crescent Falcion. From the left of the 2-2 Archstone, there are 3 Flaming Light that will explode when you go near. For the first two Flame Lights, hold up your Purple Flame Shield and walk toward it slowly. Once it started to glow, stop and hold up your shield. Your stamina will be drained a little bit but you will take zero damage. The Purple Flame Shield is such a wonderful shield. If you try to run, you can get killed by the explosion. As for the 3rd Flaming Light, since it is moving, if you hold your shield up, it will move pass you and explode behind you, killing you. Rather, run towards it, once it started to glow, press forward and press 'X' to roll infront. This feat totally dodge the explosion. Once you get pass the 3 Flaming Lights, a Fat Minister wait for you one right of the end of the passage. Switch to sniper mode, part of his body is exposed, just shoot him a few time to kill him. You should know the drill by now. Take the platform to the lower level. You should see 2 Crystal Geckos running towards a tunnel (7). The tunnel lead to their nest, you shouldn't attempt it before you learn the Miracle, Rage of God. There are 2 Black Phantoms inside the passage as well. They can be killed easily by sniping them from far and then run away. Once they start walking back, snipe them again and run. Repeat until they are killed. Don't enter the nest, at most you can kill 1 or 2 now and the other 8 or more Crystal Geckos will escape. Definitely not worth the effort. Proceed to the tunnel (8). Take note of location (9). There is a Flaming Light just round the corner. Hold up your Purple Flame Shield and move closer to activate it. You will survive the blast with this shield without a scratch. Walk a bit in front and a Miner (Pick Axe) will ambush you. Once out of the tunnel. You should see Patches the Hyena. Yes, he is a nasty NPC but you really need him. So, please don't kill him or you have to restart your game. He is the only merchant that sell unlimited Hard Arrows, the second best arrows in the game. The best is White Arrows but they came in limited supply, ~50-60 per game. Just follow his instruction and get the treasure. The Giant bearbug will fall in front of you. Kill it with Soul Arrow or magical weapon. When it got killed, back away and hold up your Purple Flame Shield to survive the explosion. Talk to Patches again to get a Ring of Flame Resistance. Note: If you return to Nexus, Patches will be located the World 3 archstone. He sell Hard Arrow for 30 souls each. From now on, Hard Arrows is the only arrows you will be using. Follow the path down and you will find the Filthy Man (11) again, this time he sell L. Splinter of Hardstone and Sharpstone and some other ores (after you killed more Bosses in this World). There are some Sand Worms that will pop out from the ground breathing fire. They can be easily killed with Arrows or Magic. Just locked-on to them. Use the right thumbstick to adjust the target to its mouth. Wait till they stopped moving before releasing your spell or arrows. A direct hit to the mouth usually kill them. Your task is to reach and enter the Fog behind the 3 sand worms. This led you through a set of tunnel where you will emerge to a lava area and eventually led to the 2-2 Boss, Flamelurker. The Fog must be entered from the front, i.e. from the 3 sand worms area, if you try to go out through the tunnels, the fog will block your way and you cannot get out. This may prevent you from reaching the Primeval Demon. Just in case you are stuck in this manner, try out the alternate method. The alternate method simply ask you to commit suicide in order to respawn at the 2-2 archstone. This will cost you to loses those souls for killing Black Phantom Scirvir. Next you will need to learn how to get to the Flame Lurker location from Scirvir area. Here's a guide to bring you there. From the archstone 2-2, go through the tunnel. At the junction where you can see those fireball carts, take a right turn. Enter the tunnel and get past the group of Miners. You should can to a dead end with a deep mineshaft. Attack and destroy those boxes at the end. Look carefully, you need to jump down to the lower platform. A wrong move will kill you and put you back to the start of 2-2 archstone. From the lower platform, look to your left to see where you should land. Jump down to the lower platform. The next location to jump is at one of the broken edge. You should see a lone piece of wood sticking out on the left side. Go there and look down. Jump down to the lower platform. From here, you can see the blocked tunnel. There are 2 paths here. Path 1. If you jump down near the blocked tunnel, you can snipe at the 2 Crystal Geckos. If you try to fight Black Phantom Scirvir at this spot, you will be doing it in close combat. Path 2. If you move to the back a bit, you can find another plank to jump down to. From that plank, you can snipe Black Phantom Scirvir and there is absolutely no way he can reach you by walking. So you can take your time to kill him. To reach the blocked tunnel from here, you just need to jump down to the plank on the left and walk over. There are 2 crystal geckos near some bottles in Scirvir's area. Scirvir will appears if your world tendency is Pure White or Pure Black. From Scirvir's area, you can continue to jump and land below. The last few jumps are quite tough and you may get killed easily if you missed your footing. You will noticed another Crystal Gecko here, it is very difficult to kill it if you proceed from here. The moment you climb down from the ladder, it would have gotten away. Climb down the ladder until you reach the bottom. Walk around and you will be attacked by 3 sand worms here. There are two paths here. You can climb up the stairs and head towards the lava area and then get out through the Fog near the 3 sand worms in the Bearbugs area. Be sure to remove the Fog from the other side or else you cannot get out of the tunnel. The other path will bring you to 2-2 Boss, Flame Lurker. Getting Stonefang Tunnel to Pure Black World Tendency It's time to get World 2 to Pure Black World Tendency. First you need exactly 5 Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. If you don't have enough, search the other world but try not to kill any Boss. If you definitely need to kill them, kill exactly 1 Boss in each World. In World 2, revive with Stone of Ephemeral Eyes and get yourself killed. Return to the Nexus to check your updated World Tendency. Repeat this 5 times to get it to Pure Black World Tendency. At this point of time, it is highly recommended for you to switch to Offline Mode. There are too many possibilities for all the Worlds to be reset to Neutral even if you are extremely careful. It is better to get over with all the Pure Black & White World Tendency events first. Now, for the Pure Black World Tendency event in World 2. First of all, start with the 2-2 Archstone. Go through the tunnel on the right past those Miners. Smash some boxes and examine the place carefully. You need to find the path to Scirvir by jumping down to the lower platform carefully. A wrong jump will kill you. Once you are near the tunnel where Scirvir can be found, make sure you jump on the platform that is inaccessible by Scirvir. If you jump to the platform where he can reach you, you will have a hard time dodging his Fireballs. You will noticed that he had turned into a Black Phantom. Fighting him is very easy. Since you are on a platform that is inaccessible by him and you are wearing the Thief's Ring, he cannot detect you at all. So just take you time to shoot Hard Arrows at him with your Viscous Compound Long Bow. When his HP is low, he may attempt to heal himself. Make sure that you shoot him to interrupt his healing spell or you may run out of arrows eventually. After killing him, cross over from the left. Take good care not to get yourself killed while crossing the plank. Collect the Talisman of Beasts that Black Phantom Scirvir left behind. It can be used to cast Miracle and Spells. Do not be fooled by the stats listed on this item. It is the best spell and miracle casting item. Even the Insanity catalyst is no match for what it can do. -- remark from Gantz85 --------------------------------------------------- There's an alternate way to kill Scirvir IF you can't shoot him in time to interrupt his healing spell as manual aim is sometimes a bitch to hit. At times he rolls away and does his regeneration spell and you got to kill him all over again. The trick is, ready some spices, have your thief ring equipped, (and optionally if you have already got makoto and the clever rat's ring, use it as your secondary ring to enhance the damage, or just any spell enchancing rings) jump on the platform Scirvir is on. (you might want to take out the Crystal Geckos on the left of Scirvir first, arrow them) Walk in close enough to target Scirvir, shoot him with soul arrow, twice: (once to do damage, second time to make sure you interrupt him before he heals, even he doesn't it's still additional damage. Scirvir will walk slowly towards you, stay locked on for a bit and make sure he doesnt try to heal, if he doesn't, don't shoot a 3rd shot or he might try to heal and a 4th shot would be too risky as he might get too close to you and you cant lose him with the thief ring) and then run back out behind the mineral carts on the left outside the cave. Scirvir will walk for a little bit then walk back into the cave to his original position. Rinse and repeat. Watch out when his health is low, he might desperately try to heal himself again even if you interrupt him, that's when you don't run out anymore and just stay locked on, spam soul arrows on him till he dies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Killing Black Phantom Scirvir gives you a +3 World Tendency to World 2. It also moves your character tendency towards white. At this point, you need to get to the Primeval Demon and kill it without returning to the Nexus. As long as you don't return to the Nexus, World 2 is at Pure Black World Tendency. If you returned to the Nexus, it will be back to Neutral and the Primeval Demon will not be there. If you bring the World to Pure Black again, killing the Primeval Demon will only take it to Neutral. So if you want Pure White World Tendency, you have to follow my instructions closely. There are 2 ways to get to the Primeval Demon. 1. From Scirvir's location, jump down carefully to the area just before Flame Lurker, traverse the tunnel and return to 2-1. 2. From Scirvir's location, jump down and get yourself killed. You will respawn at the 2-2 archstone. Return to 2-1 from there. Assuming you had gotten back to 2-1, the Primeval Demon is at the bottom of the moving platform below the 2 Rock Throwers. Don't confuse this with the one that lead to the Blacksmith Ed. The Primeval Demon is completely harmless and easy to kill. Killing it gives a +3 to World Tendency and may drop a Colorless Demon's Soul. If you had made a Large Sword of Searching, please equip it to increase your chance of getting the Colorless Demon's Soul. Note: There is no need to use the Large Sword of Searching to attack. You can keep it on the other hand and it still double your drop rate. Once you had killed both Black Phantom Scirvir and the Primeval Demon, return to the Nexus. World 2 is now in White World Tendency. Give it a little push and it will be in Pure White World Tendency. In the Nexus, go upstairs can jump down to kill yourself. You just need to kill 2-2 Boss, Flamelurker in Soul Form to get World 2 to Pure White World Tendency. There is no need to jeopardize the mission unnessarily. Getting to Flamelurker is easy, jump proceed to Scirvir's location and jump down a few time and you will be at the entrance to it's lair. Alternatively, you can go through the tunnels fighting all those Giant Bearbugs. You just need your Purple Flame Shield to block his fire attack. In most cases, you can need to roll backwards or to the side to dodge his attacks. As for offence, just equip the Talisman of Beast and cast Soul Arrows. He should be killed with 10-20 Soul Arrows at most. If you have more than 100 MP, there is probably no need to use any Fresh Spice. Once you kill it. Return to the Nexus and World 2 is now in Pure White World Tendency. World 2 Pure White Tendency events Enter the 2-3 archstone. A little ahead is the Final Boss for World 2, Dragon God. He cannot be killed normally, so don't waste arrows shooting at him. At the end of the passage, take a left turn, watch out for a Crystal Gecko, kill it if you can. The rubbles on the left had been cleared and you able to withdraw the weapon: Keel Smasher (Wt. 20!). You can fight the Dragon God now or you can follow my instruction to gather the goodies for Pure White World Tendency first. Just Load the game and you will be at the start of stage, just before fighting the Dragon God. Go to Scirvir's location with the Keel Smasher. Talk to him and he will ask you to show it to him. Showing it to him means equipping the item and talk to him. You will get a Pure Greystone (Wt. 10!). Be sure that you have the Ring of Herculean Strength equipped and pick them up. Return to Nexus to unload. Killing the Dragon God is more like solving a puzzle. First you need the spell Firespray which can be learn from Freke that is imprisoned in the Tower of Latria 3-1. Tower of Latria The Tower of Latria is a nasty place. It's corridors are frequently patrolled by Mind Flayers that cast strong spells and had a killing move that suck the brains of its prey with its tentacles. You start the the 3-1 Archstone (1) at 3rd Floor. Your task is to find all the keys that are scattered all over the place. Wear the Thief's Ring and don't run too much so as to stay invisible to the Mind Flayers. The first set of keys is located at (2). There is a Mind Flayer guarding it. Mind Flayer carries a small bell with them, so if you listen carefully, you can hear them when they walk near. Just stay at the corner and once it approaches, quickly stepped out and attack it. You should be able to attack 3-4 times before it started to cast it's spell. If you still didn't kill it by then, it's spell will likely to kill you. In that cases, please spend some time to upgrade your weapons. If you are using the Winged Spear, it should be upgraded to Winged Spear +6 by now so killing the Mind Flayer should not be a problem. Do take note that later on when you upgrade it to a Moon Winged Spear, at +1 or +2 it's power is slightly decreased compared to Winged Spear +6. You may want to gather more Splinters and Chunk of Moonlightstones so that you can immediately upgrade it to Moon Winged Spear +3. From (2), walk down the corridor and take a left turn. Prepare to ambush the Mind Flayer at the end of the short passage. After killing it, take a left turn and walk along the corridor. Get another set of keys at (3). Return to the initial Archstone at (1). Now you can go to the right and unlock the gate at (4). At (4), take the stairs up to 4th Floor. There is no Mind Flayer on the East side so you can just walk down the long corridor, turn right twice, walk down the corridor on the other side until you find a room with 2 Iron Maiden. The one on the left contains the Assassin's set which is the ideal armor for my build. They are very light and offer relatively good protection and one of the best Poison resistance as well. Walk in front to (5) and there is an Iron Maiden with a trap within. If you opened it, you will be poisoned, if you don't have a cure, the easiest way is the Load the game. Loading the game removes poison, plague and buffs. There is a Mind Flayer at the exit of (5), ambush it as usual. Turn right to (6) and pick up the set of keys. Go back past (5), make a right turn, walk till the end of the corridor. You can unlocked the interconnected passage between the East and West zone on 4th Floor. There is a Mind Flayer in the passage. If you are opening the gate and it attack, you will be killed certainly. So time yourself properly. The good news is that even if you were killed earlier, the gate will remained opened. Anyway, open the gate and ambush the Mind Flayer. There is another gate at the end of the passage and another Mind Flayer. Time yourself carefully and open the gate, than ambush the Mind Flayer. On the West side of 4th Floor, Once Royal Mistress is located at (7). If you need Splinter of Moonlightstone, get it from her for 3000 souls each. With a luck of 8, trust me, you need to buy the Splinter of Moonlightstones from her. She also sells the Ring of Avarice for 50000 souls. You can find one for free later, so don't waste your money. From the shop at (7), turn left, then right and walk to the end of the corridor. Takes the stairs down. If you exit at 3rd Floor West, you will find Sage Freke inside a cell (17). We need to find the keys to unlock his cell. Takes the stairs down to 2.5 Floor. Note that the stairs leading downwards may not be very visible so search carefully. At 2.5 Floor, take the set of key at (9). Walk ahead and takes the stairs down to 1st or 2nd Floor. At 2nd Floor, there is a Mind Flayer patrolling the corridor. Ambush and kill it as per normal. Near the end of the corridor, you can see the Blue Phantom of Lord Rydell imprisoned in a cell. You need Pure White World Tendency to rescue him. If you get the World Tendency to Pure Black, Black Phantom Lord Rydell will appears outside of his cell. There are some rubbles blocking the rest of the area. Those rubbles will be removed in Pure White World Tendency. We will work on the World Tendency events later, for now, just leave him in his cell. Take the stairs down to 1st Floor West. When you just entered, look around and you should see a large roundish monster. Kill it with arrows, when it decided to cast a spell, take cover in the stairs area. Just behind it, you can a Crystal Gecko in the East zone. This is one of those Crystal Gecko that can drop all sizes of Moonlightstones. We are more interested in Chunk and Pure Moonlightstones to make our Moon Winged Spear +5. Anyway, wear the Thief's Ring snipe the Crystal Gecko. You should be able to kill it with 1 or 2 arrows. Alternatively, you may want to try your luck with this Crystal Gecko later. Whatever you do, don't scare it away. The stairs on 1st Floor East leads to 2nd Floor East but the gate (11) is locked. It will be unlocked in Pure White World Tendency. Remember it's location because you will be coming back later. One of the treasure on 1st Floor West is a Silver Bracelet. If you have a female character, wearing it will increases the amount of souls dropped by enemies. You can walk to the outside from 1st Floor East. In the lower section, at location (12) is a set of keys you need to pick up. If you move slowly towards it, the barrage of arrows will not hit you. This new set of keys unlock the gates at 2.5 Floor. Return to 2.5 Floor. You can unlock either door. Each passage have a Mind Flayer in there. Once you killed 1 of them, be prepared to kill the other one at the end of the corridor. There is a gate at the end, open it and go outside. Take the stairs down and walk eastwards. There are 2 set of spiral staircases here. The one marked (15) will bring you to a room with a Worshiper and a bunch of keys. This particular Worshiper will revives 2-1 Boss, Fool's Idol making her unkillable. So, be sure to kill him. Take the bunch of keys. This set of keys unlock the cell of Sage Freke. You need to make a trip back to save him. Afterwards he will take up position in the Nexus. The large statue be switch off by operating a switch at (14). One of the treasure there is the Clever Rat's Ring. It boosts you physical and magical attack by about 60-70% when your HP is < 30%. It is a key item. If you decided to take out the 2-1 Boss, you will encounter a Black Phantom at (18). She had a strong crossbow. She should be quite easy to kill with a Shield and Spear combo. Once killed, she will dropped 3 Chunk of Moonlightstones. Enough to make a Moon Winged Spear +3. (19) will take you to fight the 3-1 Boss, Fool's Idol. She is able to summon clones of herself. The clones have a HP bar above their head and will disappeared after being attack a few times. The main idea is simply shoot her with arrows from far and use the pillars to block the magic they casted at you. Once she is killed, there is a treasure on a body near the altar. If you want to get it, you need to walk along the edges. The moment you walk to the middle region, the Gargoyles will appears and bring you to the 3-2 Archstone. Return to the Nexus and learn Firespray and Soul Light from Freke. If you have problem locating him, he is in the section behind 5-1 archstone. Dragon God Dragon God is the Final Boss of World 2. Enter the 2-2 Archstone and you will meet it shortly. It cannot be harmed by arrows and spells so don't waste time on that. Watch it's eyes carefully, it will turned Red when it is about to attack. When it is looking elsewhere, it is safe to run. -- remark from Luhaine -- There is one location where it might be prudent to melee your way through the rubble. On the stairs, just before the second harpoon, it took me about 2 hits with my spear in dual hand mode. ------------------------- -- remark from Volume -- You can melee the rubble if you have lots of HP. however, with a low Vitality build, your HP will be extreme low. One hit from the Dragon God will kill you. Using the Firespray is totally safe. It hit very accurately and you don't move at all. In contrast, a spell such as Soul Arrow is hard to aim and move you forward slightly causing the Dragon God to react by attacking the spot you are in. Just do whatever you think works for you. Remember, what works in the first game may not work in New Game+ and beyond. If you melee the rubble and get hit in the process, I am very sure that method will not work in New Game+ and beyond. If done correctly, you will not be hit at all. ------------------------- Noticed that there are rubbles blocking your path. Just use a Bow to enter target mode, adjust the crosshair until it rest on the rubbles. Exit the aiming mode, then cast Firespray. It should shoot directly at the rubbles. A few hits and the rubbles is gone. Keep on destroying the rubbles until you reach the first harpoon. Operate it to attack the Dragon God. Destroy the rubbles with Firespray until you reached the second harpoon. There is a Crystal Gecko just beside the harpoon so be sure to kill it swiftly. Fire the second harpoon and the Dragon God is pinned down. Run close and shoot arrows at it's horn to kill it. Collect the Dragon Demon's Soul at the archstone. Return to the Nexus and use it to learn the Miracle, Rage of God from Urbain. Urbain is trapped in the Shrine of Storms at 4-2. We need to rescue him first. Shrine of Storms 4-1 You are probably quite familiar with this stage by now. Let's tie up the loose ends. If your Dex is around 30, you should be able to kill the Silver Skeletons with 1 Hard Arrow fired from a Viscous Compound Long Bow +5. In case it is not dead by then, you should be able to finish it off with a single trust of your Moon Winged Spear. From the start, take out the Silver Skeletons until you are standing below a wall. Shoot the 2 Silver Skeletons at the top. Take the passage on the left and proceed to the top. Kill another Silver Skeleton up there. Look for the Copper Key at the other end. Back track and kill the lone Silver Skeleton (Bow). There are a few Silver Skeletons in the passage. Kill them and search for the hidden passage. The wall will appear to be shimmering. Just attack it to reveal the passage. Make you way through and rescue Graverobber's Blige (13) with the Copper Key. Shortly, you will exit from a hole to the surface. Take the stairs up. You will find 2 Silver Skeletons and a Dual Katana Skeleton. It is guarding the Adjudicator's Shield. This shield is very useful in World 5. You can try to kill the Dual Katana Skeleton or simply lure it away and grab the shield. I suggest you grab this Shield later after you learnt Rage of God. Near the stairs, there is a ladder that you can climb up. From there you can stand just above the Dual Katana Skeleton. Cast Rage of God to kill the Dual Katana Skeleton and then go down to pick up the Adjudicator's Shield. If you walk a bit in front, you can reach an area where you can shoot the Flying Mantas. There is also a Golden Skeleton that you can shoot from there. Go back down, there is a narrow with a trap. Just step on the tile that triggered trap and raise your shield. Once passed the passage you will be on a cliff. Be sure to shoot any Mantra Ray that is giving you any trouble. They made a sound before they attacks, either block or move away from your previous location. There are some Golden Skeletons at the cliff area. Attack them after they finished their attack. A Dual Katana Skeleton is guarding the entrance to the 4-1 Boss Area. Wear the Thief's Ring, shoot an arrow at it and run and hide. Repeat this process until it is killed. 4-1 Boss, Adjudicator is a very fat creature with a bird on top of it. It appear that the bird is it's weakness. I don't recommend fight it with ranged attack since it's tongue is very deadly. You may not survive a hit with low Vitality build such as mine. Instead, just get down to the base and melee it. When it is about to swing its Meat Cleaver, move clockwise to avoid the attack. Noticed that there is a spot with a sword protruding from its belly. That's its weak spot. Just attack the weak spot a few times and it will collapse. Take the opportunity to attack the bird on its head. Repeat this process until it is dead. Touch the new archstone 4-2 to return to the Nexus. From the 4-2 archstone. Run straight, jump down and enter the passage. Graverobber Blidge will be relocated here with new items for sale. Run to the end and step on the stone to open a door. There is a Reaper that can summon an unlimited number of ghostly creatures. Just stand at the edge and shoot Hard Arrows at it. It shoot takes around 2 arrows to kill it. Once it is killed, all the ghostly creatures were killed as well and you gain quite a lot of souls. To get down, you can run down the stairs and jump down from the top from the area near the Reaper. The Reaper drop Splinter and Chunk of Darkmoonstone that you can used to forge Crescent weapons. In the lower region, there is a trail of colorful lights that lead you to Patches. Once again, he is up to no good. But remember, we need his arrows so please don't kill him. (at least, not yet). Follow his direction and look down into the well. Patches will kick you down and there you will meet Urbain who got his butt kicked as well. Talk to Urbain then kill the Black Phantom guarding the exit. It is really easy to kill it with arrows. Step on the stone to open the door. Patches will apologies and give you a Ring of Gash Resistance. Return to the Nexus, Urbain can be found near Boldwin. Speak to Urbain and learn Rage of God using the Dragon Demon's Soul. If you have 5 Eye of Ephemeral Stones, revive and suicide at World 4. The easiest way is to jump off the cliff near the 4-2 archstone. Take note that if you enter 4-1 archstone when it is Pure Black, Black Phantom Satsuki will appears. You do not want to kill him until you are done with farming, so for now, avoid the area. Farming at 4-2. This is quite easy to do. Put on all your soul enhancing items such as Ring of Avarice and Silver Bracelet. From the 4-2 archstone, run ahead, jump down, run through the passage and shoot the Reaper. If you want to farm Darkmoonstones, jump down and collect the loot from the Reaper. Cast Evacuate. Rinse and repeat. Once you had done enough farming at 4-2, it's time to complete the rest of the game. Killing Black Phantom Satsuki and the Primeval Demon in Shrine of Storms This part is a bit tricky. The first obstacle is defeating Black Phantom Satsuki. His attack have the tendency to break your guard, followed by a killing move. Here's weapon configuration when I faced him. Left Hand: Purple Flame Shield <=> Adjudicator Shield Right Hand: Winged Spear <=> Talisman of Beast Ring: Clever Rat's Ring, Cling Ring. At this point of time, you don't have Magic Sword "Makoto", so it is hard to get your HP to <30% in order to trigger the Clever Rat's Ring effect. Equip the Adjudicator Shield which block 90% of the damage taken, 10% of the damage will still get through and your health will regenerate slowly. The idea is to take enough damage until your HP is less than 30%. A Rat symbol will appears when your HP reaches critical and an aura appears around you, immediately switch over to the Purple Flame Shield or you may get killed by further attacks. In this way, your HP is low enough to trigger the Clever Rat's Ring. You will quickly noticed that your damage had increased a lot. Take the opportunity to kill Black Phantom Satsuki quickly. Be sure to interrupt him eating grass when his HP is low otherwise he will recovered full HP. Once you had killed Black Phantom Satsuki, do not return to the Nexus. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Caution: If you return to the Nexus, the World Tendency will no longer be Pure Black and you will not find the Primeval Demon when you return. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Proceed on foot to the 4-2 Archstone and kill the Reaper. There is a hidden passage somewhere in the middle of the staircase. In case you are confused, the staircase is not on the side of the room where Patches is in earlier. The hidden passage can be found by attacking the shimmering wall. There is a Dual Katana Skeleton at the end of the hidden passage. Just shoot arrow and run. Repeat until it is dead. This method is safe but slow. Alternatively, you can use Soul Remains to lure it near and cast Rage of God. One casting is not sufficient to kill it. So retreat and cast it again once you had recovered your MP. A Crystal Gecko is somewhere along the cliff but it will be hard to kill. Give it a try anyway. The Primeval Demon is not far from the Crystal Gecko, if you have a Large Sword of Searching, equip it to improve the chance of getting a Colorless Demon's Soul. The best way to kill the Crystal Gecko is at a location near the Primeval Demon. Wear the Thief's Ring, get into position, Load the game and shoot the Crystal Gecko. Return to the Nexus, the Shrine of Storms should be in White World Tendency. Getting Pure White World Tendency for Shrine of Storms Be sure that you are in Soul Form. If not, please suicide in the Nexus by jumping down from high places. The idea is pretty simple. You want to kill 4-2 Boss, Old Hero. There are a total of 3 Reapers that you will find on your way there. You can shoot the first Reaper with arrows. After killing it, step on the stone near the altar to open the door. The way is quite straight forward, just walk along the cliff until you reach the cave. The second Reaper quite deadly and I would advise you to avoid it totally. Kill those ghostly creatures that were summoned by the Reaper, once you are near location (15). (refer to 4-2 map) Just sprint (press 'X' while running) pass the Reaper. Kill the ghostly creature blocking you way and get out of the cave (16). Don't worry about the treasures near the exit, they are just Crescent Moon Grasses. If you go there, 2 female ghosts will back stab you. Shortly, you will enter another passage with more ghostly creatures. The third Reaper is hiding behind the corner at (17). There are 2 ways to deal with this Reaper. 1. Simply run pass it and run down the stairs quickly. There is a chance the Reaper may kill you with it's Dead Finger spell. If you managed to reach the base of the stairs, take out your Bow and kill it with arrows. 2. Move near to the corner and cast Rage of God. Retreat and do it again until it is dead. This method is safer but requires to kill those ghostly creatures constantly. Once pass the third Reaper, you will find yourself in a cave with glowing slugs. There are some white floating light that will explode on contact. You need to block the explosion with the Purple Flame Shield. Note: The Shield won't protect you if the explosion happens behind your back. Once pass the cave, you will came to face the 4-2 Boss, Old Hero. Note that if the world is Pure Black, a Black Phantom Dual Katana Skeleton will be guarding the entrance to the Old Hero. You should farm this particular Black Phantom for the Pure Bladestone once you learn the Soulsucker Spell in New Game+. Old Hero is strong but blind as a bat. If you put on the Thief's Ring and walk around, he will not know where you are. When I say walk, it mean pushing the left thumb stick very slightly and your character will walk. Don't panic and run or the Old Hero will be able to pin point your location! You are then safe to shoot arrows or cast spells at him. He may however attack a random area blindly, so do pay attention to what he is doing. Try to move to a safer place if necessary. Other than that, he is very easy to deal with. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Contributed by Todd Johnson I just wanted to share what I did during the Old Hero battle. In the back left corner before the fog there's a set of stairs with an item and rubble making for good protection. I walk past the Old Hero up the stairs and then wait until he's walking away a good distance. Then come out slowly sniping him with arrows or magic. Usually can get 2-3 hits before he starts to turn and come back. I then go back to the stairs where he can't hit and wait till he walks away again. Rinse and repeat until he's dead. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- After killing him, touch the new 4-3 Archstone to return to the Nexus. The Shrine of Storms is now in Pure White World Tendency. Return to 4-2 Archstone, enter the place Urbain was trapped. There is a body on top of a sharp rock earlier and totally unreachable. Now, the dead body is on the floor and you can pick up the Magic Sword "Makoto". When equipped, it will slowly drain 1% of your HP. It is a great item to reduce your HP to <30% so as to activate Clever Rat's Ring. Storm King Take the 4-3 Archstone. You will be immediately taken to the Storm King location. There are basically 2 approaches to deal with the Storm King. Approach 1: (Preferred way) Wear the Thief's Ring. Run to the little hut. While you are inside, the Manta Ray's project will hit the wall instead of you. Take your time to shoot arrows to kill the Manta Rays. Once you had killed a number of Manta Rays, the Storm King will appears. Kill the Storm King with arrows and the rest of the Manta Rays died along with it. Now, there are 2 Crystal Geckos near the stone hedges. Shoot them from far. Use Makoto to reduce your HP to <30% and put on the Clever Rat's Ring so that you can kill them with 1 single arrow. There is a sword called Stormruler that you can withdraw. It is actually the best weapon against the Manta Rays. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Comment: After patch 1.03, the Clever Rat's Ring no longer works with Bows. So now you may need to use 2 arrows to kill the Crystal Geckos. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Approach 2: (Not recommended) Wear the Thief's Ring. Run to the stone hedge and pull out the Stormruler. This act will scare away both the 2 Crystal Geckos. Run to the hut and use the Stormruler to kill the Manta Rays. Once you had killed a number of Manta Rays, the Storm King will appears. Kill the Storm King with arrows and the rest of the Manta Rays died along with it. Touch the new archstone to collect the Storm Demon's Soul. Return to the Nexus. If you want to farm the 2 Crystal Geckos, take the 4-4 archstone and run to the hut. Kill all the Manta Rays using the Stormruler. After that, use the Makoto to reduce your HP to <30% and shoot them. Now, the Storm Demon's Soul is very useful. It may be used to forge the Morion Blade which will increase your damage when your HP is <30%. The damage stack with that of the Clever Rat's Ring. It is absolutely necessary in New Game+ and beyond. On the other hand, it can be used to learn the very useful Miracle, Anti-Magic Field from Urbain. In first play, Anti-Magic Field is very useful to get pass the Tower of Latria. For now, it is more crucial to learn Anti-Magic Field now, you can forge Morion Blade in New Game+. Getting Tower of Latria to Pure Black World Tendency The procedure is simple and you should know it by now. Get around 5 to 7 Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. Revive and then suicide in 3-2 by jumping down from the edge. Return to the Nexus to check your World Tendency. Repeat the process until you reached Pure Black World Tendency. Remember the Miracle, Anti-Magic Field, you are going to need it. Put on the Thief's Ring if you want to keep yourself safe from the Mind Flayers. Your first task is to locate Black Phantom Lord Rydell and kill him. He is located at the 2nd Floor, standing outside of his cell. To reach him should be simple, from the starting archstone at 3-1. Take the stairs from the West section to 4th Floor. Just before fighting any Mind-Flayer, you will have to cast Anti-Magic Field. You will noticed some static appearing on your body, if the Mind Flayer is closed, static will appear on its body stopping it from casting magic. If you attempt this in Pure Black World Tendency without Anti-Magic Field, you get not deal enough damage to kill it before it unleashed it's deadly magic. Then take a round trip to East section and take the stairs down to 2.5 Floor. Cross the 2.5 Floor and go down to the 2nd Floor. Use Makoto to lower your HP to < 30% and put on both the Thief's Ring and the Clever Rat's Ring. Shoot the Black Phantom Lord Rydell from far (slightly half the length of the corridor) with your Viscous Compound Long Bow +5, then quickly run back to the stairs. Once his HP is < 30%, Dull Rat's Ring will activate and your damage will be reduced substantially. Don't worry, just keep on shooting him and he will be killed eventually. Once he is killed, you get a +3 to World Tendency but it will not be update until you returned to the Nexus. However, the Primeval Demon will only appears in Pure Black World Tendency. So, you have to killed the Primeval Demon right away without returning to the Nexus. Proceed on foot to the Fool's Idol location, visit the altar and get yourself carried above to the 3-2 archstone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comment: After patch 1.03, the Clever Rat's Ring no longer works with Bows. So now you will need more arrows to kill Black Phantom Lord Rydell. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finding the Primeval Demon in 3-2 Take the 3-2 archstone. The path is quite straight forward. At the fork, take the right path. There is a real gargoyle posing at a stone gargoyle. You can tell it apart from its Red Eyes. Just shoot arrows at it to kill it. Once you passed the fire pot, you should be able to see a Gargoyle flying high above. Take out your trusty bow and shoot it. If it is still charging at you, you can shoot it with more arrows or wait till it is near and use your spear on it. Enter the circular building, the right side is blocked temporary so don't bother to go there. Take the left path. The further end of the left path is blocked at the moment, don't worry about it. At location (13) (refer to 3-2 map at the wiki). Shoot the gargoyle and proceed along the path. There are more Gargoyle but they are easily killed with your Bow. You will reach another circular tower. Follow the spiral stairs upward. There is a lift there but if you run too fast, there is a chance you will fall to your death if the platform is not yet lowered. So watch your steps. A gargoyle will try to ambush you on the way up, and another one is waiting at the top of the lift. It is best to killed them with your Shield and Spear. Holding the Shield up and attacking with Spear keep yourself stationary. If you try to swing another weapon, you may move forward too much and fall to your death. At the top of the tower are 4 Worshipers (7). They are basically harmless so kill them swiftly. Once they are dead, one of the two chains will be lowered. There is a path leading to some colorful lights. Do not, I repeat jump down. At least not now. If you jump down, you will be forced to free Yurt, the Silent Chief. If left unchecked, he will start killing all your NPCs at the Nexus. It is not advisable to fight him during Pure Black World Tendency, and also remember that your main task is to locate the Primeval Demon. Noticed that there are 2 opened cages there. Just walk in and the cage will closed and take you down to the swamp. Take the lift to the lower region. Search the place very carefully and you should locate the Primeval Demon. There are some face worms here that spit acid that can corrode your weapon and armor. It is best to shoot them from afar. Equip the Large Sword of Searching (can be forged with the Hero Demon's Soul at Blacksmith Ed) to increase your chance of dropping the Colorless Demon's Soul. Once you had killed both the Black Phantom Lord Rydell and the Primeval Demon, return to the Nexus. The Tower of Latria is now in White World Tendency. Next task is to get Tower of Latria to Pure White World Tendency. Make your way to the swamp. This time round it should be easier before it is in White World Tendency. Check out the route that you can access from the planks. You are looking for the base of the Tower. You will pass by location (10) (refer to 3-2 map in wiki) on the way to the tower. By now, your should be able to kill those face worm with 1 or 2 arrows. Once you are at the base of the tower, you will proceed along the circular, somewhere near (11) is a Black Phantom Mind Flayer. Be sure to cast Anti-Magic Field before fighting it. If you had opted to forge Morion Blade, this fight will likely killed you. It had lots of HP and you probably won't be able to kill it before it cast its deadly spells. So, you will need to equip Clever Rat's Ring and Morion Blade and use Makoto to lower your HP to <30%. Then hope that you are strong enough to kill it fast. Otherwise, you need to level up a bit more at 4-2 by killing the First Reaper. Anyway, with Anti-Magic Field, this fight is a walk over. Proceed to the top, there are more face worms up there. They will be quite near to you and it is hard to try to surprise them, so kill them quickly. Note that there is a Crystal Gecko here. It drops varies sizes of Moonlightstone, including Pure Moonlightstone. There is a short path there that leads to another circular tower. It is similar to the previous one. Take the elevator to the top and kill the 4 worshipers to release the 2nd chain. This causes the massive heart to fell releasing many face worms in the process. If you visit earlier section of the game, you will find some face worms in addition to the normal enemies. The top of the tower lead to to a place where you can jump down to return to the section near the 3-2 archstone. Make your way to the circular room. Remember the right path that we skipped earlier? Take the path now since it is no longer blocked. There is a hidden staircase behind the vases. Break them and take the stairs. Soon you will reach a circular room. That are some nice treasure here, the most important one is the Gold Mask. Remember the talking crow at Shrine of Storms, 4-1? You can drop the Gold Mask in exchange for a Colorless Demon's Soul. The procedure is quite simple. Drop the Gold Mask at the spot where the crow speaks. If dropped correctly, it will acknowledge it. Access the option menu and select "Load" to load your game. Noticed that your dropped item is gone and a treasure appear somewhere further up. Picked it up and you will realised that it is a Colorless Demon's Soul. Similarly, the Talisman of God can be exchange for a Colorless Demon's Soul. Other items can be exchanged for White Arrows includes: Soul Remains, Augite of Guidance, Splinter of Moonlightstone, Chunk of Moonlightstone. There rest of the item can be found elsewhere. Note that each item is only accepted once per game. If you want more, you need to get it in the next New Game. Go back to the entrance to the circular room. Take the left path to the section that was blocked earlier by the tentacle. When the 2nd chain was released, the way had open up. Notice that spiral stair that lead to the top. Look familiar right? Yes, there is a Black Phantom Mind Flayer waiting for you in the mid section. Cast Anti-Magic Field and kill it easily. Proceed to the top to the Fog that lead to the 3-2 Boss, Maneater. There are 2 Maneaters that you need to fight. It is quite tough to try to fight 2 of them at the same time. Here's a trick you can use. Don't touch the Fog. Move to the left and as close to the Fog as possible. Put out your Bow and shoot arrows through the Fog. At the right spot, the arrows will fly inside and hit the Maneater. Shoot enough arrows to kill it. One down, one more to go. Fighting Maneater at the long and narrow corrider is very dangerous. You can roll off and fall to your death or you may be knock off the edge. So once you enter the Fog, run straight ahead until you reach a brazier. Staying behind the brazier will protect you from the spell Maneater cast. If it get near, attack it will your spear. If it fly away, you may want to cast some spells at it. Anyway, it should be quite easy to kill it. Collect it's Demon's Soul and return to the Nexus. The Tower of Latria is now in Pure White World Tendency. Tower of Latria, Pure White World Tendency So what are the goodies that you can find in Pure White World Tendency? Go to 3-2 and make your way to the location where you release the 1st chain. Take the circular stairs to go up. Earlier on there is a gap which you cannot cross. Now, there is a plank for you to cross the gap. Get up and you will find a set of key to the 2nd Floor. Return to 3-1, to Lord Rydell's cell, unlock the door with the key you found. He will gives you the Dull Rat's Ring. It increases your defense when your HP is <30%. The rubbles on the 2nd Floor near Lord Rydell's cell is gone. You can get some treasures there. Go to the 1st Floor. Go to the east side (don't forget to shoot the Crystal Gecko there) and take the stairs to 2nd Floor East. Unlock the door with your newly found key. You will noticed that the cells here are locked. Don't worry, make your way to the end and you will find a key on a body that unlock all the cells. With that, you had collected all the goodies in World 3, Pure White World Tendency. Tower of Latria, 5-3 Boss, Old Monk From 5-2 archstone, simply takes the spiral staircase to reach the Boss. There will be a few Mind Flayers waiting for you along the way, just cast Anti-Magic Field to silent them and kill them quickly. The Old Monk will not be fighting you, instead he will summon a Black Phantom as his avatar. If you are playing in online mode, a random Human player will be summoned as your opponent. It is difficult to plot out a fool proof strategy against human since it very much depends on their play style and skills. On the other hand, if you are in offline mode, the Black Phantom summoned will be fixed. He basically fight with claws and have Moving Soul Arrow to assist him. He initially starts with 3 Moving Soul Arrows and eventually have 5 when his health is low. I usually defeat him using the Spear and Shield combo. Just block his attacks and look for opportunity to stab him with your spear. Be sure to avoid or dodge the Moving Soul Arrows or you will likely be killed. You may want to lower your HP to less than 30% and equip Clever Rat's Ring to speed up the combat. Once you killed him, collect the Yellow's Demon's Soul at the 4-4 archstone. It can be used to learn Banish, Moving Soul Arrow, Thirst or forge the Insanity Catalyst. Personally, I will choose Moving Soul Arrow since it is a very useful spell. You will have to go through the game another 3 times to get the others. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Note from Volume: In online mode, the Old Monk may summon you as his champion if you had leave your soul sign as a Blue Phantom or invade as a Black Phantom. If you are able to kill the other player as Old Monk's champion, you get a chance to get the Monk Head Collar. This head dress will increase your magic attack power at the cost of a decrease in magic defense. Due to it's large size, it will obstruct your view while playing the game. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Valley of Defilement, 5-1 In 5-1, the place is filled with creatures with long hooked nose. They came in regular human size but occasionally there are giant sized ones. Those regular sized enemies usually wield a poison dagger or flaming stick. Those giant ones wield a Great Club that can knock you to the ground. If you follow my character build, you will find that the only enemies that is going to gives you any trouble are the giants. The regular ones can be taken care of with a Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 or a Spear and shield combo. Since there is a chance you may get poisoned by the enemies. Do remember this little trick if you don't have any poison curing means. If you were poisoned, simply press START button select Load under the Option menu. This will re-load the game with you at the exact same place as before, but your poison status will be gone. Alternatively, you can just cast Evacuate to return to the Nexus. Please refer to the map of 5-1 in the wiki in this guide. By now you should have a Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 and plenty of hard arrows. You start at the starting archstone at (1). Go up the planks carefully. If you fall off, it is instant death. Shortly, you should encounter the first regular enemy wielding a posion dagger. Simply block its attack with the Purple Flame Shield, then finish it off with your Moon Winged Spear. From here, you can shoot the regular enemies from far. Take the stairs at (2) to go down to the lower level. Some of the floor here will collapse once you stepped on them. Some regular enemies will be waiting for you if you fall. There is a mechanism at (4) that you activate to lower the plank leading to a Talisman of God. Make your way to location (8). This part is quite risky but is definitely worth doing. You have to step off the side and jump down. If you land at the right place you will survive the fall otherwise you will get killed. If you get killed, come back and try again, aiming for a different place to land. Eventually you will survived the fall. Kill the enemies nearby. Be careful not to scare off the Crystal Gecko that dropped varies sizes of Faintstone. At location (11) is a mechanism you can activate to lower the plank. By doing this, you had open the path to farm the Crystal Gecko for this map. Once you crossed over, you should encounter around 9 plague rats at location (10). They are very easy to kill but they carry the deadly plague. Do not, I repeat cast Rage of God here. There is a Filthy Woman that sells merchandise at the upper level. If you cast a Rage of God here, you will either kill her right away or turned her hostile. After you had killed 5-1 Boss, she will be relocated to 5-2. When that happened you can cast Rage of God here without fear. Anyway, in case you are wondering why you should bother with the plague rats. They happened to dropped the splinter of keystone that can bring you instantly back to the Nexus. From here, take note of location (13). A ladder will appear here if you have Pure White World Tendency in World 5. At location (14) is your first Giant enemy. It is recommended that you use Makoto to lower your HP to <30%. Wear the Clever Rat's Ring and shoot arrow at it. Once you had fire the arrow, run across the plank to (11) and wait. Return to (10) and shoot another arrow. Repeat this until the Giant is killed. Alternatively, you can try to melee with it. Just take note that it will kill you with one hit. Proceed to (15). You should see some regular enemies with a Giant beside them. Kill the regular ones with arrows. Then use the hit and run tactics to kill the Giant with arrows. Make your way to (16). Enter it to fight 5-1 Boss, Leechmonger. Leechmonger is a very easy Boss to defeat with a Bow. Just stay at the top and shoot arrow at it. It will attempt to heal itself. But arrows from Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 enhanced by Clever Rat's Ring will kill it in 7-20 arrows. Take the Wriggling Demon's Soul and return to the Nexus. You may want to learn the Miracle, Cure from Urbain. The miracle Cure will cure both poison and plague. A pretty handy spell. Valley of Defilement, 5-2 Many people hate this place because of the poison swamp, nasty giants and insects. For a start, you need to gather some necessary items: Adjudicator's Shield - get it from 4-1. Regenerator's Ring - get it at 4-1 or 5-2 Blessed weapon You will noticed that all the above items regenerate your HP. If you are wearing a Adjudicator's Shield +5 and a Regenerator's Ring. It will basically offset the poison you get from the swamp. If you are unable to get a Adjudicator's Shield +5, you will need a blessed weapon (+5 if possible) to add more HP regeneration. From 5-2 archstone, proceed along the path and you will reach (2). You will want to equip the Purple Flame Shield before you enter the swamp. There is a plank that will serve as a bridge if you managed to push it down from the other later. This will serves as a shortcut but for now, you need to take a longer path. You have to enter the swamp from here. First just shoot the 2 creatures in the swamp. Equip you HP regenerating item and jump down at (3). This place is quite confusing even with a map. You can walk for a while and get totally lost. Anyway, try to follow the map of 5-2 in the wiki as much as you can. The jellyfish in the swamp are easily killed with arrows. They dropped poison removing items. Follow the path to location (6). There are 3 creatures and a giant. Simply shoot and kill the 3 creatures with arrows. As for the giant, after shooting at it, run away. You can actually run in the swamp as long as your equip weight is less than 50%. In New Game+ and beyond, you need to run quite a distance before the giant stop chasing you. Anyway, kill the giants with arrows. Behind them is a fog (7) than you can enter. They usually refer to this as the first fog. There are some planks that you can walk on, you will see some lights on the patch of land in the swamp. Remember this place because it is where you will find Black Phantom and Body Form of Selen. You can proceed along the plank and walk in the swamp. It's up to you. There are some creature wielding a flaming stick and some insects. The creature is easy to kill, just remember to switch back to the Purple Flame Shield. As for the insects, just shoot them with arrows. They can be quite tough to kill if you get too near to them. If you sensed flickering on the screen, it's probably their wings flapping. Take them out before you get near. At location (8), there are infinite number of creatures that will come out. So kill them if necessary and get away from them as soon as possible. Soon you reached a dead end. Jump down and be careful of the insects there. If you proceed a little further, you will noticed a lot of slugs are falling down from somewhere above. This spot is the so called slug nest where you can get the Moonlight Sword. Anyway, ignore them for now. Move ahead and you will see 2 Giants and a purple creature. The purple creature cast some sort of cloud spell that poison you. Just kill it from far with arrows. As for the 2 Giants, just shoot and run. Rinse and repeat until they were dead. From their location, if you go left, you will find a platform where you can go up. It will leads you to the slug nest which and can bring down with your weapon. After dropping the nest, there are some ledges here that you can jump down. Make you way down. To kill the slugs, you can either use Rage of God or shoot arrows. Once you kill them all, you will find the Moonlight Sword there. It is very light and quite powerful. Return to the location of the 2 Giants earlier. You will noticed a small encampment there. The filthy woman that you encountered earlier had relocated here. She is the only NPC that sell plague arrows. Those arrows will cause poison but the poison kill rather slowly. They maybe useful against dragons for certain build. The places is crawling with those creatures. However it should not be difficult to deal with them. You main task is to unlock the path to this encampment from the starting area. Make your way to location (15), then activate the switch at (18) to lower the bridge. There is a Crystal Gecko just before the bridge. It drop Chunk and Pure Faintstone. At location (17), you can find 4 Giants guarding 3 Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. Just kill them with arrows and jump down to collect the goodies. There is a slug at (10) that drops the Beggar armor set. Be sure that you had enough carry capacity before killing it. After lowering the bridge at (18), you are ready to do the Pure Black World Tendency event for this world. By now, you should be very familiar with how to get Pure Black World Tendency. As usual, enter 5-1 archstone, revive using Stone of Ephemeral Eyes and suicide by jumping off the cliff. Repeat this until the world is in Pure Black World Tendency. Pure Black World Tendency Events in 5-2 Remember the place where Black Phantom Selen can be found? It is somewhere between location (7) and (8) in the map. Your main task is to kill Black Phantom Selen, then kill the Primeval Demon to get the world to White World Tendency. However, there is a slight problem here. First of all, Black Phantom Selen can be killed easily by standing on the plank between (7) and (8) and shooting her with arrows. Be sure to equip Clever Rat's Ring, Hard Arrows fired from a Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 will kill her quickly. However, from there you will have problem getting the 2 Black Phantom Giants guarding the path to the encampment. You see, the Primeval Demon is behind them, so if you can't get pass them, you will be in trouble. So here's how I do it and it is very crucial that you had already lower the bridge at (18). Bring lots of arrows. 300-400 is a good number. First, don't bother with Black Phantom Selen. Instead, cross the bridge at (18) and make your way to the encampment. There is a Black Phantom Giant there but you can simply lure it into the lower section and run pass it. To lure him to the lower section, just go to the squarish section, maneuvers until he fall to the lower section. Alternatively, you can spend some arrows to kill it. Just beware that it can chase you for long distance and there isn't much place to hide. Once pass the Filthy Woman, you should see the 2 Black Phantom Giants, 2 Giant and 1 Purple creature. Kill the purple creature with arrows. But don't shoot the Giants. They can run inside the encampment and kill you there. Instead, keep to the right and sneak pass them. Make your way to location (12). You should see the Primeval Demon but don't kill it first. If you killed it now, you may run of arrows before killing Black Phantom Selen, you will then need to return to the Nexus to buy more arrows. That is something we should totally avoid. At location (12), make you way up to the plank. At the top, you can safely shoot arrows to kill the 2 Black Phantom Giants and the normal Giants. Now make your way back to the encampment. Walk along the cliff and return to location (3). At location (6), you will noticed a Black Phantom Giant added to the usual mix. Kill them with arrows using the shoot and run tactics. Make your way to the plank between (7) and (8). Be sure to kill the flying insects that is just before (8). You don't really want them to distract you from shooting Black Phantom Selen. Get your HP to <30% using Makoto. Equip Clever Rat's Ring and shoot hard arrows using the Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 at the Black Phantom Selen. When her HP is low, she may attempt to heal herself, try to interrupt that if possible, otherwise you will need more arrows to kill her. Once she is dead. Jump down and pick up the weapon, Blind from her flame. Make your way to the Primeval Demon. It should not be a problem now that the 2 Black Phantom Giants were killed earlier. Alternatively, if you don't mind losing some souls. You can kill Black Phantom Selen first, then get yourself killed to re-spawn at 5-2 archstone. Cross the bridge at (18) and proceed to kill the Primeval Demon. You will need to picked up those souls you dropped earlier. Anway, now that you had killed both Black Phantom Selen and the Primeval Demon. Return to the Nexus to confirmed that the world is now in White World Tendency. 5-2 Boss, Dirty Colossus You need to kill one more Boss to get it to Pure White World Tendency. Make your way to the encampment. the fog that leads to the Boss is at (19). When you are shooting arrows at Dirty Colossus, it will cast a spell that gives you the plague. Your HP will decrease gradually, you can either using healing item or use Widow's Lotus to cure it. Note that when you had the plague, healing items are less effective. Anyway, just monitor your HP, if it get low, heal yourself. It don't take too many arrows to kill it. Once you had killed it. Pick up the Eroded Demon's Soul at the 5-3 archstone return to the Nexus. The Valley of Defilement is now in Pure White World Tendency. World 5 Pure White World Tendency Events First of all, kill yourself in the Nexus to return to Soul Form. You don't want to get yourself killed by the Giants and messed up your World Tendency. Go to the 5-1, near the first giant goblin, there will be a ladder (13) leading upwards. Once this ladder is unlocked, it stay unlocked forever in the current game even if World Tendency changes later. Climb the ladder and watch out for a giant goblin half way through. Kill it with arrows as usual. Eventually the path leads to three giant goblins guarding the Istarelle spear. Kill them one by one with arrows and take the spear. At 5-2, if you go to the area around (7), you will find Selen in Body Form. Talk to her and she will ask you to look for her brother, Garl Vinland. The other part of the quest requires you to find Black Phantom Garl Vinland. However, you can't do that until you had killed the last Boss, Maiden Astraea. Take the archstone to 5-3. You will find the fog to the last Boss right away. Enter it and kill the 3 creatures there. There is a Crystal Gecko on the right side. Don't let it escape, kill it with arrows. Collect the loot, and kill the rest of the creatures there. You should be able to find a good spot to shoot arrow at Maiden Astraea. Kill her with arrows. Return to the place near the first 3 creatures. Don't worry about Garl Vinland. Select Option and Load the game. You will find a new Crystal Gecko that you can shoot. Also, Garl Vinland had suicded and left a flame behind. You need to ensure that you can carry all his stuff. You will need to wear the Ring of Herculean Strength. If you return to the Nexus, any items you didn't pick up will be lost forever in the current game. Touch the archstone to get the Pureblood Demon's Soul. Return to the Nexus. Suicide in the Nexus. You don't want to risk getting killed fighting Black Phantom Garl Vinland in Body Form. Talk to Freke and use the Pureblood Demon's Soul to learn Death Cloud. This spell is essential to defeat the False King. Don't take the 5-4 archstone but take the 5-3 archstone instead. You should see Black Phantom Garl Vinland in place of Body Form Garl Vinland. Your arrows and spells cannot hurt him when his Dark Silver Shield is raised since it block 100% physical and magical damage. Equip Purple Fame Shield and Moon Winged Spear. Lure him to smash attack with his large hammer, Brand. When he guard is down, poke him with your spear. Rinse and repeat until he is dead. Pick up Brand and the Crest of Vinland. Return to Selen and gives her the Crest of Vinland to get a Ring of Devout Prayer. Boletarian Palace, 1-2 This part should be really easy at this stage of the game. There is however a choice to whether you want to save Ostrava but I will recommend that you don't save him first. Saving him means killing all the enemies near him and then talk to him. Not saving him simply means that you don't go near him at all. Since the Red Dragon is already killed earlier, just proceed along path and your should reach location (11) quickly. Those Blue Eyes Knights shouldn't be giving you any trouble at all. Enter the fog to fight with the 1-2 Boss, Tower Knight. First of all, run to the top section and kill all the soldiers with crossbows. Then shoot arrow at the Tower Knight when his shield is down. When he is about to fire his projectile, back away. It may take some practice but you should learn the pattern quickly. Rinse and repeat until he is dead. Pickup the Iron Demon's Soul from 1-3 archstone and return to the Nexus. Suicide in Nexus by jumping down from a high enough place. Preparation for Pure Black World Tendency Before you do the Pure Black World Tendency event, you need to open up the path to the Primeval Demon. From the 1-3 archstone. A little ahead is a fountain. There are 2 dogs there, just block their attack with a shield, then kill them. There is a stairs here, while you walking up the stairs, an enemy will push a flaming boulder towards you. Just avoid it and it will smash some crates below. A Fat Minister is standing on top, when you walk near, he will escape through the Large Gate which is released and crushed one of his follower. You main task in the preparation phase is to open this particular Large Gate by activating a lever on the other side. Opening the Large Gate will provide a shortcut to reach the Primeval Demon without the need to fight the 2 Black Phantom Fat Ministers at the upper region. For now, don't go near the Large Gate. If you had rescued Ostrava in 1-2, the moment you go near the Large Gate, he will ask for help and this usually distract you from your task and if you didn't watch his back, he can get himself killed. If he got himself killed, you may not be able to retrieve the Mausoleum Key. Many people had returned to the Nexus and forget to retrieve the Mausoleum Key. You have to understand that the moment you left any world. Any item not picked up with be lost forever. So, for now, take my advice and stay away from the Large Gate, whether you had rescued Ostrava in 1-2 or not. Can you see the side passage on the right? Somewhere near at the corner near the stairs is a Crystal Gecko. Equip the Large Sword of Searching to double your drop rate. The best way to kill it is to wear the Ring of Sincere Prayer and cast Rage of God. Since you had killed 2 Bosses so far, after you loot the Crystal Gecko. You can loot the Crystal Gecko another 2 more times. Return to the same position. Load the game and cast Rage of God. Repeat until the Crystal Gecko is thoroughly farmed. Note: after killing the 1-3 and 1-4 Boss, you can return to farm this Crystal Gecko 2 more times. Take the right passage. Shoot the 2 soldiers from far. Go down the flight of stairs. An assassin will appears and you just need to block her attacks with a shield and then finish her off with your spear. They drop clearstone so you can farm them if you need some. Once you reach the lower section. You can take a detour, climb a ladder and shoot the 2 soldiers with crossbow. Cross the squarish area to where the soldier with crossbow is situated. A soldier will send a flaming boulder towards you. Take the stairs there. There are assassins hiding in the left and right passage. If you enter the passage, the assassin will appear behind you and attack. Once you reach the top, you can find another Fat Minister standing opposite you. You can take him out safely with your arrows and take out those soldiers next to him as well. He dropped the Iron Ring of Keys. In the house just right of you is a Red Eye Knight and some soldiers. Put on Ring of Sincere Prayer and cast Rage of God to kill everyone inside the house. Note: If your Rage of God cannot kill him in 1 casting, then you better put on the Clever Rat's Ring. Enter the house, go upstairs and you will find the Dregling Merchant there. Note: If you have not met him in 1-2, he will not appear here. He will sell the Brushwood armor and shield after you had kill 1-4 Boss. Go back downstairs and go out of the house. You should see a Fog here. There is also a Red Eye Knight here. He will patrol the passage. Put on Ring of Sincere Prayer and cast Rage of God when he is near to kill him. Go through the passage and loot the Fat Minister that you had killed earlier for the Iron Ring of Keys. I am not sure whether the Iron Ring of Keys will be gone forever if you return to Nexus before picking it up. It's better to play safe and get it before returning to the Nexus. Take the stairs up, more soldiers and assassins. Just dispatch them as per normal. Once you reached the top, you will noticed some long narrow passage. A Red Eye Knight is patrolling the place and you can see him from far. Put on Ring of Sincere Prayer, find a place to ambush him. Cast Rage of God when he is near to kill him. Take note of the spot the Red Eye Knight is at. Noticed the passage there? This place look harmless. But in Pure Black World Tendency, the moment you walk into it. 2 Black Phantom Fat Ministers will materialize, 1 in front of you and 1 behind you. You can imagine how nasty it will be right? By opening the Large Gate, you don't have to get into this nasty situation. Anyway, in case you are sandwiched in between them, hold your shield up and slowly maneuvers around the Black Phantom Fat Minister behind you. Once you get out of the passage. There are many ways to deal with them. For me, it's either Rage of God or shoot them with arrows. Once pass the passage. You will find some archers which you can deal with easily. There are 2 paths from here. One lead to an open and the other one lead to the Large Gate. Take the stairs to the open space. Mark this place, in Pure Black World Tendency, the Primeval Demon will be here. At the corner of the area is a sniper spot. Anyway, just stay above and shoot every soldiers that is in your sight. Now, take the other path to the Large Gate. There is a Fat Minister that you can kill with arrows from far. He dropped the Minister's Hat. Many people had forgotten to pick it up and returned to the Nexus. As usual, the Minister's Hat is gone forever. There is a lever for you to open the gate. Activate it to open the Large Gate. Note: If you had rescued Ostrava in 1-2, he will ask for help and 2 Red Eyes Knights will appears near him. You need to take out the 2 Red Eyes Knight quickly or Ostrava will be killed. Anyway. since you didnt' rescue Ostrava earlier, you can deal with this problem later. The reason I am emphasizing this is because you want to kill Ostrava for Mephistopheles quest to get a Talisman of Beast. If you had already gotten the Talisman of Beast, you may not need another one. But you can always get an extra and give it to some of your online friends. You will also get a Pure Clearstone for rescuing Ostrava the third time. Very handy to complete the Clearstone weapon trophy. Pure Black World Tendency for Boletarian Palace Bring 7 Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. Go to the 1-1 archstone. Revive with the Stone of Ephemeral Eyes and then get yourself killed. Return to the Nexus to update your World Tendency. Repeat it 5 to 7 times depending on your World Tendency to reach Pure Black World Tendency. If in doubt, do it a few more time. By now, you should be able to tell it visually. In Pure Black World Tendency, the passage on the left of the 1-1 archstone will be opened. Once opened, it stays opened forever in the current game. First of all, bring sufficient arrows. My usual recommendation is 400-500 arrows. Enter the passage, you can shoot the Crystal Gecko immediately. 3 Black Phantom Slave Soldiers appears. It is very easy to kill them. You may want to farm the Crystal Gecko completely before dealing with Black Phantom Miralda. Walk a bit further and another 5 Black Phantom Slave Soldiers appears. Take care of them and proceed to the building. Black Phantom Miralda is hiding inside. There are 3 ways to kill her. 1. Put on Ring of Sincere Prayer, Clever's Rat Ring and Cast Rage of God to kill her. If you cast Rage of God to kill her, somehow the game will not increase your Character Tendency. 2. Lure her out and kill her in melee. Get HP to <30%. Equip Clever Rat's Ring, Shield and Spear. With your improved damage, you can kill her quickly. Doing this will increase your Character Tendency. If you had kill the other 4 Black Phantom NPCs in the other world. This act will get your Character Tendency to Pure White. 3. Get HP to <30%. Equip Clever Rat's Ring, Viscous Compound Long Bow +5. (Morion Blade in offhand in New Game+) Lure her out, run back to the starting area. When Black Phantom Miralda started to walk back. Shoot arrows at her. Repeat until she is dead. Similar to method 2, this will get your Character Tendency to Pure White. Just remember that getting Pure White Character Tendency means that you can go back to the Nexus later (after killing the Primeval Demon) and collect the Friend's Ring from the Monumental. After killing her, enter building. There is a Colorless Demon's Soul on one of the beam. You need to step off the edge and land on the beam below. You will probably get killed a few time but it is worth the effort. The Brushwood armor set is at the bottom, please don't take it. It is very likely to get you overweight. Remember, you can collect the armor later. For now, you need to kill the Primeval Demon. Make your way to the 1-3 archstone. The only complication should be the 2 Black Phantom Red Eye Knight that will materialize near the 2 Blue Eye Knights. Anyway, by now, you should know that you should get your HP to <30%, wear Clever Rat's Ring to kill the 2 Black Phantom Red Eye Knights. Just remember to run away after shooting your arrow, they can run after you if you are not careful. From the 1-3 archstone. The path is straight forward. Just go through the Large Gate that you had opened earlier and go upstairs to the Primeval Demon. Once you had killed it, you are ready to returned to the Nexus. Note: If you want to test out fighting the 2 Black Phantom Fat Ministers, you should try it before returning to the Nexus. The moment you enter the Nexus, Boletarian Palace is in White World Tendency. Leave everything unwanted with Thomas. Make sure you can carry an extra Wt of 60. Make sure you can carry all of them. Ring of Great Strength will help you here. The Ring of Great Strength can be found in the Dragon nest in 1-1. Go to the 1-1 archstone. Enter the stairwell where Black Phantom Miralda was situated. Take the ladder to the bottom and bring back the followings: Brushwood Helmet, Wt 6.9 Brushwood Armor, Wt 17.3 Brushwood Manifer, Wt 10.4 Brushwood Leggings, Wt 10.4 Large Brushwood Shield, Wt 13.0 Total: Wt 58.0 Anything left behind will be gone forever. So don't attempt to pick it up unless you are ready. Return to the Nexus to offload the Brushwood set. You should be at Pure White Character Tendency by now. Talk to the Monumental and get the Friend's Ring. If there is no Boss left in the current game, you won't be able to get the Ring from the Monumental until you start the next game cycle. Rescuing Yuria the Witch Bring the Minister's Hat. Go to 1-3 archstone. There is a locked door near the Blue Eye Knight. Unlock it with the Iron Ring of Keys. There is a Fat Minister guarding the place. Shoot arrows to kill him from far. Pick up the Bloody Key. Biorr of the Twin Fang is locked inside one of the cell. Use the Iron Ring of Keys to rescue him. Return to the Nexus and you will find him sitting in front of the archstone of the Valley of Defilement. Go to 1-3 archstone. Go to the fountain with you fight with the 2 dogs. On the right side is a locked door. Open it with the Bloody Key. Make your way to a building. Go up the stairs. Noticed that a Fat Minister is standing above with no visible way to reach him. Wear the Minister's Hat and the Fat Minister above will lower the stairs. Kill him with arrows. Go up and you will find Yuria. If you talk to her with the Minister's Hat on, she will treat you like a bad guy. If you took off the hat, she will thanks you for rescuing her. Return to the Nexus, Yuria can be found in the Magician Zone behind the archstone of the Valley of Defilement. At this point, Boletarian Palace is at White World Tendency. You just need to defeat another Boss in Soul Form to get it to Pure White World Tendency. Interlude: Explanation of Mephistopheles' quests However, there is a slight complication here: doing Mephistopheles' quests. I will try my best to explain this portion as it can get confusing once you started your course of action. After you had rescued Yurt the Silent Chief from Tower of Latria, 3-2. Mephistopheles will appears in the second level of the Nexus when your Character Tendency is Pure Black. If Yurt is left alone, he will start doing Mephistopheles' quest and start stealing your kills. Here's Mephistopheles' quests and their respective rewards: Target Reward Saint Urbain and followers Stone of Ephemeral Eyes Sage Freke and followers Stone of Ephemeral Eyes Patches, the Hyena Colorless Demon's Soul Biorr of the Twin Fangs Colorless Demon's Soul Ostrava Talisman of Beasts Yuria the Witch Foe's Ring As you can see, the only important items in this list are the 2 Colorless Demon's Souls and the Foe's Ring. Since Colorless Demon's Souls can be found elsewhere, this make the Foe's Ring the most crucial reason to do the quest. The missions are given one at a time in the exact order given. Once you had completed the mission, the next available target will be selected. Any targets that were already dead will be skipped. The only penalty is the rewards for the respective target. Saint Urbain need to be rescue first, and his followers are always in the Nexus. Sage Freke need to be rescue first, and his followers are always in the Nexus. Patches, the Hyena can be rescued in 2-2 and 4-2 and will be sitting in front of the Archstone for Tower of Latria. Biorr of the Twin Fangs can be rescued at 1-2. After rescuing Yuria, Biorr will sit in front of the Archstone for Valley of Defilement. He will appears during the fight with 1-3 Boss, Penetrator and will distract the Blue Dragon in 1-4. However, after you had successfully defeated the Blue Dragon, Biorr will no longer appears in the Nexus. He is forever gone until the next game cycle. So, if you want to collect the Mephistopheles' reward, you need to kill Biorr before he disappear forever. Ostrava is another possibly glitch character. You need to rescue him 3 times, in 1-1, 1-2 and 1-3. In 1-4, after getting past the Blue Dragon, Ostrava will commit suicide after giving you the Mausoleum Key. This adds a date line as to when you have to kill him. It is also well known that sometimes after rescuing him, he disappear somehow. You see, supposed you rescued him in 1-1, if the 1-1 Boss is not defeated, Ostrava will wander in 1-1 every time you enter 1-1. He can get himself killed without you ever knowing, you must keep on protecting him every time you enter the world he is in. Suppose you rescued him in 1-2, as long as 1-3 Boss is not defeated, you must rescue him every time you enter the world 1-2. Similarly for 1-3. Frankly speaking, if I am doing my mission to kill the Black Phantom Miralda and Primeval Demon, I hardly had any spare time to babysit Ostrava. In a Pure Black World Tendency, he can get killed easily. If you ever left the world without picking up the Mausoleum Key, it will be forever gone in the current game. This is the main reason I advice you not to rescue him first. Luckily, the quest reward is a Talisman of Beast which you can get by killing Black Phantom Scirvir. Yuria need to be rescued and will stay in the Nexus till the end of the game. This make it easy to get the Foe's Ring. So, what's the big deal about all this assassination quests? You see, if you want to have an easier time fighting 1-3 Boss, Penetrator, you will want Biorr to help you out. So you may want to kill him alive. Later on, Biorr is quite helpful distracting the Blue Dragon. But that is the last time he is ever going to appear. If you want to delay killing him, you better do it after the Blue Dragon is killed. In general, it is safer to kill him earlier, before the fight with the Blue Dragon. End of Interlude Recap. At this point of time, Biorr is already rescued. And since Yuria is rescued as well, Biorr will be in the Nexus. Ostrava is not yet rescued. He should still be at 1-1. World 1 is in Pure White World Tendency. You are in Soul Form. If not, please suicide in the Nexus. Bring at least 200 hard arrows. Remember the spell: Soul Arrow, Soul Light or Moving Soul Arrows. Bring some spices just in case you run out of mana. Getting to the 1-3 Boss is very easy. From the 1-2 Archstone, head straight to the fountain, up the stairs and make your way to the Large Gate. Take the stairs up to the top level. Go to the sniper position and shoot the 3 Red Eyes Knights. Kill off the rest of the enemies. Make your way down to the fog that leads to 1-3 Boss, Penetrator. If you want to fight to be over quickly. Equip Makoto to bring your HP to <30%. Wear Clever Rat's Ring and Thief's Ring (If you want more power, you can put on Ring of Magical Sharpness). Left Hand: Purple Flame Shield +10. Right Hand: Talisman of God. Spell: Soul Arrow, Soul Light or Moving Soul Arrows. (choose the one you like) Biorr will appear in the fight with Penetrator. While Penetrator is being distracted by Biorr, just cast your spells at him. Wearing the Thief's Ring allows him to almost ignore your present. Giving you ample opportunity to kill him quickly. Just in case he attack you, keep your shield up or just roll away. Once you get far enough from him, he will ignore you totally. Anyway, it should take you more than 1 or 2 minutes to finish him. Doing this fight without Biorr is more challenging. In that case, Moving Soul Arrows may be a better choice since it pack a punch. However, learn to aim it well or you will waste lots of MP. This also train your dodging skills. You better master it or you will suffer later in New Game+. Touch the archstone to collect the Silver Demon's Soul. Return to the Nexus. Suicide in Nexus to return to Soul Form. Visit 1-1. World 1 is now in Pure White World Tendency. Body Form Miralda appears in the place where Black Phantom Miralda can be found earlier. If you kill her, you can get the Binded armor set from her. Note: Killing Body Form Miralda will gives a -3 to World Tendency bringing World 1 back to Neutral World Tendency. Mephistopheles' quest You had done all the Pure Black and White World Tendency events at this point. You had also complete the Pure White Character Tendency event. Now, let's do the Pure Black Character Tendency event. This part is quite straight forward. Just visit World 1 to 5 and kill all 5 merchants: World 1 - Dregling (changes location from 1-1 to 1-2, then 1-3) World 2 - Filthy Man (location 2-1, 2-2) World 3 - Once Royal Mistress (location 3-1 only) World 4 - Graverobber Blige (changes location from 4-1 to 4-2) World 5 - Dirty Woman (changes location from 5-1 to 5-2) After killing all 5 of them, your Character Tendency is now Pure Black. However, Mephistopheles will not appear in the second floor of the Nexus yet. Go to 3-2, make your way to the place where you lower the first chain. Look for the colour light markers. Go there and rescue Yurt. Evacuate to the Nexus. Go to the second floor of the Nexus. Yurt should not be there yet. If he is there, be sure to kill him. Anyway, in my play through, he is always not in the Nexus until some time later. You will want to collect Yurt's armor. Gloom Helmet, Wt 4.6 Gloom Armor, Wt 11.5 Gloom Gauntlet, Wt 6.9 Gloom Leggings, Wt 6.9 Be sure you can carry all this before proceeding. Return to 3-2, make your way to Yurt's location but don't jump down. Yurt should be walking on the platform. He is practically target practice for your Viscous Compound Long Bow. So, just kill him with arrows. Jump down and collect the Gloom armor set. Return to the Nexus. Mephistopheles is now at the second level of the Nexus. First mission: Saint Urbain and followers. Be sure to learn all Miracle from them and memorize the miracles you want. After killing them, you can no longer change your miracle until the next game cycle. Saint Urbain had a male and a female follower. After killing one, the other 2 will attack you when they see you. Let's start with Saint Urbain. The nasty part about this fight is that you don't want to cast Rage of God or any area of effect spells here. Stockpile Thomas is right behind Urbain and you don't want to kill Thomas accidentally. So, just equip the Purple Flame Shield and a spear. Lower your HP to <30%, wear the Clever Rat's Ring and fight him in melee. He should go down quickly. When he want to cast the Rage of God, be sure to stop him. I don't know whether his Rage of God can kill Thomas. Let's just be more cautious and always interrupt his spell. After that, his two followers will attack. The female follower wields a Pickaxe, it's attack is very strong. It is safe to dodge it then block it. They shouldn't be much of a problem to deal with. Talk to Mephistopheles to get a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. Next mission: Sage Freke and followers Be sure to learn all the spells you need from them first. We are now at the other end and it is very safe to cast Rage of God. Get your HP to <30%. Wear Clever Rat's Ring and Ring of Sincere Prayer. Left Hand: Purple Flame Shield or Dark Silver Shield Right Hand: Talisman of God. Walk near Freke and cast Rage of God. Depending on your soul level. You can kill him in 1 or 2 casting. The follower will attack you after you killed Freke. Switch to a spear and kill him quickly. Talk to Mephistopheles to get a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. Next mission: Patches, the Hyena First of all, buy lots of arrows from him. You want Stockpile Thomas to have 999 arrows of each type of arrows he is selling. You will also want to carry an extra 400-500 hard arrows with you. Remember, you are killing off the sole supplier of your hard arrows. Patches carries an Adjudicator's Shield that regenerate his HP. He also attack with a spear. This present a rather nasty combination. If your Magic and Faith is high enough, you can kill him with a single blast of Rage of God with Clever Rat's Ring and Ring of Sincere Prayer. If not, you can use it to reduce his HP and then fight him with a spear. Alternatively, you can shoot arrows at him and then fight him in melee when he run near. Just choose the method you are most comfortable with and kill him swiftly. Talk to Mephistopheles to get a Colorless Demon's Soul. Next target: Biorr of the Twin Fangs At this point, Biorr should be in the Nexus. He is wearing a very strong armor. Get your HP to <30%. Wear Clever Rat's Ring and Ring of Sincere Prayer. Left Hand: Purple Flame Shield or Dark Silver Shield Right Hand: Talisman of God. Hide behind the archstone of Valley of Defilement. Cast Rage of God twice. Biorr will get up but is unable to locate his attacker. If he is still not dead. Eat some spices and cast Rage of God a few more time. Do it until he is dead. Talk to Mephistopheles to get a Colorless Demon's Soul. Next target: Ostrava Visit 1-2. Clear the lower section and rescue Ostrava. Return to Nexus. Visit 1-3. Go near the Large Gate and rescue Ostrava. After he had given you the Pure Clearstone. Kill him and get the Mausoleum Key. Talk to Mephistopheles to get a Talisman of God. Next target: Yuria Be sure to learn all the spells you want from her. Make sure you memorize the spell Death Cloud. You may learn other spells as well. Get your HP to <30%. Wear Clever Rat's Ring and Ring of Sincere Prayer. Left Hand: Purple Flame Shield or Dark Silver Shield Right Hand: Talisman of God. Stand next to Yuria and cast Rage of God. She should be killed with 1 blast. If not, cast it another time to finish her off. Prepare yourself before talking to Mephistopheles. Get your HP to <30% with Makoto. Put on the Clever Rat's Ring. You can choose any method you like to deal with her. For me, I melee her with Purple Flame Shield and a Moon Winged Spear. Talk to Mephistopheles to get the Foe's Ring. After getting the ring, she will attack you with Soul Sucker. If connected, it will drain 1 Soul Level from you. Kill her quickly. At this point, you had completed the Pure Black Character Tendency events. The Blue Dragon Take the archstone to 1-4. There are some crossbowmen right ahead. Kill them with arrows. There is a Crystal Gecko right in front of the 3 Black Phantoms: A Woman with the White Bow. A Man with a sword A Knight in heavy armor and Tower Shield. They are actually quite easy to deal with. Get your HP to <30% with Makoto. Wear Thief's Ring and Clever Rat's Ring. Kill the Crystal Gecko with 1 hard arrow. Then shoot arrows at them. Take them out one at a time. Be sure to run away after firing your arrows. Also, beware of the magical arrow from the woman. Make sure to dodge them. They can only be stopped by a Dark Silver Shield. A Purple Flame Shield will not protect you against her arrows. After killing them, collect the loot. By now, all these are extra duplicates that you stock up with Thomas. You may give them away if you take part in online game later but seriously who want them? At the time, you may want to move back to the place behind the dead dragon. Load the game and harvest the Crystal Gecko. Since you already killed 3 Bosses, you can harvest this Crystal Gecko 4 times. Move ahead, turn right. There is another Crystal Gecko behind the planks. Similarly, you can kill it with 1 arrow. Then harvest it a total of 4 times by loading the game. In the building ahead, there is a Red Eyes Knight. You can kill it quickly with a Rage of God (<30% HP + CRR + RoSP). Once you reach the top of the stairs, you will find 2 Fat Ministers. Kill them will arrows. Walk a bit nearer and a Blue Dragon will appears. Bring it down to 50% HP and it will flies away. As usual, Viscous Compound Long Bow +5 (<30% HP + CRR) will make your task real easy. There is a Crystal Gecko right ahead. Kill it with 1 arrow. Then load and harvest it another 3 more times. Note: After loading, the Blue Dragon will regains 100% HP. Return to Nexus, then repeat the previous steps again to bring the Blue Dragon to 50% HP. Go through the building and you will reach a hall with the Blue Dragon. This time round, Biorr will not be there to distract the dragon. So your job is tougher. There are a few ways to kill the Blue Dragon. 1. Shoot the head of the Blue Dragon from far. Aim for the mouth when it is breathing fire. It takes many arrows but is completely safe. Be sure to bring at least 500 arrows. I think you need 200-250 hard arrows if you don't miss. Light arrows will perform better here. 2. Get to the right pillar near the Blue Dragon. There is a safe spot amongst the pillar. The flame will not hurt you there. Unfortunately, you cannot enter the precision target mode from this position. Just lock-on and shoot. Arrows fired from this distance should deal around 5x the damage of method 1. However, with a low vitality build, if you get hit by the flame once or twice, you are toasted. Hard arrows perform better than Light arrow here. 3. If Biorr is alive, he will distract the Blue Dragon. Doing method 2 is extremely easy. Whichever way you choose, the Blue Dragon will be killed eventually. Note: this is the reason why I advice you to stock up on arrows. If Patches is alive, this mission is a cake walk. Just bring 999 hard or light arrows. Once passed the Blue Dragon. If Ostrava is stilled alive (in certain game variant), he will gives you the Mausoleum Key, then suicides. Walk on a bit further and you meet Black Phantom Ostrava. Just shoot him with arrows and then take cover. He went down quickly. Ahead, you reach an elevator with a lever. Equip Thief's Ring and Death Cloud. Activate the lever. Once it reaches the top. Enter the Fog. Hide behind the wall on the left of the stairs. Wait for the False King to turn his back against you. Walk (don't run) up the stairs slowly. Cast Death Cloud on the False King. Make sure you can visually see his HP decreasing. If not, cast Death Cloud again until his HP starts to decrease. Walk back down the stairs and hide behind the wall. Turn off the screen and come back about 15 min later. In case the Death Cloud had expired before he is dead. Repeat the same process again. Once he is dead. Collect the False King's Demon's Soul from the archstone. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Remark: There are reports that Death Cloud doesn't work on the False King after patch 1.03. In that case, you just have to defeat him using Magic or Melee. Alternatively, you can remove the patch and kill him with Death Cloud. Lastly, you can always find people online to help you. --------------------------------------------------------------------- At this point, the game is officially sealed. You can no longer gain any soul level from the Maiden in Black. Old King Doran If you want to defeat Old King Doran. Now is the last chance to do it. Go to 1-1, get past the Red Eyes Knight. Then open the door with the Mausoleum key. Cast Death Cloud on Old King Doran. You can either wait for him to die and hasten the process by fighting him. He had a very powerful attack that can kill you in one hit. As long as you can dodge that move, you should be able to kill him. Killing him unlock a trophy and let you have his armor. It is the best light weight armor in this game. However, it may not be suitable for my current build since I will not have enough Endurance to wear the armor and still roll. End Game Return to the Nexus. Talk to her and she will bring you to the Old One. Enter the cave and fight the Wanabe Allant. This Boss is easy. The Maiden in Black will then lure the Old Ones to slumber. At this point you have a choice. 1. Good Ending Just exit the place. You will receive the Maiden In Black Demon's Soul. This can be exchange for the Soul Sucker Spell from Yuria in New Game+. 2. Evil Ending Kill the Maiden in Black. You will receive the Beast's Demon's Soul. It's properties is currently unknown. You also receive a Red Eye Stone which can be used for Player vs Player mode. For the first time through the game, it is better to get the Good Ending. The Soul Sucker spell is too good to be missed. New Game+ After finishing the game, you will start at the Nexus with a new game cycle. The World Tendency and Character Tendency remains exactly the same as before. You keep all your souls, soul level and most of your items. The items that are gone were the quest related items such as keys. You also get to keep the Minister's Hat and any items that are left with Stockpile Thomas. All NPCs are now alive and will not remember what you had done to them in the previous game cycle. This also means that you need to rescue all those NPCs all over again. All enemies are now harder to kill and hit harder. They also give more souls when killed. As before, you can't level up your soul level until you had defeated Phalanx. If you had followed my walkthrough closely, you would have completed all World and Character Tendency events. You can try out online mode if you want. The World Tendency glitch should impact you little since you are not longer bother with it. If you need Colorless Demon's Soul, you can get the World to Pure Black World Tendency and look for the Primeval Demon. Killing the Black Phantom NPCs is now optional. However, doing so will increase your Character Tendency and this make your life easier since the enemies are weaker. Obviously, the target you should be aiming for is the completion of all the trophies in the game. Since some Boss demon's soul can have up to 4 usages, you need to reach New Game+++ in order to cover them all. You should exchange the Storm Demon's Soul for the Morion Blade as soon as possible. The upgrading trophies are mainly related to the Crystal Geckos. With <30% HP, with a Clever Rat's Ring and Marion Blade. You should be able to kill it with 1 hard arrow from a Viscous Compound Long Bow +5. Each Crystal Gecko have a counter that start with 1 and increase every time a Boss is killed in that particular world. So, you have 4 or 5 attempt on each Crystal Gecko. Equipping a Large Sword of Searching and farming them in Pure Black World Tendency will improve the drop rate. Since you are going through the game 4 times. You have many chances to get what you want. However, there are 2 particular ores that are quite frustrating: 1. Chunk of Cloudstone You can find some at the dead body near the Stormruler. If you want more, you can obtained it by killing those Flying Mantra in the Shrine of Storms. However, their drop rate is rather low. 2. Pure Bladestone This can only be found by killing the Black Phantom Dual Katana wielding Skeleton. There best way to do it is get World 4 to Pure Black World Tendency, starting from 4-3, back track and get pass the slug cave, kill the 3rd Reaper, then sneak up behind the Black Phantom Dual Katana wielding Skeleton and kill it with Soul Sucker. However, the drop rate is 1 out of 200, i.e. if the skeleton drop 200 items, 1 of them could be a Pure Blackstone. It is not influence by your luck. If you have friends who already forged a Sharp weapon, you can ask them to join you in co-op, drop the sharp weapon and let you hold it for about 4 seconds to unlock the trophy, then return it to them. Beware of Black Phantoms that may mess things up. That's all. Enjoy the game! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13. Game Patches --------------------------------------------------------------------------- You will be forced to install the latest game patches the moment you enter online mode. To remove an existing patch. Just delete it in the game data section. Don't mixed this up with your saved games. Some people have reported that all their world tendency get reset to neutral after installing or removing a game patch. So be careful if you want to do that. It is inevitable that some portions of my walkthrough may become obsolete after introduction of a particular patch. In that case, you will probably need to find another way to do what I had mentioned earlier. In the Worst case, you can always uninstall the latest patch. Take note that when the US version is released later this year, the latest patches may already be incorporated into the original disc making this option invalid. But that's live, so learn to live with it. Version 1.01 (Pre-patch) Weapon rating of Meat Cleaver is S/S/-/S. Physical Attack 90 +405, Magical Attack 90 +135 (Str 99, Dex 99) Clever Rat's Ring and Morion Blade boost damage from Bows and Crossbows. Soul Duplication trick workable. Online matchmaking allowable for player +/- 10 levels of your level only. Dying in Soul Form reduces world tendency. Version 1.02 Weapon rating of Meat Cleaver is S/S/-/A. Physical Attack 90 +306, Magical Attack 90 +98 (Str 99, Dex 99) Clever Rat's Ring and Morion Blade boost damage from Bows and Crossbows. Soul Duplication trick workable. Acid Cloud range and damage is reduced. Increase the level requirements for high level players in online matchmaking. Dying in Soul Form doesn't reduces world tendency. Online glitch that may turn all your worlds to neutral world tendency. Version 1.03 (released Jun 2009) Buying of large quantities of items is possible by pressing and holding the D-pad button. It increases by 1 initially, then start increasing by the 10s, then by the 100s. Shadow of character is more visible now. Meat Cleaver HP draining capabilities is removed. Clever Rat's Ring and Morion Blade does not boost damage from Bows or Crossbows any more. Death Cloud does not work on Bosses any more. etc ??? Note that the Clever Rat's Ring effect on Bow will be enabled again in a later patch. If you can read Japanese, you can read the patch announcement at http://www.jp.playstation.com/scej/online/mente.html#demons-souls --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14. NA vs Asian version --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some of the terms in the game had changes between the versions. Terminology Hyper Mode = Having less than 30% HP and equip Clever Rat's Ring and/or Morion Blade Attributes Intelligence = Will Equip Burden = Equip Item Burden = Load Weapons Bramd = Brand Demonbrandt = Demonbrand Soulbrandt = Soulbrand Dragon Bone Smasher = Keel Smasher Dull Gold armor set = Beggar's armor set Hiltless = Gripless Spiral Rapier = Curved Rapier Holy Arrow = Toad-Eye Arrow War Scythe = Sais Ores and upgrades Sticky = Viscous Marrowstone = Pulpstone Shard of xxx = Splinter of xxx Large xxx Shard = Lg. Splinter of xxx Shard of Archstone = Splinter of Keystone Spells Cloak = Hide Enchant Weapon = Magic Weapon Flame Toss = Flame Thrower God's Wrath = Rage of God Hidden Soul = Subdue Soul Homing Soul Arrow = Moving Soul Arrow Regeneration = Slow Recovery Second Chance = One-Time Revival Soul Ray = Soul Light Warding = Total Protection --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15. Game play video --------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.youtube.com/user/ColdDrake13 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16. Acknowledgement --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Luhaine, Gantz85, Ezzekhiel - for their remarks. Todd Johnson for his comments on the battle with Old Hero. kpearwut - for pointing out the Scirvir's section is unclear. Part of the walkthrough is written with reference location markers indicated on the maps hosted at http://www.geocities.jp/kouryakubo/ds/index.html Many of my earlier entries are submitted to the Demon’s Souls wiki under the ID Cold_Drake. http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/ I am not sure whether I should copy them back here into this FAQ. Information of the patch 1.03 is gotten from the official announcement at http://www.jp.playstation.com/scej/online/mente.html#demons-souls --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17. Revision History --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.0 - 05 Nov 2009. Added the changes between NA and Asian versions. 1.9 - 15 Jul 2009. Minor corrections. 1.8 - 14 Jul 2009. Added Combat 101 section. 1.7 - 09 Jul 2009. Missed out Old Monk earlier, fixed. Added Weapon Upgrades section. 1.6 - 03 Jul 2009. Added the section on Magical and Physical Damage Enhancement. 1.5 - 02 Jul 2009. Minor update. 1.4 - 26 Jun 2009. Minor update. 1.3 - 25 Jun 2009. Rewrite Scirvir portion. 1.2 - 24 Jun 2009. Update after patch 1.03. 1.1 - 18 Jun 2009. Minor update. 1.0 - 06 Jun 2009. Update earlier version and move it to GameFAQs. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345