Can You Beat Dark Souls 2 Without Even Creating a Character? (All Stats at 1, no stat boosting gear)

[Music] it's just [Music] you couldn't take another day [Music] is [Music] all right so level one runs one of the more popular and accessible type of challenge runs in the souls genre but dark souls 2 was known for being quite painful due to the agility system only 680p means almost no iframes when rolling and therefore stat boosting gear like the peasant set is highly recommended to increase your adaptability after all without that especially with this game's interesting hitboxes sl1 could be quite an experience as i would personally know given that i've done so1 nukemplus7 with broken straight swords and no stat boosting gear however there is something else unique about dark souls 2 compared to the others namely that the game starts before you even create a character and you start in a unique state which you can only be in before character creation this character is even lower than level 1 because it has all stats at 1 instead of at 6 meaning soul level -44 so here's the question to ask can you beat dark souls 2 without even creating a character well sleep mover discovered a way to skip character creation using some very complicated inputs and therefore the skip has only been done successfully on pc well regardless i am on pc now and i did try to beat dark souls 2 not only without creating a character but also without any form of stat boosting gear meaning all stats permanently at one so what would be the most effective way of doing that um well i'm not sure but not the way i did it as you will see as i put several arbitrary restrictions on myself and for the most part i improvised my way through it meaning i did very minimal testing as a result i must say that this was definitely one of the most frustrating playthroughs i've done in this game i mean when all your stats are gone and you're just one it's like darkness is imprisoning me because all i can see is this absolute hollow i cannot live i cannot die i'm trapped in myself since i cannot customize my character making this body my holding cell oh please god wake me so let me take you through dark souls 2 with all stats at 1. other than the initial scap i would not allow myself to use any other skips glitches or major exploits meaning that if i would want the stone ring i would have to acquire it before skipping the old ladies so first order of business was to go and wreck shrek which takes a while but fortunately you can pay this butt slam by staying behind him and in general it is a quite predictable enemy however this ring only adds poise to your melee attacks but with all stats at one what was i even supposed to attack with other than my bare hands i mean what is this peculiar starting character even supposed to be he's michael willis screen named generic white male i'm just on my way to the beach yeah and i do have to admit that i feel kind of dirty for not playing as my own character but hopefully she never finds up uh-oh no this is not what it looks like no i can't explain i can't explain well we obviously have the lowest possible anything literally so beating the game like this would be ironically one hell of a hollow victory and no that's not a dead joke that's an undead joke however there were some surprising observations first of all how often in this run i was able to survive an attack despite having the lowest amount of hp also despite numerically only having about 10 percent less stamina than a soul of one character definitely one of the major difficulties in this playthrough was stamina management and when it comes to iframes we have about a third less than on a regular solar for one character so 99 of the time practically speaking we cannot roll through attacks we can only roll to position ourselves outside of hitboxes altogether but on top of that adp affects any and all item animations meaning the slowest healing animations the slowest consumable animations etc and when it comes to stats related to weapon requirements we cannot build any weapon at all after all this game doesn't contain a stormroot type weapon without stat requirements in fact even with stat boosting gear it would require kill's helmet to even just two-hand a broken straight sword only the pyromancy flame has no stat requirements but that one has limited use with only one attunement and the lowest possible casting speed also contrary to dark souls 1 in this game damage from pyromancy is affected by stats so we have the lowest possible fire damage as well i did try it out but it wasn't very useful in this playthrough so my first source of damage would be consumables after all although they do skill with stats they don't require them moreover frog knives are cheap and are a surprisingly powerful early game source of damage however they are consumable and you can only hold 99 and store another 99 so i went and teased the dragon rider to stock up on enough of them oh and i also made sure to get rid of alicia so she wouldn't be able to invade later on given that we are supposed to be the only nameless usurper in this run you know because you cannot give your character a name without so now that did give me enough consumables but unfortunately there are several problems with using them in the first place especially with only 180p which makes the already slow attack even slower but what's worse is that it's an attack that locks you into place and what's even worse is that it locks the direction you are throwing into even when locked on so if you combine that with the lock-on itself already absolutely sucking donkey dick in this game missing your target was a constant problem and no in this game binoculars or aiming with a bow doesn't help you free aiming since you can only throw at specific angles now all of this might simply be annoying but not an actual problem when you can either take damage or consistently avoid attacks but we have the lowest possible health the lowest possible stamina and the lowest possible adb so even the last giant gave me trouble now fortunately there is one advantage that consumables have and that's that they don't consume stamina because stamina management is already pretty tough on regular sl1 and it's definitely much harder to deal with when you have even less but having said that consumables would likely not carry me through the entire game given that i cannot increase their damage by leveling up and they also aren't affected by rings and given that the pyroflame isn't even used that much on regular sl1 runs there was only one other specific item that could not merely serve as a functional weapon but a very powerful one at that however for that item we need to go down the gutter and with this little health we would need gilligan's ladder for that which means we have to make our way past mifa to get him to move to majula now the skeleton lords wouldn't be that much of an issue even with all of our limitations however getting there was quite a bit more challenging cannot lock on to him from this distance that is some [ __ ] still what the [ __ ] well this is i still can't lock on that works what the [ __ ] is this normal is this guy trying to break dance or what the [ __ ] is he doing okay ah come on i just wanted to get past there come on let me just through very nice no hardly any stamina no iframes almost no health i feel like i'm a little underleveled let me just i [ __ ] i cannot jump because of the stamina come on that's better now i'm actually tempted to just fight to go and fight the skeleton what because for all i know i will not be able to pull the lever no i can't reach the lever come on pull it nice okay we have opened up the shortcut so at least something well that at least takes care of the shortcut of course then it would turn out that i didn't need it in the first place however one thing i technically did not need but would have been very helpful but i forgot to buy them were alluring skulls for the bonewheel skeletons i mean those are nowhere near as bad as the ds1 versions but they can still hit multiple times in a fraction of a second so i made sure that they killed the lord with the staff first okay at least they take a lot of damage okay that's one quick no [ __ ] then it was a matter of patience and throwing firebombs as long as i would be able to not get stuck anywhere i should be fine because these enemies do ridiculously little amounts of damage so even with the lowest possible health i could still survive as long as i wouldn't get combos by multiple skeletons at once now as i said before one of the biggest surprises through this entire run is how often i was able to survive at least single heads even from late game bosses heck even fume knight has specific attacks that will not one shot you now having said that it was the ring of binding that many many times save my ass definitely one of the more important rings in this playthrough however mifa would be a different story and as i already expected she would be the first roadblock in this run because avoiding her hitboxes with practically no iframes and with the lowest possible stamina while using slow throwing knife attacks that lock you into place that is a tall order so i decided to buy a freaking branch of yore so that i could at least get the chlorante ring plus one from the shaded woods that ring doesn't really provide that much of a noticeable difference in this game however under these circumstances it could mean the difference between life and death of course that does mean getting through the ambush room first but not to worry there's a way to prevent getting locked inside this room excuse me what the [ __ ] i threw a fireball on that they didn't explode what okay well then we'll do it without uh we'll just try to have to try to survive yeah see that is so stupid why the hell did those uh barrels not explode that's not fair well that's one way of getting bent over barrel but the point was that if you can make the barrels explode then the ambush will happen with the door still open and given that the enemies are designed to stay in sight they will quickly return to that room meaning you have a sort of safe zone to retreat to if necessary also in the shaded woods you can buy lightning urns from the head of van gaal given that the majority of bosses in this game are weak to lightning and of course there was the clarity ring plus one inside the chest hidden in the mist now for all i know maybe there was also diane fossey and some gorillas here on the mist but i didn't stick around to find out now of course that ring is nice and all but getting to miffa is a challenge in and of itself mainly because of well the mannequins i guess at this point we can refer to them as proto-revenants now that's not the only problem of course because we definitely need to burn the windmill and knocking the grave one over the edge is not really an option so i thought about luring him towards me and then make a run for the windmill but remember that i also only have one intelligence so i forgot to actually light a torch however also remember that luck is not one of your stats in this game okay that was not smart this i had to light the torch first maybe you have iframes from doing that no of course not oh actually yes maybe i can actually make it ah oh me a son of a gun okay good so then we could make our way towards mifa now why exactly would she be such a roadblock in this run because in most playthroughs she is an easy boss to handle well first of all actually making it into the boss arena is already an issue but other than the lack of iframes when going through a fork wall lacking iframes makes it really difficult to avoid a spear especially the running stab now back when i fought it with 680p on nukemplus7 with broken straight swords my strategy was to run around her and roll while already moving in the right direction to outspace the hitbox of a spear however that same strategy wouldn't work this time because i'm not using a melee weapon and firebombs would be too slow and even if i had a pyroflame already not only would it be too slow but on top of that consumed too much stamina so i basically had to rely on throwing knives while staying near the edge of the arena because that way i had the most time to respond to a lunging spear attack after all given that i couldn't iframe through it i would have to roll in such a way that i wouldn't connect with the hitbox altogether at some specific moments you can roll through the spear without the spear actually you know but actually without uh how do you say that without connecting with the head bars i've done that already but that's only in specific yeah like this there you go you see iframes were not necessary as you can see but it depends on your spacing see oh that works so you can avoid the stab that way but it all depends on where i am in my throw knife animation and what her distances and all that stuff on top of that i would need that distance as well to avoid the projectiles but the problem is that the throwing knife animation is extremely slow so if there would be too little distance between me and her that could mean not having enough time to react to her in the first place and it would take a lot of throwing knives to take her down even more depending on how many times she spends healing inside the poison but especially because well the lock on obviously now thank you lock on ah thank you welcome again when you're editing the video count how many times you say thank you lock on probably way too many times maybe the thank you lock-on counter would even be higher than the death counter well at least most of myths attacks are so weak that the ring of binding would prevent me from getting one shot in the majority of cases but of course having the slowest healing animation as well would make any time i'd need to heal very intense indeed oh the asses is so slow okay do it again please oh [ __ ] uh killer nice fuckalicious jesus oh okay well at least we have that uh finally done oh whoa i'm getting followed so with mifa down gilligan moves to majula and i had enough souls to buy his second longest ladder and a cat ring because you still need that in order to make it safely down but now we had access to the grave of saints and why would that be relevant well in this area you get invaded by dora's brother roy the explorer and he drops an r stone if you kill him while in the champion government however on the regular new game he doesn't respawn and on top of that killing him is not as easy if you only have your fists and throwing knives so we need some preparation first therefore i talked to kale to get access to the house of medulla for a free ferrous lockstone and a bonfire setting from cloana to push the grave of saints into nougat plus however that does require us to defeat the royal red vanguard which has an additional benefit namely access to the red king who sells really good [ __ ] namely dungpies for applying toxic however the royal rat vanguard is just plain bad [ __ ] however even in a run that is bad [ __ ] insane they aren't that big of a deal since they are all very weak however there are a ton of them and it's really hard to see which of them is the actual boss namely the one with the mohawk what a punk but good luck spotting that especially with my eyesight although that could be worse but that's something for later at least this time i did buy the alluring skulls from shalquar so with a little patience and yelling a few times for the love of [ __ ] don't get stuck or at least saying stuff that would bring that sentiment across i was at least able to make it fruitisfied and with the boss defeated we can now use the bonfire ascetic to make roy respond infinitely and by lowering the bridge using the ferrous lockstone we have a sort of easy-ish way of killing him because you can insta-kill him if you knock him off the bridge but that is a big if though because he will constantly kill you with his crossbow before you even have the chance to attack him in fact even with the stone ring you need to hit him twice in order to stun him and only after he's done attacking otherwise you will just hit each other simultaneously and to be fair i couldn't really figure out a more effective way i did later on try to use a dagger despite not having the stats for it you know just for the extra poise damage however that was way too slow and uses way too much stamina meaning it just had to be a slow grind to kill him 50 times yes you need to kill him 50 times why because you can trade 50 oststones for the vancouce a ring that increases the damage of your bare fists but given that i was streaming this playthrough this wasn't the right time to do all that farming actually i wouldn't really want to do any farming to begin with but in this case i figured i kind of had to i mean technically you could get to vancouver cecil early because many regular enemies can occasionally drop all stones but that would require even more farming and i don't know about you but i hate farming so much that i would equate it to one of the zodiac signs and you can figure out which one that would be i absolutely hate it and therefore at this time i decided to just continue to run so i went towards notchka because my next goal was to get govlan to the doors of pharos so that i could buy infinite poison knives firebombs actually did less damage to notchka than i expected but by now i have photo doing way less damage than this in fact for some reason all my ds2 videos somehow end up containing a how to fight notch cut tutorial and the good thing is that the way i do fighter is already based on not needing iframes to begin with as i constantly move away from her and yes there's always someone in the comment section saying that you can tease her by getting up on her till but come on as much as i appreciate riding a nice still using an unnecessary g-stack like that would be kind of as lazy as the designers were when making this queer-like rip-off boss to begin with so then after running through no man's wharf to talk to govlon in order to get him to change locations which is not easy to do under these circumstances but where there's a wheel there's a way and on top of that it would turn out to be a good thing that i unlocked the shortcut here even though i wasn't even planning on fighting the flexor sentry however that's something for later but now i had access to an infinite amount of poison knives and whenever i would need some extra souls i could simply sell stuff to get those now i did also buy a whole bunch of poison arrows because even though i cannot wield a bow i figured that poison arrows could still help me out to get through iron keep but that's also something for later oh and speaking of poison i also went down the gutter to pick up the pyroflame because i thought that poison mist could help me out which didn't turn out to be the case given that i have the slowest possible casting time and it also drains all of your stamina and what makes it worse is that toxic mist was out of the question to begin with even though we had the vanguard soul however straight doesn't allow you to trade anything if you don't meet the end and faith requirements in fact not even with stat boosting gear but there was something else on my mind that i also mistakenly thought would be highly beneficial something that massively backfired and in order to get to that item i would have to get past the congregation which i assumed would be a problem since doing specific types of challenge runs the easiest bosses can suddenly become an immense obstacle but fortunately that wasn't the case this time especially because of the poison knives i bought i was able to get quickly rid of the healing priests now with my small health bar i did have to watch out for the lighting attacks yeah if only you had spirit summons in this game like an allen ring so that you could summon a couple of young boys to serve as one hell of a distraction but even without that i managed to manage this menace and then i used some regular knives to finish the job now i wasn't specifically going this way to reach the duke's diaphragm the reason i was here was because i thought that the engraved gauntlets would be really beneficial in this run for the occasional bonus damage unfortunately the engraved gauntlets were a grave mistake which made the run harder rather than easier without me even realizing it this took place at the end of my first stream and i was wearing them during the entire second and third streams but on the third video someone left a comment now given that time is convoluted let's skip ahead to the start of the fourth stream there's something i need to test because someone actually made a comment about my my gloves or the engraved gauntlets because as you can see i i'm not meeting the staff requirements which isn't weird obviously i'm not meeting them that doesn't prevent them from functioning but what he said is that it will actually mess up your rules and your stamina i use so let's give that a try because that would suck okay so i can roll twice on my stamina bar now let's take them off oh my [ __ ] god so the entire the entire previous stream i was basically playing with a massive stamina handicap and all that for just a random critical attack sometimes which doesn't even add that much well that is some [ __ ] yeah so given how much i struggled with stamina management these gauntlets made this already difficult run even more of a gauntlet but back to the end of the first stream i made sure to farm for the all stones before the second stream started a very tedious process i may add but i did eventually get good at baiting roy's attacks and knocking him off the bridge unfortunately even though he can drop an extra ostone you cannot get it if he dies down in the water meaning i did have to kill him 50 times now this did give me a lot of souls which allowed me to restock my consumables and i also bought fire seats and pyromancies from milibuff allowing me to use two of them with the attunement ring equipped however then at the start of the second stream when i tried to collect my reward for sitting through all that tedium i found that they made it even more tedious as you can only give one awestone at a time and we have 50 of them fuckalicious moreover i was actually a little afraid that the vancouver seal would make me too powerful and yes i am fully aware of how absurd that may sound given that i am literally 45 levels lower than sl1 but after my previous ds2 run which was torch and emulation only so a run in which i could only do minor chip damage therefore even doing normal damage this time would make me feel completely overpowered by comparison so i thought i would just continue on and only acquire the vanquisher seal when i would really need it so i decided i would give freya a try with my pyro flame and consumables and the benefit of not having to do ant anything is obviously that i was able to hold the torch to keep freya's children away after all the spiders were all in tune on this evening of the moon and dreams of victory were made winding through my head so i thought that freya wouldn't be much of an issue as i've defeated her with a torch and immolation in my previous run which took almost half an hour and in my sl1 nookie plus seven broken stage would run i also had lower damage than i had here and also hardly any iframes to work with however it did turn out to be a massive obstacle because fighting frail like this really messed with my muscle memory and on top of that the lock-on was being a massive [ __ ] constantly and my attacks were too slow to fight her in melee range however freya became too unpredictable and much harder to avoid at mid-range because i'm simply not used to fighting her like that and on top of that i was unaware that the engraved gondolas were causing me to use more stamina and decrease my rolling distance which is highly important when your rolling is about getting outside of a hitbox rather than iframing through an attack however i had an additional issue this stream because the day before i broke my glasses one of the screws got loose and was missing so let me give you the press continue experience as if things weren't bad enough as they were however i did see it as quite poetic that i literally had a screw loose when doing a run like this so yeah freya gave me way more trouble than i expected in fact i was running low on torch time so i went back to the force of fallen giants to collect more torches but since i was there anyway i thought i would give the pursuer a try now of course the ring of blades doesn't boost pyromancy or consumables but it would boost my fist damage when i would later on acquire the vancouver seal fortunately the pursuer is one of the easiest bosses in the game and you don't require iframes if you run around him after baiting either version of his free head combo although in order to prevent the lock-on from screwing me over i did have to awkwardly tilt the camera down in order to reliably hit the boss while free aiming however i did get sloppy near the end and then i almost had a heart attack when he caught me off guard no oh i survived what the [ __ ] quick finish it oh wow i did not expect to survive that okay oh it worked out yeah that was a bit annoying at the end that the fire bombs actually uh did they block your vision because the explosion is too big yeah i definitely expected to die there but they didn't the rune sandals were a different story however now one on one i have little trouble dealing with them even without iframes the slow throwing animations were a much bigger issue but fortunately for some reason these empty sets of armor are weak to poison however once i got forced to fight on ground level with two of them left then not only the lack of health on iframes were a problem but at any time i would choose to throw an item they could simply insta kill me with a jump attack which is faster than my throwing animation to reiterate once more adp affects all item animations including consumables now i did come up with a good strategy that could work in theory namely by stacking toxic and poison on the second sentinel before the third one shows up however that requires you to get enough hits in while he's still on the ground but the interesting design choices surrounding how the lock-on functions together with the throwing animation locking you in a single direction when chain-throwing them kind of threw a wrench of the monkey variety into my plans you know what at this point i wouldn't be surprised if the functionality of the lock-on system is tied to adb as well i don't think that b-team could surprise me anymore oh by the way because i'm throwing poop you might be thinking ah why aren't you wearing the butterfly set i mean that could help a lot with poison build up well that was actually kind of intentional given that i did an entire run using that set exclusively so for that reason the pooper armor was kind of off the table in my mind and its poison buildup is very slow anyway however it is true that in specific situations at least it could have been beneficial again it's not the case that i was approaching this one in the most ideal fashion possible and i was neither wearing the most ideal fashion possible but then someone suggested to give the flexor sentry a try instead which i normally never do because for whatever reason i never go that route and well this was the result oh that was easy okay did not expect that okay yeah now there we go flexible sentry you don't even need to know what he does so now i could make my way towards the lost center and to reiterate once more straight is useless in this run because he won't let me buy or trade anything with one hint and faith however the lost sinner would be the second major roadblock in this playthrough which you might not expect if you've never fought her with low adp and low health before but her attacks are extremely hard to avoid without iframes and before you think of no roll strats it's not like we have enough stamina to run around and then do massive damage with a rapio for example so basically i had no strategy at all in mind for that fight at least i was pretty sure that i would have to use the vancouver seal but before that i gave freya a few more tries but when i was getting low on torch time again and on top of that with the lost cine fight in prospect i said [ __ ] it and i went through the tedium of trading in my awestones and as i already expected i then easily destroyed freya first try with venus a sill even while still in the champion covenant as i intentionally hadn't left it as a sort of punishment for more or less giving up and yes that is kind of ridiculous and arbitrary yeah but that's kind of the nature of being a challenge runner see what i mean and that was with the champion covenant [Music] that's why i didn't immediately want to go for the uh for the vancouver seal it's just so so [ __ ] powerful 270 and this is without flint ring here get these points now next up was the rotten which is not a hard boss and you can relatively easily deal with him even without iframes by moving back and forth however the real issue here was my small stamina bar i could only safely get a single running attacking and his overhead attack with this cleaver is very weird where he sort of bounces forward which extends the hitbox and with 180p the only attack you can roll through is his almost 360 sideswipe at least if you roll very precisely but anything else was instant death and to reiterate once more i was unaware that my gauntlets were slowing down my rules and were increasing my stamina consumption meaning i was even more at a disadvantage than i already was also what the [ __ ] was this supposed to be huh really i couldn't even see that that the uh that that hit me but with enough patience and some poison knives yes the rotten can be poisoned figure that one out well at least he's not an empty set of armor and his resistance to poison is actually quite high and by literally getting rid of the terrible cleaver overhead attack i was in fact able to make it through looks like he's been disarmed i get it shut it naba now you would think that the smartest thing to do would be to go into the sunken king dlc for flint's ring which would provide a whopping 50 extra ar which in this case would be an almost 20 damage increase but for completely arbitrary reasons i decided to not get flinching because i felt like i was getting a bit too overpowered already with the vancouver seal so adding flintstring to death would mean slapping enemies around with massive penis so i wanted to keep my power level a bit flaccid i mean lower wait what what also nothing to worry about because now the only thing we had to do was to traverse iron keep with the lowest possible amount of iframes health stamina and without stats to wield a bow huh well surprisingly we could actually survive a single attack from the alumni and in turn they are weak to strike damage however that did not mean we could just take them on because no way i would be able to dodge their attacks with any consistency and a second hit would immediately put me back at the bonfire and given that i was planning to skip smeltodemon for obvious reasons that would be one hell of a long trip now fortunately fans of sharon can be teased with poison knives around the staircase but dennis would be much more of a menace but his range attacks however if i would be able to make it through this area without dying then i wouldn't have to worry about dealing with him in the first place unfortunately that's kind of a tall order now my idea was to rely on poison arrows since you can still use a bow even without the required stats simply for massively reduced damage but poison buildup although very much reduced is not completely removed unfortunately although it could work in principle i simply wasn't able to build up that little bit of poison fast enough for it to proc and again you cannot aim consumables by aiming with a bow like you can in the other games so this was a very slow very tedious and very scary and therefore very sweaty butt crack type of experience you could have imagined the rage i would have felt if forlorn would have happened to invade or even worse if it turned out that i didn't have any ferrous lockstones in my inventory when finally getting here regardless eventually i did make it to the next bonfire well so far so good but because of video game logic we cannot just climb up this easily climbable wall so we have to go all the way around belfry soul but you know that shouldn't be an issue right yeah and because of the invader the fork wall stays up even after going through it once and that's merely to get started on the second section of iron keep i guess that's why it's called iron keep because you need an iron will just to keep going so again slowly painstakingly luring enemies over one by one and making use of the clear path behind me apart from the fire of course and some tactical use of poison and the environment i finally made it all the way through yeah you would really have to watch the actual stream to get a sense of the tediou mirror but fortunately the iron king is not much of a finale to this very difficult area as he is basically just way too easy however given that i don't have the iframes necessary to dodge through his hands and especially not as fireballs so i thought i would use a similar strat like when i fought him with a torch in my human torch run by retreating to the fork wall however i forgot that he actually can still reach you there when he does the lower version of the fire breath now fortunately when you handle the boss winner for the second time the boss spawns on the left side meaning that you can use the wall on the right as a cover for anything but a laser so by stacking toxic and doing massive damage with the vengeance hill so as you can see not getting flinching is not completely arbitrary however having said that after taking possession of the third grade soul the fourth one would pose an immense problem and actually even in hindsight i cannot think of an actual solid strategy for how i could have dealt with the lost sinner by the way if you wonder why she's called the lost center well originally it was actually the forgotten sinner but that was lost in translation but when it comes to the fight i quickly decided that i would need to go back to the rune sentinels so i could get the key to light the fires in the room because yeah i simply couldn't see anything and on top of that the darkness messes with the lock-on that already isn't all that functional however as you might have expected now with venxa seal i ruined the sentinels in fact it went from very hard to very easy so why doesn't the same thing apply to the lost center i mean normally she's not difficult at all even during most challenge runs well have you ever thought without iframes at low health and at low stamina because i guess the true sinner here is whoever designed her hitboxes especially her running stab attack which is almost unavoidable under these circumstances if you dodge early the tracking will get you if you dodge late then you're still inside the hitbox that as you would expect is actually larger than the sword itself and good luck dodging your side swipes without iframes meaning that i would somehow have to avoid our hitboxes altogether with the smallest possible stamina bar and remember that i was still unknowingly using more stamina and shortening my roll distance because of the engraved gauntlets so i must say that i became pretty desperate given that i wasn't making any progress and couldn't think of any strategy to deal with our hitboxes in fact i even tried parrying which you still can do even without meeting the stat requirements but the boss recovers so quickly that not only i wouldn't get an opportunity to attack it actually left me quite vulnerable so how did i manage to get through it that's actually kind of hard to explain i guess sometimes when you get beaten down so much you enter a phase where mind and controller just blend together like ultra instinct or that scene from kickboxer too sometimes when you're blind times seem darkest you can often see more clearly whoa [ __ ] why didn't i hit her oh well there you go that that's also a way to do it i did it nothing changed and suddenly i beat her i've never okay i can't even really explain how i did that well that's going to be nice in the video when i have to explain like what the strategy was i don't know i just avoided her for some reason i guess this is just suddenly out of the for no reason getting good or something i don't know well there you go that's pretty nice i have no idea how i did that but i'm sure it's how good that i did because now we have access to drangleic castle meaning only one more boss fight would stand in the way of arguably one of the best rings in the game other than flings ring i suppose oh and the red tearstone ring which i also arbitrarily chose to not pick up and that boss fight is of course the double dragon riders bimmy and jimmy now in theory this fight should have been no problem since i could use my usual strategy which is to bait jimmy to knock bimmy down and then run back and forth to bait and avoid bimmy's arrows and then take him out before he can take out his helmet of course that is all in theory in practice with my low health stamina and pretty much absence of iframes this pretty much required some favorable rng which i wasn't really getting because jimmy didn't want to play along so eventually i chose to just get bimmy down myself by shooting him with an arrow from the fork wall but then i did get the rng i needed so then it was simply a matter of fisting jimmy up the butt because he cannot protect his own ass well neither can we but after this fight we get a ring that will help us with that so yeah i would have to be a real dumb dick to get greedy right at the end hey i got greedy come on fuckinglicious i got i got greedy and he jumped away jesus [ __ ] that was stupid i guess i kind of deserved that one that was really dumb that's better okay jesus that took way longer than necessary uh i feel but okay that's what it is yeah alright then so as i said now it's time to collect one of the best rings in the game well other than the one that's literally my weapon and flinchwing and rtsr but this one is arguably even better depending on the circumstances especially in the upcoming sections of the game but in order to obtain it we must slay a horse that is inside of the castle hall for some reason kind of a peculiar design choice well actually as a dutch person and specifically one from the south it's not even that unusual as we like to sing during carnival air start and okay maybe 99.99 of people watching this have no idea what that was in reference to but what you all probably can relate to is that the hitbox is when the horse reels itself up and the one from his breath attack going right for pillars and walls that is a bunch of horse manure however that did give me the inspiration to try to use that to my advantage the manure i mean not the hitbox issues because this enemy cannot enter the little hallway of the castle hall leading to the door of the castle hall come to think of it this isn't even castle hall but anyway in theory you can throw poison knives and poop from this location however i guess he remembered that he was designed to be in the executioner chair at boss arena and not in this random place because in response he started racing like crazy so yeah it did take quite a while but as a reward for defeating this enemy we get gawa's wing of protection a butt cover that can literally save your ass while cuddling you at the same time yet it's still not better than fia but at least we don't have to pay any snuggle tax well in the sense we do we just need a lot of repair powders and another downside is that it's very heavy for a character with only one vitality but it could prove to be invaluable to survive sign of a mana and the road towards the ancient dragon but especially the throne wanker and throne defecator which would be the biggest obstacle in this entire playthrough however first up was the mirror knight and he was giving me some trouble my damage output was definitely high enough and a lot of attacks can be avoided by sticking behind his right leg however without a meaningful amount of iframes and almost no stamina this requires very precise movement and timing when it comes to when you choose to attack especially if you bounce off against the side of a shield you're pretty much [ __ ] so i decided that maybe my past self would be able to help me out given that i've fought them before with only 680p and a way lower damage output so i watched my soul level 1 nukan plus 7 broken saysop1 back but well if i had a time machine and could visit my past self okay maybe that's a little too far back into the past but if i could i would have to wave my finger disapprovingly and tell myself that i'm not angry but i am disappointed because in that video i explained nothing about how to actually avoid mironite's attacks i mean you see me do it but i don't explain what i'm doing now i am giving helpful advice regarding the invader but not in regards to the miro knight himself so i did have to dislike my old video and post a negative comment i mean in all fairness i did have it coming so what about poison well actually this would have been one of the fights where the butterfly set would have been very helpful but as i said before i simply chose not to use it but rather than poopa what about just poop ah well just like in real life you have to choose very carefully when to poop what's worse now i should have used poison instead because that might have killed him now i'm dead well when everything else fails there is one final strategy that never fails when when it doesn't fail and that's just pure unadulterated freaking luck okay nice little critical there so oh come on seriously that was some [ __ ] right there okay jesus ah okay well that [ __ ] show is over but now of course shrine of a man is coming up and that's that's going to be a lot worse so although that might have had more to do with luck than skill but i would say rng but of course luck alone will not allow us to get through sign of a mana in fact even gawa's ring will only get us so far it definitely helps us deal with the first section as long as you don't get stun looked at the fork well you can make your way to the next bonfire rather quickly however although our ethereal snuggle spook significantly reduces physical damage it is way less effective against elemental damage so with a low life bar and a low stamina bar making running through this area already extra difficult there was just no way i would be able to get through here without dealing with the enemies along the way but how the hell do you deal with this onslaught of casters hidden beasts and archdrakes under these circumstances not very well that's how you deal with them not very well now normally you could easily well relatively easily make your way through you with a bow but given that you don't have the stats for one even after upgrading it the damage was absolutely abysmal and as we already established back in iron keep poisoning enemies is possible but definitely not feasible so i was definitely getting pretty desperate here especially because eventually you will have to deal with the archdrakes and as you probably already know these enemies cheat in several ways like how they can block and attack at the same time like spearhollows can even though they neither have the weapon for it nor does the animation show them blocking to begin with and on top of that just plain dark souls 2 style [ __ ] can happen as well these enemies are unfair as [ __ ] but if they can get a backstab oh huh if i come on what the [ __ ] dark souls do i was right behind him i was right behind him and the game is like no it's not a backstab [ __ ] you why the [ __ ] was that not a backstab oh my [ __ ] god [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] up the [ __ ] [ __ ] so eventually i saw no other option than to make use of another ds2 exclusive mechanic namely killing enemies enough times that they no longer respawn and yes that was [ __ ] tedious with a capital [ __ ] however then there was still the final archdrakes near the fork wall i wouldn't be able to kill them one by one since three of them will get aggroed all at once [ __ ] this is not good that's bad aren't you that is bad orangey [ __ ] no this sucks no no quick please oh quick move move oh my [ __ ] god oh roy's resting place roy's wrestling place that's beneath the bridge beneath the bridge down where we have to fall but we have to form all the austin that's why it's resting place we made it through we actually made it through well i am sure as hell never going to do that again and i'm actually questioning why i ever did it in the first place well we challenged runners are modern-day gladiators we suffer for your entertainment but at least the next section is more straightforward frog knives are actually very functional here and you can avoid the other archer eggs by moving along the left side the only danger would be getting shot at the back but despite gaurav's ring not being very effective against magic damage it would at least prevent me from getting one shot but finally after all of that we made it to kermit the cancer ironically the easiest part of this entire area however there is something you need to watch out for in this fight when you have disabled health and that is some uncommon attacks and that is precisely what happened here sometimes germa does a sudden jump forward which is why i made sure i still had the snuggle spook on my back because it's a giant fast moving and therefore unavoidable hitbox but this way you can let go's ring take the hit instead in fact it actually happened twice in this fight so talk about rare rng in fact i got two water spit attacks as well you hardly ever even see those attacks so this was a very unusual kermit fight befitting of a very unusable playthrough i suppose but because of my butt cover saving my ass it was an easy first try victory and rightfully so after all the suffering we went through to even get to this boss in the first place of course the real boss of this area is the night guarding the door but befitting of the theme of this area i ended this [ __ ] by [ __ ] all over this [ __ ] craplicious i crawled through a river of [ __ ] but i came out clean at the other end well it was definitely time to call it quits there and end the stream so after that i got a comment about the gauntlets i was wearing so to reiterate for the final time and testing it at the start of the fourth stream i had unknowingly been playing with a massive stamina and rolling handicap shameless well speaking of comments helping me out for the fight against valstad this time my past selves comments did help me out to avoid valstad's giant hitboxes given that he is a big guy with a huge bell end so back then i didn't have to dodge for his hitboxes at all but moved back and forth instead and relied on poison when he gets a resistance buff in his second phase this does require some precise movement obviously but it removes any need for iframes since you're not dodging anyway only rolling for extra distance if necessary which now was more effective anyway since i ditched the gauntlets and during his phase transition you have more than enough time to throw some poop ah that works very well as poison and toxic do a steady amount of damage regardless of his resistances and the added benefit of moving back and forth is that when you create distance he is likely to do his projectile attack which you can punish by running around him and attack him from behind so only on the second attempt i was able to turn velstad into felt you know like enemy felt in in l ring well speaking of rings now i had access to the king's ring but instead of going to aldia's keep i decided to deal with the biggest obstacle of the entire playthrough first well actually no before that i decided that it was about time to do the closest thing possible to not make me feel dirty for not playing as my own character so in the total absence of character customization i decided to turn this generic boy this regular tom into a tomboy yeah that's the best i could do well we spent most of the run as a decaying zombie or covered up anyway and speaking of going hollow now it was time for the part of the playthrough that i dreaded the most one of the worst boss fights and from software history i mean we have experienced recently how from software can [ __ ] up their dual boss fights with the foreskin duo in allen ring but i suppose that this game had the before skin duo and what is it like to fight them under these specific circumstances well kind of like experiencing armageddon of the [ __ ] so i quickly decided to do all ask keep and join lord first by the way you might wonder what would happen if you equip an item that actually lowers one of your stats like the ladle for example which lowers your dexterity and the answer is nothing it cannot go lower than one which i guess is a good thing because imagine that lowering your vega would automatically kill you then merely wearing the sunken king crown would basically soft lock the game of course not that the game was ever meant to be played like this anyway but you know now fortunately guardian dragon wasn't that much of an obstacle because he has a very low poop resistance only three dungpies required to [ __ ] all over his life bar especially handy when he's up in the air taking passive damage while he's out of your reach speaking of being out of reach i didn't want to spend too much time in the vicinity of his giant hitboxes around his feet so i was staying at a distance waiting for a safe opportunity and then i actually got caught in his fire breath i'm not even sure if that ever happened to me before in fact does anyone even remember that he has a version of that attack that goes sideways as well but when i was able to safely get in between his legs i could do massive damage to him now even though the guardian dragon wasn't that much of a problem merely getting to the ancient dragon certainly was with everything chasing me especially because the b team was friendly enough to put a freaking door along the way and gower's ring can only take so much and every time it breaks you have to get it prepared again for a very steep price and what's worse is that it only protects you from the back but the final enemies are in front of you and remember that gyara's ring is very heavy and i only have one vitality on top of one stamina one figure and one adp so if you wonder if i would even consider fighting the ancient dragon on this playthrough meaning each time you die you have to do this run back again including going through a fog well that doesn't provide any iframes when going through it i have three separate yet not mutually exclusive answers for you no [ __ ] and way ironically merely getting to the giant lord was an obstacle as well not so much avoiding the fireballs on enemies that's the same as the nani playthrough but it's the initial overhead attack he does with a sword because you cannot iframe through it and because it actually shoots a shock wave across the ground merely moving back is enough you need to go around the shock wave while timing it with the incoming fireballs from the left side of the screen but when you make it to the boss you've practically already won unless the camera makes it too hard to see whether he slashes in front or behind him or if he does this very rare stab attack which has the most absurd hitbox ever didn't happen here but it did happen back in my broken strazo run so if you need a reminder that's for anyone who denies that dark souls 2 has some ridiculously broken hitboxes because yes there are actually people who deny that now speaking of things that are ridiculously broken and that become an immense obstacle during specific types of challenge runs now we could no longer avoid having to fight the before skin duo how in the ever-living [ __ ] would i ever be able to get past these guys under these circumstances because it's an accumulation of flaws and limitations that you have to deal with independently acting ais with no way to separate them i mean even the foreskin duo at least has spillers in the room relentless combos that i neither have the iframes for nor the stamina to roll enough times in the first place and no ability to wield a shield in order to tease the throne wanker by making him fall over the edge so my strategy was to tank hits by using gawa's ring while dealing damage using dung pies and although i was literally carrying the snuggle spook it was definitely carrying me metaphorically but that only applies to attacks from behind and given the slow and short reaching throwing animation just finding opportunities to build up toxic was already an issue and could easily get me killed however even after surviving for a long enough time to get our health low enough the moment they applied their elemental buffs gawas ring would no longer give me enough protection to survive multiple hits and after many filled attempts i was running low on items so given that i wouldn't want to spend streaming time on farming i simply had to try something else so i quite desperately tried to make the throne wanker fall over the edge however even with a shield i already have issues doing this successfully i mean it took me many attempts and favorable rng to do this in my torch and emulation run and i could very well be a consistent way to do it but i have no idea what that would be so under these circumstances i couldn't see it happening in any reasonable time frame therefore i reluctantly decided to summon bernal now i mean bernhardt for help it's interesting how the npcs for both the foreskin as well as the b4 skin duo have similar names but at least now it would be easy right uh actually no it was still a massive pain in the uncircumcised dick so after that ginormous [ __ ] show all that was standing in between us and completing the game with all stats at one was the queen herself although she's ironically one of the easier fights in the game if you ask me however the curse orbs are a problem with the slow amount of health but you can destroy them or even lure away from them depending on rng however due to my lack of iframes and stamina i would only be able to safely get a single hit in unless she does the laser attack so i wanted to supplement my damage with some dung pies however she is pretty resistant to poop huh that doesn't even do that much damage so yeah it basically all came down to patience especially because she wasn't really giving me the best rng so i suppose that at least made it a bit less of an anti-climactic fight and that was any percent down without flint's wing red tear stone ring or even the ring of blades plus one now initially i wanted to enter the run there and can you really blame me but especially because it has been literal years since i did the sunken king and ivory king dlcs since they were never included in any of the videos i made however there was still some time left on the stream so i wanted to see how much of a pain it would be to get to fume night in the first place and then i could decide whether or not i would at least want to include him as the final challenge of this run of course getting all the way to the bottom of the tower in the first place was quite a challenge in and of itself well at least it turned out that the cat ring did reduce enough damage for some little shortcuts well depending on how you fall down of course but pulling the switches was even worse than on a regular sl1 run because normally i could slowly get rid of at least most of the knights by using a bow with poison arrows which was an option this time and i wouldn't be able to hit them with poison knives from a safe position now it actually turns out that for some reason the regular ashen knights are drawn to alluring skulls in all honesty all these years i've never known about that and that's actually not that strange given that other types of knights do not respond to those i mean you cannot use them to get through iron keep for example but apparently these knights for whatever reason are scholosexuals who have a boner for the allure of alluring skulls however the mass of chat in front of the giant gate is just too alpha to even care so ultimately the strategy here was once more just trying until you get lucky and of course hoping that dark souls 2 excellent design doesn't get you killed huh what he hit me through the thing that was stupid well at least sometimes the environment is in fact designed to help you kill enemies rather than merely for getting you killed so slowly but not necessarily steadily i made my way further down the tower and after many many deaths i finally arrived at fume night to die many many more times i did try out my initial damage but especially because i kind of forgot how to fight them without relying on iframes since i last did that over a year ago i decided to come back to this later so on the fifth and final stream i first went to collect flintswing for a quite significant damage boost of 50 extra ar meaning that my attack power was at least sufficient enough however actually surviving against fume knight with all of your stats at 1 is definitely not wonderful in fact it took me two and a half hours of attempts to get it done despite my damage output fortunately just like with valstad looking back at my broken straight sword video for this fight was actually helpful in fact if you want a detailed breakdown of how to deal with few nice attacks at low adb i recommend that you watch that video because under these circumstances it's obviously not about eye framing through his attacks but about positioning yourself outside of his hitboxes but having said that as failing for two and a half hours demonstrates even if you know how to do it in principle doesn't mean that it's easy to execute in fact that doesn't really seem to be a consistent way of getting it done under these circumstances simply because fume knight's hitboxes are not all that consistent to begin with fortunately they are not merely broken in his advantage but also in your advantage as i pointed out in the broken streets of video as well as i did multiple times live on stream especially in fumes second phase if you dodge to the right you will often visually connect with the sword but not take a hit emphasis on often because there were also times where i inexplicably would suddenly take a hit or of course i would get hit for absolutely no reason whatsoever but the biggest danger by far are his fireballs because you cannot roll through them meaning that if you don't have enough space to move in between them or are close to a wall when he does it you're pretty much completely [ __ ] so after dying repeatedly to [ __ ] i was actually fuming more than he was again it's just it's like it's on a timer or as i said like a like a die you die because of a die it's so random it's just suddenly for no reason no discernible reason you get hit and therefore i have no idea how to prevent that because it's as far as i can tell it's random but i don't know what i don't know what the variable is but hey i made it this far as an absolute hollow so i couldn't give up because i wanted to achieve an absolute hollow victory there are two feet obsessed and that kind of stuff but still despite that still a great community oh no got him oh that was that was clutzer near the end i thought i would get greedy if that didn't kill him i would have died myself well uh ah easy that was not easy that was not easy yeah that was not easy that was quite rough that was quite rough huh like a basic thank you god damn it jesus i don't recommend anyone else doing this because this was quite uh quite something so there fume knight with all stats at one with the lowest possible iframes and with the bare fist but of course with the vectors are still jesus oh my god well i suppose fume knight would want to have a smoke after getting [ __ ] like that but of course then after crowning myself the lord of hollows i immediately died to the first enemy after leaving the boss arena isn't that poetic well it actually kinda was because it made my final death count a nice round number so there you have it that's how you can go through dark souls 2 with all stats at 1. probably not the most effective way but then again i suppose that the most effective way would be to not even do this type of run in the first place if you enjoyed this video then consider leaving a like and a comment and if you want to see more of me consider subscribing to the channel and if you want to support the channel you can do so by becoming a channel member or a patreon supporter thank you all for watching and i will see you all next time [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Press Continue

Views: 537,581

Keywords: dark souls 2 all stats at 1, Dark souls 2 character creation skip, Dark souls 2 things betwixt skip, Dark souls 2 true level 1, Dark souls 2 starting character run, DS2 true level 1 run, Dark souls 2 sleepmoover, Dark souls 2 sl-44, Dark souls 2 negative level, Dark souls 2 negative soul level, Dark soul 2 lower than sl1, Can You Beat Dark Souls II at NEGATIVE Level 44?

Id: xB5u0Z8xHNM

Length: 71min 24sec (4284 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 16 2022