How do you keep the "fear" alive in Dark Souls?

You all know what I'm talking about. Those veteran players with over 500 hours in the game definitely know what I'm talking about.

During your first playthough there's that hopelessness, that fear that emotion no other game has ever managed to make you feel.

you spend the majority of the game trying to overcome it but now its been gone so long that the game is beginning to lose its charm in a sense.

So how to you guys keep the fear alive?

Have you tried turning off your HUD?

I usually pvp with no hud.

I now never run vitality higher than 30. (w/o RoFaP)

Grab a friend whose a GL and run through the game having them constantly gravelord your areas/buy the PC version and get a permaGL mod.

I suggested this in another thread. But take your best gear and place it at the end of one area, then take a shortcut to the beginning and play through it alive with starting gear. If you die you lose all your best equipment.

You can't ever get it back, but you can play the game with limitations that force you to learn to handle the game's challenges in other ways. Play through as a starting level character, don't use a shield, choose a weapon you're not familiar with, etc.. Basically play outside of your comfort zone so that you have to approach everything differently. It can make the game fresh for you again, assuming you haven't tried everything already.

Trust me, if you've only ever beaten the game with powerful characters, then doing it at low levels with very little health and stamina will do wonders.

sl 1 runs. I'm currently trying to do a fast roll no-handed kirk run. Only armor of thorns rolling. No weapons/shield. Also I fight players that are so much better than me in PvP to try and keep that adreniline pumping :p

But when you beat the game with a low level character, it gets even less scary as you will have vastly improved.

What about a self-imposed limitation that you cannot get your souls back, ever? Just can't pick up any souls/humanity that you drop. When they're gone, they're gone.

vageta31 wrote:You can't ever get it back, but you can play the game with limitations that force you to learn to handle the game's challenges in other ways. Play through as a starting level character, don't use a shield, choose a weapon you're not familiar with, etc.. Basically play outside of your comfort zone so that you have to approach everything differently. It can make the game fresh for you again, assuming you haven't tried everything already.

Trust me, if you've only ever beaten the game with powerful characters, then doing it at low levels with very little health and stamina will do wonders.

I agree completely. I've been doing one of these lately, with a level 5 character, and it really injected the sense of dread back in the game. Having 40 vit makes the game almost too easy, since you can button mash if you want and just heal up with one of your 20 estus flasks.

ErrJon6661 wrote:So how to you guys keep the fear alive?

Take the low-level run further, because there will be no fear in NG for an experienced player. Go as far as you can with him. The more +'s you get the more afraid you'll be. You used the word 'hopeless,' and other than my first run (O & S, especially) the only time I've come close to hopelessness was my infinity run at sl 6.

i came to the souls series from much more punishing video games, and as a result a skillset to do well and learn.. i didn't really have this "fear" that you guys are talking about..

i dunno man. not sure how you can get something like that back aside from lobotomizing yourself haha. you're knowledge is always going to be your strength..

just thrive i guess.

Use all unupgraded gear, level up resilience only, play human while following these rules.

Have your gf/wife sac you every time you die. That would keep me in fear.

Get cursed, wear the Dusk Crown Ring.

@Tolvo- With the new DLC you can go one better than that by doing a cursed Dusk Crown Ring and Calamity Ring combo run. :affraid:

Gazman0169 wrote:@Tolvo- With the new DLC you can go one better than that by doing a cursed Dusk Crown Ring and Calamity Ring combo run. :affraid:

im sure theres gonna be a hp reduction cap lol

I was considering doing a pure caster build, its practically the only thing I haven't done. Using the dusk crown ring to make it that much harder. Low end, low vit, high intelligence and high attunement.