The White Hollow run

One must be careful with these challenge rules!

You can only upgrade weapons with regular titanite and only up to +5
You cannot wear body or head armor
You cannot use weapons that are upgraded through demon or twinkling titanite
HUD must be disabled through the run
Cannot have a starting gift
Cannot use magic or miracles

Some notables:

- As the rules are written, it is 100% valid to use the occult club, lightning spear, enchanted falchion, and crystal halberd (we just can't upgrade them). If you stat-up dex and only use it vs bosses, the halberd in particular could make this run a lot easier.

- There are no rules against downgrading weapons, which means we could in theory make a divine weapon (occult club) or falchion +10 (enchanted falchion downgrade, though I'm not sure that would increase total damage)

- Similarly, a few good strength weapons are usable, particularly the dragon weapons. DKGA for example upgrades on dragon scales and hits like a truck. Dragon greatsword is a similar deal. Sure, according to the rules you can't take them to +5 (must use them in base form), but they're still very powerful compared to any +5 weapon you'd scrape up. Due to limited equipment anyway, the weight is less of an issue. You could cheese capra with firebombs (also legal) and dive into depths for DKGA while statting STR and have a powerful weapon pretty quickly under these rules.

- You can purchase unlimited crystal weapons from domhill of zena, particularly the crystal greatsword. If you use a quality build, its 190 base and C/C scaling makes it rather powerful. 6000 souls buys you 60 durability, and you'll have plenty of souls to spare with limited equipment, limited weapon/armor upgrades, and no magic at all. This weapon is similar to a +9 claymore (might be slightly stronger off scaling, not sure) and notably easy to get early.

- Heck, you don't even deny us summoning NPC phantoms lol!

- A fast way to do this run would be:

1. Get bridge wyvern's tail, use the drake sword to clear out all the earlygame stuff. Cheesing capra with firebombs is optional.

2. Grab a crystal greatsword

3. Stunlock quelag using any bow at +5 (not challenging) or just beat her with your crystal greatsword.

4. Do a run-by in sens to pick up the lightning spear, beat iron golem

5. Pick up crystal halberd, use it and your +5 bow (preferably with some poison arrows) to take out O&S.

At this point you have a solid, infinite-purchase buffable sword (crystal greatsword, use charcoal or lightning resins), a limited-use but powerful crystal halberd, a club you can downgrade to divine +5 for the catacombs (nothing in rules against downgrading!), and if you care to pick them up + stat for them two very powerful dragon weapons. Seath and Nito would not be particularly challenging, bed of chaos would be exactly the same as always.

Basically the only two major bottlenecks on this run would be O&S (cheesed with +5 bow + crystal halberd) and the four kings. Four kings you'd probably want to break out the crystal halberd again, although resin-buffed crystal greatsword would probably be fine too.

Parry spam Gwyn as usual and claim the W ^_^.

TheMeInTeam wrote:or falchion +10 (enchanted falchion downgrade, though I'm not sure that would increase total damage)

Just thought I'd point this out: Downgrading the enchanted falchion results in a magic falchion +5, not a regular falchion +10. The only upgrades that downgrade to +10 are lightning, boss weapons and, naturally, +15.

Elifia wrote:

TheMeInTeam wrote:or falchion +10 (enchanted falchion downgrade, though I'm not sure that would increase total damage)

Just thought I'd point this out: Downgrading the enchanted falchion results in a magic falchion +5, not a regular falchion +10. The only upgrades that downgrade to +10 are lightning, boss weapons and, naturally, +15.

Ah, good point. I don't use the magic/enchanted path at all really, since if I go the INT route I'd just use a buff build or the derp spear/sword combo (or just one of them).

Falchion + 10 wouldn't be that helpful over just a crystal greatsword under these restrictions anyway, and would be weaker than the halberd for sure. One would almost certainly either do a quality build or a VIT gouge since you can't use magic, don't need more than 40 end, and can't upgrade the elemental paths.

Hachouma wrote:

Ghadis_God wrote:

Hachouma wrote:

Green__Eagle wrote:No head gear or magic? You go through the Tomb of the Giants blind (until you get the Skull Lantern)? I did that my first time; that might have been enough for me.

The last necromancer always drops a lantern, you have two guaranteed per playthrough

Not true, it's a random drop. I've gone through killing all the necros and not gotten a lantern.

Then i don't know why, i must have cleared them 6 or 7 times so far, and i'd always get one lantern before tomb of the giants.

I always wear serpent ring, have 10+ soft hum throughout the game and since playing dks since January, I've never gotten more than half a dozen.

How do you turn of HUD, out of curiosity? Is it in the same place as camera options?

TheMeInTeam wrote:One must be careful with these challenge rules!

You can only upgrade weapons with regular titanite and only up to +5
You cannot wear body or head armor
You cannot use weapons that are upgraded through demon or twinkling titanite
HUD must be disabled through the run
Cannot have a starting gift
Cannot use magic or miracles

Some notables:

- As the rules are written, it is 100% valid to use the occult club, lightning spear, enchanted falchion, and crystal halberd (we just can't upgrade them). If you stat-up dex and only use it vs bosses, the halberd in particular could make this run a lot easier.

- There are no rules against downgrading weapons, which means we could in theory make a divine weapon (occult club) or falchion +10 (enchanted falchion downgrade, though I'm not sure that would increase total damage)

- Similarly, a few good strength weapons are usable, particularly the dragon weapons. DKGA for example upgrades on dragon scales and hits like a truck. Dragon greatsword is a similar deal. Sure, according to the rules you can't take them to +5 (must use them in base form), but they're still very powerful compared to any +5 weapon you'd scrape up. Due to limited equipment anyway, the weight is less of an issue. You could cheese capra with firebombs (also legal) and dive into depths for DKGA while statting STR and have a powerful weapon pretty quickly under these rules.

- You can purchase unlimited crystal weapons from domhill of zena, particularly the crystal greatsword. If you use a quality build, its 190 base and C/C scaling makes it rather powerful. 6000 souls buys you 60 durability, and you'll have plenty of souls to spare with limited equipment, limited weapon/armor upgrades, and no magic at all. This weapon is similar to a +9 claymore (might be slightly stronger off scaling, not sure) and notably easy to get early.

- Heck, you don't even deny us summoning NPC phantoms lol!

- A fast way to do this run would be:

1. Get bridge wyvern's tail, use the drake sword to clear out all the earlygame stuff. Cheesing capra with firebombs is optional.

2. Grab a crystal greatsword

3. Stunlock quelag using any bow at +5 (not challenging) or just beat her with your crystal greatsword.

4. Do a run-by in sens to pick up the lightning spear, beat iron golem

5. Pick up crystal halberd, use it and your +5 bow (preferably with some poison arrows) to take out O&S.

At this point you have a solid, infinite-purchase buffable sword (crystal greatsword, use charcoal or lightning resins), a limited-use but powerful crystal halberd, a club you can downgrade to divine +5 for the catacombs (nothing in rules against downgrading!), and if you care to pick them up + stat for them two very powerful dragon weapons. Seath and Nito would not be particularly challenging, bed of chaos would be exactly the same as always.

Basically the only two major bottlenecks on this run would be O&S (cheesed with +5 bow + crystal halberd) and the four kings. Four kings you'd probably want to break out the crystal halberd again, although resin-buffed crystal greatsword would probably be fine too.

Parry spam Gwyn as usual and claim the W ^_^.

Admittedly, you're right. I really should have gone into detail on the rules because you aren't supposed to be able to downgrade or use weapons of a different path and your definitely not supposed to be able to use dragon weapons.

The run is essentially supposed to be based around the idea that you can only use +5 regular weapons and that is it. I allowed buffs and NPC summons because I knew it would be tough with quite a few bosses but I obviously did not clearly think about the rules fully through when posting them.

With that being said, thanks for posting out the errors of the rules. I'll have to fix them and it definitely deserves an uprep too!

I might also make lore explaining why it's called the "White Hollow Run" too, so it won't confuse people into thinking I'm a racist either.