Can you beat Dark Souls 2 SOTFS with only Miracles? | (Dark Souls 2 CHALLENGE)

greetings and salutations gamers my name is kyle also known as gamers weekend and welcome back to the dark souls challenge last time we defeated dark souls remastered without consuming stamina which was a fun concept that ended up being far easier than we expected it to be but today is the day that we finally add dark souls 2 to the challenge rotation and what better way to kick it off than with a magic run can we beat dark souls 2 with only miracles magic at face value is very similar to dark souls 1 but there are some fairly large changes in the magic system that'll change how we approach the game but before we get into any of that let's go over the rules for this run any damage we inflict must come from miracles no other weapon or damage sources are allowed and yes that includes ballistas we're allowed to wield any other equipment in the game including rings armors and shields as always this is going to be an all bosses run although dark souls 2 does have 41 bosses in total so forgive me if i don't get into detail about every single one and finally no major glitches or sequence breaks are allowed i think that covers just about everything i hope you all are having a wonderful day and without further ado this is the dark souls 2 miracles only challenge [Music] we name our character kirei after the completely innocent cleric from the fate series pick the cleric class for its starting levels in faith and starter chime and pick the life ring for our starting gift just like dark souls 1 we start at a wall we start the game with a healing miracle and nothing else we have absolutely no way to deal damage yet so we have nearly no way to progress i say nearly because i have a pretty good plan to get us hooked up very quickly we start by grabbing some basic goodies in majula most notably the estus flask shard and titanite shard found in malin's shop and began making our way to hayde's tower of flame if you've ever watched the dark souls 2 challenge you know exactly why we're here but just in case we have some people who don't know we're going to take on the dragon rider first the dragon raider has a very small arena that you're supposed to expand by pulling levers throughout the area but we could take advantage of his own arena by leaving it b by having the dragon rider use a jab attack right at the edge of his arena we can bait him into throwing himself off into the water and giving us an instant win right above the dragon riders arena is a bonfire and lysia of lindelt the main miracles teacher of dark souls 2. with the souls we get from dragon rider we can purchase lightning spear but we don't have nearly enough souls to get the stats for it quite yet that being said we can make our way to no man's wharf picking up extra souls and a sublime bone dust along the way and light our torch at the wharf bonfire this will make a run into the wharf a bit easier and allow us to pick up our second damaging miracle emit force now loaded up on consumable souls including the dragon rider's soul we can pump enough levels into faith to wield lightning spear however we only start with three spell casts that's not nearly enough to help us make real progress this early on so we're gonna need a bit more souls before we can really do anything we start making our way through the force of the fallen giants carefully making our way past most of the enemies and resting at the cardinal tower bonfire here we can knock down a door fail to kill a lizard and pick up an extra esses flask shard we can also quickly switch out lightning spear for a midforce to detonate the barrels accessing the shortcut early and buy the blacksmith key from malencha after getting the mansion key from cartographer kale and picking up an amber herb next to him we can unlock the shortcut to the next boss and then kill the crystal lizard for the titanite after a few more failed attempts back to majula to unlock the mansion where we slay a spooky boy for some base basement goodies and raid the upper level for even more titanite unlike dark souls 1 you can upgrade your spell casting tools in 2 and we take this opportunity to get our chime to plus three even though we're getting stronger i'm still not quite comfortable taking on a boss at this point so we're going to need a way to farm souls but preferably without us needing to deal damage thankfully we can grind souls fairly quickly using some level design and gravity in hayde's tower by standing on a small outcropping on the main tower we can bait the enemies of the area into throwing themselves into the water giving us about 1400 souls every run this method isn't foolproof and we can get knocked into the water if we aren't careful but it's still consistent enough to be viable a small bit of farming later and we have enough souls to start pumping our attunement this stat is going to be far more important in this game than in dark souls 1 as a 2-minute not only determines your 2-minute slots but also determines the amount of casts for each spell you can have so a 2-minute means more magic mags per spell slot as the run goes on as good as faith is we need to make sure we monitor our tournament very closely with our second and two mid slot active we can equip emit force and now we have the spell cast to get a lot more work done we kill maul in the armor for the seldora armor a set that increases the amount of souls we gain and have lysia open up huntsman's copes we'll come back to this area in detail later but for now we have just enough spells to kill felk in the outcast he doesn't drop anything major but after he dies malencho will sell his armor set most notably the hexers hood which adds one additional cast to every tuned spell and gives a small boost to faith and intelligence now we finally have the resources we need to start making some actual progress the next boss up is the last giant and he's about as simple as bosses yet the only interesting thing is even with all the prep we've done we still don't have enough damage to kill him however with the amber herb we grabbed earlier we have enough spell casts to finish the fight [Music] we use the last giant souls to buy a fragrant branch from malenja because not only is it an item we need very soon but it puts us over the threshold for her to give us a silver serpent's ring plus one for even more souls back to no man's warfare we can make a few throwaway runs to grab items from one of the houses most notably a fragrant branch of yore and a flame butterfly once we've got the items in hand we use the first fragrant branch to open up the shaded woods here we can grab a ton of upgrades to our build first up is the chlorine fee ring plus one for extra stamina regen and the clear blue stone ring plus one for the extra spell casting speed we can then use our fragrant branch to get our hands on the lion mage armor and another fragrant branch the lion mage armor is a set that increases the speed at which we can cast our spells and will be the main armor set we use for the rest of the run after pumping some more levels in faith we head back to the things betwixt and force the fallen giants to grab some extra amber herbs next up is pursuer and thankfully most of his attacks have long recovery animations giving us plenty of time to spell cast and peel we do need to use one amber herb to replenish a few spells but take the victory nonetheless [Music] back in majula and we get our hands on the silver cat ring which we'll put to use very soon but first it's time to fail at donkey konging the barrel several times before final we'll skip the rat vanguard we'll come back when we're a bit more prepared we can punch off this ledge giving us the right distance to make it down the well where we can pick up another sublime bone dust and make it to the gutter there's not too much interesting stuff here although there is another ginger root of york the stony boys along the way once we're in black gulch i head down to kill the two giants using a chest room as a safe spot in a single amber herb we can kill one of the giants then we can quit out our game and upon reloading the game gives us the loot for killing both giants for some reason either way with the forgotten key in hand we can make our way back to the majula pit to unlock the forgotten doors giving us the key to the sunken king dlc as well as great lightning spear we don't have quite enough faith to use great lightning spears yet so we need more souls best place to get those is the two-headed shark warrior in no man's war he was a fairly simple fight but once again required an amber herb to finish off [Music] after a few more rounds of farming at hate's tower of flames with the souls we obtained from flexile century we can finally cast great lightning spear our spell casts are starting to add up and now things are really going to start snowballing into effect after teaching a small army of stone soldiers how to swim we take down the dragon and unlock the blue cathedral this is where we take on definitely not a dark souls 1 boss like most creatures he wasn't a big fan of being struck by large spears composed of electrical divine energy and we finally have enough spellcasts to actually finish a fight without amber herbs after slaying the slayer we pump some additional levels into attunement and head to the huntsman's copes where we can make this jump to grab the gamer token this will convince targray at the cathedral to let us join his clan and sell us his goods specifically another cast of emit force and our first copy of heavenly thunder an extremely powerful miracle that operates like a lightning firestorm that can hit creatures multiple times the first boss to fall to the aoe spam was the royal rat vanguard where we spammed lightning storms until the boss showed up and destroyed him with lightning spears [Music] at this point we're rocking a total of 24 spells six of them being lightning storms we've reached a point where we're starting to feel powerful but just a couple more upgrades before we start grinding through bosses like coffee paper it's time to head to the black gulch to take care of the rotten the rotten isn't incredibly difficult but this early on he does hit pretty hard that being said heavenly thunder is amazing against bosses with large hitboxes and the rotten easily gets hit multiple times per cast that's lorzel one of down [Music] after spending some souls to level up we buy a copy of force from lysia which is going to be a great help for this next step it's time to make a run into our first dlc dragon sanctum there are a ton of easy to grab souls but more importantly we can run our way to grab the sanctum key which will allow us to grab the lightning clutch ring this ring gives us a good boost to all of our lightning damage in exchange for slightly lowering our defenses this is a more than worth it trade-off if you ask me [Music] new ring in hand i think it's time to take on the slim jim hammer boys first go around they knocked me into a 3v1 which wasn't very cash money if i'm being honest but the second time around we don't experience too many issues the main purpose we chose the rune sentinels is to get our hands on the priest chime which is an upgrade to our lightning scaling i take the chime back to mcduff to be reinforced up to plus six and then use a bolt stone i bought from targray to infuse it with lightning to further increase its damage okay now it's time to start powering through bosses after freeing straight with a beetroot of 4 we use a flame butterfly to light up the sinner's boss room before taking her on at this point our damage levels are pretty juiced so we have little issues [Music] after that we head back to the shaded woods and remind eight-legged nascar here that a large hitbox and heavenly thunder do not go well together afterwards we head into the rat domain and take on rat dog once again large hitboxes heavenly thunder large damage easy boss fight hotel trevor a boss fight that's just a ton of overly religious nerds well at least we know this isn't a fight concept they'll reuse in the next game right right guys guys on top of the church we can pick up some more emit force and heavenly thunders from cromwell the partner and use some chunks from brightstone cove to upgrade our chime to plus 10 to get ready for the arachnophobia zone duke's deer freya is a fairly simple boss just between her attacks run to the opposite side and unload a lightning miracle into the face with a torch in hand there's no need to worry about the extra spiders that's lord soul number three to our name the last lord soul we need is the copes path so it's time for the bone zone not only is heavenly thunder great for taking on the large group of enemies but part of the arena is covered in water increasing our lightning damage the scale of lads go down without too much effort harvest valley wasn't anything too interesting and ended with an even less interesting fight against jabba the useless earthen peak wasn't too awful of a run since almost everything here died in one hit to our miracles i should note that i could pick up an extra copy of lightning spear here but to be honest it wouldn't be very useful at this point in the game and by the time it actually will be useful we will either have better options or an easier way to get them either way mitha without her poison pool isn't too much of a challenge especially since her room is considered wet which enhances our lightning damage even more lackluster medusa goes down bowser's castle is up next on the list and this place wasn't off to a great start not difficulty wise but sanity wise first we rested at the bonfire got invaded by armored denim killed him and reset then we got invaded by sharon who we beat after wasting our time and reset again and then we made our way in just a bit more before fort lauren decided to crash the party who took even longer to kill than the first two and reset again some allen knight shenanigans later and we make our way to the smelter demon this boss typically isn't an issue but this is no exception heavenly thunder and great lightning spear put in great work on this guy and as long as we don't take a full three-hit combo there's very little risk of us dying we'll see this guy again in a bit at this point our attunement and faith are at a pretty decent spot so from here on out we'll be spreading our levels into health stamina and adaptability to round out our build while continuing to level up our vital stats one short lava bath later and we begin to navigate upward bowser's castle our great lightning spears are enough to one shot the ninja turtles so getting through is closer to a casual stroll after shutting off the flames we can finally take on our final lord the iron king this guy isn't a very big fan of being electrocuted and as long as we don't fall into the hole of demise we get through just fine actually come to think of it does anybody enjoy being electrocuted i need eye bleach with all of the lord souls claimed we can open up the shrine of winter and head into drangleic castle most of this area is covered in rain and once again anything that's wet takes extra damage from lightning yeah it helps a lot in this area we do meet up with the nameless usurper along the way but i think we've far surpassed her in the way of miracles at this point we grabbed the secret bonfire by nashandra and head into the twin dragon riders encounter yeah they're not much of a fight in other news i forgot this chest was a mimic and it killed me more than half the bosses have at this point other than that i make my way through the rest of the castle into the king's passage where i thought we would hit our first roadblock in the run the looking glass knight the looking glass armor has excessive lightning resistance and his shield deflects our spells it sounds like it should be a fight designed to counter miracles except the devs made it so it rained in this area so you would take more damage from his lightning attacks why is that important for us because he and his minions are also affected by rain and take extra damage from lightning damage it's not as much damage as we've been doing to some of the other bosses but it's still manageable either way the looking glass knight gives us a fairly good fight before going down it's time to head back to majula to talk to lysia after opening the shrine of winter she sells an unlimited amount of lightning spears and we're going to take full advantage of that we can replace all of our emit forces with lightning spears now which means we are in full shock and awe mode i think it's about time we clean up some bonus bosses we saved for later first up is gargoyles they're a tad annoying but heavenly thunder once again gets a ton of value in multi-hitting multiple enemies not much else to see here next up is one of my personal favorites the executioner's chariot there is a fun optional method that doesn't involve using the gate but i settled for the regular method of taking him out that heavenly thunder damage is just too satisfying to pass up [Music] so shrine of amana is supposed to be this massively annoying area but let me run an idea by you an area covered in water while playing a lightning build yeah there weren't too many issues here either we can also pick up some extra twinkling titanite along the way from the soldiers which we'll need for later armored kermit didn't really pose much of a threat and we made our way into the bone zone part two for lorne paid us another visit and he was truly shocked at how strong we've become seriously why does anybody watch these videos usurper also paid us a visit which ended up exactly how you'd expect it would and we made our way to velstad his lighting resistance is pretty average but some poor decision making and poorly timed rolls made us lose our first attempt second try and we use regular lightning to phase him into second phase and great lightning spear to finish the second phase as fast as possible velstak goes down with the king's ring in hand we can make our way into aldia's key we can get to the guardian dragon with little issues and with heavenly thunder spam actually killing the dragon provides even less issues there's nothing we really need in dragon area so we're just going to zip our way over the dragon shrine in my honorable duel with the final dragonite i accidentally hit one of the onlookers which made them pretty upset with me i get the ashen heart regardless and proceed back to the force of the fallen giants giant lord time bob and weave on the ledge next to him makes this about as easy as ever he goes down for the first time but boy will it not be the last we'll be back very soon at this point we are approaching end game bosses very rapidly so it's about time we grab some more upgrades to get ready first of all straight will sell an extra copy of great lightning spear after we grab the king's ring the next copy of great lightning sphere is behind a boohoo lockstone door in the bonezone 2.0 now we can swap out some of our regular spears for great ones putting us at 30 regular spears and 21 great spears the next upgrade we're after is going to require we take on the dark lurker so we go ahead and light up the three chasms of old quick tip for getting to dark lurker i strongly recommend doing the shaded woods last as the chasm here is by far the least annoying of the three so fun fact i fought dark lurker once and i killed him in about 30 seconds without seeing half his move set so i essentially walked into dark lurker pretty much blind and that reflects through the death count turns out this dude hits like a bus and does the whole clone thing way better than pinwheel does so congratulations dark lurker you take this run's record of the most deaths give yourself a pat on the back he's exceptionally squishy for a boss and as long as you're patient and choose to time your attack carefully during his second phase then things should go fairly smoothly the dark lurker goes down but more importantly dark diver grand old gives us the dragon chime as a reward the most powerful lightning chime in the game it's a quick trip to targray for another bold stone to infuse into the dragon chime for extra lightning damage and with several twinkling titanite we can almost get it completely upgraded even before being fully upgraded though it's already an upgrade to our priest shine so getting it fully upgraded should be a priority we burnt some bonfire aesthetics in the forest of fallen giants to get some bonus souls and get the rest of titanite we need from cloan to get the chime to a plus five after spending a bit of time revisiting a few areas for estus flask upgrades i make my way through the giant memories and start collecting giant souls after i have the first four it's time to grab the last one from the ancient dragon this fight shouldn't be too bad with heavenly okay maybe we aren't quite as prepared as i thought we were okay then i guess we need some upgrades before we start the final gauntlet of bosses first things first a trip back to majula to start pumping our armor full of titanite if i'm going to be fighting these late game bosses i need to be sure i can take a hit next up is a trip back to earth and peak to burn a bonfire ascetic killing lackluster medusa for a second time will reward us with the covetous silver serpent's ring plus two for even more soul farming potential after that is another bonfire aesthetic in the huntsman's copes to take on bone bros round two taking them on for a second time will give us the clear blue stone ring plus two which will give us even more casting speed now it's soul farming time and what better way than to abuse the giant lord several times with the seldora armor and our new silver ring for tons of souls no wonder he was so angry with us earlier after killing him a handful of times we have about one and a half million souls which lets us level up about 37 times oh yeah now we're definitely feeling it mr krabs back to the ancient dragon and this is one fight we definitely have to be cautious about he's not particularly tricky but his damage output is insane so mistakes are way more punishing here we can hit him from a distance with lightning spears and if we ever get close we can spam heavenly thunder for those juicy multi-hits it's a fairly long boss fight but nevertheless we take down the dragon on our second try [Music] vendrick is up next and first time around he caught me off guard with just how fast his sword swings are second time around and our patience pays off well for a decaying old man he hits deceptively hard and fast so once again paying careful attention to our timings is key second try once again and vendrick goes down from there his spectacular voice actor gives us the order to collect the crowns which means it's finally time for the dlc gauntlet [Music] crown of the sunken king is up first navigating the areas actually isn't very difficult once you've destroyed all the armor sets jester thomas gives us a good fight but we prove ultimately that lightning is still superior to fire after the long path down we face the first of the bosses alana alana is a fight that consists mainly of dodging her spells while dealing with her summons and then dealing damage between phases she starts out by summoning skeletons which is the best option for us she can choose between skeletons velstad or the occasional pig summon i make sure to carefully clear out all the skeletons each time she summons them and then damage her once they've been cleared the reason i'm making sure to clear them out is because every time alana chooses to summon something she chooses between the aforementioned enemy types if skeletons are still alive then she'll remove skeletons from that list now choosing either velstad or the rare summon of pigs we obviously don't want to see velstad so by constantly clearing the skeletons we can avoid velstad for most of the fight by the time she finally decides to bring him out it's already over the squalid queen falls on the first try sin the slumbering dragon is up next this fight is long and annoying as he spends more time in the air than he actually does on the ground that being said the time he does spend on the ground he is very vulnerable to heavenly thunder so damage isn't going to be a massive issue however his aerial attacks are tricky to avoid and can cause toxic so i make sure to keep divine blessings on hand to cure the toxic and heal up after several minutes the dragon goes down on once again try number one the goon squad is a bit more tricky but not too awful this time around we swap out the divine blessings for elizabeth mushrooms we'll need the extra healing for this one the goon's lightning defenses aren't anything impressive but we can lure them into the water for even more damage and for some cover against the archer once again heavenly thunder spam is amazing here the biggest threat here is by far the grave robber his fast attacks with power stance are devastating if you don't have enough poise to shrug off his attacks and he's the most aggressive when it comes to chasing you out of the trio as long as we can kill him the rest of the fight should be pretty much free on our first try we nearly kill him just to corner ourselves and loot out on first try second attempt and we bring in the ring of giants plus two for some extra poise and manage to kill the grave robber from there the howl wannabe is not much of a fight and the archer goes down that's the goon squad in two attempts next up is the crown of the old iron king and it starts with a descent through broome tower some of the areas here were somewhat tricky to navigate mainly the ones with chicken wielding giants and rejected naruto characters but we make it through with all of our smelter wedges to use at the bottom next up on the list is the fume knight this boss is a fun but tricky duel first phase went off without much of a hitch but the second phase was a tad more tricky i'm still not fully used to all of his timing so i took some extra unnecessary hits here and there however i was still able to space and time well enough to recover from the damage and weave in my own attacks the fume knight goes down on the first attempt next up is the juicebox demon 2.0 i walked into this fight still debuffed and unable to cast magic so that was a wonderful start besides that this boss wasn't much of a fight it's the smelter demon but again in different color the first one wasn't hard to begin with and if that isn't telling on how this fight went then i don't know what will other than the fact that i almost won without using a single estus baja blue goes down on the first try sir alan on the other hand was certainly intense i forgot to replenish my spells before walking into the room so i had to equip some replenishment items mid-fight from there i also found it difficult to nail down the timings none of his attacks seemed to have enough lag to really let me get my attacks off then i finally realized the opportunities aren't in his attacks it's in his movement if you're in front of suralan then he can almost immediately go into an attack however he's a bit slow when it comes to turning around the key to this fight is to attack him from the back and sides as to exploit the time he takes to turn it's an intense and fun battle but in the end we finish off sir elon in once again the first attempt one more dlc to go crown of the ivory king and a lamb lois the enemies in this dlc were by far the most tricky to deal with via miracles so ended up being an area i mostly tried to avoid enemies and just run through to get what i needed the first boss is king's pet ava i bet you're tired of hearing me say it but big hitbox and heavenly thunder ava wasn't a big fan that being said ava does have some pretty good lightning resistance so the fight did go on for a while but other than some odd angles and a wrath of gods like attack baba isn't too dangerous we claim another first try victory over the course of about the next hour or so we find all the knights and get access to reindeer land two boss is left on the dlc gauntlet and first one up is the old ivory king the first part of this fight was a bit tricky due to the fact that the knights are excessively resistant to lightning however at this point we have around 70 spell casts as well as spell replenishment items we have no shortage of casts so just by taking our time we slowly clear out the charred knights the king on the other hand wasn't quite as long a fight but i really played badly i mistimed dodges at several points and completely exhausted maestas he also had some pretty good lightning defense but once again i'm absolutely loaded on spell casts the ivory king falls on our first try reindeer land on the other hand is a bit of an issue getting through this place with a lightning build is an absolute nightmare since the reindeer show up faster than we can kill them so running is just about our best option which we've failed multiple times it gets a bit tricky but we finally make our way to the lud and zolon boss fight one cat isn't all that bad but two at a time makes this an interesting fight to navigate heavenly thunder is once again the king in this fight but the problem is finding the right opportunities to attack the best option is to try and use one cat to body block the other and hopefully get the chance to try and single them out focus firing one is the best option so keeping that one to the front is probably for the best once we get lud down zalin finally takes some time before finally buffing from there we just wait up the buff before treating the fight like another battle against ava it's a difficult battle but we claim victory on try number two one blessing from king vendrick later and it's time to finish this with the throne of want trio first up is the throne watcher and defender they don't have very strong lightning resistance and take tons of damage from our miracles we only take a single hit before cleaning them up rapidly the chandra also isn't very resistant to lightning but she doesn't take quite as much damage she definitely deals more damage with that laser though just some casually timed rolls and a few lightning spears later and the queen falls final boss of the run and it's althea and what better way to sum it up then say it with me big hitbox and heavenly thunder we can throw some lightning spears during his fire phase for chip damage but most of our damage is going to come from spamming lightning storms while his defenses are down it's yet another drawn out battle but eventually we take down aldia and with that we have defeated every boss in dark souls 2 scholar of the first sin with only miracles just for the record that was a ton of fun the other more difficult challenges are always fun of course but i think this was the most fun i've had this series during a challenge there was something so satisfying about mapping out the early game and watching the characters slowly grow into a powerful build just to take on such difficult boss fights with the restrictions we had sir allon and fume knight with miracles only has been some of the most fun i've ever had while playing dark souls if you're looking for a decent challenge and a ton of fun with dark souls 2 i highly recommend you give this a try yourself either way that is the first dark souls 2 challenge in the books and it will definitely be the first of many i've already started to compile a list of challenge ideas for dark souls 1 and 2. but if you have any ideas or suggestions please feel free to leave them either in the comments below or in the suggestions channel of the discord but in the meantime if you guys did enjoy this video then please give it a thumbs up pop that subscribe button and ring a tingling that little bell to be notified whenever i drop another video you can also join the discord link is in the description below as always and as always thank you guys so much for watching and i'll catch you gamers on the flip side later [Music] you

Channel: GamersWeekend

Views: 315,589

Keywords: Gaming, DS2 Miracles Only, Dark Souls Miracles Only, Dark Souls Challenge, Dark Souls 2 Challenge, GamersWeekend Dark Souls 2, GamersWeekend Miracles Only

Id: yvmDovxY4P8

Length: 32min 28sec (1948 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021