all of the exact level ranges / matchmaking formulas for the multiplayer items

First off, apologies if any of this appears familiar. When doing some of my testing, I've posted threads asking questions and sharing some findings here and there. Now that I've completed most of the testing I've wanted to, I wanted to post a review of all the formulas in one place.

Most of this isn't new information, but I see a lot of uncertainty and incorrect formulas shared from time to time, so I wanted to hopefully clear things up and provide formulas that people should (hopefully) be able to trust as being exact.

Some starting info-

All ranges are calculated by the player using the corresponding items, never are they calculated by the found player or those who see and interact with summon signs. The matchmaking for levels is a one-way process that ONLY does the math based on the level of the person using multiplayer-items.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, this means a host looking for white signs can't use the formula below, it won't work exactly. Instead, do the math from the phantoms' perspective, and if the host is found within their range, then the host will be able to see their sign.

White Sign Soapstone

+ / - (10 + 10% of the item-user's level)

Level 50 can be matched with: 35-65
Level 100 can be matched with: 80-120

notes: I cannot stress enough that this doesn't work from the host's perspective.
A level 100 host will be able to see signs from phantoms between the levels of 82-122, a different range than the player using the soapstone.

Red Sign Soapstone

-(10 + 10% of the item-user's level), or any level higher

Level 50 can be matched with: 35-713
Level 100 can be matched with: 80-713

Red Eye Orb

-10% of the item-user's level, or any level higher

Level 50 can be matched with: 45-713
Level 100 can be matched with: 90-713

notes: Surprisingly, not the exact same range as the Red Sign Soapstone.

Blue Eye Orb

Lower Level Limit: - (50 + 20% of the item-user's level)
Upper Level Limit: + (10 + 10% of the item-user's level)

Level 100 can be matched with: 30-120
Level 200 can be matched with: 110-230

notes: Contrary to popular belief, it has been very carefully tested (using new tools available through modding) and found that Sin has no impact on the level range. Instead, two different calculations find the upper and lower level limits. It is a fixed amount based on the invader's level. The Darkmoon Ring has the same range as the Blue Eye Orb.

Cat Covenant Ring

-(10 + 10% of the item-user's level), or any level higher

Level 50 can be matched with: 35-713
Level 100 can be matched with: 80-713

notes: Contrary to popular belief, this ring and the forest are not without level restrictions. This ring has the same level range as the Red Sign Soapstone.

Eye of Death

+ / - (10 + 10% of the item-user's level)

Level 50 can be matched with: 35-65
Level 100 can be matched with: 80-120

notes: Same as the white sign soapstone.

Lastly, I have yet to personally test the Cracked Red Eye Orbs and the Dragon Eye. From what I've read, the Dragon Eye should be exactly the same as the White Sign Soapstone and Eye of Death, while the cracked orbs are likely the same as the orb.

General

-This looks messy, no way I can remember all of that!

It's pretty simple. Almost every item uses the "co-op" range in some way. Everything is either just like the white sign soapstone, or uses the same range on the upper or bottom end only and removes the level cap from the other end (allowing for invading far above or below your level). The ONLY exception appears to be the Red Eye Orb. Instead of using the complete "10 + 10%" formula, it drops the first "10" from the equation.

EDIT: Also, the Blue Eye Orb also uses a unique formula to find the lower level limit.

-How does the rounding work?

When you calculate the percentage part of the formula, the resulting decimal place is always truncated into non-existance (or you could also say it always rounds down to the nearest whole number, even if it's .9).

For example, a level 59 player trying to find out their co-op range simply calculates +/- 15. This is because for the "10 + 10%" part of the formula, it's actually just "10 + 5", not "10 + 5.9".

-Isn't co-op range actually 15%? Hasn't this been tested?

I've seen this mentioned a bunch, but I'm confident it's a mistake. And what do people mean exactly, 10 + 15% or just 15%? Either way, neither of those formulas seem to work. 10 + 15% almost works when you try to calculate from the host's perspective, which is how I believe people came to think this, but it still doesn't really work that way (it'll give you a very-wrong lower limit, and a slightly-wrong upper limit).

-Don't subros have an expanded range?

I really don't think so. I think people made the mistake of trying to calculate the range from the host's perspective. I believe 10 + 10% explains the range exactly and correctly when you calculate from the phantom's perspective, for everyone including sunbros.

-What about the forest?

It has level restrictions. Yes, you can invade any level higher, but that's no different than the Red Eye Orb and the Red Sign Soapstone. You can't invade below co-op range as a Forest Hunter, and all other items maintain their normal level ranges when used in the forest.

Most testing was done in 1.05, but some retesting has been done in 1.06 and nothing has appeared to change.

Another player also just sent me the results of a lot of testing in the Forest, and confirmed my formula.

It's nice having confirmation from someone else, because during my earlier testing when I made posts about the Cat Covenant Ring, the idea that it does have restrictions was usually doubted.

I've never been clear about the range for the blue eye orb, so this was very helpful. Really informative!

This is really good stuff, it should be directly added to the Wiki.

Some of this was known to me but stuff like being from the phants perspective and the forest was new and I'm glad you've nailed everything down. Good work +1.

Btw Retro have you added this to the wiki?

Nice information, and well organized. +1 ^^

By the way if the Cat Ring section gets updated with correct information, I'd love to add this the Resources Thread.

Cool!

The cat covenant ring section should be correct, it's probably the most heavily-tested item. I'm near certain that people are confusing different invasion types or are misremembering hosting vs. invading when they doubt the given formula. If you write down the souls dropped by hosts (and not white phantoms) as a Forest Hunter invader, you'll find that you're never invading below the range of the white sign soapstone.

edit: I should add that the wiki currently agrees with me, although it's not as clear:

Forest Hunter Page wrote:The Cat Covenant Ring ignores the normal level range for invasions. As a result, a level 20 player may invade the world of a level 50 player ( not vice versa). (At level 52 I have consistently been invaded by my friend in this covenant at level 68.)

-The "not vice versa" part means that someone else noticed that the level 50 player cannot invade down to the level 20 player.
-Applying my formula to the level 68 character, 68 minus 17 = 51 (the decimal place of 16.8 rounds to 17). So the level 68 player being able to invade level 52 is within the expected level range.

Oh, someone stickied this! Thank you.

I was going to post an update about the Darkmoon Sin thing. Here's what the wiki says:

Important Note: testing following Patch 1.05 indicates that Sin acquired from being indicted for killing a player, which cannot be removed by speaking with Carim, is added to this formula in a 1:1 ratio to level to allow high level Dark Moon Blades to invade and punish player killers even if those players are very low level. For example, a level 20 Darkwraith who has been indicted 80 times after slaying other players could be invaded by a level 100 Dark Moon Blade using the Blue Eye Orb.

I do not believe this is true. It would great if I could find out who tested it and what their exact methods were.
edit: It was befowler who first added it to the page on Jul 10, 2012. I'll send him a friendly message soon and see if we can figure out what's up.

I did some testing, and with a level 100 host with 13 sin logged in the Book of the Guilty, I was invaded by a level 155 Darkmoon.

If we follow this 1:1 mechanic, I would've needed at least 29 sin for the level 155 Darkmoon to invade down to my level. As the lower end of co-op range for level 155 is level 129, and I'm another 29 levels below that. My character was not BB glitched.

Did you kill more than 13 people? I believe the Book of the Guilty only records indictments, so unless you were indicted every time it will not reflect all sin. And what I added to the wiki was from discussions with dedicated DMs (and tracked my own experiences). Whether it has been tested with a completely new character with a controlled level of known PK sin I don't recall.

Ah, I'll have to test for that. I'm aware that there's more ways to sin than being indicted, however I though that all sin was still logged in the book of the guilty. Is there a hidden/ invisible sin counter of a different kind?

I couldn't find out anything about that here:
http://darksouls.wikidot.com/sin

With the level 100 character, I was also invaded by a level 182 player with only 5 sin logged in the book of the guilty. I'd need at least 54 sin according to the 1:1 formula. Where could those extra points come from?

I was wondering if perhaps the game logs your highest sin count, and it doesn't matter if it gets reduced, but I don't think this character ever had it near 50.

I may start a new profile with a new PSN to do some more testing eventually...

Haven't made any progress on testing sin/ darkmoon invasions yet, but I wanted to post a small disclaimer about the current formula for the Eye of Death.

I think it's reversed from what's currently in the OP. Gravelords are the one exception where the host is the player that uses the multiplayer item to make the connection, making it the odd-one-out in all of the types of PvP. I noticed a trend where the level ranges seem to be calculated by the phantoms (which are almost always the item-user, asides from this one exception), but then instead figured it was calculated by item-users.

It may be that the ranges ARE calculated by the phantom always, which I actually kind of hope since it'd be an easier way of explaining it.

So basically, I'm saying that preliminary testing suggests that the range for the Eye of Death is calculated by the players who find the sign, because they are the phantoms:

+ / - (10 + 10% of the item-user's level)

Level 50 can be matched with: 35-65
Level 100 can be matched with: 80-120

may have to turn into:

+ / - (10 + 10% of the phantom's level)

Level 50 Gravelord can be matched with: 36 - 67
Level 100 Gravelord can be matched with: 82 - 122

I'm not 100% sure though. I'll try testing that later on...

retro wrote:Ah, I'll have to test for that. I'm aware that there's more ways to sin than being indicted, however I though that all sin was still logged in the book of the guilty. Is there a hidden/ invisible sin counter of a different kind?

I'm not an expert, but here's my understanding of how it works. Basically, there are two kinds of sin, which appear to be tracked in parallel, and both of which can open you up to DM invasions. There is what I think of as NPC or PvE sin -- killing or angering NPCs, breaking covenants, and the like. That is the sin that can be absolved by Carim.

There is also sin you earn for killing other players as an invader. This is the sin for which you can get indicted, and which is tracked by the Book of the Guilty. However, even there, the book of the guilty only tracks the actual indictments you have received; your "PvP" sin is almost always higher since many folks don't indict. You can never have this sin removed, and Carim will not absolve it (or even recognize that you have it, aside from some of his dialogue). Back in the bb glitch days, this sin would transfer from one character to the duped character such that brand new characters with no "NPC" type sin -- AND no sin in the Book of the Guilty since they had never been indicted -- would still get invaded by very high level darkmoons as soon as they set foot in the burg. Although that other website suggests this sin can drop by 1 if you are killed by a DM, I don't think this is correct. Certainly I've never had my sin completely removed that way. It was with this PvP sin that folks noticed the more you killed people as an invader, the higher the level of DMs you started having to deal with.

Finally, I believe you can also receive perma-sin for killing Gwyndolin, although I do not know the amount or how that factors into the level calculations for DM invasions.

My 128 Gravelord cursed a 108 last week , and my 120 cursed a 100 a couple of days ago.

I am inclined to agree with the 1:1 sin thing. I have a lvl 252 dark moon, and I get a failed to invade message almost every single time I use it. If it is any level lower, than I should have no problem invading any where in the game, but that's not the case.

Very helpful thread, thanks OP.

befowler wrote:

retro wrote:Ah, I'll have to test for that. I'm aware that there's more ways to sin than being indicted, however I though that all sin was still logged in the book of the guilty. Is there a hidden/ invisible sin counter of a different kind?

I'm not an expert, but here's my understanding of how it works. Basically, there are two kinds of sin, which appear to be tracked in parallel, and both of which can open you up to DM invasions. There is what I think of as NPC or PvE sin -- killing or angering NPCs, breaking covenants, and the like. That is the sin that can be absolved by Carim.

There is also sin you earn for killing other players as an invader. This is the sin for which you can get indicted, and which is tracked by the Book of the Guilty. However, even there, the book of the guilty only tracks the actual indictments you have received; your "PvP" sin is almost always higher since many folks don't indict. You can never have this sin removed, and Carim will not absolve it (or even recognize that you have it, aside from some of his dialogue). Back in the bb glitch days, this sin would transfer from one character to the duped character such that brand new characters with no "NPC" type sin -- AND no sin in the Book of the Guilty since they had never been indicted -- would still get invaded by very high level darkmoons as soon as they set foot in the burg. Although that other website suggests this sin can drop by 1 if you are killed by a DM, I don't think this is correct. Certainly I've never had my sin completely removed that way. It was with this PvP sin that folks noticed the more you killed people as an invader, the higher the level of DMs you started having to deal with.

Finally, I believe you can also receive perma-sin for killing Gwyndolin, although I do not know the amount or how that factors into the level calculations for DM invasions.

I think you may be right. I think it still may be possible that there's not a 1:1 mechanic, and it could instead be a priority mechanic where having higher sin and/or a combination of PvE and PvP (indictment) sin increases the likelihood of higher DMs finding you. But I can't say I haven't ruled out 1:1 yet and I believe it may be more likely than I thought before.

I can confirm that getting killed by a DM invader does drop your indictment sin count in the book, though, by 1 each time it happens. Sometimes the book takes a minute to update, but I carefully watched as a character of mine with 15 sin in the Book of Guilty saw that count down to zero.

During this process, I was open to pretty frequent DM invasions until I was down to about 3 indictment sin. Then it took quite a while to find the last several invaders to bring me down to zero.

Then, it took me a LONG, very long time to get invaded again with only PvE sin. I would've loved to have starting keep track of the levels of invaders to see if I could learn more, but it become so slow that I gave up on testing (for now).

Thanks for the thorough posts!

I'm not good with all these math stuff but how do you calculate what levels you can invade?

Automancer wrote:I'm not good with all these math stuff but how do you calculate what levels you can invade?

I'm not the best with math either, which is why I try my best to write out the formulas in a sort of 'plain english'... using as many words instead of variables as possible. But if we look at some of the examples hopefully I can explain it. It's not too hard to calculate.

Red Eye Orb
-10% of the item-user's level, or any level higher

To find out the levels you can invade with the Red Eye Orb and Cracked Red Eye Orbs, you take 10% of your own level, and then subtract it from your own level. The dash at the beginning there is a minus symbol, not just a bullet. It reads outloud as "minus 10%..."

If you're level 30, you first ask yourself, what is 10% of 30?
10% of 30 is 3.

Then you subtract it from your level. 30 minus 3 = 27. Note that the stated formula also says you can invade any level higher. This means a level 30 Darkwraith can invade levels 27 to 713 (max level).

Cat Covenant Ring
-(10 + 10% of the item-user's level), or any level higher

This time, we can't just subtract 10% of your own level. You have to add the number 10 to whatever that 10% is first.

For a level 30 Forest Hunter invader, we already know that 10% is 3. But we have to add 10 to that (in math, whenever you have a set of parenthesis, you have to do that part altogether first). So we get a total number of 13 this time instead of just 3.

30 minus 13 = 17, so the level 30 Forest Hunter can invade levels 17 to 713.

Blue Eye Orb
+(10 + 10% of the item-user's level), or any level lower

We do the same 10 + 10% calculation as before, but we add it this time instead of subtracting it.

A level 30 Darkmoon invader can invade levels 1 to 43.
Because that's 30 + (10 + 10%), or 30 + (10 + 3).
Then unlike the other methods of invasions, this time you can invade any level lower, all the way down to 1.

That makes a lot of sense now but with the Eye of Death, how do i calculate it since it has "+/-"?

The "+/-" part means that you're doing two different calculations that give you two different numbers. Don't think of it as "plus or minus", think of it as "plus and minus".

In other words,

For a level 30 player, 10 + 10% turned out to be 13.

This time, it's 30 +/- 13,
or 30 + 13
and 30 - 13

30 plus 13 = 43
30 minus 13 = 17

Giving a range of levels 17 through 43 for the level 30 player.

Well, that certainly cleared things up. Thank you once again, retro.

me and my friend did some tests and i invaded him with the blue eye orb (i was 70) and he was 125 so i think that the rules only apply when theres someone in human form in range in the area if not they will pair you with whoever is around

Wow, that's quite the level difference, and in the wrong direction too O_o