Speed Run Challenge!

Notes: kill nothing other than bosses. If the mob isn't blocking your path, run by it. And don't be shy of healing with humanities. You'll eventually need 30 in liquid form, so if you can get that done during the run, it'll save a bit of time. This run, perfectly executed, has the potential to be 1:40 to 1:45ish. I died 3 times, so my final time was a bit slower!

- Start as Warrior, for his stats, and take Master Key for gift

- Get out of the Asylum (nothing special to do here)

- In Firelink, collect the following: humanity from well, homeward bones from chest bellow the elevator, 2 nearest souls in the graveyard, 1 soul hidden behind a wall on the way to the bonfire from the graveyard, then run and go grab the Ring of Sacrifice under the aqueduct. Homeward bone! (Seems like almost a waste, but no reason not to.)

- Use Souls, rest at the Bonfire, and raise the following stats: Str +3 (16), other Stat of your choice +1

- Go to the Catacombs to get my weapon. Run by all the skeletons. Activate switch in front of Necromancer to open door, go out the door, dodge the following 3 skeletons, drop from the bridge to the broken stairs bellow (shortcut). From there, enter the door and run past the titanite Demon to grab the Eyes of Death behind him. Run past the demon again and enter the coffin, wait until you're pushed into Nito's Room.

- Join Nito's covenant, equip the GLS, 2-hand it. Go back to the broken stairs, fall to the right for the second shortcut. Grab the soul where you land, then go down all the way and to the boss fog. Beat Pinwheel, grab and equip whichever mask he drops, homeward bone to Firelink shrine.

- Level up (all optional), then go down the elevator to New Londo (once the elevator has reached the bottom, always step on the switch again to send it back up). Exit the elevator and grab soul next to the stairs on the left. Go through the locked door to Valley of Drakes, and grab the soul outside the door, to the left. Run through the valley toward the Darkroot elevator. On the way, grab the soul in front of the sleeping dragon (3rd loot, the one on his left arm) and the humanity in the little cave behind the first Drake. Ride the elevator up and rest at the bonfire, for a checkpoint. You may use the souls and level up here.

- From the bonfire, go out and kill the Black Knight, grab the GCS, put it on your back. Run past the bassin, grab the soul on the way, and go kill Havel, equip Havel's ring (Havel actually killed me today... embarrassing!). Go back out and run up the path, grab the bow on the way. Run to the Parish.

- Kill titanite Demon (the damn titanite Demon actually killed me today... embarrassing!), go to Andre, purchase the Weapon Smithbox, and upgrade your GLS to +1. Kill Andre (Andre... almost killed me today! I just wasn't playing so well up to this point!). Rest at the bonfire (for safety, you may rest here before killing the demon and Andre). If you have any souls left, level up whatever you want.

- Run to the Parish, grab the firekeeper soul, go kill the Gargoyles. Ring the bell, go back down and kill Oswald, homeward bone.

- Level up whatever you want, reverse hollowing. Run to the parish-firelink elevator and go down.

- Kill Petrus, (optional: kill Crestfallen Warrior), do not rest at the bonfire, kill Lautrec, equip his ring, upgrade Estus Flasks. Take elevator to New Londo, go through Valley of Drakes door, run to Blighttown.

- Run past the 3 infested barbarians. Fall all the way down by the ladders, and take the platform elevator down. Use a humanity on the way down to heal. Kill Mildred, go to the boss door. (Optional: summon Mildred) Kill Quelaag, ring second bell, go kill Ceaseless. Homeward bone (all the way back to Sen's!).

- Use souls, level up whatever you want. Go to Darkroot Forest. (Do not use a bonfire on the way.) Open the door, run straight to Alvina and talk to her (NPCs will de-aggro as soon as you talk to her), join the covenant. Kill Ninja, equip DWGR (unless otherwise stated, I wear DWGR & Ring of Favor from now on), grab Stone Set, run to Sif's door.(Equip whatever armor combination you like, but at this point I like: Stone Legs and Gloves, Gold Hemmed Shirt, Pinwheel Mask.) Grab the Hornet's Ring, kill Sif, homeward bone.

- Sen's: grab the soul behind first manserpent on the right, then run through the rest of the fortress not bothering to attack anything on the way. Once you're past the short bridge with the close guillotines (the one after the rotating boulder platform), you'll need to attack the mage-manserpent halfway up the stairs on the left, to move him out of the way. Then keep running. Outside, grab the soul where the exploding boulder lands, then rest at the bonfire. Level up if you have the souls, then run to the boss fog (don't bother killing the boulder-throwing giant). Kill the Iron Golem, go to Anor Londo.

- Rest at the Knightess's Bonfire, level up (by this point, you want to have 24 Str. You should have leveled nothing other than Str, End, and Vit; End and Vit are optional, Str you want to get to 24 and stop). Go down the elevator toward the castle. Outside the elevator, ignore the Gargoyle. Make a right and grab the Demon titanite in the chest. Go to the cathedral. Get past the rafters with the painting guardians, exit the cathedral, rotate the stairs. Ignore the gargoyle, run up the stairs toward the palace. Ignore the sentinels, run past the spear demons, run up the buttress. Parry the right knight, go down.

- Rest at the bonfire, upgrade your GLS to +2. Go grab Havel's Set, kill the knight on the way. Swap Stone armor pieces for Havel's (gloves and legs), then go back out the room and up the stairs. Once you're past the second floor, get a running start and jump over the railing--shortcut to the second floor (the trick to getting over the railing is to jump when you're pretty far from it). From there, you can go open the shortcut door on the floor bellow, if you like, in case you die against O&S. Once the shortcut door is open, go to O&S's door. Run by the sentinel, and go kill O&S (no fancy weapons needed, the GLS+2 will handily get the job done).

- Go get the Lordvessel! Rest at the bonfire, level up. (At this point, I was exactly 59 minutes in.) Warp to Anor Londo, kill the Darkmoon Knightess, homeward bone back to the Chamber of the Princess. Warp to Firelink, upgrade Estus flasks, go place the Lordvessel.

Once you've placed the Lordvessel, the rest of the route is pretty up in the air. In order of difficulty, I find (from least to most dangerous): Bed of Chaos < Seath < Nito < 4 Kings. So I try to do them in that order. I like to go kill Bed of Chaos as soon as I've got 30 humanities (don't forget to add up your liquid humanities, your solid humanities, and your twin humanities). Today, at this point, I had 29, so I went to kill Seath first. After which I had more than 30 humanities, so I killed BoC, then Nito, then 4 Kings. I recommend doing Nito after the Bed of Chaos, because you can grab the Sunlight Maggot, which will come in handy in the dark. And I recommend fighting the 4 Kings after BoC, in case they get you with their humanity sucking attack--you don't want to fall below 30 humanities before you've killed BoC. So if you've got the humanities, do them in the order of difficulty I listed. If not, go Seath, BoC, Nito, 4 Kings. Whatever order you do them in, here's my walkthrough for each:

Seath

-Warp to Anor Londo (yes, the bonfire is out now), run up to the Duke's Archives. Run past the boars, don't bother with the bonfire, and go up the elevator. Run past all the mobs and the channeller (I like to go to the right of the bookcases, and grab the soul below the stairs, then run up the stairs), take the elevator up. Kill the Crystal warrior, run past the gecko, go through Seath's door. Swap DWGR for the ring of sacrifice you picked up in Firelink while you're going through the door. Run around when Seath attacks, so he'll catch you with counter damage, which will kill you quicker.

- Don't forget to re-equip DWGR when you spawn at the prison bonfire. Rest at the bonfire, level up if you can. Kill the guard, get his key, go out the door.

- Don't bother with any of the mobs, run all the way down, and go up the ladder. Run past the manserpents and grab the key in the chest, run to a safe spot and homeward bone back to the prison bonfire.

- Run out the cell and go up the ladder, exit the prison. Run by the mobs until you get to the first channeller. A running-R1 followed up by another R1 will kill him and barely break your stride. Keep running, go to the far rotating stairs, rotate them. Attack the archer at the top to move him, run toward the other set of rotating stairs, attack the archer on the way to move him. Ignore the farthest archer and just fall onto the stairs. Ignore the channeller and rotate the stairs, go down the stairs and through the door to the long ladder down. Open the shortcut, go rest at the bonfire, then run to the crystal caves.

- Run by all the golems on the way. Once in the crystal caves, roll by the first golem as he attacks (this first golem actually killed me today... He NEVER kills me, I was pissed! This was my 3rd and last death of the run for today), and go grab the humanity at the end of the first invisible path. Keep going down the crystal caves. Once you reach the second crystal golem, it's safest to wait until he comes to you, then roll past him as he attacks and keep running through the caves. Once you reach the clam room, run for the left wall and hug it all the way to Seath's chamber, ignore the clams, until you reach the cutscene. At this point, quit/ load game to reset yourself and the clams outside Seath's chamber, and walk through the fog gate that now appeared. Kill Seath. Rest at his bonfire, level up, warp to Firelink.


Bed of Chaos

- Now that you have 30 humanity, retrace the route you followed to go ring the second bell. On the way down the two elevators (New Londo, Blighttown) and while you wait for Eigniy to move his *** after you said "YES" to him, consume as many humanities as you need left to reach 30 liquid. Join the Daughters of Chaos covenant, offer your 30 humanities to rank up to +2, then leave. If you didn't already, you may rest at the bonfire to give yourself 10 flasks again, just in case! Then run out and to the Demon Ruins.

- Just run by everything here. I was no longer human at this point so Kirk didn't invade me, so I'm not sure whether he'd interfere if you run by him. From the cliff-side path, I jump down to the bonfire (I imagine Kirk would try to follow you here. If he didn't fall to his death trying to follow you, kill him down here). Kill the chaos worm and rest at the bonfire. Level up if you can.

- Run down toward the fog door (you may grab the 3 loots on the way, they're all souls), ignore all the fire-jabbas on the way. Roll past the Taurus, and keep running until you're through the arch. Make a right into the large hall (if you go right and roll on top of the right wall, you can get another soul) and go open the DoC shortcut door. Kill the Sunlight Maggot, grab his sunlight maggot loot. Then run straight for the Bed of Chaos's fog gate. On the way, you may kill the DoC pyromancer (a running-R1 and a few R1s will easily do the trick). Enter the boss fog (for people who don't like the BoC: queue "Dun! Dun! Dun!" foreshadowing music!).

- Equip your bow and feather arrows you picked up in Darkroot (you don't have the stats to wield it, but that's not important--cool right!) and swap your GLS for your starting Longsword, then go down the chute. Relax, the BoC is easy! Here's what you do: with your Longsword 2-handed and GCS on your back, hug the right wall, and run all the way to her right orb. Roll through the branches, then attack the orb. I like to quit/ load after this and go through the fog door and down the chute again, but it's not necessary. Now hug the left wall and go as far as you can, until a vine and a drop block your path. Keep close to the wall (she has no attacks that attack that far), backtrack a little until your line of sight is clear of the vine, and take out your bow. Shoot at the orb, aiming a little above the gloving line and right in the center of it. Your first arrows will break through the branches, then the 5th or 6th one will break the orb. Now swap back to your GCS and 2H Longsword, and run back to the center, where you drop down from the chute. (At this point, BoC will attack you with firestorms. These shouldn't kill you, and the GCS is there so you can regain your stamina quickly because you'll be rolling around a lot, to dodge and break branches.) Now you're back right where the chute drops you, and this is the sweet part: notice the tree on the left? Stand a short distance to the right of it, and the only attack that can hit you there is her firestorms. When you're there, you're totally safe from all her melee attacks. So if you need to catch your breath and heal, go to that spot. Now all that's left to do is make the floor crumble and fall to the center root. From your safe spot, walk right until the floor crumbles. Be careful here, as she can hit you with her fire-scythe when you're standing right next to that hole. From that hole, wait until the opportune gap in BoC's branch-arm swipes and run straight for her (opportune gap: start running right after she starts sweeping her right arm--her right!). When the floor crumbles, you'll notice there are two tiles that stick out on the right; one small one, and one larger one furthest on the right. Go onto the furthest one, and from there you can simply safely fall right onto the center root. Now go into the belly of the beast; roll through the branches and the firestorms, and take her out with a single unupgraded-Longsword-R1. Re-equip your GLS, remove the bow, and rest at the bonfire that just appeared. Warp to firelink.


Nito

- Follow the same route down to pinwheel (fall from the first short bridge to the broken stairs, heal, fall to the right from the broken stairs, heal) and equip the sunlight maggot when you reach the Tomb of Giants. Cross the first casket-bridge, roll past the first giant-skele, and fall to the right once you reach the next casket. Fall straight from there, roll right when you land to dodge the giant-skele, then slide down the last casket (you can grab the humanity on the way down by hugging the right, if you like). Ignore the bonfire and patches and run straight for the fog door. After the fog, I like to go to the second bonfire to rest, just in case. Then just go right to Nito's chamber.

- Fighting Nito: at this point, and with Havel's gloves and legs and the gold-hemmed shirt, you're strong enough to ignore Nito's skeles while they attack you. Just focus all your attacks on Nito, and he'll take out his own skeles himself, or you'll do it incidentally while attacking Nito. Point is, ignore the skeles! Be careful, though: you don't want to go too far back in Nito's chamber, or you'll aggro the giant skeles back there--they can seriously mess things up! So when you first land in Nito's chamber, walk forward a bit and wait there until Nito's moved forward some, then go in for the kill. If you're in melee range of him, his melee attacks will actually go right over your head. All you have to watch out for is his AoE attack, which I don't recommend ignoring (the skeles is one thing, but ignoring both at the same time might be a bad idea!). So retreat when he does his AoE, then go back into immune melee range after. Nito shouldn't pose any problem. Rest at his bonfire, level up, warp to Firelink.


The 4 Kings

- From Firelink, obviously, go down the New Londo elevator (which should always be up, by the way! Never forget to activate it back up once you've ridden it down). Not much special to do: grab the Transient Curses, apply a transient curse, run past the 2 first ghosts, (you may grab the firekeeper soul... but at this point, you really don't need it anymore!) up the stairs, past the next 2 ghosts, into the ruined building. Do a running-R1 on the ghost blocking the door, keep running. Fall to the right to skip the stairs, do a running-R1 on the ghost blocking the hall, and go pick up the parrying dagger straight ahead. Run straight for the fog door, ignore the accumulating ghosts. Kick down the ladder, then run to the ladder-room bellow Ingward. In that room, do a running-R1 to take out the female ghost immediately, then kill all the ghosts that show up right away. Don't linger if they don't come en-masse, just go right up the ladder and go kill Ingward. Now that you've got the key, go back down the ladder, out the room, down the stairs on the right, out the building, and all the way to the Seal. Rotate the seal, go back to the walkway outside Ingward's building, and fall right onto the bridge in front of the fog gate to the Abyss. Go through. Equip the Covenant of Artorias ring, and fall down into the abyss (I like to swap the DWGR for the Covenant ring, because I don't mind being at 50% equip weight for the Kings and I don't feel like breaking the ring of Fap).

- 4 Kings strategies: pretty simple, you've got the GCS on your back and the GLS 2-Handed, need I say more? Try to dodge as much as possible, and if they shoot their homing magic missile just quickly block it with the GCS and resume fighting. Try not to get caught in their grab attack, but it can be tricky at 50% weight (it probably won't kill you, but it's excruciatingly slow, which means another King will imminently appear). Don't get too caught up in roll-dodging, though, because the GLS+2 doesn't have the best DPS for the 4 Kings. I actually had 2 of them present during the majority of the fight... But you should be able to beat the 4 Kings without fail. Homeward bone or rest at the bonfire and warp back to Firelink. Level up whatever you like.

GWYN!

You're almost done! Don't get too excited at this point, though (I do!), keep your focus. Offer the Lord souls to the Lordvessel and rest at the vessel again to get your 20 flasks (hopefully you won't need them ). Equip the parrying dagger in your backup left hand slot, keep the GCS on your back (you should have enough equip weight for GCS, GLS, Parrying Dagger, Pinwheel Mask, Gold Hemmed Robe, Havel's Gloves and Legs), and head out into the Kiln. Just run by all the knights and go right for Gwyn's door.

Go through.

- While you're going through the door, swap the DWGR for the Hornet's Ring (50% weight isn't a problem at all if you only plan on parrying Gwyn) and as soon as you're through switch from the GCS to the parrying dagger (or whatever your preferred parring method is--I happen to like the parrying dagger). Parry, riposte, repeat--that is all. If you're anything like me, you'll be excited at this point, so be sure to keep your nerves under control and focus on parrying. If you miss a parry, don't sweat, parry the next swing and flask while he's on the ground. When he gets up, he'll do 1 of 3 things: fast 1-handed sword attack, medium speed 2-handed sword attack, or slow grab attack with his left arm. Stay focused on parrying. I find it's when I worry "Oh maybe he'll do the grab attack this time, better be ready to roll" that I miss my parry. The grab attack is the slowest, so concentrate on parrying and, in the event that he does do the grab attack, you'll have plenty of time to react. But if he does a sword attack and you're thinking about the grab attack, he'll get you. If he does a sword attack and you're ready for it, you'll get the parry. Repeat until dead!

Walk toward the fog gate. When it dissipates, walk out the door, like a boss.

(Right after I killed Gwyn I swapped the Hornet's Ring back to DWGR, because I don't like how the character walks at 50% weight! That's why I have DWGR and Fap on my final stats.)

Congratulations, you just finished a speed run!