While Dark Souls: Age of Fire was selling worldwide, the number of players beating the game kept growing.
Compared to the previous game, this one had an even more evil map design.
But once guides started coming out, new players actually had a much better experience than in the last game.
The first boss players had to face was the Asylum Demon.
In the previous game, there was basically no way to cheese Iudex Gundyr.
Even if you picked a Pyromancer or Sorcerer who could attack from a distance, you still had to be careful.
That's because Gundyr could quickly close the gap.
And even if you used up all your starting Black Firebombs, all they could do was push Gundyr into his second phase, not kill him outright.
But in Dark Souls: Age of Fire, things are different.
Right at the start, you can do a plunge attack that cuts the Asylum Demon's health in half.
If you chose Black Firebombs, a few swings are enough to finish it.
Unlike the previous game where upgrading your Estus Flask was really hard and you had to search for shards just to slowly increase the number of uses,
in Dark Souls: Age of Fire, players can offer Humanity at bonfires to raise their flask count from 5 to 10. Even though each bonfire is separate, Humanity isn't that hard to farm.
And after clearing the Catacombs and learning how to kindle, you can boost it to 20, which makes the game feel much better to play.
With guides showing how to get the Gravelord Sword or the Guan Dao early on, players could already wield strong weapons at the start. Of course, a single mistake still meant dying easily to mobs or bosses.
But compared to the original game where enemies could kill you in two hits while you had to slash them 20 times—
with these weapons, the first playthrough suddenly felt amazing.
For players who had been tortured by the maps before, this was pure satisfaction.
After all, this is Dark Souls!
And yet here you were, cutting down bosses with just ten or so hits—what kind of experience was that!?
It was exactly because of these guides, plus the chance to get powerful weapons so early, that many players who quit the original Dark Souls ended up sticking with the prequel, even though its design was more brutal.
In a neighborhood in the imperial capital, Ben, Zack, and Hannah were hanging out together. Wells and Joey, who had just come back from a business trip and was recovering from an injured foot, were there too.
"See? If you want the Gravelord Sword, just roll down here and run straight inside. Be careful with the Titanite Demon, you'll need to roll twice. Grab the item, hide in the coffin, and pray you don't get spotted. Once you're inside, make the pact with Nito to get the sword. After that, just use a Homeward Bone to return to Firelink Shrine. Okay, now it's all much easier."
Ben sat there showing Wells and Joey how to do the early-game route.
The game had been out for nearly two weeks, but both of them had been pretty busy, so they hadn't really kept up.
Watching Ben's moves, the two of them couldn't help but praise him: "You're awesome!"
"Yeah, those dodges are so smooth!"
Zack, sitting nearby, teased: "Give me a break. He's practiced this on who knows how many fresh saves already. He's a one-playthrough maniac who never goes to NG+2 or NG+3. Of course he knows it inside out!"
"This is called building up experience. Besides, in NG+2 or NG+3, the maps don't change. Once I've memorized all the layouts and bosses, wouldn't higher cycles be easy? That's my plan." Ben gave a light cough as he defended himself.
"And it's fun to replay NG anyway. Sometimes I go dex, sometimes strength, sometimes even try magic."
His routine was simple: keep restarting NG, grab the Gravelord Sword first, then start his own little power trip.
And with so many builds in the game, why stick to just one style?
He tried the second run too. Even though fighting monsters with upgraded weapons was really easy, their damage suddenly went way up.
Especially those mad dogs—when two of them rushed him at once, it almost cost him his life.
In short, the second run gave him that old familiar feeling again, the familiar "Souls flavor."
"Eh! The game got an update!? And it's huge!" After showing off the Grave King Sword, Ben was about to quit the game and open Fall Guys to play with his friends when he noticed something unexpected.
Dark Souls: Age of Fire had actually been updated, and the update was massive.
If it were just an online game, he wouldn't really care too much about a big patch.
But the key point was—Dark Souls: Age of Fire is a single-player game!
Why did it suddenly get such a big update?
"What's going on? An update?" Hearing Ben, Zack and Hannah froze for a moment, then leaned in to look at his screen.
Curious, Ben clicked open the update preview for Dark Souls: Age of Fire on the Nebula Games store page.
"Dark Souls and Dark Souls: Age of Fire bring you a brand-new mode: Death Mode, offering the undead a whole new challenge."
"That long-lost dance of blades and heart-pounding thrill will return in Death Mode."
"Have you regretted not being able to fight legendary figures like Lord Gwyn at his peak, Artorias, or the Witch?"
"Have you ever wondered how terrifying Giant King Yhorm's power would be if he hadn't gone mad?"
"The brand-new Death Mode will fulfill the regrets of fire-linkers everywhere. Here are the full details of the update…"
After going through the patch notes, Ben, Zack, and the others pretty much understood what Death Mode was about.
It was basically like the random mode in the previous game—just another unique mode for players to try.
What surprised them was that the previous Dark Souls also got this mode in its update, while the new game had both Death Mode and a more fun, random mode added at the same time.
Death Mode was essentially like an arena.
Players could freely challenge certain bosses from Dark Souls.
And after defeating them, they'd earn special item rewards.
There would also be a dedicated leaderboard to record players' rankings.
You could go solo, or team up with others.
Up to three players could team up.
According to the description, the bosses in this version used Nebula Games' latest game AI technology.
Their health, toughness, and other stats were also boosted.
In co-op, boss health scaled with the number of players.
But unlike random mode, where you had to make a brand-new save file, Death Mode used your existing save.
Of course, Death Mode required you to always be online. Weapons and stats would also be slightly adjusted.
This way, higher-level characters with stronger upgrades wouldn't be too overwhelming compared to someone who had just cleared their first run.
In short, skill mattered more than just numbers.
And unlike the purely fun random mode, Death Mode had a ranking system, which made it way more appealing for many players.
Each boss's first kill list and fastest clear records, along with the players' IDs, would be displayed somewhere in Firelink Shrine for everyone to see.
That was also where players could access Death Mode.
(End of The Chapter)
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