Can you beat Dark Souls Remastered with only the Armor of Thorns? (Dark Souls Remastered CHALLENGE)

greetings and salutations gamers my name is kyle also known as gamers weekend and after a long break welcome back to the dark souls challenge last time we beat every boss in dark souls remastered with only archery which almost seems trivial at this point because today we are taking on by far the most difficult challenge we have ever faced other people in the past have defeated dark souls by only rolling while using the armor of thorns however i wanted to take it a step further today we answer the question can you beat dark souls remastered with only the armor of thorns on new game plus new game plus is going to make this run a whole lot more interesting but first let's go over the rules for the first playthrough i can run through the game however i please and prepare myself for the challenge ahead however once i've defeated gwen and begin the new game plus cycle i am completely restricted to the armor thorn's damage i'm allowed to use any buffs or extra equipment in the game so long as the damage ideal comes from the armor of thorns as always the challenge ends upon defeating gwyn and finally i just wanted to give you guys a huge thank you for the support on the series when i released the last episode the channel was sitting at 243 subs and today we are over 26 000 people strong from the bottom of my heart thank you for all the love and support you've shown and without further ado this is the dark souls remastered armor of thorns only new game plus challenge [Music] all right we've got a lot to actually go over i'm not getting ready for some casual challenge this is going to be a dark souls marathon we're preparing for just to give you an idea the average time it took to kill a boss in this run was 22 and a half minutes and that's not including the unsuccessful attempts so we need to make sure we are properly geared up for this challenge otherwise we're going to get absolutely steamrolled we name the character joestar because i only know my secret technique of running away and get started on our run of prep first things first let's actually talk about getting the armor of thorns unlike the barbed sword or spike shield kirk doesn't actually drop the armor instead you have to fight his invading spear in the depths the demon ruins and the lost izalith once that's done we can pick up his armor next to the daughter of chaos bonfire the armor of thorns does an extremely low amount of damage this run and to make matters worse there's no real way to actually increase the damage output the damage dealt by thorns is only increased by the amount of armor we wear and even with a full set of armor we do on average about 15 damage per roll if that sounds like a fun time to you then let's put this into perspective my beginning hand axe with a soul level 1 pyromancer does 62 damage per swing in other words an axe with zero upgrades at base level does over four times the damage i do in one roll new game plus health bars can get to be above 10 000 health oh boy is this gonna be fun looking at the armor's resistances they aren't exactly ideal the physical resistance is actually fairly good and it's got fairly average fire resistance however the magic and lightning resistances are somewhat lacking that's gonna hurt later on don't forget either that in dark souls dodging damage exists when a creature in dark souls is considered dodging they take 40 percent increased damage in pyromancy only we took advantage of this to kill the taurus demon early however this time we're going to be spending most of our time rolling which means that most of the time we'll be at risk of taking massive counter damage it doesn't help that the armor counts as unique set so the highest it will go on the upgrade path is plus five we can get the twinkling titanite by buying it from the giant blacksmith for about eight thousand souls apiece thankfully we're already going to be doing a ton of soul farming so 320 000 souls won't be an awfully huge amount it should also be noted that the armor of thorns is fairly heavy as well so we'll need some pretty large equipment load if we want to be able to fast roll and have some extra equipment on us about an hour and a half of soul farming gets us enough souls to put our endurance comfortably at 53 which can be put in combination with havel's ring in order to give us the ability to fast roll with a little bit of wiggle room i'm going to avoid using the ring of favor and protection so i can use my second ring slot to have rings more adaptable to the situation the three stone plate rings are going to be extremely useful to block extra elemental damage and the ring of steel protection is going to be essential for drawn out brawls to increase our physical defense later on we can also get our hands on the curse bite ring to help out with seath and there will be some more special rings later on that will help us in these situations two rings that sound like they could be good but are actually not as great are the chloranthy ring and the dark wood grain ring plenty ring for extra stamina region sounds like it could be amazing but it can be easily substituted with the green herbs bought from the crestfallen merchant dark wood grain ring gives us the longer ninja flip but hitboxes in this game are already weird with thorns and the ninja flip doesn't exactly help also sometimes we want to stick to a boss and the ninja flip ring can make it more difficult i did use it once or twice but overall i decided it's not really worth the extra ring slot for our hand slots there will be two shields that i will have on for their passive effects the grass crest shield and sanctus grass crest shield obviously works as a pretty great shield on its own and gives great stamina regen sanctus on the other hand passively gives a very small amount of health regeneration speaking of healing we're also going to get our s's flask fully upgraded and get a hold of two different miracles regeneration and bountiful sunlight are miracles that will both give us more health regeneration during fights with bountiful sunlight being slightly more powerful than regeneration thankfully the healing amount on both miracles is fixed no matter what the catalyst so just the basic talisman will suffice i should also note that after a ton of farming i could just technically max out all of my levels while this technically would be ideal i think it takes away from the challenge aspect of the run i don't want to just super power through these bosses with a maxed out character i want to actually win with a normal build so i decided that i would get my stats to a relatively high level and then continue to level up as i proceeded through the challenge section of the run after testing out my damage on some normal enemies in my prep run i'm not exactly confident about this challenge the damage is absolutely abysmal and there's no way to make it better not to mention that the hitbox on the armor is fairly small so we're going to have trouble even hitting some of the bosses but unlike other runs there's practically nothing we can do to change things up these rules are all we have so there's nothing else we can really say or do other than prepare for the struggle of a lifetime and with preparations complete it's time to finish off gwyn and begin the real challenge [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] first up on the list is asylum demon unfortunately the undead can't plunging attack via cannonball so we're missing out on plunging damage however asylum demon is very easy to avoid taking hits from and we deal 29 damage per roll the highest number we'll see this entire run about 3 minutes and 76 rolls later and we claim the first boss on our way next up is the tourist demon and his attacks aren't too bad to dodge although some of his attacks do track very aggressively normally this fight would have taken about 138 rolls to kill completely but somehow the bull creature gets stuck on the wall and ends up killing itself just over halfway through the fight the gargoyles were the first truly tricky fight of the run i've said it in the past but any slow fight that involves more than one creature is going to be exponentially more difficult than normal thankfully the second gargoyle enters the fray with a bit less health than the first one and their attacks aren't too tricky to avoid either the real goal here is to kite them back and forth and roll through their attacks to deal as much damage as possible 218 rolls later and we finished the gargoyles in 9 minutes flat i decided that the next boss on my list is quailag and if you thought shields only was painful then let me tell you this is way worse quality's health pool and new game plus sits at just about 6028 health we deal about 13 damage per roll that is a total of 463 successful hits and just think it's only gonna get worse after this thankfully there are some smaller legs near quail egg's mouth that are easy to get stuck on which lets us combo rolls in a relatively safe position it's not exactly a foolproof strat and we run through most of our estus however 15 minutes and 10 seconds later we claim bell guardian number two insert spider trauma joke here and after that we killed ceaseless yep we sure did capra's up next but this fight isn't as bad as it sounds on paper multiple enemies low damage they can bleed us sounds like hell thankfully the dogs have incredibly low poise and the poise we get from the armor of thorns is enough to help shrug off some of their attacks the dogs don't cause too many problems and 196 rolls later we finish the goat demon good news is next is pinwheel bad news is pinwheel is an actual boss fight when you do about as much damage as a deflated tetherball technically we only need to hit pinwheel 159 times to win the fight however the clones are the real danger here if you get wombo comboed by multiple clones you can kiss your health bar goodbye thankfully if we keep at least one clone alive it helps influence pinwheel into not summoning more of them this is helpful in managing the fight to some extent the battle lasts for just over 7 minutes before we claim victory when pinwheel died he dropped the mask of the mother i knew if i didn't say what he dropped you would all ask actually now that i think about it everyone asks anyway comments are good for the youtube algorithm it's time for the mid-game fights and the boss timers are only going to get longer from here on out first up is sword doggo and this is going to be a long one in new game plus her sword does some pretty hefty damage so we need to be careful not to get hit especially with the spin attack thankfully the spin attack is her double-edged sword both the most dangerous attack to get hit by and the best one for us to see it leaves her open to get some extra damage rolls in about 17 minutes and 415 rolls later we claimed the victory on our first attempt the next on the list is gaping dragon thankfully the boss isn't any more difficult in increased new game cycles although it does manage to stun lock and kill me at least once our successful attempt goes on for just shy of 21 and a half minutes before we land the killing blow on roll 498 come on surrender to me fiend yes i am i have reached glorious victory iron golem may have been slightly shorter than gaping dragon but it certainly felt like an eternity this boss is notorious for knocking people off of ledges and when you're 18 minutes into an attempt knowing that any second the boss can instant give you to oblivion you can bet you're gonna start sweating unfortunately it doesn't seem possible to send the boss over the edge either so we're in this for the long haul this boss was the first minor roadblock but within a fairly short amount of time we managed to clear it it's a total of 480 rolls before we win the fight after a long 20 minutes and 35 seconds [Music] let's go dragon slayer ornstein and executioner smell are often a rite of passage for dark souls players and in armor of thorns it's a true test of skill and endurance in phase one ornstein has a health pool of 2873 while smo has a pool of 4 630. however when the boss gets sent into phase 2 the remaining boss's health will spike up either ornstein to 5218 or smo to 7166 either way this fight's going to be a living hell since phase one has always been far worse i decided it would probably be in my best interest to end it as soon as possible that means ornstein first and we'll deal with smooth the wonder cat in a one-on-one this means it'll take 240 successful rolls to end phase 1 and another 378 rolls to win phase 2. that's a total of 618 successful hits before they take out my tiny health bar once unfortunately the hitbox on the armor of thorns is fairly small and sometimes when we roll into ornstein the damage doesn't actually register due to weird hitboxes even though we are clearly making contact also keep in mind that both of these characters are very good at comboing into one another it's possible if they pick the right attacks that my attempt could disappear because of one mistake another thing to consider is even though the boss becomes easier to handle in phase 2 the damage is a ton more punishing especially since our armor's lightning resistance is poor and smoggalog gets himself a nice oren pine resin i had several attempts that lasted over 25 minutes before the boss finally destroyed me this was a massive roadblock to say the least that being said i finally got an attempt where i battled in phase one for about 25 minutes before ornstein finally went down i was already out of refilling miracles and myestus flask was completely empty smoe's lightning attacks at this point could easily cleave us for over half our health and our humanity was relatively low if this was going to be the run the execution would have to be near perfect finally after another 20 minutes we took out the londo duo with a final time of 45 minutes and 31 seconds our victory was somewhat short-lived as we attempted to take on the movement butterfly after the londo duo gave us such a grand duel we were finally stopped in our tracks by a butterfly most of you probably know this but for those of you who didn't did you know that the moonlight butterfly heals itself when it lands it's usually something you don't realize because it's not a very large amount however it's just enough to completely outpace the damage of our armor of thorns we can manage to gain a bit of ground but as the butterfly takes flight again she heals off the damage we deal so out of all of the bosses the moonlight butterfly can call herself the one boss that's truly impossible to kill with only the armor of thorns that being said we have an easy workaround named beatrice beatrice meet butterfly butterfly me imminent demise thankfully we can avoid complex super bosses and unkillable butterflies for a while because it's time for the stray demon this boss in any run is practically free due to how easy it is to exploit his rng he is rather tanky but to be honest i would rather be stuck in here with him rather than one of the four lord souls we spend the next 17 and a half minutes rolling into him 550 times before he submits of all the lord souls for us to go after bet of chaos will be by far the easiest so let's start up the izalith boss gauntlet demon firesage is a vaguely more annoying version of the stray demon with his added mobility and slightly more varied moveset that being said he's only beefier than his asylum counterpart by a small margin after 18 and a half minutes we roll into him 582 times for the kill centipede demon is next and it definitely took some adjusting to get used to his weird patterns eventually though we figure out his weird stomping and jumping but he runs us completely out of estes he ends up cutting into our humanity reserves but 21 minutes and 393 rolls later and we send a report to bug splat you know in casual runs bed of chaos is typically seen as a nightmare but i'll be completely honest she's become a sight for sore eyes in these challenge runs no elongated boss fight or super strategy required just a tree and a bug evidently she's also the last freebie we get the hill only goes up from here on out usually gwyndolin is a boss fight that lasts a couple of cycles before you can burst down his relatively low health bar but in case you haven't noticed we don't do usual amounts of damage so we're going to have to chase him all the way down his hallway thankfully he's not too difficult once he's cornered it takes us about 12 minutes to roll into him 715 times for the kill priscilla is a bit of a tricky beast priscilla's shroud is only supposed to break after her poise is completely broken except we aren't using a conventional weapon we're rolling into her with incredibly weak armor which means we do far too little poise damage to actually break her shroud so we have to fight her while she's permanently invisible and while she's invisible her health bar is also gone so we have no idea how far into the fight we actually are until the moment we kill her all of that being said priscilla isn't a very tricky boss to deal with in the first place her scythe can hit exceptionally hard but it's rare that we got hit with it except of course for that one time she nearly one shot us after what feels like hours we finally defeated priscilla in 16 minutes and 13 seconds [Music] imagine being stuck in a boss arena for 20 plus minutes with a boss who has hard to avoid damage in an insta kill mechanic yeah we're going to need an extra layer of defense this is when we headed to new londo ruins to grab the curse bite ring to ensure that seath wouldn't destroy us mid-battle with curse seed's damage isn't exactly a lot but it can be hard to avoid at times either way this fight is barely different from a classic battle against the crystal dragon and after a 22 minute and 22 second fight we kill him with roll number 457 after this i decided to battle the hydra in dark group yeah imagine chasing down all those heads with the armor thorns this totally didn't take longer than over half the bosses not at all brave lord nito certainly presents us with a dilemma his arena is littered with skeletal b-boys which usually aren't an issue however neato's damage is pretty difficult to avoid as it is and i'm not sure if we can really handle taking the extra damage from three resident skeletons especially since they can inflict bleed and we already have to possibly deal with neato inflicting toxic however nito counts as their necromancer so we've got no true method of killing them so now what thankfully there is a way to get into the arena without the skeletons noticing you a combination of the slumbering dragoncrest ring and the ring of fog prevents the skeletons from realizing you're there his explosions deal tons of damage so we hope to see as little of them as possible we even get toxic during our encounter and still manage to pull through 590 rolls a time just of 40 minutes and lord soul number three is ours and then everything came crashing down [Music] [Music] the four kings to call this a roadblock would be an understatement they are an absolute wall in our run what happens when we meet a dps check with our armor of thorns hell hell happens the four kings boasts the most hp of any boss in new game plus with over 16 000 health points with our 13 damage per roll it's going to take 1 236 rolls in order to actually defeat them the normal in-game balance to 4 kings is you're supposed to be able to kill them as they appear hence making it a dps test we are currently an angry beyblading porcupine normal damage circumstances do not apply to us when more than one king spawns you are at the absolute mercy of rngesus especially in the remastered version the kings can absolutely destroy you whilst you're off screen they can spam unavoidable magic attacks sweet spot you with sword swings grab you stab you or randomly explode on you not even to mention that their damage increases significantly into the new game plus cycle and it can still get worse remember the hitbox problem we had with ornstein it also applies to the four kings making it not even a guarantee that you'll be able to hit them with every roll i tried for hours on this boss and at multiple points throughout the run but eventually they ate away at my will to keep going on this run these kings these dark wreaths this boss is what constantly loomed over me the entire run and i wasn't sure how it was going to do it there's just a different feeling about this boss than the others the londo bros were absurdly difficult don't get me wrong but they always felt doable not possible but doable the kings on the other hand they felt like a wall so can you beat the four kings with only the armor of thorns it's certainly possible but let me really iterate that this is not just another one of those just too difficult fights your fight is going to have to be perfect you need to land your roles without having hitbox issues you need to have near perfect rng with grabs and explosions you need to have near perfect rng and hoping that the off-screen kings don't obliterate you and you need to be stocked up on several forms of stackable healing so is it possible absolutely but it was when i had been in this boss room for so long that the armor of thorns broke that i realized it was time for me to move on so we went ahead and took down the four kings with a good old-fashioned sorting with our spiked sword in honor of kirk well since the four kings proved to be a bit too much for me i guess i'll just have to replace the four of them with four other bosses i guess that means it's time for the oolacile dlc the first boss on our elite four is the sanctuary guardian at first i tried to see if there were any unique strategies that i could come up with but really putting yourself in unique positions against this boss is just begging for him to poison you that tale is dangerous not to mention how powerful his normal attacks are you have to fight him head on just like a normal melee fight but you can weave in an extra roll or two on his combo attacks 310 rolls and 26 minutes of combat nets us our victory on the first dlc boss sit down sit down things are not getting any easier there are no tricky tank strats here and there are no workarounds artorias is going to just be an elongated duel sword vs thorn one vs one he can also essentially buff for free since we don't have nearly enough poise damage to actually stagger him to break the animation it took a couple of tries but eventually artorias met his match just under 38 minutes of continuous artorias combat and 368 successful rolls gives us our victory over the abyss walker sit down sit down what some call the true final boss of dark souls manus is next up on our oolacile gauntlet standing at 10 464 health manus is an absolute goliath his magic is more than capable of one-shotting us and he can trap us into inescapable combos and his range is massive even with the silver pendant this fight is going to be an absolute brawl there was one attempt where we began to see the ending just for manus to take it all away but in the very next try manus took the record of the longest boss fight in the entire run as i took the victory it takes 805 rolls for us to finally defeat the father of the abyss after 46 minutes and 49 seconds just a little fun fact to put that time into context as of recording this video the current world record for the 80 glitchless speed run of dark souls remastered is 48 minutes and 16 seconds i beat manus in just under a minute and a half faster than it takes the glitchless world record to beat the game that's how long some of these bosses are taking but with manus finally down we only have two bosses left to go calamity was definitely one of the bosses that i feared this run he has crazy resistances so much that he is tied for the least amount of damage per roll with iron golem does crazy damage and his hitboxes are insane it would take something just short of a miracle to beat him normally but during one of my attempts i noticed something weird about the fight calamite has a way to respond in front of himself and behind him as well as attacks he can choose to use when you get underneath him but what about his sides it turns out that kalameet has no attack programmed to respond while you're just to the side of him and so he'll turn to face you hence you can create a small ai loop by maintaining your position at his side while he turns it's not easy to keep yourself in the right position but when done right you can lock kalami into not attacking for several seconds using this loop makes the dragon fight way easier than before and it's exactly the tool we need to defeat him it takes us just under 32 minutes and 771 rolls but eventually we slay the black dragon let's go sit down and with that out of the way we have one final boss in our path the lord of cinder himself gwyn gwyn usually isn't much of a problem as a walking riposte doll however we can't repost with the armor thorns we can certainly parry but rapost is clearly out of the question so what exactly is our plan of action his grab is easy enough to dodge and his heavy swing is very easy to parry but the faster swing is going to be an issue however with a fully upgraded dragon crest shield we can absorb most of the damage of the fast swing and parry as he backswings on the combo however we're going to need to constantly maintain our green herbs to compensate for the constant stamina loss of blocking parrying and rolling it's a good thing that both green herb and estus almost always makes gwin use this heavy swing allowing us to manipulate this fight it's a long and silent battle as i'm using up all of my focus on this one final fight and after 20 minutes and 57 seconds 563 rolls and two tearful eyes we defeat the lord of cinders and with that victory we have beaten almost everything and dark souls remastered on new game plus using only the armor of thorns uh it's finally over this challenge was extremely rough and by far the hardest challenge i've ever taken in a video game i will say it is slightly disappointing that i wasn't able to defeat the four kings but all in all i think i should be proud of what i did accomplish taking what is normally an already nightmarish challenge and taking it a step further into new game plus i think i've really achieved something here and to be honest it was amazing to experience the end of this challenge with you guys at the end of the last challenge i said something along the lines of who knows how many people will be here by the time the challenge comes out i never even imagined that we would grow as a community so fast and so large and to be honest i don't think i could have gotten through this challenge if i didn't have you all cheering me on and constantly reinforcing me as i went this is nowhere near the end of the challenges in fact we're just getting started you guys have been showering me with suggestion ideas and i can't be more thankful to see you guys so eager to see more of these challenges come out if there's anything i can say at this point it's truthfully and honestly thank you guys so much for all the amazing support but as one challenge comes to an end a new one must begin i haven't decided what i'm doing next but i've got some really cool and crazy ideas in the meantime though feel free to drop any suggestions you may have for a challenge either in the discord server or in the comment section below i try to read each and every comment so let me know if you've got any suggestions but in the meantime if you guys did enjoy this video please give it a thumbs up pop that subscribe button and a ring of tingling that little bell to be notified whenever i drop another video you can also join the discord server to talk to me and other people in the community through the link in the description 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: 405,928

Keywords: Gaming, GamersWeekend Challenge, GamersWeekend Dark Souls Remastered, GamersWeekend Armor of Thorns, Amor of Thorns, Dark Souls Remastered Armor of Thorns, Amor of Thorns Only, Amor of Thorns Challenge

Id: H1HWvdGiIBg

Length: 30min 40sec (1840 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 06 2021