Dark Souls III Guide (Steam) Gameplay
Upgrading Equipment
Improving your equipment is at least as important as leveling when it comes to Dark Souls games. The benefits that you receive from finding better gear and then improving those items are impressive. Using the correct gear for each occasion turns encounters from brutal down to livable.
Search Everywhere
Your starting gear is usually fairly good, though certain classes get much better items and others start without any benefits whatsoever. On the whole, you’re going to have decent weaponry and enough armor to get by. However, you find amazing things as you explore the game world. Some of them aren’t even that far from the start of the game, although you have to know where to look.
Searching carefully is the first rule of upgrades. Off the beaten path are extra weapons, pieces of armor, items with bonus Souls, spare tools, and much more. You are heavily rewarded for looking around every corner, for dropping off of ledges, and for turning over everything in the scenery that isn’t nailed down.
Look for messages wherever you go. Helpful players like to leave them near hidden items or pathways. Not all of these are trustworthy messages, but most will be. When you’re exploring, keep your Soul count low so that you aren’t risking much if you die trying to do something interesting.
Each time you find something new, examine it thoroughly. It’s not always clear which items are the best. Higher stats are never a bad thing, but the moveset and bonuses for each weapon have the potential to turn plenty of things into hidden gems once you realize what they’re good at doing.
Reinforcement
Once you find superior weapons and armor, hunt for Titanite and other upgrade items, and bring everything to your Blacksmith. He’ll take a moderate sum of Souls and then use those upgrade items to add pluses to your equipment. You get very substantial bonuses from these upgrades.
Normal weapons and shields are upgraded from +1 through +10. Some items have more powerful upgrade tracks and can only be upgraded to +5, but they’ll be very powerful by the end of their path.
Modifications
You can also add certain elemental effects to your items. Consider these upgrades very carefully because they aren’t always going to help you accomplish your goals. Make sure that you’re adding things that help your items do what they’re meant to do. It sounds awesome to add an entire type of elemental damage to a weapon, but if you sacrifice your Strength bonuses on the item to get that element, it might not pay off in the long run. It’s usually better to have a lot of damage from one type than two moderate types of damage.
Basic modifications are available as soon as you meet the Blacksmith in the Ashen Shrine, but there are four special items that you can return to him to improve the range of modifications that he masters.
All modifications exist to focus the types of damage that your weapons and shield are based on. Look at your attributes, and try to push the scaling of your weapons in a direction that plays off of your best ones.
Modifications
| Modification | Positive Effect | Negative Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy | Improves Str scaling | Destroys Dex scaling |
| Sharp | Maximizes Dex scaling | Lowers Str scaling |
| Refined | Improves Str and Dex Scaling | Requires high Str and Dex to exceed other infusions |
| Raw | Improves base damage | Destroys Str and Dex scaling |
| Crystal | Improves Int scaling, adds magic damage | Lowers Str and Dex scaling and base weapon damage |
| Simple | Improves Int scaling, regenerates FP slowly | Lowers Str and Dex scaling and base weapon damage, weaker Magic scaling than Crystal |
| Fire | Adds fire damage | Destroys Str and Dex scaling |
| Chaos | Improves Int and Faith scaling, adds fire damage | Lowers Str and Dex scaling and base weapon damage |
| Lightning | Raises Faith scaling, adds lightning damage | Lowers Str and Dex scaling and base weapon damage |
| Blessed | Raises Faith scaling, deals 20% bonus damage to Reanimated foes, regens HP slowly | Lowers Str and Dex scaling and base weapon damage |
| Deep | Adds dark damage | Destroys Str and Dex scaling |
| Dark | Raises Int and Faith scaling and adds dark damage | Lowers base weapon damage |
| Blood | Increases bleeding | Lowers Str and Dex scaling and base weapon damage |
| Poison | Increases poison | Lowers Str and Dex scaling and base weapon damage |
| Hollow | Adds Luck scaling | Lowers Str scaling |
| Shriving | Removes Infusion, does not affect Reinforcement level | — |