Dark Souls III: Everything We Learned from the March Content Drop

Just last week, a very select group of people were invited to play a near-completion build of Dark Souls III, the third and final entry to the Dark Souls series developed by From Software. The people who attended the event include series veterans like Lobos, Peeve, Cowboy, and Vaati. On March 2, the content embargo was lifted and these people were finally allowed to reveal their experiences with the game. To save you a bit of time, here’s the full rundown of everything we’ve learned from the March content drop.

Do take note that this article will contain spoilers for some areas and the early bosses of the game. If you wish to experience the game blind, it would be wise to avoid this article altogether.

– The starting classes in Dark Souls III are as follows: Knight, Mercenary, Warrior, Herald, Thief, Assassin, Sorcerer, Pyromancer, Cleric, Deprived

– You can choose from three types of voices for your character: young, mature, and aged.

– You can give your character chest hair. There are two options: standard and thick. Female characters can also have chest hair. Joy…?

– As expected, poise is back in Dark Souls III and can be seen as a stat on your character screen.

– There is no Adaptability/Agility stat.

– Stats and what they do:

• Vigor: governs HP and resistance to frost. Frost is a new status effect that affects your stamina. It’s similar to bleed in Dark Souls II, but seems to be much more deadly.
• Attunement: governs FP, determines number of attunement slots
• Endurance: increases your stamina, governs lightning and bleeding resistance
• Vitality: increases your equip load, physical defense, and governs poison resistance
• Strength: governs resistance to fire, improves attack strength
• Dexterity: governs attack speed, reduces spellcasting time, reduces damage taken when falling
• Intelligence: increases spell potency, increases magic defense
• Faith: increases spell potency, increases magic defense, increases dark defense
• Luck: increases item discovery, increases bleeding and poison capabilities, governs resistance to curses

– You can put weapons in your off-hand, and they will have slightly different functions compared to when they’re in your right hand.

– When you retrieve your souls after death, the text displayed is ‘Souls Retrieved’.

– Bosses will have different phases, as they did in Bloodborne. They are much more improved than in previous Souls games.

– The game starts off with your character appearing to rise up from his or her own grave.

– You can find an Ashen Estus Flask on the corpse of an Elite Knight. It could be a nod to Oscar from Dark Souls.

– You can get a Uchigatana in the tutorial area of the game.

– You play as an Unkindled one. You are not worthy to become a Lord of Cinder like the Chosen Undead, but you are worthy enough to hunt them down.

– Firelink Shrine will be your main hub in Dark Souls III.

– Firelink Shrine looks a lot like the Nexus from Demon’s Souls, in terms of level design and the gathering of NPCs and merchants in the area.

– You level up by talking to the Fire Keeper at Firelink Shrine. One of her dialogue lines is “Touch the darkness within me.” It feels like a callback to the Maiden in Black from Demon’s Souls, where she tells the protagonist to touch the demon within her.

– Andre of Astora is back. He can reinforce and infuse your weapons. His menu, however, does not include the option to reinforce armor.

– Andre is also in charge of reinforcing your Estus Flasks.

– Andre will allow you to allot Estus slots. You can use charges from your FP Estus and convert them into extra charges for regular Estus.

– Killing Andre and the Fire Keeper doesn’t seem to matter too much. Both characters will reappear in Firelink Shrine when you come back.

– There is a Crestfallen warrior in Firelink Shrine. Like you, he is also an Unkindled one.

– There’s also a shrine maid in Firelink. You can find ashes of fallen heroes and give them to her in exchange for more items to buy from her stock.

– The Dried Finger is an online play item that will allow you to summon a third phantom for co-op. However, this will also make the summoning of a dark spirit occur earlier, and it can also summon a second dark spirit.

– Embers are like Humanity. However, you can only use them once after death to increase your max HP. You cannot stack them or use them as healing items as you could with Humanity in Dark Souls.

– When you use an Ember, your max HP will increase, and you’ll be able to see summon signs from fellow Unkindled ones. However, you’ll also be susceptible to invasion.

– The Ember looks a lot like the Humanity sprite from Dark Souls.

– The Blue Sentinels and the Way of Blue covenant is back. You join covenants by equipping their specific items.

– The Sunlight covenant is also back in Dark Souls III. Praise the sun. \[T]/

– Entering the white fog to get to a boss area is much faster than it was in previous entries.

– The flying lightning monkeys of Anor Londo from Dark Souls are back. After killing the second boss in the game, they show up and fly you away to another area.

– There will be an Onionbro in Dark Souls III. Siegward of Catarina makes an appearance, though we do not yet know his connection to Siegmeyer and Sieglinde from Dark Souls.

– Undead Bone Shards serve the same function as the Sublime Bone Dust from Dark Souls II and the Fire Keeper Souls from Dark Souls. Burning them in a bonfire will strengthen your Estus Flask.

– You can push enemies aside by either dashing or rolling into them.

– The Pyromancy Flame is back in Dark Souls III. However, it comes with a special skill called Combustion, Even without purchasing pyromancies, you’ll be able to use Combustion at the cost of FP once you have acquired the Flame.

Dark Souls III is set to be released on April 12 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.