• Revert all hostile NPCs to normal, with two specific exceptions. See below.

• Allow Covenants to be rejoined if the covenant leader was angered, but not killed.

• Revive dead NPCs.

• Remove Sins caused by Indictments or getting kicked out of covenants ("PvP Sin"). This can be absolved by getting killed by a Spirit of Vengeance, removing 1 point from the Book of the Guilty each time that happens.

• Remove the Sin of killing Gwynevere. Oswald will allow you to pay for absolution after killing Gwynevere, and may tell you shortly after that you do not have sin. But the sin of killing Gwynevere is actually permanent, and it will eventually be placed upon your character again automatically.

• Prevent Darkmoon invaders from invading you. Receiving indictment sin opens the player to Darkmoon invaders who are using the Blue Eye Orb, which Oswald cannot absolve. Killing Gwynevere opens the player to Darkmoon invaders who are using the Darkmoon Blade Covenant Ring, which Oswald also cannot absolve.

• Revert either of the primordial serpents. The only way to get Darkstalker Kaathe or Frampt back is to start a new playthrough.

• Revert Lady of the Darkling only if you made her hostile by killing Gwyndolin. You can still revert her if you made her hostile by damaging her.

• Revert Eingyi if made hostile by killing Quelaag's Sister. You can still revert him if you made him hostile by damaging him.

• Oswald allows players to pay for absolution after destroying Gwynevere's illusion, and will inform them that they "have not sinned" if they attempt to pay again right after. This may give players a false sense of safety, thinking they have removed that sin. However, the sin of destroying Gwynevere's illusion is permanent, and automatically refreshes to be placed upon the player again when they revisit darkened Anor Londo. This means that absolution cannot prevent Darkmoon invasions in dark Anor Londo, and paying for it in this scenario is a waste of souls with no beneficial effect.

• Paying for absolution after killing any NPC, where their services are no longer available, is also a waste of souls. There is no negative effect resulting from carrying the sin of killed NPCs (consult the sin page for more information). Absolution is only beneficial for de-aggroing living NPCs and unwelcoming covenants.

• Refills your HP and stamina
• Removes your Status Ailments except Curse (although it can remove your Curse buildup)
• Recharges your Estus Flask uses
• Recharges your attuned Sorceries, Miracles, and Pyromancies uses
• Resets and respawn enemies (except some unique enemies and bosses)
• Registers the bonfire to the Warp menu
• Sets your respawn point to that bonfire

• Using Homeward Miracle, a Homeward Bone, or the Darksign will teleport you to the last bonfire rested at and applies the "resting" effect as if you just died.

• You cannot use a bonfire when an enemy (hostile NPCs included) enters the bonfire area or you have another player online connected to your world (whether it's for co-op or PvP). The bonfire will shrink to its unlit state until the enemy is gone or the guest player(s) leave your world, where the bonfire will return to its previous state accompanied by the bonfire kindling sound effect.
  • Similar to multiplayer items, this can also be used for signalling invasions: the bonfire will shrink even before the invasion message comes out.

• Warping to another bonfire does not count as resting at that bonfire, so you will respawn upon death on the last bonfire rested at, although some of the effects of having rested at one (like respawned enemies, life bar restored, etc.) will still occur when you warp. Your Estus Flask won't be refilled, though.

• Four bonfires have an active Fire Keeper. These are bonfires tended by Anastacia of Astora, Lady of the Darkling, Quelaag's Sister, and the Stone Dragon. When the Fire Keeper is dead, you will be unable to use their bonfire (though the Stone Dragon is immortal and cannot die). You can, however, respawn and warp to that bonfire.

• After reviving Anastacia of Astora, the bonfire located at Firelink Shrine will still remain upgraded even if it was kindled before she was killed by Knight Lautrec of Carim.

• Resting at a bonfire to respawn enemies can be used to farm souls if necessary. Check the Soul Farming page for more details.

• To fully upgrade all bonfires, 108 Humanity is needed, assuming you do not die and lose human form. With Additional Content, 120 is needed.

• To make a bonfire available for warping, you have to rest on it. Simply light it will not be enough.

There are a few types of Blood Stains within the game.

Dark Blood Stains

Like in the other Souls games, when playing online, dark blood stains show the last few moments of a player who perished at that spot. You can examine the stain in order to observe a ghost of that player reliving their death. If you see one, be wary of traps, falls, and difficult enemies.

Glowing Green Blood Stain

This blood stain is left after your death in your world. It will be on the spot where you died. If you died by fall damage or by falling down chasms, the blood stain will be on the spot ~5 seconds before the time of your death. This contains any Soft Humanity and all of the souls that the player had on them at the time of death. If this stain wasn't recovered, a second player death will cause the previous blood stain and its accumulated souls to disappear and a new blood stain with the number of souls and Humanity contained at the time of that second death to appear.

Using the Darksign to kill yourself doesn't leave any blood stain nor erase any previous blood stain.

Glowing Red Blood Stain

The death of an invading Red Phantom will leave its own blood stain containing one Soft Humanity.

Dark Spirit NPCs also leave this upon their deaths.

Description

A Counter Attack is one of the techniques used to increase damage dealt by thrust/piercing damage. It is sometimes confused with stagger damage, which is a different mechanic that also boosts damage.

Execution

Counter can be performed by striking an opponent at the same time their attack would have hit you, or immediately afterwards (but before they recover from their attack animation). It is essentially a boost given to thrust/piercing attacks that risk likewise taking damage from the enemy at the same moment, though the enemy does not have to actually hit you. It naturally also works with pokes while upholding the shield for weapons that have this.
The counter-attack window generally follow right after the attack hitbox disappears, i.e. shortly after the actual damage is dealt.

Almost all enemies in the game can be counter-attacked, including large enemies and bosses.

Damage

• Counter increases the damage dealt by 20%.
• The Leo Ring further increases counter damage by stacking another 40% boost, for a total of 68% additional damage.

It works with most weapons, including bows and crossbows, but counters only give a bonus to thrust/piercing attack types, so the effect is weaker with weapons that have split Magic, Fire, or Lightning damage.

Notes

• Some weapons do not claim to have a thrust attack in their "Attack type" description, but might still have one anyways (like the Dagger rolling R1).
• Pure magic weapons like the Moonlight Butterfly Horn can't deal counter damage at all.
• The Pickaxe and Warpick can deal counter damage. Though their attack isn't the thrusting motion, it is classified as a piercing attack.
• Many Halberds deal counter damage on their light attacks, even thought their attack type may be displayed as "Slash".

Description

Criticals, also referred to as throws, are powerful attacks that can only be used under certain conditions.
Using Critical damage to achieve overkill can benefit players early in the game, because of the extra souls gained.

There are several ways to do critical damage: Backstab, Riposte, and a situational Plunging attack.

• Backstab
  Walk behind a backstab-able enemy, mostly humanoids, and press the normal attack button (R1 on PS3 / RB on Xbox / H on PC default). The enemy doesn't need to be locked-on.

• Riposte
  See Parry. Riposte can only be done after a parry. When the enemy is staggered by the parry, stand close to the enemy's front side, then press the normal attack button to trigger riposte.

• Plunging attack critical
  Do a plunging attack as close as possible to the target's center. The "drop zone" is quite large, you can still drop about two steps from the target's center and still trigger the critical.

When you do these moves, you and your target will enter a unique critical animation. The animation depends on the weapon used and whether you equip the Hornet Ring or not. For example, dagger users critical by stabbing the target really hard, accompanied by a gush of blood, while hammer users critical by bashing the target's head. You and your target are temporarily invincible for the duration of the animation.

There are only a few known instances where you can complete critical plunging attacks:

• The fight with Asylum Demon if you didn't already kill it when encountering him the first time.
• The fight with Taurus Demon in the Undead Burg.
• From the ledge in Undead Parish where you can drop to the Armored Tusk below.
• From the garbage dump of the Butcher in the Depths where you can drop to a Giant Rat.
• In the lower area of the Demon Ruins you can try a plunging attack from behind the Minor Taurus Demon guarding the doorway to the Demon Firesage if you're wearing the Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring.¹
• From the ledge left of the Demon Firesage room in lower Demon Ruins where you can drop on the second Minor Taurus Demon below.

If you do a plunging attack to these enemies and you are directly above them, you will enter a unique animation where you plant your weapon to the enemy and you hear SFX similar to critical attack.

Damage

Critical Damage is generally calculated the same way most attacks are: The AR of the weapon is multiplied by what is called the "Motion Value" (sheet) of the attack (in percent, a motion value of 100 means the damage corresponds, such as with most one-handed attacks), for criticals that is then multiplied by the critical modifier of the weapon (also in percent). This AR is then calculated together with the opponent's defense (Calculator).

• Damage gained from weapon Buffs are not affected by Motion Values, as such they are a poor match with critical attacks.
• Some buffs, such as Power Within, Red Tearstone Ring or the Hornet Ring, multiply damage after the Damage calculation, which significantly increases damage, but doesn't influence the ratio of damages between attacks buffed by them. Due to the way the Damage formula works, such a flat Damage multiplier is always weaker than an equal modifier of AR.

• Backstabs may deal between two and 20 times as much damage as a light attack. It favors weapons with low AR such as infused weapons with split AR.
  • Due to the way Damage calculation works, attacks with fewer stages are fundamentally stronger than ones with more stages. As stronger criticals tend to have more phases though, this is rarely noticable.

• Ripostes generally deal 10 to 30 percent more damage than backstabs.

• All weapons have unique Motion Values (MV) on their criticals. As a result, 100 critical stat in an Estoc does not equate a 100 in a Falchion with identical AR.

List of Weapons and Critical Rates

Tips

General

• The only means to raise critical damage is equipping the Hornet Ring. Equipping it boosts both critical damage by 30%.

• You can do a critical attack while holding the weapon with both hands, increasing its damage. The additional damage is not much (in most cases, less than 50 points of damage), but may help finish off some enemies.

• Keep in mind that a high critical rating on a weapon doesn't always mean that it's the best weapon for your critical attack. Weapon base damage, weapon stat scaling, and your build affects critical damage greatly. For example, a Mail Breaker will never outdamage a Ricard's Rapier even though the Mail Breaker has higher critical stat. And if you have STR build, you may want to use ultra greatswords or other weapons.

• You can still trigger criticals even if you do not meet the stat requirements for the currently equipped weapon. Although the damage will be greatly reduced, depending on your backstab/riposte animation, it can still be used for pushing enemies off ledge.

• There are several places in the game map where you cannot do backstab or riposte (even if you can Parry the attack). These places are usually moving platforms.(Video)
  • Anor Londo's rotating bridge
  • Anor Londo's elevators in boss room
  • The Duke's Archives' stairs to the garden
  • The Duke's Archives' rotating stairs
  • The Duke's Archives' elevators
  • New Londo Ruins elevators
  • Sen's Fortress' elevators, both the cage's and Mimic room's
  • Blighttown's waterwheel elevator
  • The exception is The Catacombs's turning bridges, you can still do backstab and ripostes there

Backstab

• Some enemies are positioned in the map with their backs facing you. These enemies are designed so that you can easily dispatch them by backstab. Walking slowly, using Hush, or equipping Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring helps you sneak up on these enemies.

Backstabs are one of the primary forms of attack in PvP. To understand backstabs in PvP, an understanding of latency is crucial (video).

• Among both uninformed and uncompetitive players, the idea that Backstabs are a problem is widespread, largely due to a lack of clarity from the game's side and the major punishment that not being proficient at it leads to.
• Within competitive play, the game can very much be interpreted as an even mix of backstabs and all other attacks, though they both build on each other and every other option players have. The almost unanimously agreed upon strongest weapon for PvP, the Chaos Blade only very rarely uses Backstabs, however other, very backstab focused weapons such as the Murakumo and Estoc are also generally agreed upon as top-tier. Easier pivots and stronger pivots due to the lack of Ghost Strikes (video) skewer PvP in the Remaster further to a greater backstab focus.
• In general, a lot of very casual fights between more experienced players are intentionally almost entirely based on Backstabs, as this is often seen as the most rewarding and in itself deep aspect of the game's PvP.

Engaging a backstab against a real person attempting to avoid that is extremely difficult, the most basic tactics for this include:

• Using Poise or toggle escapes to walk through an opponent's attack to their back. This can be seen as a type of trade.
• Rolling through an opponent's attack behind their back on fast roll, then turning the character to their back and engaging a backstab.
• Especially on builds using good shields, just blocking and engaging a backstab during their recovery.
• Stunning an opponent, either with an attack or a kick, then moving to their back and catching their timing (while factoring in standstill (video)).
• A more general form of punishing attacks with poise backstabs is: Reading any committing move, such as a roll or even just movement on higher latencies, and moving to their expected position.
• Generally good, efficient locked on and unlocked movement to reach an opponent's back within the shortest amount of time. This is less of a technique or tactic, more of a fundamental, but becomes the only aggressive option against more passive players.

• After you backstab an enemy, the enemy will get floored. Until the enemy is standing right up, the enemy will be in an invincible state. But, you can walk up to the enemy as they get up, wait behind them, and chain backstab them as soon as their invincibility state wears off.
• Chain Backstab represent one half of the wakeup game in PvP. There exist strategies and techniques both to perform (video) and counter (video) them.
  • At lower latencies, chain-backstabs often require very precise reads and execution to counter one specific wakeup technique. Due to the difficulty in this, many players, when facing others of similar skill, will instead often prefer to attack them, specifically attempting to catch wakeup rolls.
  • At higher latencies, a number of wakeup techniques do not work anymore, mixing up standstill (video) is the primary option here - this helps in making chain backstabs, and backstabs in general, more prevalent on higher latencies.

Riposte

• Specific information on parrying can be found on Parry article.

• Scythe has the highest Riposte Damage, when used on a Quality build, and is also the highest Damaging weapon for dexterity builds. For strength builds, Demon Greataxe has the highest Damage, however it is only barely ahead of the lighter and less stat intensive Great Club. For builds without investment in Dexterity or Strength, the Chaos Gargoyle Halberd with 10 Humanity is the strongest option.

Enemies against whom critical attacks can be performed

Note that, in the case of ripostes, enemies listed above have at least one attack that can be parried, but that does not mean that all attacks can be parried. See the parry page for more information.

Disclaimer: The information in this article is currently heavily outdated and should not be thought of as verifiably correct.

Description

Deflection is a hidden value for weapons that have blocking ability, but primarily only concerns shields. This value is not listed in game. It is not the same as the stability value of the shield. Upgrading shields does not affect its deflection value.

If an attack connects with your shield, and your shield's Deflection rate is high enough to overpower it and that attack doesn't break your guard by draining the rest of your stamina, then the attack will be deflected. Your opponent will be in staggered state, allowing for extra damage.

Even though you can block with almost all weapons (by equipping it in left hand or two-handing it), all non-shield weapons (including Dark Hand) have no deflection rate. That means, the enemy won't be staggered and can finish their attack animation if you block with those weapons. Shields that you don't have enough stats to wield in one hand also have no deflection, even if you wield greatshields like Havel's Greatshield.

As a general rule:

• Small shields have light deflection.
• Normal shields have medium deflection.
• Greatshields have heavy deflection.
• Unique shields have light deflection.

Though there are exceptions:

• Cracked Round Shield, a small shield, has no deflection.
• Iron Round Shield, a normal shield, has heavy deflection.

Iron Flesh provides the Deflection of a Greatshield, but only to unblocked attacks.

List of Deflectable Enemy Attacks

Description

Fall Damage is the damage sustained when a player falls from above a certain height, with higher falls causing greater damage.

It will remove a percentage of the player's max HP, meaning any survivable fall is always survivable regardless of how leveled up your character's Vitality is, provided that the player's health isn't already reduced enough to cause death. For example, a fall that removes 500 HP for a player with 1000 max HP would only remove 200 HP for a player with 400 max HP.

Defenses and stats do not reduce fall damage.

Affect of Equip Load

A heavier equip load will increase the damage taken from a fall, maxing out at 89.7 equip load. Having 0 weight will result in sustaining only 70% of the damage taken from the same fall when having 89.7 or greater equip load.

Carrying a heavier load does not affect the survivability of falls if the player's health is full. The maximum survivable fall will result in 70% HP lost for a character with 0 equip load, and ~99.9% HP lost (rounding to 1 HP) for a character with 89.7 or greater equip load.

Note that the above values are not damage breakpoints, just specific examples chosen.

Fall Control

The Fall Control spell completely prevents all Fall Damage while active, though it does not normally allow the player to survive falls that would otherwise kill them. The same max-survivable-height applies regardless if Fall Control is active or not.

An exploit with Fall Control can allow players to survive impossible landings if the player quits with a very specific timing when landing.
For more information, visit this page about the Fall Control Quitout technique.

Fall Control can also be used to negate damage on certain sloped falls (more information below).

Latent Values

Though there is no way to ascertain these values in-game, fall damage directly corresponds with the amount of Y coordinates the player descends when falling.

• 5 units of height is the greatest height that can be fallen without taking any damage. Anything greater will trigger Fall Damage.
• 20 units of height is the greatest height that can be fallen without dying. Anything greater will trigger death.

Things like equip load and Fall Control have no bearing on these breakpoints. They only affect the amount of damage sustained when a fall within the range listed above occurs.

Kill Boxes

There are places in the map where a character will instantly die when touching them, regardless of the distance of the fall. They are typically found in pitfalls and out-of-bounds areas, and guarantee death regardless of Fall Damage mechanics.

Glitches

Surviving Sloped Falls

A couple different exploits allow surviving falls that include a sloped surface (that you "slide" down), that are otherwise normally too high and cause death when descending:

• If the player performs a roll while descending a slope and i-frames are active upon landing, damage will not be taken.
• If the player has Fall Control active, it will allow them to safely slide all the way down a slope to the bottom without dying. However, this only works if the sloped surface connects smoothly to the ground. If the slope ends with a drop-off before the landing, even a small one, it will not work.

Used to communicate with other players. The gesture menu is accessed with the Select / Back button.

Motion sensoring is enabled for the Playstation 3's Sixaxis controller. In theory, the game will recognize a pattern of movement when the player holds the X button down and then enact an assigned gesture.

Image	Gesture	Description	How to obtain
	Point Forward	Player points forward	Available at start
	Point Up	Player points up	Available at start
	Point Down	Player points down	Available at start
	Beckon	Player gestures to come nearer	Available at start
	Wave	Player waves	Available at start
	Bow	Player performs a bow	Available at start
	Proper Bow	Player performs a more respectable bow	Given by Dusk of Oolacile
	Hurrah!	Player pumps fist in the air	Given by Andre of Astora
	Joy	Player jumps with joy!	Given by Domhnall of Zena
	Shrug	Player raises his palms and shakes his head	Given by Petrus Of Thorolund
	Prostration	Player falls on his knees	Given by Patches
	Look Skyward	Player lifts hand to his brow and looks up toward the sky	Given by Shiva of the East
	Well! What is it?	Player extends both arms and steps forward	Given by Oswald of Carim
	Prayer	Player drops to one knee and prays	Given by Rhea of Thorolund, Knight and Cleric starting classes have this, instead of Joy
	Praise the Sun	Player raises his arms toward the sun	Given by statue that allows joining Warrior of Sunlight covenant (must meet Faith prerequisite to interact with statue, but need not join the covenant)

Description

During certain grab attack animations, damage can be reduced by mashing buttons. There is typically a range of potential damage reduction depending on how quickly buttons are pressed.

Execution

• Rapidly tap any one of the eight shoulder or face buttons. Tapping the d-pad or other auxiliary buttons will not work.
• Pressing a combination of buttons may help your speed and reduce more damage, so alternating between R1 and L1 is a good method. However, if you are capable of pressing a single button the same number of times within the same duration, the amount of damage reduced will be the same.
• The BPM (beats per minute) required to trigger damage reduction can also vary a bit between enemy types, but typically button presses lasting the entire duration of the grab begin to reduce damage at roughly 300 BPM. A rate of roughly 480 BPM or higher may be needed to reduce the most damage possible.

Damage Reduction

Certain grab attack animations will end more quickly depending on the rate of your button presses, with roughly 15% damage reduced with the slowest possible button presses, and up to roughly 80% damage reduced with the most rapid button presses.¹

In special cases, certain grab attacks can also have their damage negated entirely. The consistency of triggering these is not yet certain, but it is known to be possible.

Enemy Types

Partial Damage Reduction

• Demonic Foliage
• Slime
• Crow Demon
• Mimic
• Gaping Dragon
• Infested Ghoul
• Man Eater Shell

Total Damage Reduction

• Gravelord Nito
• Great Feline
• Centipede Demon
• Chaos Eater

It does not work on other enemies not listed above.

Description

Headshot is a feature in Dark Souls exclusive to projectile attacks. Performing these is easiest with a bow because of the first-person mode that is available, but it is also possible to achieve with crossbows, spells, fireballs, and miracles by manually aiming in third-person view. A target who's been hit on their head will take additional damage and, most of the time, stagger. Mastering this can be very useful, even for certain boss fights like Quelaag.

Execution

• Aim in first-person view using a bow.
• Manually aim in third-person view using a crossbow or other throwing weapon.

Damage Calculation

There are three groupings of damage-boosts caused by headshots.

• An unprotected or lightly-armored head will receive 50% more damage from a headshot.
• Heads protected by sturdier helmets that are open-faced will receive 30% more damage from a headshot.
• Heads protected by sturdier helmets that provide full protection receive 10% more damage from a headshot.

A video demonstration is provided here.

Tips

Manual aiming with weapons that don't allow first-person view may take some practice. Your character throws directly ahead, regardless of the direction the camera is facing. However, the camera angle does affect the vertical axis of the projectile. As such, manual aiming is a two-step process. Face your character in the direction you want to shoot or throw, then angle the camera to aim up or down.

You can also exploit the Binoculars to enter first-person mode before attacking.

Enemy specific

• Sentinel have their vulnerable spot on their achilles heel instead on their head.
• Quelaag's still-human body is entirely vulnerable. Every arrow will stagger her movements, which can result in a safe and easy kill.

Notes

• The torso is considered the normal part of the body where the regular base damage occurs.
• Arms and legs are paired as a "third" body part. Similar to the bonus damage of headshots, arms/ legs cause a 10% boost in damage.
• Some enemies do not have a stagger animation but still take extra damage from a headshot.

When you're hollowed, you look like an undead. You cannot kindle bonfires, see summon signs or be invaded.

The player character is hollowed at the start of the game and becomes hollowed again if they die while in human form. A blood stain will be left at the location of death; recovering it won't return the character to human form, but it will return the lost souls and soft humanity points. Hollowing can be reversed by offering one Humanity at a bonfire (reverse-hollowing)¹ .

Some online Multiplayer Items require human form and thus cannot be used by hollows: Cracked Red Eye Orbs, Red Sign Soapstone, Eyes of Death and the Red Eye Orb.

While hollowed, Item Discovery and Curse resistances are unchanged, only the amount of soft humanity in the humanity counter can change these values, being human or hollow makes no difference.

Hollowing also refers to the process of an undead losing their mind. The result of this is seen in the Hollows, Armored Hollows, Undead Soldiers, Balder Knights, and various characters that can go hollow throughout the game.

It seems that having an achievable reason to live or a goal of some kind may prevent hollowing, as many NPCs² in the game go hollow and become hostile as soon as they lose their reason to live, fulfill an objective or are faced with extreme hardships on their quests.

Humanity (item)

Humanity in 'solid form' is collected or purchased as a Consumable that will appear in the item inventory. These consumables are not lost upon death and, when used, are converted to Humanity in 'loose form' as an increase to the Humanity stat. Solid form Humanity consumables can not be used directly to revive to human form or to kindle a bonfire - they must be used from the item menu to obtain a resulting Humanity stat point, which can then be spent.

In Game Description

Rare tiny black sprite found on corpses.
Use to gain 1 humanity and restore a
large amount of HP.

This black sprite is called humanity, but
little is known about its true nature.
If the soul is the source of all life,
then what distinguishes the humanity
we hold within ourselves?

Availability

• Dropped by all Bosses (various amount)
• Dropped by most NPCs (various amount)
• 100% drop by Giant Undead Rat, Evil Vagrant (white)
• Dropped by Small Undead Rats (5% drop rate, 3% in Depths)
• Dropped by Large Undead Rats in Depths (5% drop rate)
• Dropped by Snow Rats in Painted World of Ariamis (5% drop rate)
• Dropped by Skeleton Babies in Tomb of the Giants (2% drop rate)
• Dropped by Pisacas in The Duke's Archives' prison tower (4% drop rate)
• Dropped by Humanity Phantoms in Chasm of the Abyss (small/medium/large: 4.4%, 8%, 9.1% drop rates)
• Sold by Patches in Firelink Shrine for 10,000 souls. Limited to 3 per playthrough
• Sold by Marvellous Chester in Royal Wood for 10,000 souls. Limited to 13 per playthrough
• Sold by Undead Merchant Female in Firelink Shrine, for 5,000 souls. Limited to 1 per playthrough

Use

• Consume to increase Humanity (stat)
• Consume to fully restore HP
• Trade with Snuggly the Crow for a Ring of Sacrifice
• Feed to Kingseeker Frampt for 1,000 souls each

Notes

Refer to the Humanity Farming page for ways of quickly acquiring humanity.

Soft Humanity (stat)

Humanity in 'loose form' is added to the counter to increase the Humanity stat point. It is referred to as Soft Humanity by the community. This is shown in the upper left corner of the HUD as well as on the Character stat screen. Upon death, any Humanity stat points are lost, along with any souls. Both can be retrieved from the player character's Bloodstain.

Availability

• Consume a Humanity (item)
• Consume a Twin Humanities for 2 Humanities
• Consume a Fire Keeper Soul for 5 Humanities
• Use the Dark Hand's strong attack to 'suck' Humanity out of players and NPCs - the number of Humanity absorbed per use is determined by current Darkwraith Covenant rank
• Kill an invading Darkwraith, players invading with Cracked Red Eye Orb, or Black Phantom NPCs (by interacting with their Bloodstains)
• Gain Soft Humanity by killing a host player by invading them with Red Eye Orb (by being a Darkwraith Covenant member) or Cracked Red Eye Orb
• Gain Soft Humanity by being summoned as a white or gold phantom with the White Sign Soapstone and assist the host player with defeating a boss
• Kill numerous enemies in an area where before defeating the area boss.¹

Use

• Revive to human form at a Bonfire
• Kindle a Bonfire
• Added to the summation of stat points when determining all defenses, therefore, more Humanity directly equals more defense (99 humanity gives approximately 50 more defense in all categories)
• Increases damage of weapons with Humanity scaling (i.e. Weapons in Chaos upgrade path, Chaos Blade, Quelaag's Furysword, and Abyss Greatsword)
• Increase Item Discovery
• Increase Curse Resist
• Given to Darkstalker Kaathe in order to rank up in the Darkwraith Covenant
• Given to Quelaag's Sister in order to rank up in the Chaos Servant Covenant
• Given to Ingward in order to remove Curse

Exact Values

Curse resist figures are presuming no innate resistance granted by equipment

Bleed and poison resists are unaffected.

Notes

• Item Discovery stacks with Covetous Gold Serpent Ring or Symbol of Avarice
• The Cursebite Ring multiplies the Curse resistance by 4 (+300% raise) - this does not affect Curse resistance granted by armors, only from base stat + Humanity stat
• Contribution as a modifier for weapon scaling stops at 10 Humanities

An Illusory Wall is a type of fake wall that will disappear upon hitting it or using a certain item. Some may reveal secret items or bonfires, or even Covenants and entire areas.

Locations

Darkroot Garden

To the left of the door sealed by the Crest of Artorias that leads into the location of the Clan of Forest Protectors, a bonfire is hidden behind an illusory wall.

The Catacombs

By the bottom of the ladder near the lever that controls the second rotating bridge, an illusory wall leads to a hidden bonfire. This illusory wall is "guarded" by a statue that shoots spikes.

Blighttown

A large treebranch in a far corner of the poisonous swamp leads to a series of two illusory walls. The first is near the corpse containing the Plank Shield, which reveals a treasure chest. The second is directly behind said treasure chest, leading to The Great Hollow and Ash Lake.

Quelaag's Domain

After descending the stairs by the lever that rings the second Bell of Awakening, an illusory wall can be found that leads to the Chaos Servant covenant and a bonfire. If you use Seek Guidance, a developer message will point to the correct wall.

Sen's Fortress

By the top of the tall ladder that exits the tar pit, an illusory wall leads to a rooftop above the gate. There you may battle the Giant that opened Sen's Fortress after ringing both Bells of Awakening. It is the only illusory wall in the game which requires you to attack it to disappear instead of rolling or kicking.

Anor Londo

On the same floor as the bonfire in the building with all the Silver Knights, a fireplace contains an illusory wall that leads to a dark room with several treasure chests containing Havel's gear, and a Mimic.

Another can be found at the lowest floor reached by the rotating bridge. Equipping the Darkmoon Seance Ring by the Darkmoon Tomb bonfire will remove an illusory wall to reveal Gwyndolin's boss fog and therefore access to the Blade of the Darkmoon covenant.

New Londo Ruins

By the Darkwraith enemy who is outside, between the watery area and the building with the Ghosts, an illusory wall leads to another Darkwraith enemy and a chest containing Titanite Chunk.

Lost Izalith

At the second structure in the lava area, an illusory wall contains a hidden bonfire.

Tomb of the Giants

Traveling from the first bonfire to the tomb with the Large Divine Ember, an illusory wall can be found on the wall to your left shortly before reaching the tomb. It is where you exit from the pit Patches kicks you into.

Painted World of Ariamis

There are several illusory walls underground by the Skeleton Wheels. All of them are easy to see and look different than surrounding walls.

Oolacile Township

After taking the alternate path that leads to the rooftop with the Crystal Lizard (turn right and walk around the building before the first wooden bridge, follow route and then roll onto the ledge beneath the wooden platforms), follow the perimeter of the structure and stand on the side closest to the Crystal Lizard. Use a light source by the developer-placed message that says "Let there be light…", like a Skull Lantern, Cast Light, or the Sunlight Maggot to reveal an illusory wall.

A second illusory wall can be found in the upstairs area of the large building that contains many Bloatheads. On a wall by the broken floor that requires a jump to reach a hidden treasure chest, you can use a light source to reveal the hidden path. It leads to the same treasure chest, bypassing the need to jump.

If you listen carefully when close to an illusory wall in this area you will hear a slight pounding noise that fades away as you leave the wall.

Chasm of the Abyss

Near the end of the first descending path by the first group of Humanity Phantoms, there's a fork in the path. Go to the left, the floor will disappear and you will fall below (but will take no damage). From there, follow an illusion that appears to be Alvina. The illusory wall is behind the third illusion. Not far from there is a shortcut elevator leading to the Royal Wood. If you already accessed the elevator and miss Alvina's guidance, just start from the bottom of the elevator and hug the left wall.

Other Breakable Walls

There are also some breakable walls in the game that aren't classified as illusory:

Undead Asylum

A boulder will break open a wall to reveal Oscar, Knight of Astora.

Undead Parish

Breakable boards of wood in the upstairs of the church will lead to Knight Lautrec of Carim.

Darkroot Garden

In the area with the Giant Stone Knights, a large tree blocks a path. It will move by turning, facing your direction, but it cannot harm you. Kill the tree to open the path. Another tree will be found further down this path.

Sen's Fortress

There are two breakable walls that can be found at the end of boulder-paths.

The first is behind the resting Serpent Soldier that leads to the imprisoned Big Hat Logan. It cannot be broken with regular attacks. It can be broken by rotating the boulder-trap switch to smash it open with a boulder, or it can be broken by getting the Serpent Soldier to attack the wall.

The second is behind the boulder pit near the Mimic chest. After several boulders fall into pit, it will fill up and allow the next boulder to smash through the wall. This leads to the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring.

Painted World of Ariamis

On the roof of the Annex, a breakable set of wooden boards leads to Velka's Rapier.

The Catacombs

In front of the developer's message saying "Treasure" is a breakable stone wall leading to the Darkmoon Seance Ring.

Description

Dark Souls includes an invasion cooldown timer. It is triggered automatically to prevent rapid, subsequent invasions against a particular player.

Invasion Timers

There are two specific cooldown timers that prevent a host from getting invaded.

• Red Phantom Timer (when invading with Cracked Red Eye Orbs or the Red Eye Orb)
• Darkmoon Phantom Timer (when invading with the Blue Eye Orb)

Both are set to 15 minutes by default, and are triggered for a host when the hostile phantom leaves their world. It does not matter how a phantom leaves, as the timer is triggered regardless of who wins or loses during PvP. It also triggers if the phantom uses the Black Separation Crystal to leave, or simply disconnects.

The two timers act independently of each other, meaning a Darkmoon can invade while the Red Phantom timer is active, or vice versa.

There are no cooldown timers for most other forms of PvP, meaning a Forest Hunter can still invade a host who has either of the above timers active.

Clearing the Timer

The following items can be used to reset the timers back down to 0, allowing immediate, back-to-back invasions:

• Dried Finger
• Eye of Death
• Red Eye Orb / Cracked Red Eye Orb
• Red Sign Soapstone

The Dried Finger and Eye of Death both have a permanent effect until the player dies or reloads the area. They do not need to be used repeatedly, as they will keep the timers cleared after subsequent invasions. The Red Sign Soapstone and invasion items will clear only currently active timers.

Gravelord Timer

There is a third timer for preventing subsequent Gravelord infections. A player who has the "disasters are gone" message display will also have a 15 minute timer set¹, blocking both Gravelord Black Phantoms from showing up, and the Gravelord Summon Sign from appearing as well. The items listed above will clear this timer as well.

Cooldown Extension

It is possible for the cooldown timers to become longer than 15 minutes if the invaded player experiences subsequent invasions soon after the initial cooldown period ends. The length of the cooldown depends on a value known as the player's "Limit Level", which increases if a subsequent invasion occurs within a secondary, "follow up" time frame. The follow up timer begins as soon as the corresponding cooldown timer ends.

• Note that the Limit Level will not increase if the timer is cleared using any of the items listed above, it must be waited out to complete naturally
• Clearing the timer or waiting out the secondary time frame (without experiencing another invasion) will also break the Limit Level and reset everything back to 0
• Limit Level 10 is the max, though it is no different than Limit Level 9

The item discovery rate determines the possibility of item drops when killing enemies.

Base value is 100, and it can be raised to the maximum of 410 via different ways:

• Equipping either the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring or Symbol of Avarice will raise item discovery by 200. They will not stack.
• Humanity (stat) raises discovery by certain amounts and stops after 10. See its article for a chart.

Hollow or human form does not affect the drop rate of your character.

Item discovery rate does not increase drop rate linearly, though it is close to linear scaling at low drop rates. Equivalently, one can say the item discovery rate increases the drop rate for all possible item drops, or that it reduces the chance that no drop occurs. The respective formulas are:
$$P(\textrm{Item})=\, \frac{\textrm{ID}\cdot p(\textrm{Item})} {\textrm{ID}\cdot \sum_{i}\left(p(\textrm{Item}~i)\right) +100\cdot p(\textrm{NoDrop})} =\, \frac{p(\textrm{Item})} {(1-p(\textrm{NoDrop}))+\frac{100\cdot p(\textrm{NoDrop})}{\textrm{ID}}}$$
Where ID is the item discovery rate, $p(\textrm{event})$ is the base likelyhood of an event, i.e. at 100 item discovery, with "item" being the event that said item will drop and "NoDrop" being the event that no item will drop, and $P(\textrm{Item}1)$ being the actual probability of the drop when factoring in item discovery.

Description

After the ending of the game a new game will start. This is called New Game Plus (NG+). New Game Plus begins after you have defeated the final boss, Gwyn, Lord Of Cinder. The game begins again, allowing you to keep most of your gear and items, but with increased difficulty. After NG+ is completed, the game will continue onto NG+2 with slightly increased difficulty again. This continues all the way to "New Game Plus 6" (NG++++++).

• After the seventh playthrough is completed, the game will no longer increase in difficulty after it restarts. NG+7 and any subsequent playthroughs are a repeat of NG+6. It is a common misconception that NG+7 is the highest difficulty.

• The most significant change is between the first playthrough and NG+. Once NG+2 is reached, the increases become much smaller and less significant with each subsequent playthrough. The differences between NG+ and NG+6 are smaller than those between NG and NG+.

Newgame Lifecycles

• A single formula cannot be applied to the increase in enemy HP and Souls between NG and NG+. This is because they increase by inconsistent amounts, usually corresponding to the location.
  • In NG+, enemy HP is between 1.54x to 2.7x of NG values, while souls dropped are between 2x to 5x NG values.
  • Damage and defense changes are applied as well, from NG to NG+, enemy's Attack Rating is between 1.37x to 2.4x of NG values, and defenses between 0.97x to 1.7x of NG values.
  • Additionally, from NG+1 to NG+6, all enemy's defense is multiplied by (1+4.2%*(#GameCycle-2)), after which it stays at a constant 1.21x multiplier.

• Starting with NG+2, subsequent playthroughs have enemy HP and Soul amounts that scale consistently off of NG+ values.

What changes?

• Most progress is undone (asides from the exceptions listed below in "What stays the same?"). Levels need to be beaten again, killed NPCs will be living again, etc.
• Enemies hit harder, can take more damage, and are harder to kill as a result. Even small enemies can put out a lot of damage, but they also give more souls.
• You lose all of your Embers. Ascend weapons before starting NG+.
• You lose all of your Keys except for the Master Key.
• You lose all of your Bonfire Items except for the Bottomless Box. Without the Lordvessel, you can no longer warp, and all of your warp locations are lost. I.E. you will need to find the ash lake bonfire again before you can warp there, even once reaquiring the Lordvessel.
• You lose the Orange Charred Ring and the Covenant of Artorias ring.
• Domhnall of Zena sells you Gwyn's armor, the Great Lord's Set.
• You can offer the Soul of Gwyn, Lord of Cinder at the Altar of Sunlight as a rank +1 member of the Warrior of Sunlight covenant to receive the Sunlight Spear miracle.
• Rite of Kindling is removed; however, kindled bonfires retain their status.
• You cannot level up until you get to Firelink Shrine, so try not to lose the souls received from Gwyn, Lord of Cinder before you get there.
• You can now be infected with Gravelord Black Phantoms, in NG+ or higher.

What stays the same?

• Enemy behavior remains the same, but with higher stamina and damage output, they may appear to be more aggressive at times.
• You keep your equipment, stats, souls, and items (except for the items mentioned above).
• Your Estus Flask level stays the same.
• You keep your covenant and rank.
• Bonfires keep their status. Bonfires kindled three times in the first playthrough will have the same status in NG+ and provide the same number of flasks.
• Oscar, Knight of Astora gives you the Big Pilgrim's Key regardless of New Game iteration, after you've killed the Asylum Demon.

Notes

• Since you keep your stats and equipment, it should be pretty easy to kill the Asylum Demon in NG+ and collect the Demon's Great Hammer.
• If you completed the game with decent equipment, the earlier parts of the game are typically considered easier in NG+. Despite the greater difficulty, having upgraded gear generally outweighs the extra damage and HP of enemies. Players typically first experience a much more noticeable challenge when reaching areas like Anor Londo and beyond.

NG+ Checklist

Things to do or collect in each playthrough. This list includes items or actions you can only do a limited amount of times each playthrough, such as purchase a spell, collect a ring, or trade with Snuggly the Crow before the new game+ / ++ etc.

• Trade for all wanted items with Snuggly the Crow

• Collect all items that only appear once per playthrough. You should check each of these pages for a detailed list with a location summary:
  • Merchants - some of the merchants sell unique items that you can only get from them, and only once per playthrough
  • Armors - especially Domhnall of Zena's merchandise, as you can't get both Ornstein's Set and Smough's Set at the same playthrough
  • Weapons, Shields, and Magic Catalysts
  • Rings
  • Miracles
  • Pyromancies
  • Sorceries

• Collect all Titanite Slabs. Check each page for Availability details
  • Titanite Slab: 2 slabs (3 slabs with Additional Content)
  • White Titanite Slab 1 slab (2 slabs with Additional Content)
  • Red Titanite Slab: 2 slabs
  • Blue Titanite Slab: 1 slab (2 slabs with Additional Content)

• Level up your Covenant to +3. Especially if you want to use the covenant's spell/item with maximum efficiency on NG+
  • Max. efficiency Darkmoon Blade - Blade of the Darkmoon +3, farm Crow Demons for Souvenirs of Reprisal
  • Max. efficiency Gravelord Sword Dance and Gravelord Greatsword Dance - Gravelord Servant +3, farm Basilisks for Eyes of Death
  • Max. efficiency Dragon Head Stone - Path of the Dragon +3, farm Drakes for Dragon Scales

• Farm Humanities.
  • Use them to kindle as many bonfires as you can as kindled bonfire carry to NG+
  • Consume in NG+ for extra defense and/or Chaos weaponry
  • For levelling up Chaos Servant or Darkwraith

• Upgrade your playstyle's main weapons and armors to face tougher opponents in NG+
  • Blacksmiths lose their forging abilities in NG+ until you re-collect Embers, so upgrade your main weapons before you face the last boss
  • Upgrade all weapons and shields you will need to make Boss Soul Items

• Upgrade your Estus Flask with all available Fire Keeper Soul

• Stock up usable items and ammunitions: Blooming Purple Moss Clumps, Transient Curses, Repair Powders, Feather Arrows, Dragonslayer Arrows, etc.

• Kill all optional Bosses for their souls and item drops

• Kill all Crystal Lizards for their item drops

• Finish all NPCs' questline for special rewards:
  • Siegmeyer of Catarina/Sieglinde of Catarina
  • Big Hat Logan
  • Dusk of Oolacile/Elizabeth
  • Knight Lautrec of Carim/Anastacia of Astora
  • Petrus of Thorolund/Rhea of Thorolund
  • Quelaana of Izalith
  • Hawkeye Gough

• Kill all NPCs for Humanities and items they drop. Be wary not to accidentally kill NPCs that breaks your Covenant.
  • If you have the Dark Hand, use the Dark Hand's strong attack to suck additional Humanities
  • The blacksmiths except Rickert each drop their hammers if you kill them
  • Kill the Fire Keepers for their Fire Keeper Soul: Quelaag's Sister and Lady of the Darkling
  • Don't forget to kill hollowed merchants after you buy all their merchandise

Description

Players who can Overkill an enemy will gain a bonus of 20% souls, making farming weaker enemies more profitable. Overkill is signified by a somewhat longer "soul absorb" animation and sharper SFX.

Conditions

You must be able to do greater than 150% of the target's max HP in one attack.

• Doesn't matter if the target has full health or not. (e.g. you damaged an enemy for half its HP, then do a riposte, and you'll still get the overkill bonus).
• Damage must be done in a single hit. Riposte and backstab counts as single hit, even though certain weapons have 2 or 3 damage stages.

Kills that do not count as overkill:

• Combos don't count as a single hit. This includes Homing Soulmass-type spells.
• Poisoning and Toxic effects can't trigger overkill.
• Fall damage (kicking enemies off cliff) can't trigger overkill.

Tips to Achieve Overkill

Apart from being overpowered, a few examples:

• General
  • Power Within. It raises all damage by 40% at the cost of health drain.
  • Hitting staggered enemy grants 40% extra damage and can be done with all forms of attack.

• Melee
  • Backstab with Hornet Ring.
  • Riposte with Hornet Ring. Ripostes have higher damage multiplier than backstabs, but are relatively harder to perform.
  • Counter hit an enemy, can be further increased when wearing the Leo Ring for a total of ~67% extra damage.

• Bow
  • Headshot. Extra 20% damage and staggers enemy. Works on most humanoid enemies. Signified by a sharp sound and a fountain of blood gushing out.

• Sorcery and Pyromancy
  • Equip the Crown of Dusk.
  • Equip the Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring.

• Miracle
  • Equip the Crown of Dusk.
  • Equip the Ring of the Sun's Firstborn.

Notes

• In order to maximize soul gain, equip Covetous Silver Serpent Ring and, if you are fine with the side-effect, Symbol of Avarice, for a total of 173% soul gain.
• Item drop rate doesn't seem to increase on Overkill.
• Overkill is unachieveable on bosses.
• Overkill exists in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3, but not in Dark Souls 2.

Description

Parrying is a technique where you deflect an enemy attack, leaving the enemy in a special staggered state, vulnerable to ripostes.

Parrying is a technique usable against most humanoid enemies in Dark Souls. It requires some amount of studying enemy attack behaviour, but learning it will provide the player with an advantage in numerous situations.

Execution

1. Equip a shield or weapon that can parry in your left hand. An empty hand works as well but is not recommended as failing the parry will have you take full damage.
2. Face a parriable enemy, lock-on recommended though not required, stand as close as possible. Since your weapon/shield has to connect with the enemy attack itself, your chance also increases if you are nearer.
3. Press L2 (PS3) / LT (XBox) / TAB (default on PC) at the moment (the first frame) the enemy's weapon begins its motion towards you (i.e. after the windup).
4. On successful parry, the enemy will be thrown back for about one second, and you'll hear a echoing cue sound.
5. The enemy will be in an unique staggered state. Ripostes can only be done in this unique state. It is possible to perform actions before the riposte as well e.g. two-handing for higher strength scaling then riposte or even swap weapons, rings (for example to a hornet ring) or even armor, it is also possible to attack, cast offensive magic, heal or run away. Additionally it's possible to attack an enemy, who has poise, otherwise they will be staggered by the attack, with some quick attacks, then riposte afterwards. In PvP circles this is referred to as a "Burrito". Even if you're not performing a riposte, the enemy will receive 40% extra damage within this staggered state.
6. The game allows for players to begin the riposte by pressing R1 while they're still in the parry animation. This inclusion is likely the reason the PvP tech "Parry Backstab" exists.

List of Weapons and Frame Data

Parry animation could be thought of as the active window and the recovery window.

• Active frames are when the enemy will be parried if their weapon connects with your weapon.
• Recovery frames are the "cooldown" period where you can't do anything at all. Animations in Dark Souls can almost always be "cancelled" into different animations, how early this happens depends on what other animation is queued to follow next. The earliest cancel in general occurs by dodging. All weapons are classified by Weapon Speed into fast and slow weapons, which decides whether their animations can be cut off earlier or later. This also applies to parries.

Partial Parry

When you parry a little too early (i.e. already entered recovery frame) or are hit with an attack that can't be parried while parrying, you will do a "partial parry". You don't actually parry the attack (no parry SFX), and you don't technically block the attack either (no deflection), but it has several properties:

• You still take damage, but the damage is partial. The damage taken is calculated from your weapon's actual blocking abilities divided by 2 (e.g. a partial parry by a Target Shield will give you 39% physical damage reduction instead of the normal 78%).
• You don't suffer any kind of block stun, hit stun, or Poise damage.
• You can do this to almost all kinds of attack in the game, including projectile attacks. The only exception is grab attacks; you must dodge those.
• If an enemy's attack would take away more stamina than you have remaining, you will get knocked back. For example, the Mushroom People's punch or the Gaping Dragon's tail swipe.

List of Parriable Enemies

Some of these enemies use the same base model as the player (NPCs, Clan of Forest Protectors, Dark Spirits, etc.). As such, they may carry parriable weapons and thus can be parried.

List of Enemies Who Can Parry

Tips

• All Jump attacks (forward + strong attack) can't be parried and are therefore useful against mobs able to parry the player. This should not be taken as advice for PvP.

Notes

• The classification of Small and Normal for shields does not technically have anything to do with parrying, however with the exceptions of the Effigy Shield and Heater Shield they do correspond to fast and slow shields.
• It is possible to parry an attack from an allied phantom (or the host, if you're summoned)

General Information

Poise is a value that determines a character's resistance to being stunned. All characters, including enemies, have Poise. Being hit will briefly drain the player's poise value, and if drained to 0, the character will become stunned. Having more than 0 poise after taking a hit is required to avoid getting stunned, outside of a few specific instances.

Poise Regeneration

Each time a hit is taken, poise will reduce and remain briefly frozen at the latest value (it does not regenerate steadily like stamina). This means that if a player with 53 poise gets hit by an attack that drains 20 poise, the player will then have exactly 33 poise for the next few seconds. A hidden timer is triggered with each hit that is taken, and if it completes before another hit is taken, poise will instantly refill back to 100%.

For player characters, the timer takes a little over 3-5 seconds to reset¹. For most enemies, the timer is set to exactly 5 seconds.

Poise Safe Points

Poise Drain Values

Different weapons drain varying amounts of Poise, and it is completely independent of damage. The following tables show the amount of Poise drained for each weapon and attack type.

Note: When certain columns like "Rolling" or "L1/L2" are omitted below, they are identical to those weapons' R1 attacks. When "Kick" is omitted, it drains 0 poise from standard enemies but inflicts a guaranteed stagger on player characters.

Axes

• Kicks are regular kicks, on NPCs/Players they lead to a guaranteed stun, these just also deal poise damage. This can break and reset poise, no special animation is played for that however.

Chained Attacks:

• The Butcher Knife has a chained two-handed R2 attack, where the second R2 drains 70 poise instead of 52.5.

Curved Greatswords

Curved Swords

Chained Attacks:

• The Falchion and Scimitar have a chained R2 attack where the second R2 does 20 (1-handed) or 30 (2-handed) poise damage.
• The Jagged Ghost Blade has a chained R2 attack where the second R2 drains 5 per hit (both 1-handed or 2-handed).

Daggers

Fist

Greataxes

• The Dragon King Greataxe's two-handed R2 drains 100 poise with its AoE attack, and another 50 if the axe directly hits the enemy, for a combined total of 150 poise damage.
• The second stage of the Stone Greataxe's two-handed R2 chain attack drains the same amount of poise as the first attack, 75.

Great Hammers

Chained Attacks:

• The Large Club has a chained 1H R2 attack, where the second R2 drains 75 poise.

Note: The 2-handed rolling attacks actually trigger a guaranteed stun as well as draining Poise.

Greatswords

• The Moonlight Greatsword's 1H R2 projectile attack drains 35 poise. The blade itself does not deal any poise damage if it hits the enemy directly.
• The Moonlight Greatsword's 2H R2 projectile attack drains 52.5 poise. The blade itself will drain an additional 35 poise if it hits the enemy directly.
• The Obsidian Greatsword's 2H R2 AoE attack drains 70 poise. The blade itself will drain an additional 35 poise if it hits the enemy directly.

Halberds

Hammers

Chained Attacks:

• The Club, Pickaxe, and Warpick have a chained one-handed jumping attack, where the second R2 drains 24 poise instead of 30.
• The Blacksmith Giant Hammer, Blacksmith Hammer, Hammer of Vamos, Mace, Morning Star, and Reinforced Club have a chained one-handed jumping attack, where the second R2 drains 42 poise instead of 52.5.

Katanas

• Kicks are regular kicks, on NPCs/Players they lead to a guaranteed stun, these just also deal poise damage. This can break and reset poise, no special animation is played for that however.

Spears

• The Dragonslayer Spear's 1H R2 projectile attack does not drain poise. The spear must connect to its target to drain 20 poise.
• The Dragonslayer Spear's 2H R2 has a chained attack, where the second R2 drains 50 poise.

Straight Swords

• The Drake Sword's projectile 2H R2 attack drains 30 poise by itself. The sword impacting the enemy directly drains 20 in addition.

Thrusting Swords

Chained Attacks:

• Ricard's Rapier has a chained 1H R2 attack, where the second R2 deals 4 attacks that remove 2.5, 2.5, 2.5 and 1.25 poise.
• Ricard's Rapier has a chained 2H R2 attack, where the second R2 deals 4 attacks that removes 5, 5, 5 and 2.5 poise.
• Velka's Rapier has a chained 1H R2 attack, where the second R2 deals a single attack that removes 1.25 poise.
• Velka's Rapier has a chained 2H R2 attack, there the second R2 deals a single attack that removes 2.5 poise.

Ultra Greatswords

• The Dragon Greatsword's 2H R2 special attack drains 50 poise if only the projectile blast hits.
• Above instances where two values are found adding to each other, poise damage has the potential to trigger twice (rapidly in succession, from a single attack). Though it may be possible for only one of those to trigger, depending on the spacing or angle of the enemy.

Whips

Spells

Note that weapons buffed by spells do not have increased poise damage.

• The Soulmass orbs do not drain poise if they "bump" into an enemy instead of firing.

• Fire Surge does not drain poise.

• Miracle Resonance buffs do not increase poise damage.
• The AoE bursts trigger a guaranteed stun if unblocked by an opponent with sufficient poise, and instead trigger a knocking down animation when poise is drained.
• When the lightning miracles hit water, there are three different tiers of poise damage depending on how close the water effect is to the enemy:
  • Lightning Spear: 16 / 10 / 0
  • Great Lightning Spear: 25 / 15 / 5
  • Sunlight Spear: 35 / 20 / 10

Ammo

• All Bows and Crossbows deal the same amount of poise damage. The poise damage depends on the ammunition being used and also the body part being hit on human players/ NPCs.
  • A multiplier to certain body parts being hit by arrows or bolts affects the poise damage taken as well.
  • Legs and Arms of human players/ NPCs will take 10% extra poise damage (22 for regular arrows and bolts), regardless of which armor is being used.
  • Headshots with arrows or bolts are a guaranteed stagger regardless of poise.²
• The Avelyn deals the full poise damage for each bolt that impacts, for a total of 60 poise damage.

Shields

• Above instances where two values are found adding to each other, poise damage has the potential to trigger twice (rapidly in succession, from a single attack). Though it may be possible for only the first hit to trigger, depending on the spacing or angle of the enemy.
• The Crystal Ring Shield's projectile attack drains 60 poise, plus an additional 20 if the shield impacts the enemy.
• The Bonewheel Shield R2 attacks deal three possible hits, for a total of 60 poise damage.
• Some shields have unique animations that replace the kick attack, however these don't qualify as special kick attacks and simply behave as a standard kick.

Items / Special

• The Egg Head Kick drains 100 poise in addition to triggering a guaranteed stun regardless.
• Kicking with the Orange Charred Ring equipped does not drain poise (or affect the kick attacks that do drain poise).
• The Set of Thorns do not drain poise when equipped and rolling into an enemy, though having any piece equipped will stagger enemies with 0 poise.

Enemy Poise Values

Regular Enemies

Bosses

Various bosses do not have any poise. But rather than stagger with every hit, they are set to be completely unstaggerable.

• Priscilla has 60 poise when invisible, breaking her poise is what makes her visible. She has infinite poise (unbreakable) when visible.
• The Iron Golem has its own stagger mechanism instead of normal poise. See Iron Golem for an explanation.
• Artorias' Poise is reduced from 130 to 90 during his charge-up animation.

Notes

• Poise Damage for an attack is calculated as a base amount of poise (5 for Daggers and Thrusting swords, 20 for Katanas and Straight Swords(…), 35 for Greatswords (…) and 50 for Ultra Greatswords (…)), multiplied by some factor for the attack. This factor is 1 for a one-handed light-attack, 1.5 for a two-handed light attack, etc.
  • It appears that due to the way the game saves values, attacks with poise damage generated with a factor of 0.8, 1.2 or 1.6 are slightly less than they are supposed to be, allowing players to poise through them with a slightly lower poise value.
  • The value 1.6 in particular includes backstep/running attacks, making it possible to poise through 20*1.6=32 poise Damage dealing attacks with only 32 poise. The more precise poise Damage dealt is 31.9999980927.
  • Also, Black Knight Greataxe is the only weapon with different factors for its light attacks, happening to be 0.8 and 1.2, it can not stagger 40/60 poise with a single hit.

• The Wolf Ring also boosts poise by 40 points.

• Havel's Set provides the highest Poise of any armor set in the game at 121 Poise. This doesn't necessarily justify it's popularity, as the benefit of such excessive poise is debatable, and compared to many upgradable armor pieces it presents an option low on defense for a high weight setup.

PvP related

When building a character for PvP, it is a good idea to equip armor that will put you above one of the following Poise breakpoints:

• 32 lets you get poise through the many 30 poise two-handed R1s that dominate the PvP meta. Without this, you're giving Katanas, Spears and Curved Swords a massive advantage. Additionally it lets you walk through their running attacks.
  • 21 lets you poise through very light attacks, including one-handed ones of 30 poise Damage dealing weapons. With Wolf Ring, this can reach the much more important 61 poise breakpoint. One important tactic with this is removing the Wolf Ring at low HP, when poise doesn't help you anymore and the Dark Wood Grain Ring or Red Tearstone Ring are better choices.
  • 53 lets you survive at least one light attack from any weapon without getting your Poise broken except by 2-handed light attacks from an ultra greatsword, a great hammer, or a greataxe. This is a very minor poise breakpoint, as 61 poise and 32 poise are vastly more important. Primarily it is a counter pick against builds that don't use 30 poise Damage dealing weapons, as without which there is little need for 61 poise. This mostly refers to strength builds that have little to no variety in the swaps they can make, or specifically counter-picking Greatsword or Hammer users. 56 poises as a variation poises through running attacks.
• 61 lets you poise through two 30 poise hits, three 20 poise hits, a Katana kick into a Great Combustion, one 2H light attack from the Black Knight Greataxe or one Black Flame hit, as well as everything 53 poise can. This is the most important poise Breakpoint in the game, only followed by 31 poise. 62 poise is a variation which can take a two-handed running attack + a regular two-handed light attack from 30 poise Damage weapons.
  • 71 lets you poise through two, 35 poise light-attacks.
  • 76 lets you survive at least one light or jumping attack from any weapon without getting your Poise broken. None of these are generally seen as worth investing levels into, some builds use Full-Giants as it has the highest poise in the game, but the breakpoint has become irrelevant both with an increase in player proficiency, to not get hit by attacks with seconds of startup, and the widespread use of toggle escape. High poise levels such as these can be useful to not get interrupted while healing, in duels and most other situations, they are rather irrelevant for though.

• A popular list of important armor setups can be found (here).

• Running attacks drain more poise than normal R1 attacks. For example, you need 56 poise to resist a greatsword running attack as opposed to 53.

• A phantom hit — an attack that hits you during the invincibility frames from a roll when viewed by the player getting hit — will still damage your poise, much like poison and bleed will still build up when a phantom hit occurs. Can also be used to reset poise, just like it can be used to reset bleed.

• Toggle Escape — if you toggle your left/right hand weapon during a stun animation, you can replace the stun animation with a weapon toggling animation (which you can move during), effectively cancelling your stun. While clearly intentionally left as part of the animation, the reason is uncertain. Toggling is an important part of PvP, depending on the attack, it can get you in a safe position or even let you hit them back or backstab their attack.
  • Toggles are "Queued", that is they start after the current animation ends. This can be a positive, as it allows for perfect toggles after being stuck in an animation. However, if backstabbed with a toggle queued, the toggle will come out as early on in your wakeup animation as possible, which both breaks your immunity, and leaves you unable to roll or block, often allowing the opponent to land a free hit on you.

Reinforcement Formulas

All upgradable Equipment follows a strict formula for determining the next values in the upgrade tier. It uses a multiplier table where the first three sets of Values (Physical AR/DEF, Magical AR/DEF and Elemental AR/DEF) are identical in most cases¹. Each Weapon that can be infused with different elements actually exists 10 times in an "initial state" which is not visible in-game, this is very important to know because some +0 weapons actually already have a multiplier applied even at +0. To show an example, here is the Dagger with its 10 initial stats:

For example, regarding the Raw Dagger: the first entry of this set has a different Physical Base Damage of 64 instead of 56. At first glance it seems that the Raw Dagger +0 would have a Physical Damage AR of 64 but that's not true. The Raw Dagger +0 has a base damage of 96. The reason for this is because the template for any Raw Weapon +0 specifies that even at +0 it will get a multiplier bonus of 1.5 × Base Damage. (64 × 1.5 = 96).

Scale Grading

Some weapons and their reinforcement paths change the scaling bonus from their defaults:
As seen above in the Dagger example the Basic Weapon has a 13 point Bonus in Strength and 85 points in dexterity. The game however will make it a bit simpler and displays the bonus in letters ranging from S,A,B,C,D,E (from most beneficial to least). But an "A" Bonus does not mean that the "A" bonus alone is the same for all weapons. Here's the tier grading list:

If any weapon for example has 139 points in strength bonus it would be only 1 point short of achieving the "S" Scaling rank but it would still display as "A"

• Armor
• Weapons
• Shields
• Bows & Greatbows
• Crossbows

Normal Armor Upgrade Formula

Special Armor Upgrade Formula

Normal Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Crystal Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Lightning Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Raw Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Magic Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Enchanted Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Divine Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Occult Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Fire Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Chaos Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Special (Twinkling) Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Boss Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Dragon Weapon Reinforcement Multiplier

Normal Shield Reinforcement Multiplier

Crystal Shield Reinforcement Multiplier

Lightning Shield Reinforcement Multiplier

Magic Shield Reinforcement Multiplier

Divine Shield Reinforcement Multiplier

Fire Shield Reinforcement Multiplier

Special (Twinkling) Shield Reinforcement Multiplier

Boss Shield Reinforcement Multiplier

Normal Bow Reinforcement Multiplier

Crystal Bow Reinforcement Multiplier

Lightning Bow Reinforcement Multiplier

Raw Bow Reinforcement Multiplier

Magic Bow Reinforcement Multiplier

Enchanted Bow Reinforcement Multiplier