http://uk.ign.com/wikis/dark-souls-3/Things_Dark_Souls_3_Doesn't_Tell_You

"When you get around to recruiting Yoel of Londor from his pilgrimage at the bridge in Undead Settlement, he'll not only offer to sell spells but to "Draw out your true strength". Doing so will essentially give you a free level up at no cost for souls. However, it will also give you a Dark Sigil in your inventory. Having said Dark Sigil means that every time you die, you'll gain one point of Hollowing for each Dark Sigil you carry with you, up to a maximum of 5 Dark Sigils can be held.

You'll find that after getting a few Hollowing, you're character will grow visibly worse for the wear. Getting more free levels from Yoel will depend on your Hollowing level (0, 2, 6, 12, and 16, respectively.) Hollowing will also affect any items infused with a Hollow Gem, increasing your luck if you have more than 15 Hollowing.


To get rid of Hollowing, you'll need to first remove the Dark Sigils in your inventory - by giving the Soul of a Fire Keeper in the Firelink Shrine Belltower to the Fire Keeper, and paying a price to remove each Dark Sigil. However, this will not remove any current Hollowing, which will require a Purging Stone, bought from either Yuria of Londor, found in the world, or from the Firelink Handmaid once you have found Hollow's Ashes later in the game.

The most important effect by far, is that by gaining Hollowing, and Dark Sigils from Yoel, will cause the appearance of Yuria of Londor, who will set you down a path to an alternate Ending." 

My character looks like zombie Gary Oldman in The Dark Knight right now. 

Irithyll Dungeon and those fucking masked things with the brands. What the FUCK is the deal with them killing you just by looking at you. And then there's a room with like 10 of them at the end.
And the fucking roast chicken lizards with human baby faces that scream all the time. This is the worst place.
I just ran through to the next area, I think I might even have missed the boss. 

So I saved up 20,000 souls to go towards the 34,000 souls needed the cleanse my sins and de-aggro that knight dude. And then discovered the very hard way just how bad CURSE is from those FUCKING BUG EYED FROG CUNT SHITBAGS. Then I saved up another 34,000 souls and the price had gone up to 38,000 souls cos it's tied to level and then I cleansed my sins and went to speak to the now-friendly knight except he's not really friendly and is a smug arrogant cunt and I really wish I'd spent 60,000 on another 6 levels instead of his stupid twatty face.

Also fuck abyss watchers, they reset my ember boost before that combat the cunts. 

LOL. 

I ran my ballsack through a blender this morning. I can't wait to go back and try it some more. 

 

The swamps are pretty much DS3's version of Blighttown. With Basilisks and giant crabs. 

Are not a place I would pick as a top holiday destination.

Kona, u tried it?? Trust me I am as skeptical as anyone about repetitive / frustrating gameplay, but this is fine so far. In fact I'm wondering if the DS controller-up-arse fanbois are crying into their Mountain Dew in the early game when the bosses I'm getting in 2-6 goes they are smashing through first time w/out using Estus flask and not getting their "ballsack in a blender" gameplay fix?? Maybe it gets ridiculously hard later on, even if it does I suspect I'll have got my �40's worth from scenery alone.


The cleansing sins thing I did was entirely optional, maybe when it does get excruciatingly hard I'll wish I'd spent that 60k on 5 levels 4 Ember and 4 Homeward bones but it's easy enough to farm again.... 

When it gets ridiculously hard you engage in JOLLY COOPERATION 

I do love a good bit of co-op. The online really sets the game apart from many, it's great that your interactions are limited to physical emotes and literally nothing else.

People can still manage to be dicks though, I summoned someone for the Abyss Watcher fight and the guy just crystalled out. This wouldn't be a huge problem except once you summon someone it buffs the health of the enemies.

Also, I got invaded in the catacombs and lost 16k souls. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but I also got my arse handed to me several times over, then I ran into an army of skeletons that would have made Jason and his Argonauts collectively shit themselves. 

Playing offline since day 1 HTH. 

:((((((((((((( 

The amount of times I have been invaded while helping someone as we are travelling to the boss and then absolutely destroy the fucker is far more numerous than the successful invasions.

The reason the dickwraith got me last night is that I rolled backwards off a cliff, then I died trying to recover my souls. I am certain I would have had the guy but I wasn't aware of my surroundings, maybe the invader chose the environment as part of his strategy?

Anyway, you're missing out on a lot by not playing online IMO. 

but invasions and coop are only part of it. You are missing out on all the messages and death stains that litter the world from other players when you play offline. It's part of the Dark Souls experience :(

It's fun to also to leave your white soap stone summon sign down by a difficult boss you've beaten and help others defeat it! If you equip the sunbros covenant item you can get rewards for it to. And souls! 

online play is the heart and soul of the game, it can ease off a lot of the supposed difficulty.

There's a reason why people are getting really pissed off that the online functionality of Dark Souls 1 has stopped on PC 

https://gifsound.com/?gif=i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/108/187/1c7.gif&v=0_C2HJvtRDY&s=6 

i literally can't stop laughing at that, lmao 

The fucking Mimics man. 

I want to play a cool SP game.

I don't want to have random moments of fucking DS3 1v1 deathmatch.

I don't want the beautiful scenery littered with bleeding shitstains with some moronic drivel I have to stop and read every 5 seconds.

I don't want to help any other cunts with difficult boss fights. If they're difficult enough I'm quite happy not playing them again. 

... so play Quake + Quoth mod... that would satisfy your query ;) 

<Shambler> holy shitting fuck
<Shambler> when you pop out onto dat view of the boreal valley city
<Shambler> DAT VIEW! 

I find invasions add a great deal extra variety to the overall experience, such as one encounter which had me and a friend laughing our arses off.

I was helping him via coop and we not long reached a particular night-time location, He gets invaded and we both proceeded to fight the guy. He's a squirmy one that's for sure. Friend's covenant kicks in and a Blue Sentinel comes to our aid. The invader knows he's outmatched, especially having Lloyd Talismans thrown in his face. Screw this he must have thought and retreated further ahead to mingle with some nasty enemies to take advantage of them. The invaded expected us to come to him.

We had a better idea.

Seed of the Giant. The invader gets slashed in the back by one of those enemies and then stun-locked into its deadly combo, dying soon after. That was perhaps the funniest encounter in a Souls game I've personally experienced in a while. 

Just trying to comfort poor ol' Bal last night who despite probably having 850% more experience and skill in games like this is totally noobing it up, possibly because he has chosen a Pyromancer build.

I've read in a couple of places that a magic build (ranged or otherwise?) is pretty weak in this?? I can imagine that being so, partly because of the need to lock on to enemies are close range thus encouraging them to smash your head in, and partly because of managing mana as well as health/stamina. Is that true??

What builds are people rocking, and what builds are feasible??

I've gone for uber-boring knight, partly because it was recommended as a good starter build, partly because I like having some good honest H2H combat in these sort of fantasy games (I get my ranged weapon fix elsewhere). I've stuck with sword and shield and kept my weight low and my weapon single handed so I can block, then dodge, then still land a decent flurry of blows.

I can imagine "adjacent" builds to this working well, e.g. a rogue-ish build with light armour and maximum daggers for speed, or a barbarian-ish build with massive weapon aiming for just one good hit per encounter.

Discuss etc etc 

That allowed me to totally clown Ludex Gundyr on the first try, and gave me some safety distance for some of the more annoying parts of high wall. Then I picked up some sorceries and a staff in the settlement and ditched pyromancy because lol it's shit.

Found a straightsword fairly early in the high wall and I've got that at +8 now with a heavy gem and I'm pretty much using that for everything, with soul arrow to plink away at stuff from safety.