This post is supposed to come after the Dark Souls review, so just ignore anything where I reference the review, all the stuff you need to know in order to do Co-Op is in this post.
If you guys have read my earlier review, then you will know
2 things.
1. I LOVE DARK SOULS
2. I co-opped through the game with 2 of my Soul
newbie friends.
But! But! You can’t do this game as a co-op with your
friends, all you get is dickwraiths, morons and the occasional human being for
company, how did you get 2 friends through the entire game!?
Well this post is going to detail all the info on how to do
that, because it was a great experience that you should do with your friends.
Newbies are preferable because not only does it spread the Souls love around,
it will also give you a bit of a macabre kick to hear your friends screaming in
terror due to traps, Bone Wheels, Darkwraiths, Dragons and so forth.
But for those of you who just want to know how to do this
instead of reading my ramblings, I will put a bare bones version at the bottom
of this post.
Now this game was not designed to be a pure co-op game that
you and your buddies can play through, for starters just talking to each other
is difficult as voice chat is disabled through their respective client/console
(Xbox private chat is not disabled, so you can chat to a single buddy), this
requires that you use some form of voice chat via a pc, or even your smart
phone if you can find the right app.
Next there are a few requirements that need to be met; otherwise
the summoner just plain won’t be able to summon you. For starters the areas
boss needs to be alive, if it’s dead then while you can’t be invaded, you also
can’t summon. The summoner needs to be human, so head over to a bonfire and pop
a humanity, you certainly won’t bring the boys to the yard if you look like a piece
of raw meat.
And the most important thing you have to keep in mind is
your level; you can summon a friend whose level lies within a 10% range of your
own, so a level 100 can summon anyone whose level is between 90-110. So if you
want to play the entire game co-op with a bunch of friends, all of you will
need to manage your levels. The best time would be after killing a boss, otherwise
you will be walking around with a lot of souls that could be lost, and this is
Dark Souls; this game thrives on pushing you off a cliff when you least expect
it.
But now you need to actually summon each other, which can be
a major pain, for starters the person being summoned needs to place their
summon sign in an out in the way place, this is to stop other people from
summoning you. If you’re lucky your friend will find your white sign straight
away and summon you, if not then you will need to wait. After 2 mins you plonk
your summon sign down again to get through the summon servers and then you get
to do some more waiting.
There will be a lot of waiting thanks to the weird system in
place, summon signs get placed in one of the many lobbies, players in that
lobby may summon from signs that appear in their game. The problems come about because
you don’t know which lobby your summoner is in, nor which your sign is in. So you’re
forced to plonk your sign down every 2 mins to cycle through the servers, while
giving enough time for your summoner to see the sign.
It does mean that you may have to wait a while to be
summoned by your friend, so keep that in mind when you’re organising a game. The
max I’ve spent is about 30mins per person to be summoned, but there have been
plenty of times where it’s taken just 5-10 mins to summon everyone.
Now heres a few tips to keep in mind whilst playing Dark
Souls co-operativly.
Phantoms, you need to keep your Summoner alive, if he dies then
you all get kicked back to your own world. As such you need to get between the
Summoner and any major threat (Invaders) to his life, even if doing so would
get you killed. You can always be re-summoned for no cost, but the Summoner
loses his souls, humanity and becomes Hollowed, so you need to keep him alive.
And while you don’t have to, it’s well worth getting the
ability to use the miracle Heal. This will help cut down the amount of Estus
flasks your Summoner will need to chug, while on the way to the boss.
And for you Mr Summoner, you are the life line of the game,
you need to keep yourself alive, so no rolling in lava, it may be warm and
pretty but please don’t do it. And you need to keep an eye on your Phantoms
life, barring from slow miracles and very rare consumables he can’t heal
himself. The only other time he can be healed is when you chug an Estus flask,
the better your flask the more he is healed.
And lastly this is for the both of you, take advantage of
the fact that you’re a team, if one guy tends to wade into the melee with a
huge sword; perhaps you should take magic and cover him. If your friend prefers
to wear heavy armour and use a big shield, then maybe you should take miracles
to buff/heal him. This makes your team extremely flexible and able to take on
different opponents, this is especially true against Invaders, who will have a
hard time evading spells, swords and area effect miracles/pyromancy.
You should also plan out some tactics for when you are
fighting Invaders, these guys will be the most dangerous opponents you will
face. The invaders can still mess up your day, but you can create tactics, to
form strategies. You know that the invaders need to kill the host so you dangle
him as bait, when the invader goes for a nibble your summons swoop in from the
sides to backstab the bastard.
Me and my friends have done the above tactic quite a few
times and it is a joy to pull off, there will be plenty of times where invaders
will kick your butt a hundred ways to Sunday, especially so if your not a big
lover of PvP combat.
Now for the bare bones version of this guide.
Host – The person doing the summoning
Phantom – The person being summoned
Requirements to summon
1. Host must be human
2. The areas boss must still be alive
3. The Host must not have a summon sign placed
4. Both the Host and the Phantom levels must be between a 10% range of each other
The Phantom must then place his summon sign down in an
agreed, out of the way area to prevent others summoning him. In order to speed up the process, the Phantom can
place down a new summon sign every 2 mins, this is in order to cycle through
the lobbies that the Host and summon signs are placed in.
And there you have it, some jolly co-operation, just
remember to stick the Demons with the pointy end, and to always praise the sun.
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