Vapourware Dark Souls/Elden Ring modding megathread (Archthrones demo available now)

[Dr1f7]

This mod seems to be heavily using Sekiro move sets as well. More than fine by me, since I don't think I'll get into that game at this point.

>skipping the best fromsoft game

 

[Visperas]

So, what's the best dark souls big mod?

 

[ADL]

September 2023

 

[Ivan]

So, what's the best dark souls big mod?

Convergence

 

[ADL]

Personally I didn't like a lot of the gameplay changes to Convergence as I feel it's far too reliant on magic builds but the content is insane.

exists btw and here's the 1.0 (alpha) changelog https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JHX3bMxnIIct8MSZnXkyqpmhYKLPt8p8HY9FUcXKUNE/

 

[Elthosian]

Has anyone here tried Reforged? My brother and I have been playing Seamless Co-op for our first time with Elden Ring but, as expected, it makes the game too easy, and Reforged seems to be the only mod that interacts with Seamless while trying to turn up the difficulty.

If it's not filled with bugs that's more than enough for me, I've played enough From Software games to not care about having an authentic-TM experience with this one as long as I can have a good co-op challenge.

 

[ADL]

Has anyone here tried Reforged? My brother and I have been playing Seamless Co-op for our first time with Elden Ring but, as expected, it makes the game too easy, and Reforged seems to be the only mod that interacts with Seamless while trying to turn up the difficulty.

If it's not filled with bugs that's more than enough for me, I've played enough From Software games to not care about having an authentic-TM experience with this one as long as I can have a good co-op challenge.

Apologies, missed this. I really like Reforged a lot but I can't comment on difficulty scaling for the purpose of cooperative play; the scaling feature is great for solo. It's still early days for Elden Ring's modding scene but they've done a lot in a small amount of time to such an extent that I wouldn't advise playing without it.

Might as well be called Elden Ring: Enhanced Edition.

 

[Elthosian]

Has anyone here tried Reforged? My brother and I have been playing Seamless Co-op for our first time with Elden Ring but, as expected, it makes the game too easy, and Reforged seems to be the only mod that interacts with Seamless while trying to turn up the difficulty.

If it's not filled with bugs that's more than enough for me, I've played enough From Software games to not care about having an authentic-TM experience with this one as long as I can have a good co-op challenge.

Apologies, missed this. I really like Reforged a lot but I can't comment on difficulty scaling for the purpose of cooperative play; the scaling feature is great for solo. It's still early days for Elden Ring's modding scene but they've done a lot in a small amount of time to such an extent that I wouldn't advise playing without it.

Might as well be called Elden Ring: Enhanced Edition.

Thanks bro! We downloaded Reforged a few weeks ago, and the experience with it has been super nice in co-op, with many bosses kicking our assess without feeling HP-bloated. Given your good thoughts about it I think we will move forward with it for the rest of our playthrough

 

[ADL]

Seeker of Fire 2.0 released and damn it looks good. This is the only way I'd ever consider playing Dark Souls II SOTFS in the current year.

 

[Caim]

Does Seeker of Fire do away with the bullshit drop tables of DS2, where you had to grind for hours on end to get a shot at something you want?

 

[Frank Capicoli]

From the run I did last month it felt more generous than the default drop rates.

Quite a few sets from what I recall were found complete in the world instead of grinding, for example the desert sorcerous has a full set placed in the world so you can give it to the pyro hoe.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Any updates on that other DS2 overhaul, "Flames of Old"?

 

[ADL]

Https://twitter.com/stayd3d for updates on Flames of Old. He's still working on it but who knows. Hopefully 2024. That's the year he always gave for a release window.

 

[ADL]

Demo out March 15th

 

[ADL]

https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls3/mods/1765

 

[ADL]

Not sure how complete the demo is but I was able to visit five of six worlds in the nexus and someone on discord claims there's 17 bosses. They're self-hosting their own multiplayer servers for the duration of the demo and there's plenty of activity. Definitely check it out.

 

[Jinn]

Want to try the demo, but with that much content I feel like I'm just gonna want to keep playing and get blue-balled in the end. Suppose I'll try to remain patient and keep waiting for the full release. Good on these guys, though. Looks like really solid stuff.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Looks more original than DS3, despite the reused assets

 

[Ravielsk]

Having tried the demo I must say I am really impressed with what they did on the technical side of things. The way they imported assets and whole movesets from other games while also very tastefully editing them is something I would never have expected from a mod.

That said design wise I am not exactly blown away. They repeat a lot of the cancerous mistakes typical for soulsborne games beat for beat. Basic enemies that two shot you in the first area? Check. Long boss runs through said enemies check? Check. Rewarding gear that only works when embered? Check and check.

I really appreciate the effort but after Steel Rising and Lies of P I am seriously tired of souls borne stuff that just shoots itself(and by proxy the player) in the foot purely for the sake of artificially inflating the difficulty.

 

[Hell Swarm]

That said design wise I am not exactly blown away. They repeat a lot of the cancerous mistakes typical for soulsborne games beat for beat. Basic enemies that two shot you in the first area? Check. Long boss runs through said enemies check? Check. Rewarding gear that only works when embered? Check and check.

I went through the arch stones and repeatedly ran into very difficult respawning enemies at the bonfire of each one. Decided the game can fuck off when one of the fat angel knights was by the undead village bonfire and it gave me 35 souls. A hollow gave me 30. Lothric knights in the tutorial is already bad but every arch stone is the same. It seriously pushes you into running past things because there's no way you can do enough damage to make those fights worth it. It's really poorly designed difficulty wise and it's a shame as the world looks interesting to explore.

Hopefully the full release winds back on the bullshit but other wise I'm with you. Hard enemies can be fun but this is all really hard enemies you're not equipped to deal with. It's like putting Ithryll in place of the highwall of lothric. Even if I'm good enough to dodge every attack I'm still not enjoying needing 20 hits to kill the respawning enemy by the bonfire with massive leashing range.

 

[Ravielsk]

Hard enemies can be fun but this is all really hard enemies you're not equipped to deal with.

I think it all stems from soulsborne fans (and pretty clearly also developers) not realizing that not everyone is playing these games non-stop. The level of challenge in this mod is exactly tuned for someone who just came off finishing DS3 or ER and wants more of that endgame difficulty. But for anyone else its just a stupidly overtuned non-challenge that gives you no time to get back into the tempo of things and immediately starts off expecting you to have absolute mastery of the game. Or rather games because they are drawing assets from all the Souls games up to Sekiro so that doubly increases the challenge.

 

[ADL]

Just curious did you guys start with the middle archstone? That's the one you're supposed to go with but it's still waaaaaaaaaaaay overtuned. Don't really get the point of it being 'non-linear' when there's clearly an intended path and diverging from that path makes it unreasonably difficult. Can't imagine how fucked I'd be if I did the level 1 starting class instead of a knight.

Either make it linear or do some sort of difficulty setting at bonfires like Cinders mod has.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Hard enemies can be fun but this is all really hard enemies you're not equipped to deal with.

I think it all stems from soulsborne fans (and pretty clearly also developers) not realizing that not everyone is playing these games non-stop. The level of challenge in this mod is exactly tuned for someone who just came off finishing DS3 or ER and wants more of that endgame difficulty. But for anyone else its just a stupidly overtuned non-challenge that gives you no time to get back into the tempo of things and immediately starts off expecting you to have absolute mastery of the game. Or rather games because they are drawing assets from all the Souls games up to Sekiro so that doubly increases the challenge.

I did just finish a Dark souls 3 play through though. I went from Ring city to this and I still think presenting extremely hard enemies out of spawn is a bad idea. I ran around looking for a weapon instead of fighting because the starting one sucked for damage and speed.

Just curious did you guys start with the middle archstone? That's the one you're supposed to go with but it's still waaaaaaaaaaaay overtuned. Don't really get the point of it being 'non-linear' when there's clearly an intended path and diverging from that path makes it unreasonably difficult. Can't imagine how fucked I'd be if I did the level 1 starting class instead of a knight.

Either make it linear or do some sort of difficulty setting at bonfires like Cinders mod has.

Location spoilers

The war torn village has fat knights and lothric knights every where.
Tower of heide has giant knights with extended move lists taking loads of damage to kill.
Snow castle has 2 chaos knights with a huge HP pool each and both respawn.
Sand land has a very fast teleporting new enemy with a huge HP pool.
Cathedral of the deep has multiple giant undead faggots in areas too tight to properly fight them.

There isn't a single suitable arch stone to start the game on. You end up having to face something you need an upgraded weapon to realistically fight. The best way to start the game is to go to the sand location and run around collecting upgrade material and whatever else you can find. Then do the same in any other arch stone you can best survive until you have a a fully upgraded early game weapon and start playing through like a normal souls game. I've seen some of the multi phase bosses and they combine difficult melee movesets with spam only fit for a tranny swallowing slug or a brother needing a piggy back. The difficulty level isn't close to balanced and it's all presentation over functionality sadly.

I don't know why they didn't make their own game if they're putting this much effort in. They're redone so much it seems odd they didn't make their own Demon's souls clone from scratch. I bet they would have made a lot of money if all they sold was this demo as early access. The nexus alone sells it as a commercial product.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I've put some more time into Archstones and I'm actually going to highly recommend it. The starting weapons all suck so you should drop them for literally anything else you can use. Upgrade material is plentiful in the war torn village so you can get a +3 weapon (or more if you want to farm) pretty early. Once you have a few levels your damage and survivability starts to match up well with what you're fighting. Very rough start but totally worth it. Some of the early bosses I've fought I would say are up there with the best From have done. Absolutely fantastic timing on the attacks. Many look over the top but the dodge timing is just right to be comfortable but needing you to be focused on what you're doing. This is a solid 9/10 game so far. Prepare to get your shit kicked in but enjoy the exploration because it's by far the Fromest souls mod/souls like I've played. It's additions are good, they even improve on From's Elden ring design with the parry timing guard counter and it's as useful here as Elden Ring. And very interesting to see enemies using it too.

 

[Spike]

I've put some more time into Archstones and I'm actually going to highly recommend it. The starting weapons all suck so you should drop them for literally anything else you can use. Upgrade material is plentiful in the war torn village so you can get a +3 weapon (or more if you want to farm) pretty early. Once you have a few levels your damage and survivability starts to match up well with what you're fighting. Very rough start but totally worth it. Some of the early bosses I've fought I would say are up there with the best From have done. Absolutely fantastic timing on the attacks. Many look over the top but the dodge timing is just right to be comfortable but needing you to be focused on what you're doing. This is a solid 9/10 game so far. Prepare to get your shit kicked in but enjoy the exploration because it's by far the Fromest souls mod/souls like I've played. It's additions are good, they even improve on From's Elden ring design with the parry timing guard counter and it's as useful here as Elden Ring. And very interesting to see enemies using it too.

High praise. Any idea when they will be done with the mod?