Dark Souls 3 Cinders - Same Game, but Twenty Times the References!

[DoubleNegative]

Dark Souls 3 came out in April of 2016. A lot of people liked it, but I thought it was shit. For reasons that I'm sure are related to me thinking it was fucking awful, my first run was a sorcery run. I was also very disappointed with how much the game felt the need to fellate the first Dark Souls. Say what you will about the game, but the callbacks were anything but tasteful and well-thought-out. Every time I came across a direct reference to the first game, it felt like all that was missing was a sitcom audience's raucous applause.

So why am I doing an LP of a game that I hated? Because Cinders did the impossible and made me like the game. Cinders made Dark Souls 3 actually fun.

So what is Cinders?

Cinders is a reimagining of Dark Souls 3. It rebalances a lot of items and skills and a lot of fundamental mechanics. To give you an idea of what I mean, you can only have 10 Estus Flasks at maximum instead of 15. Why? Because the mod author removed Ashen Estus Flasks. Why? Because in its place they give you an infinite use item that restores a shitload of FP all at once but leaves you vulnerable for about 5 seconds. On top of that, FP naturally regenerates. So you can cast as many spells as you want as long as you're willing to deal with being extremely vulnerable when you go to replenish your casts.

The game is harder now, but the dev gives you the tools to actually scale the mountain he's set in front of you. And in case the game wasn't hard enough for you, you can activate optional curses that make enemies even stronger in exchange for greater rewards when they die. We'll be doing most of this LP under the effects of some of those curses.

When are you recording? I want to invade you and--

Slow your roll there, chief. While Cinders can be played online, FROM's servers will auto softban you if they detect you going online with the mod enabled. For various reasons, I don't especially want to be softbanned and forced to play on the cheater server. Also the run I'm planning on doing is not your traditional Souls run.

To put it bluntly, if I played with other people, I'd be inundated with messages calling me every name under the sun, chief among them being "unfair."

What kind of run is it going to be?

Low schadenfreude. To say more would ruin the surprise. You're very likely not going to see me struggling very much. I've practiced this run several times now, and each time I do it, it gets easier and easier. When I die, you're not going to see a half hour of me struggling to get back to where I was. I'm going to cut out repetitious content liberally.

Videos

I'm aiming to post videos twice a week, and they'll be me and Yapping Eevee and maybe anyone else I can guilt convince to come along for the ride.

01 - Cemetary of Ash
02 - Hellrun Part 1
03 - Hellrun Part 2
04 - High Wall of Lothric Part 1
05 - High Wall of Lothric Part 2
06 - High Wall of Lothric Part 3
07 - High Wall of Lothric Part 4
08 - Undead Settlement Part 1
09 - Undead Settlement Part 2

Bonus Videos

Bonus 01 - Patch 1.73

[Lurith]

Happened to be up late and saw this on YT first, downloaded the mod as soon as I finished watching. So far I'm just past Vordt and having the most fun I've ever had with this game. Really looking forward to more videos, but I need to hurry so I can get ahead and not get completely spoiled on changes. Also, there is a way to do an arcane build from pretty much the beginning in Bloodborne, which is pretty much the only way I ever had fun with that game.

[Carpator Diei]

Looking forward to this, the mod sounds really interesting. I admittedly don't mind all the callbacks in DSIII since most of them seem to have some actual thematic significance, but I can see how some (like Andre) might be considered a bit egregious.

[DoubleNegative]

02 - Hellrun Part 1

Late posting this, but today starts the hellrun where we sequence break like crazy in order to get something to make my life simple!

[Quackles]

I've never played DS3 or any Dark Souls game, so I'm a tad confused, but so far so good!

[DoubleNegative]

03 - Hellrun Part 2

The Hellrun concludes with today's video! It's an action packed finale as we dip into a place we really have no business being in.

[Carpator Diei]

Well, now I'm sure that this is going to be amazing The cycle of Fire and Dark has never been broken, but maybe that's just because no one ever had the idea to throw a skeleton with an AK-47 at the problem.

By the way, going by the worldmap, the Undead Settlement and the Catacombs of Carthus are actually right next to each other (elevation aside), so a direct route connecting the two is not entirely out of the question (spoilered for people who don't know the areas of Dark Souls III):

[DoubleNegative]

04 - High Wall of Lothric Part 1

In which I can't stop sequence breaking, and so we actually spend very little time in the zone for which the video is named.

[Lurith]

Finished a hexer build for the first time ever, man that was a blast. Looking forward to more of this LP, and thanks again for making me aware of this amazing mod.

[Carpator Diei]

There's another interesting Dark Souls III mod in development which apparently aims to convert the gameplay and progression to that of Demon's Souls:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDBBa-ZOLUk

[DoubleNegative]

Interesting... I'm kinda eager to give that a try when it comes out. With a gun of course.

Also, Friday's video talked about the handmaid's ladle briefly. Well, I finally got up off my butt and messed with it on my endgame character. Here's my findings:



The basic ladle has B scaling in everything but doesn't deal a lot of damage.



At +15 it has S scaling in everything, deals about 400 damage per strike, and apparently deals a metric buttload of poise damage per strike, because it completely knocked a random hollow's shield away. It also uses barely any stamina. But the downside is it took 28 estus shards to max out. That's gonna take a while!

EDIT: My endgame character has a +5 Ring of Favor which adds +30 to Vigor, Endurance, and Vitality. So that's why my stats are extremely high!

[Gespenst]

I have to say that this mod seems really... odd. a lot of what it does is good, but it seems to have some really strange ideas thrown into the mix. like whatever the hell that Gundyr fight was. I'm absolutely going to give it a try myself, but some of what I'm seeing is terrifying. (I really hope that this mention of weapons upgrading to +15 is not because you'll need those extra stats to slog through three hundred and thirty varieties of increasingly large HP sponge that just will. not. die.)

[Lurith]

In my hexer run I didn't upgrade my catalyst or melee to even +10 and still seemed to have a pretty fair time fighting through. Enemies did seem to have more hp, but nothing egregious. I should note that I haven't played vanilla DS3 in about a year though, so I might be misremembering.
Quick Edit: Just checked to make sure I wasn't lying, and actually catalyst was at +8 and melee at +10. That high might have been a bit overkill though.

[Gespenst]

that's pretty good to hear, actually playing the mod has also helped offset some of my concerns, Corrupted Gundyr is an extremely rude first boss, but honestly that's not so much of a problem once you realize that he's optional. travel is enabled from the start so you can just get to the first bonfire and warp to firelink.

[DoubleNegative]

Today has two videos!

05 - High Wall of Lothric Part 2
Bonus 01 - Patch 1.73

The second is actually a pre-commentary video from the first version of this LP. I decided to not go through with it, but this is all that remains. It's a look at what could possibly have been.

[Carpator Diei]

I'm looking forward to the first proper bossfight; that overpowered exploding machinegun vs. buffed bosses with presumably some horrible new attacks will be a treat to see

[DoubleNegative]

06 - High Wall of Lothric Part 3

Making a lot of Dark Souls 1 veterans upset because of that item drop

[Lurith]

I don't know which patch they did it in, but I'm glad they took out those extra angel knights. I really cannot overstate how much I love this mod. The functioning poise system alone made basic game play much more enjoyable, and being able to start up pretty much any build type as soon as you beat/pass Gundyr is the best. Gotta say, for me new Gundyr actually seems easier than vanilla. Just more intimidating due to the new attack and being in second form right off the bat. Excited for more vids!

[DoubleNegative]

I think the extra angel knights are because I have the Curse of Attraction enabled, to be fair! And yeah, Gundyr not having his spear phase is oddly easier in a way. Standing behind him like I did in the first video is probably the best method early on. And once you have summons or more than 3 estus, you can clown on him all day long.

[Lurith]

I keep forgetting those curses exist the moment they stop being mentioned. I need to give them a shot soon.

[Gespenst]

the "functioning" poise system mostly made it crystal clear to me why from decided to kill that feature. I cannot overstate how obnoxious it is for every enemy that functions like the player simply ignore your attacks. trading hits isn't fun and brings combat close to a Bethesda state of "plunk away with your foam bat until either you or enemy arbitrarily fall over"
when you're wielding a giant ridiculous mace the last thing you want is for your attacks to feel massless.

The extra variety early on is also really weird. The awkward early phase is pretty much eliminated, but it feels like that mostly just makes it less interesting. you just get to a state of "well I've got my build. now what?"
I have a lot of mixed feeling about the mod, mostly because a lot of what it does just feels like variety for the sake of variety. much like the lazy Bloodborne weapons (Guns that can't parry and trick weapons with no trick. the fact at least one weapon actually makes an effort to replicate the two modes makes all the ones that don't bother more sad.)

[DoubleNegative]

07 - High Wall of Lothric Part 4

The videos I was thinking of are all linked in the description. There are about seven of them and they go into pretty insane detail regarding the world's layout. If you only watch one, though, then you should probably watch Illusory Wall's video. It's by far the longest, but it's also the most comprehensive.

[Carpator Diei]

The videos I was thinking of are all linked in the description. There are about seven of them and they go into pretty insane detail regarding the world's layout. If you only watch one, though, then you should probably watch Illusory Wall's video. It's by far the longest, but it's also the most comprehensive.

Thanks for linking that, it was extremely interesting. And it makes me wonder what DS3 would've looked like if it was less committed to mostly linear progression (with all the potential interconnections between areas, it seems like a deliberate design choice to me). I hope Dark Souls modding will eventually reach a point where area layout can be modified; then a mod like Cinders wouldn't have to rely on teleporters to make the game more nonlinear, it could just add some staircases and elevators in specific spots.

[DoubleNegative]

08 - Undead Settlement Part 1

Sequence breaking for fun and profit!

[Carpator Diei]

Maybe I just don't get it, but how exactly did you move from the Settlement entrance to the Farron Keep part of the bridge? Is that interactable pilgrim corpse a teleporter?

[DoubleNegative]

Yeah, interacting with the corpse teleported us across the gap to the Farron Keep bridge. Cinders has a lot of sequence breaks like that.

[DoubleNegative]

09 - Undead Settlement Part 2

[DoubleNegative]

LP's back after a break! Etc etc etc

10 - Undead Settlement Part 3

[Lurith]

Glad for the return, still very enjoyable. Seeing the new vids inspired me to finally try out some of those curses and whoo, they definitely ramp up the challenge and lead to some adrenaline pumping fights. It's funny, I didn't really like the "challenge" of DS3 because most of it's harder bits felt more cheap than difficult, but Cinders gives you so many more options that I'm fine with buffing the bosses and giving enemies extra attack and defense just to be mean to myself.