Dark Souls walkthrough, guide and tips for the PS4, Xbox One, PC and Switch adventure
Survive Lordan's trials with our Dark Souls walkthrough, guide and tips.
A remaster of Dark Souls - one of the most celebrated adventures of all time - has finally arrived on PS4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch.
Whether you are playing on these systems - or the original Xbox 360 and PS3 versions - our Dark Souls walkthrough can help you explore this huge, sprawling and often intimidating adventure, and survive its many challenging boss battles.
As well as a series of Dark Souls guides to help answer any questions outside of the main quest, we have a handful of Dark Souls tips that are worth reading, whether you are playing for the very first time or are coming to the adventure for the first time since previous generation systems.
Dark Souls walkthrough
Though Dark Souls has a vast interconnected world, certain areas are locked off until you defeat specific bosses. Below is the order you'd want to tackle them, though note much later in the game you can visit one of four areas - the choice at this point, is yours.
Opening areas
Ringing the First Bell
- Dark Souls - Undead Burg
- Dark Souls - Taurus Demon boss strategy
- Dark Souls - Undead Parish
- Dark Souls - Bell Gargoyles boss strategy
Ringing the Second Bell
- Dark Souls - Lower Undead Burg
- Dark Souls - Capra Demon
- Dark Souls - The Depths
- Dark Souls - Gaping Dragon boss strategy
- Dark Souls - Blighttown
- Dark Souls - Quelaag boss strategy and Quelaag's Domain
The road to Anor Londo
- Dark Souls - Sen's Fortress
- Dark Souls - Iron Golem boss strategy
- Dark Souls - Anor Londo
- Dark Souls - Ornstein and Smough boss strategy
Note the following four bosses and their adjoining areas can be tackled in any order:
Finding Seath the Scaleless
- Dark Souls - Duke's Archives
- Dark Souls - Crystal Caves
- Dark Souls - Seath the Scaleless boss strategy
Finding The Four Kings
Finding Gravelord Nito
- Dark Souls - The Catacombs
- Dark Souls - Pinwheel boss strategy
- Dark Souls - Tomb of the Giants
- Dark Souls - Gravelord Nito boss strategy
Finding Bed of Chaos
- Dark Souls - Demon Ruins
- Dark Souls - Ceaseless Discharge boss strategy
- Dark Souls - Demon Firesage boss strategy
- Dark Souls - Centipede Demon
- Dark Souls - Lost Izalith
- Dark Souls - Bed of Chaos boss strategy
Once the above four bosses are down, you can go on to complete the game.
Completing Dark Souls
Other areas off the main path
- Dark Souls - Darkroot Garden (can be visited before Anor Londo)
- Dark Souls - Darkroot Basin and Hydra battle
- Dark Souls - The Great Hollow (recommended to visit after Anor Londo)
- Dark Souls - Ash Lake
- Dark Souls - Valley of Drakes
- Dark Souls - Painted World of Ariamis
Additional bosses off the main path
- Dark Souls - Moonlight Butterfly
- Dark Souls - Great Grey Wolf Sif
- Dark Souls - Crossbreed Priscilla
- Dark Souls - Stray Demon
- Dark Souls - Dark Sun Gwyndolin
Artorias of the Abyss DLC areas and bosses
- Dark Souls - How to access DLC Artorias of the Abyss and explore Sanctuary Garden
- Dark Souls - Sanctuary Guardian boss strategy
- Dark Souls - Royal Wood
- Dark Souls - Knight Artorias boss strategy
- Dark Souls - Oolacile Township
- Dark Souls - Kalameet boss strategy and Hawkeye Gough
- Dark Souls - Chasm of the Abyss
- Dark Souls - Manus, Father of the Abyss boss strategy
More Dark Souls guides
Dark Souls tips
Dark Souls has a reputation for being notoriously obtuse, with the game not actually explaining many of its mechanics to you. However lucky for you, we've not left a stone unturned in the world of Dark Souls, meaning that you'll be able to wrap the machinations of the game all around your head with these tips that you need to know before you start playing Dark Souls: Remastered.
Leveling Up is not as important as you think
While a lot of traditional RPGs intrinsically tie your power directly to your level, Dark Souls' Soul Level is less of an advantage than you might think. Many of the offensive stats (Strength, Dexterity) won't actually help you out in a tough fight that much. Instead, the big jumps in power come with upgrading your weapons and gear with Titanite. The stats that you will passively want to level up are Health and Endurance, giving you more health and options in combat.
Where the stats and levelling up do come in handy is where armor and weapon requirements are concerned. If you want to wield a Zweihander, for example, you'll need to level your dexterity up to 16 to wield it in one hand. While it may be tempting to pump your souls into Strength and Dexterity- there are better options out there than simply running a 'pure' build.
Humanity, Human Form & Soul Form explained
Humanity is the stat to the left of your health bar. The game does a pretty poor job with telling you what it actually is, though. Humanity can be stocked for various uses, such as levelling up a covenant, increasing your attack power and also restoring your health.
Humanity also comes in two forms - as an item and 'stocked'. You can occasionally find Humanity as an item left behind by enemies or in the world, in this form you can also use a Humanity to fully restore your health, and also stock it.
Stocked Humanity refers to the number next to your health bar. You can get more by continually progressing through the game, or using a Humanity item. However, if you die, this stocked humanity will be left behind with your bloodstain.
Humanity's main use is to help you revert to Human Form. When you start Dark Souls, you will begin in Soul Form, and see the character you lovingly created mangled up and with half health.
In addition to this, you will not be able to summon player to help you, instead, you will only be able to lay your summon sign down to help another player. If you succeed and defeat that area's boss, you will return to Human Form.
Human Form is the form that you will often turn to if you need more health, or to summon NPCs and other players to help you out. You revert to human form if you have stocked humanity and selecting "Reverse Hollow" at the Bonfire.
Keep an eye on Messages and Bloodstains
One great feature in Dark Souls is the ability to read messages left by other players. While many of these messages can be genuinely helpful and lead you to rare gear or items, a lot of them are red herrings, that will often lead you to your death. Be sure to take advantage of this feature, as people can vote your message up, which will restore your health in a pinch.
Bloodstains on the ground will also help you discern dangerous areas and upcoming enemy ambushes. Be sure to take a peek at these to see where people died, and to be sure to avoid their fate.
It's okay to lose Souls
For those familiar to game like it, Dark Souls is a pretty difficult game to make your way through, and losing your Souls, which act as both your experience points and currency in shops. It can be tempting to stockpile them and keep a large amount on you at any given time, but due to the nature of Dark Souls' Bloodstain system, where you have one chance at regaining them before they disappear, you'll want to be spending Souls on items and levelling up all the way through the game.
Additionally, if you're stuck in any certain area, it's okay to lose souls. Levelling up is much less valuable than upgrading your gear, so if you want to do a suicide run to get some rare/strong itms, then don't be afraid to lose a few thousand souls while doing it.
Engage in Jolly Cooperation
It is pretty easy to help out your fellow players. You'll want to encounter Solaire of Astora in the Undead Burg, who will give you the White Sign Soapstone if you talk to him enough. This will let you leave your Summon Sign down for other players to find and summon you to help them out.
If you need help and want to summon in a player or phantom, then you should be able to easily do this by returning to Human Form, and organically encountering any player or NPCs Soapstone on the ground. Beware though, as while in human form you can also be invaded by other players.