A Detailed Guide to Your First Two Hours Playing Dark Souls 2

Dark Souls 3 is coming out in a few scant months and unless they’ve taken a sudden left turn nobody was expecting during development, it’s going to be complicated enough that I will be forced to write guides for it. Which means I have to play it. In preparation for this I asked for Dark Souls for Christmas, and received Dark Souls 2, which may or may not be close enough: I don’t know, I have no frame of reference.

In any case, such a complex game requires a similarly detailed guide, so as a tester I have written a minute to minute guide to your first couple of hours playing Dark Souls 2 (on the assumption that you will have the same experience I did). If this is received well I will apply this template to Dark Souls 3.

00:01 Pass through cutscene unscathed. Proceed with caution in the general direction of the glowing crack in the sky, expecting to be leapt upon by ferocious eldritch horror at any second. Become annoyed by how loud the ‘walking through grass’ sound effect is.

00:05 Happen upon lovely cosy treehouse inhabited by needlessly cryptic old women. Fail to understand much of character creation because nothing is explained. Muddle through instead and randomly guess things, e.g. which Gift to choose. These decisions cannot possibly come back to haunt you.

00:14 Notice vague references to invasions into your game from other players. Have brief, mild panic about what this could mean further down the line.

00:15 Proceed out of the backdoor of treehouse and light bonfire, but completely miss passage to next area. Go back through the treehouse and kill what appear to be some mongrel dogs. Follow tracks to giant bear thing. Approach bear thing with ill-deserved confidence after successful foray against dogs. Die.

00:23 Return to tree house. Discover next area. Notice the entrances into the giant trees but avoid them because they’re misty and you do not trust the mist, not now, not ever. Run past all of them and fall off ledge. Die.

00:24 Gather courage and enter the mist this time. Discover that you had in fact skipped the entire tutorial process. Wrassle with jump/leap controls and fall to your death whilst attempting it. Stubbornly repeat this process three more times.

00:32 Enter tunnel. Begin to notice messages from other players. High prevalence of ‘PRAISE THE SUN’, which is explained when you suddenly exit the tunnel onto a bright coastal scene. Sunlight is yellow and almost welcoming. Seems more like a traditional RPG. Feel yourself being lulled into a false sense of security.

00:35 Arrive at an extremely small village with approx. 4 total inhabitants, to whit: locked out of his house man; depressed man; wants you to buy things but will not stand up to talk to you man; speaks in mysterious riddles woman. Worst ever iteration of The Avengers.

00:38 Discover large well in middle of the village. See items on top of beams in well. Jump into well to get said items. Learn valuable lesson regarding falling damage in Dark Souls 2.

00:42 Begin to both progress to next area and to mistrust the player messages. They say there is a monster, but no monster appears.

01:38 Continually grind through the same three areas, growing to a peak of madness. Share frustration at load-time-to-number-of-deaths ratio on social media. Receive advice to get better at the game and die less often. Suddenly realise you missed a bonfire and have been respawning further back than necessary at each death. Shriek in manner of banshee. Realise the only death you are foretelling is your own.

01:42 Ignore player message warning of an ambush to your right due to previously mentioned mistrust. Fall prey to ambush.

01:48 Finally reach the next fire. After pausing to have a cup of tea to calm down, become aware that an old woman is there selling stuff. Wonder how the f*** she managed to make it this far.

02:00 Try to move on to but find yourself unable to leave the fire. The fire is warm. The fire is safe. You will never leave the fire again.