Dark Souls All Achievements Speedrun World Record in 1:59:47 (With Commentary)

Hello! My name is catalystz and you are watching the world record of the first ever Dark Souls All Achievements speedrun completed under two hours. Achieving this took me more than 3 months of grinding and I am extremely proud to present it to you now. For most of the run, I will be explaining the thought process behind it, detailing the glitches, elaborating on the routing and providing other trivia, with the goal of making the run more understandable and enjoyable! One more thing to note is that this is the Remastered version of the game, which has a separate set of leaderboards from the original. Dark Souls has 41 achievements, or trophies, whatever you prefer, to be claimed. The goal of this speedrun is to obtain them all as fast as possible. Some of them are really trivial, like obtaining the Estus Flask or entering Anor Londo, but others take effort, like collecting all pyromancies, sorceries or miracles. The most important of all, however, is the Knight’s Honor achievement about collecting weapons. Most of this run’s routing revolves around it and the others are almost done as a side-product. Some of the weapons on the list have a random drop chance, meaning I will have to attempt to farm them by repeatedly killing the corresponding enemies. Farming is what determines a huge portion of the run’s quality. I start as a thief, as the class has the Master Key by default and choose the pendant, YES, THE PENDANT, so I can later trade it with snuggly for the Souvenir of Reprisal, one of the three necessary covenant items for this run, otherwise it would have to be farmed in the Painted World. After triggering the boulder, I run down to open the shortcut door, as I will have to come back later to kill the hollowed Oscar and pickup his Crest Shield. Two-handing the bandit knife allows me to have more DPS on the Asylum Demon and while staying behind him, I am hoping to keep on getting his favorable swing attack. This save and quit, or quitout for short, is performed to skip the long door opening animation. In order to ensure fairness and consistency of timing between different machines and platforms, the in-game time is used to time the speedruns, meaning the loading screens do not count towards the final time. What you see on the splits is directly connected to the in-game timer running within the game’s memory, tied to the save file. Upon leaving the Asylum and getting our second achievement, yay, the goal is to proceed with ringing the first Bell of Awakening and then talking to Oswald. First, however, I need to conduct some business with the Undead Merchant. Unfortunately, I’m kind of broke at the moment, so I will pick up the soul located behind the initial fog wall in Undead Burg and perform the first major glitch of the run – the quantity usage. Quantity usage abuses the ability to open two different menus at the same through a different glitch called prompt swap, more on that later. By overlapping two different prompts, it is possible to manipulate a previously stored quantity into one of them. Here I will overlap the quantity prompt while using a consumable and the prompt to reset the brightness settings. Any loading screen sets the default quantity to 0, allowing for up to 99 to be selected. This allows me to use the single picked up soul 99 times and thus have enough resources to purchase everything from the Undead Merchant. The items of choice are Throwing Knives, Firebombs, Lloyd’s Talismans for mimics, the Bottomless Box for a glitch later on, Residence Key to free Griggs, the Scimitar, a bow, a shield and two sets of arrows. As I said, I want to free Griggs on the way, so I will perform a Lower Undead Burg Skip by jumping on this railing and quitting out as the character touches it. As long as I stay on the railing for long enough, the game will store my position there. Unfortunately, I get a bit unlucky and the position is stored too close to the edge so I slide off after the first quitout. Then, the momentum generated by left-handed L2 attack of the hilt is used to land on the lower wall and then I drop to Lower Burg. Navigating around the dogs can be tricky, but the pattern is nice and before opening Griggs’ door I quitout again. This time to reset the dogs back to their default locations. After the quitout I do a small Griggs skip, where the range to open the doors is extends further than the range of the sorcerer’s dialogue. If a dialogue is active, no actions can normally be performed, so this saves a bit of time and also protects me from the dog because the door opening animation has invincibility frames. Another quitout is performed on these doors to reset the dogs back to lower burg, which would otherwise have a decent chance of tearing me to shreds. The quitout at least skips part of the door opening animation, so it loses a less than regularly. These burg quitouts are essential, as without them the number of extra resets I’d do would make the speedrun extremely tedious and not fun. Next, I pick up the important Gold Pine Resin, as that will be the main source of damage on the next two bosses, with Taurus Demon being particularly weak to lightning. I also equip the Scimitar during the chest opening animation. Quick jump around the barrel allows me to progress quickly and up we go. Throughout the run, I will attempt to do most of the necessary equipment menuing during animations such as fog gates, ladders or bonfire warps as to minimize time loss. Here I apply the resin in position that gives me a chance to have the animation cancelled by an arrow, which I was lucky to get. Taurus staggers on the fourth hit with the Scimitar, so the strategy is to attack three times, regenerate stamina to full, unleash a combo of R1s and then finish him with an R2 attack. You notice that I equipped the bow and previously arrows as well. The two sets I had purchased are so that I can attempt to drop one set of them, making the game store that quantity, while also having the other set equipped and usable. I use the shortbow to aggro the Hellkite Drake and make him drop on the bridge, then I quickly apply the resin with good position to dodge shots from the Hollow archer who survives Hellkite’s initial onslaught and then I cut the drake’s tail. Dragon tails are necessary for the Knight’s Honor achievement – those are Hellkite’s, Gaping’s, Priscilla’s, Seath’s and the Stone Dragon’s. The shield is now equipped in the right hand so it can be used to push enemies out of the way in the hollow room. Having the hilt in my left hand also allows me to block, which means I can get a roll out of a sprint, instead of a jump. It is possible to rebind jump in the remaster, but that can compromise precision, so I prefer to play the standard way. The gate here is not closed because I outrun the hollow who’s scripted to close it. Before going to Gargoyles, I activate the shortcut to use couple of times later. Gargoyles stagger after three hits, so the strategy is similar as on Taurus. On this fog gate I also place my mouse cursor in a specific spot, which play a big role shortly. I get a good opener which allows me to actually use a firebomb in place of a regular attack while my stamina is regenerating. This way I get a second stagger and can just finish off the Gargoyle afterwards. I do a lot of menuing here on the ladder, most of it is to reorganize my inventory for later things in the run. I then queue up dropping the stack of wooden arrows, and because I have 999 of them, the game stores that value of 999 in the memory. Then, I yet again perform the quantity usage glitch, but this time I can manipulate the stored quantity of 999 into the prompt. I need these souls for upcoming NPC purchases. After ringing the bell and collecting another achievement, I drop to Oswald to purchase Homeward Bones to use for the run, his miracle, two Rings of Sacrifice for two planned deaths and then perform a Prompt Swap glitch. I mentioned prompt swap previously when Quantity Using at the Undead Merchant. Prompt Swap abuses the ability to use the mouse and controller simultaneously. Here at Oswald, I will attempt to purchase an item with a controller, while clicking on the spell tab which switches the merchant’s item category with the mouse at the same time. This will allow me to carry the purchase prompt from the Bloodbite Ring into an empty tab of Spells. Confirming this tab purchases an invalid item, however, spells count as Goods and Goods also include consumables. The Bloodbite Ring’s ID is 109 and there is a consumable sharing this ID – The Eye of Death. This way, I can easily obtain the second necessary covenant item without having to pick it up later. Prompt Swap will be abused several more times throughout the run with various uses. For those keen to understand it further, I have a full video covering it and its origin story. After using the Homeward Bone to return to Firelink, the next goals are to pick up the Red Tearstone Ring, purchase initial sorceries from Griggs and then head to Anor Londo. The Red Tearstone is a crucial item for the speedrun, as it doubles or even triples the player’s damage based on the damage calculations while they are under 20% health. This means that in many fights, getting hit even once will result in a death. Lautrec is killed so that the Firelink Shrine bonfire remains usable. Here on the elevator, I quantity use humanities. I will be offering them later to the Fair Lady to open the Izalith shortcut and also having up to 10 soft humanities increases the player’s item discovery. As I am running through the valley, I want to address one thing you might have noticed – I constantly swap, or toggle, my weapons. I do this in order to speed up the acceleration animation and it basically allows me to start sprinting a little bit sooner. It’s a tiny time save each time but it adds up over the course of the run and I assume saves me at least 5 seconds. It’s also something to do when just running around. By the Undead Dragon I pick up the Dragon Crest Shield for Knight’s Honor, but it’s also going to be my main shield of choice for most of the run. I’ve also picked up two extra souls which I will quantity use in order to level up for the O&S fight. From Griggs, I purchase Fall Control, Great Soul Arrow, Great Heavy Soul Arrow, both of his rings and the Sorcerer’s Catalyst. The Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring boosts sorcery damage by 20 to 25%, while the Lingering one increases duration of buffs. After quantity using the two picked up souls, I equip the newly purchased gear and head over towards Undead Parish in order to perform the first major sequence break of the run – the Sen’s Gate Skip, but first I quitout to reset the enemies chasing me. This skip abuses a specific state of the game called the Death Camera, or Deathcam, which is usually activated when the player falls off a platform and is going to die a horrible death. Generally, however, the triggers for activating deathcam and reducing the player’s health to zero are separated and do not overlap. This is exactly what I will abuse. After baiting a hollow to follow me, I will precisely position myself on the stairs and through parry and riposte force my character partially through the wall just enough to collide with the deathcam trigger, but not with the killbox, which is situated slightly lower. While in this state, the game stops loading or deloading anything. The developers expect the player to die after all. However, in order to save computing power, assets to areas are loaded later than the areas themselves. At the moment of this deathcam’s activation, the start of Sen’s Fortress is loaded, while its closed gate is not, allowing me to enter the fortress without ringing both Bells of Awakening. If you want further visual demonstration, I have a video covering this skip and it will be linked in the description. I also rest at the Undead Parish bonfire to level Attunement, Strength to use the Dragon Crest Shield, Dexterity which up to 45 increases casting speed and Intelligence to 75, as I need to keep some souls for Giant Blacksmith. I also attune the three sorceries I purchased. To get rid of the Deathcam, a simply quitout is performed after passing the usually closed gate. If the quitout is always done in a similar place, the pendulum cycles here in the Fortress will be consistent, since they reset after a loading screen. Navigating through it then shouldn’t be a problem. There are several ways to free Logan, but I will literally use the power of my body to break the sealed wall. The standup animation of the character has destructive properties, this is to prevent the player from somehow getting stuck after loading their savefile. The issue is that the ground leading up to the wall has unstable property, meaning it does not store the player’s position, so I cannot just walk up to the wall and quitout. Instead, I need to jump over the unstable ground right into the wall. This is done by dropping this cell from the bridge and then jumping from there into the wall at a relatively specific angle next to the snake. I briefly switch to mouse and keyboard for this skip, as it is easier to perform. Furthermore, you might have noticed the instant jump off the cage, this is because as I land on it, I am already holding sprint and during the small landing stagger, the game basically charges up the sprint already and when I hold the jump button, the game simply performs a jump as soon as possible. I also bound the confirmation button to my mousewheel, allowing me to quickly scroll through long NPC dialogues. I pick up this Soul of Hero and finally free Logan. Progressing his quest line is not just necessary to obtain more powerful sorceries to use, but also to obtain all the sorceries for the achievement. This quitout is done to reset the boulder in order to not have to wait for as long at the bottom of the staircase for it. I first head downstairs to pick up the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring which will in combination with the 10 Humanities max out my Item Discovery. Normally, several boulders need to stack up and only then will the wall here break, but if I put my body between the boulder and the wall, I can break the wall immediately. While waiting I also dropped an item I won’t need anymore. I will be doing this throughout the run to keep my inventory clean, primarily for weapon upgrades at blacksmiths. I can even drop the armaments required for Knight’s Honor, as they just need to be in my inventory at some point, not all at once. The mimic here is put to sleep using a Lloyd’s Talisman and the Lightning Spear will be used to not just fully upgrade a Lightning Weapon, but upgrading it to +15 for another achievement and also to ascend it via a boss soul at the very end. Then I quitout next to this elevator and although elevators don’t store the player’s position because of their unstable property, here I am standing up so close that the elevator picks me up anyways. The lever here is pulled so we can progress Siegmeyer’s questline, because as he moves to Firelink later on, he gives away a miracle. Now let’s progress towards Iron Golem. Another soul is picked up because the build used is obviously quite resource heavy, there are two more separate level ups I will need to do. Fighting Iron Golem atop of Sen’s Fortress has a special strategy. Dealing 400 damage beneath his knees will make him stagger. One Great Heavy Soul Arrow with the Bellowing Ring equipped will be enough for that. Another 200 damage makes him fall on his butt; a Great Soul Arrow will suffice. I will try to do it in a way to angle the golem perpendicular enough to the side of the bridge to make him fall off. Then I roll into the fire on the ground and toggle my weapon to perform a toggle escape. Toggling a weapon takes priority over almost any other animation, including the stagger from being hit by most attacks. This way I can survive and simply make it to the ring taking me to Anor Londo. After entering the city of gods, I proceed to take the first bonfire in order to have it accessible later and then perform one of the several ways of avoiding fall damage in Dark Souls – this one is called Fall Control quitout. Fall Control normally prevents non-lethal fall damage from occurring. By non-lethal I mean fall damage which doesn’t kill the player from full health. However, what it also does is delaying the lethal fall damage from being inflicted to the character. This can be abused, because the player’s position is stored immediately upon landing and before the delay passes and the damage occurs, I can simply perform a quitout. Upon loading back in, the game will spawn me at the bottom of the fall but alive. This is obviously faster than simply taking the elevator. For the rafters, I equip the Dragon Crest Shield for more blocking stability and the East-West shield goes into my right to once again be able to push enemies out of the way. The Painting Guardians can sometimes present quite a big problem and this is the fastest way of dealing with them. I will also break the chandelier while purposefully taking damage in order to start setting up my health for Red Tearstone Ring’s or RTSR’s activation. Now instead of going around to enter the cathedral, I will execute the Silver Knight Archer Skip. First, I enter the elevator and turn its lever. A quitout will follow to place me back on the last stable position, that is to the last location before entering the elevator. I then perform another glitch to avoid fall damage – Air Rolls. Air Rolls in the Remaster are quite simple, as long as the player is between 25 and 29 % equipment weight load, they will be allowed to continuously chain rolls even when mid-air. This is why I unequipped the Dragon Crest Shield and equipped the thief set. I explain Air Rolls with more detail in my video about Blighttown Skip. With proper timing of the first roll, the last roll’s invincibility frames can be exploited to avoid incoming fall damage, unless Fall Control is active, then simply being in the roll animation at the bottom of the fall is enough. Furthermore, the subsequent deathcam works a little different than the one used for Sen’s Gate Skip. This one is just a singular plane programmed to kill the player once they land on flat ground, however, Fall Control prevents that interaction from occurring, as long as it lasts. In order to keep the buff for long enough, I equipped the Lingering Dragoncrest Ring which boosts its duration from 30 to 45 seconds. With this deathcam, I am able to run past a shortcut door directly to the Giant Blacksmith. This is not only slightly faster than running around to enter the cathedral, but saves substantial amount of time when visiting the Blacksmith is necessary. From him, I get a max stack of Large Titanite Shards, 16 Green Titanite Shards and Giant’s Halberd for Knights Honor. Coming up next is quite a difficult and random fight, Ornstein and Smough. The strategy in phase one is to kill Ornstein, because Super Smough is easy to stagger lock in phase two. Depending on the opener, I will try to separate Ornstein from Smough and kill him as fast as possible. The issue is that he can jump around quite a lot when spells are cast. So, let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Here I simply take extra fall damage to reach the RTSR range. Phase one went really well and two Great Heavy Soul Arrows were enough to dispose of the bunny hopper. Smough here wasn’t great, because him jumping back made me hit his hammer. Optimally he would just keep shoveling into the pillar. More item dropping on this elevator and a quitout to skip the door animation. Then, rather killing Gwynevere’s illusion, I talk to her instead, as I need to discover all the covenants for All Achievements, but joining is not necessary. Now after obtaining the Lordvessel, the goal is to return to Firelink and upgrade our sorceries, but I will first warp to Undead Parish in order to talk to Siegmeyer and make him progress further. Warping to Firelink and then to Parish means that my last bonfire will be set in Firelink, while keeping the number of warps the same as if I had warped there directly. A soul dupe is done here for levels and the spells I want to obtain. I purchase a Soul Spear and Homing Soulmass from the sorcerer, while listening to his exit dialogue in order to progress his questline further. Once Firelink is reloaded, he will have left and Griggs will be selling a second Soul Spear, which is very useful to have, as I will have 8 casts of it available instead of only 4. I level more attunement to have space for these spells, endurance for better air roll setups and not mid-rolling with more equipment and also 99 Intelligence for maximum damage. From here the goal is to get to Blighttown to ring the second Bell of Awakening and rest at the Daughter of Chaos bonfire. Instead of taking the shortcut, however, I will take the regular route through the Depths, as there are other tasks to complete there. To gain access to the depths, I need to kill Capra Demon and the fastest way to do that is to perform a neat little skip into his arena from Upper Undead Burg. In the Remaster, there is this wonky collision with ladders which I can exploit to get on top of it. From there I can roll onto a railing, use the Hilt’s L2 attack to get to the other side, which I initially mess up… twice. And then I fall off. This is undoubtedly the biggest time loss of this run caused by my mistake. From the other side I roll down onto a pillar and get into Capra’s room. The boss’ AI trigger is located by the fog gate, however, and as I never go near it, his AI never loads and he just takes it like a champ. The dogs here can be a little bit annoying, but the passive resistance from all the levels make them deal very little damage. The biggest issue is when they interrupt or even block my spells intended for the Demon. Entering the depths, I want to free Laurentius for his pyromancies, pickup the Large Ember and cut Gaping’s tail before killing him and entering Blighttown. Small little jump saves a little bit of time and Kobe with a firebomb destroys the barrel Laurentius is stuck in. A pyromancer stuck inside a wooden barrel, hm… Great game by the way, it just crashed out of nowhere. Fortunately, a game crash doesn’t invalidate the run and as the in-game time is tied to the savefile, it rolls back along with the progress, although the extra stand-up animation does lose a little bit of time. You can already see the speedrunning rule of good runs having terrible beginnings in full effect. It meant I also had to throw the firebomb again, which is not the easiest thing to aim, but I didn’t miss this time either. A quitout is needed here otherwise I would get rekt by the butcher picking up the ember. This rat is killed because it would otherwise block me when coming back from Gaping. Gaping Dragon himself has two different openers, I want to get the slam, as it exposes the beast’s weak spot and allows me to set up the tail cut, which can otherwise be quite tricky. I start the fight with Homing Soulmass as the Dragon approaches and of course get the less likely bad RNG, forcing me to restart the fight. After the initial slam, I cast two Soul Spears, get out of the way of the incoming charge attack and shoot the Dragon from the side. The last hit will both kill him and cut the tail, but not before making sure I don’t get hit and interrupted by the casting channeler. His tail cut animation has to play out first before he dies, but employing a different strategy with way less consistency just to save 3 or 4 seconds is not worth it in a run of this length and randomness caused by the weapon farming later on. With Gaping dead, we can now progress to Blighttown. I pick up the Iaito for ascension and warp back to Firelink, where Logan has now left and Laurentius has arrived. From Laurentius I obtain the Pyromancer’s Flame which I upgrade in order to see Quelana in the swamp, and also Iron Flesh and Flash Sweat, as these are not obtainable elsewhere. Flash Sweat will even find use later in the run. Then I purchase the aforementioned second Soul Spear from Griggs along with Aural Decoy for the sorcery achievement. Yes, that will do it. Since I don’t need Griggs anymore, I proceed to kill him for Hush and also the Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring. To get to the bottom of Blighttown as quickly as possible, I will do a Fall Control quitout followed by a Slope Roll. When sliding down a slope, the character technically never leaves the ground, allowing for a roll to be performed at the bottom of it. Similarly to an Air Roll, the invincibility frames of the roll allow me to avoid fall damage. From here, the next destination is Ash Lake, as there is a miracle there and a covenant. To get through the Great Hollow as fast as possible, Fall Control will be utilized, while also picking up a Titanite Chunk and Blue Titanite Chunk. I won’t need more than one of each and you will see why. The Great Hollow is the perfect place to obtain them, as they are directly on the way. What you saw there was yet another different method of avoiding fall damage, this time by plunging a slope surface. That puts the player into a very specific animation, out of which rolling is possible, even mid-air. If the roll is timed correctly, once again the fall damage can be i-framed, except when Fall Control is active, then the roll is not even necessary and the animation itself will suffice, just like in this case. I equip the Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring or SDR here for the first time. It mutes my footsteps and will be useful for not aggroing enemies too early in some areas. The Ash Lake Hydra has pretty decent tracking on its ranged attack, forcing me to roll here. Here is the one miracle that needs to be picked up and then I immediately quitout to put the Hydra back to the start of Ash Lake, otherwise I would have to deal with it. To a big surprise of the Dragon most likely, I rock up to him, cut his tail with a well-aimed Soul Spear, discover his covenant and immediately peace out. Before finally heading for the second bell, I also get Power Within. Not only do I need it for the pyromancy achievement, but it will be an extremely useful spell for the run. If you don’t know, it increases all damage dealt by the player, at the cost of draining 1% of health every second. Even this disadvantage of the spell, however, will be leveraged to my benefit later on. In order to pickup the Remedy sorcery, I now have to perform Blighttown parkour, backwards. This starts with a Fall Control quitout on this plank followed by a precise jump to the chest with the spell. Now I’ll do another FC quitout to get to the bottom of blighttown and then unequip my armor so that my rolls through the swamp have less recovery frames. Thanks to the upgraded Pyro Flame, I can see Quelaana and buy all her pyromancies from her. I also ascend my Flame to trade it with Snuggly for the Red Titanite Slab. It does not lose any time since I have to visit Snuggly anyways and is much faster than picking up the Slab before Bed of Chaos. Then, a quick GSA and a Soulmass kills her. This is done to obtain Fire Tempest, which would otherwise be available only after finishing her questline. Now I am almost done with my first visit to Izalith, but I want to take the Daughter of Chaos bonfire first. I attack the eingyi here to get infected with his eggs, this is so his discriminating friend sells me pyromancies later on by the bonfire. Asshole. Quelaag will hopefully get stun locked with Soul Spears by attacking her human part. I got a jump opener so I will also cast the Soulmass after running under her. Unfortunately, my pro-aim failed me with the first cast, so I need to finish her with one Great Heavy Soul Arrow. Afterwards, the second bell is rung, achievement is collected, Frampt is woken up in Firelink so I can place the Lordvessel and I’ll take the bonfire before doing so. I can also finally attune my second Soul Spear cast. Coming back to Izalith will be done after the upcoming two segments. I need to make sure to place the Vessel by talking to Frampt, since I will have to sell him things later on for a dupe glitch. Just jumping into the pit would make him hostile and that would be no bueno. Placing the Vessel means the golden fog gates are now dissipated and we can head over to the Duke’s Archives towards the first farming section. Here on the way, I need to pick up the Crystal Halberd for the Crystal Weapon achievement and I’ll actually end up using it in one fight because it actually packs a good amount of damage. Thus, these two giants must be killed first otherwise they would mess me up and then I kill the mimic. I also equip the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring for maximum drop rate for the Channeler’s Trident which needs to be farmed. With the ring equipped and more than 10 soft humanities, I am now at maximum item discovery of 410, giving me roughly 4% chance of dropping the Trident from each channeler. That’s not very high, so you can see how luck determines the faith of many attempts of this speedrun. On this elevator, I equip armor because there are going to be Air Rolls soon and also for extra protection in the next area. I also quantity use another Soul, because this is the perfect time to do it. Before killing the first channeler, I need to navigate around these crystal hollows, which can be quite tricky and requires some though-out pathing. Channeler is dead aaaaand, nothing. That’s not surprising, but I can afford to farm several more as long as sub 2 hours and not perfection is my goal. Now the goal is to kill Seath as soon as possible, so I can talk to Logan and buy all of his spells. In order to skip the prison section for now, I will perform the Duke Upwarp. The way it works that I first send the elevator up and quitout to spawn on the last stable ground. Then, I do a setup to store my position as close to the elevator as possible. After another quitout, as the game loads in, it actually loads the elevator in its default position first, which is at the bottom, and then instantly moves it to the top. However, because my last stored position is so close to the elevator, it actually takes me with it, allowing me to jump to the top of the elevator and out of bounds. This way I can perform a Fall Control quitout and land not just past the first Seath encounter, the prison section, but also on a floor where another channeler guards the Strong Magic Shield sorcery. Pretty cool, huh? No luck in getting a Trident from this guy either, so I now store my position on the correct side of the room and turn the stairs because it will allow me to access that channeler again if needed. The position was stored so that I could simply quitout after the staircase was turned and spawn back there. However, there is another channeler here so I of course go for and the kill and… I got the trident! It means that I have to turn the stairs again, but getting the Trident from the third channeler is really good. We call it the half cycle, since some time is lost to turning the stairs, but it didn’t have to be repeatedly farmed from the balcony bonfire here. Now I simply Air Roll down here instead of taking the ladder as Iaito puts me in the correct weight load range and I open the shortcut, whose opening animation is skipped with a quitout. This bonfire is taken because after killing Seath, more business needs to be conducted here alongside the aforementioned Logan. The Power Within is attuned and I’ll use it for the first time very shortly. As you see I become a chick with my eggs hatching and can rock the egghead hairstyle. I know what I’m getting from the barber next time. This stage always occurs after a set period of time since getting infected. I put this mimic to sleep and get the Falchion. The Falchion will be used both as an enchanted weapon and as a magic weapon. It’s going to play an important role in the Four Kings fight in New Game+ as well. I’m making sure to also take specific fall damage, including the incoming drop to the bottom of Crystal Caves. I run off in such a way to always get blocked by the top crystal and safely land on this piece of collision, otherwise I could slide off and die. Before heading to Seath, I need to navigate this invisible platform to obtain the Blue Titanite Slab. The platform is actually simpler than might seem at first and with some practice this is doable pretty consistently. Now with Seath, I need to cut his tail which might be one of the hardest tails to sever, besides maybe Kalameet’s. However, I do have a specific strategy for it. First, I quitout here before the clams. Quitting out near most boss arenas messes with their AI in some way, Seath being no exception. It leads to him starting the fight by turning around, which exposes his tail to me. I also need to navigate around these clams in a specific way and force out attacks, otherwise they could enter the arena with me before the fog gate spawns and mess with the fight. I wait for Seath to turn around and then shoot the crystal, this makes him scream and stop moving. Immediately after, I cast Power Within, so that I have RTSR and the pyro buff activated simultaneously, followed by a Soul Spear to his body while he’s still staggered, the next shot goes to the tail, forcing him to scream and stand still again. If this part goes, the rest is a simple Soul Spear barrage while making sure to move closer with each cast to ensure he doesn’t get out of range. This went great. I also have to heal up after the dragon’s demise, otherwise Power Within would kill me. You can see I lost a bunch of time on this split, but this is because of the extra turn of the staircase. I will save this time by not having to farm any channelers on this split. After Seath’s death, Logan is now placed down here in the archives. I buy all of his sorceries and proceed to deal with him the same way I dealt with Griggs. It is important to shoot from behind, because his death animation would be much, much slower otherwise. Along with the White Dragon Breath necessary for the sorcery achievement, I also pick up the Tin Crystallization Catalyst, which increases the damage of sorceries thanks to its high MagicAdjust stat. The downside is that it halves the number of castings available when equipped, but I will use it tactically. Now, the last remaining location to clear here in the Archives is the previously skipped prison, as it contains two different miracles dropping from the Pisaca maidens located there. While heading to the area of the first encounter with Seath, I purposefully take damage, you’ll see why in a second. Instead of calling the elevator, I do the upwarp again, but this time with a different position so that I end up back inside of the elevator rather than outside of it. This Crystal Knight blocks the corridor and can roll spell casts, so I use the Soulmass to get rid of him and instead of waiting for his long death animation to end, simply quitout instead. Another creature blocking the way is this Twinkling Lizard, so I kill him too. Now here’s the interesting part, right before I open this chest containing an ember, I cast Power Within. As mentioned before, Power Within drains 1% of the player’s maximum life per second. The reason I took the damage from arrows and why I want this debuff is because simply dying in this area transports you into the prison. That interaction has nothing to do with Seath himself. I find this strategy both clever and fascinating. I can say that because I was not the one who found it. Making sure the earlier purchased Ring of Sacrifice is equipped to not lose souls and humanities, I quantity use this Soul of Great Hero while waiting for Power Within to do its thing. Thanks to two soul dupes I did here in the archives, I have enough souls for the final level up of my character. Upon being trapped here in the cell, I whack the lizard with my catalyst and before he drops the key, I also light the bonfire. After opening the door, I immediately cast Fall Control because there’s a pretty neat skip I will perform. The collision on the railing here allows me to stand on top of it, from there, I jump to the right and bounce in a way to land on this upper platform, directly above the place with the alarm. The jump allows me to always end up on the platform, which is important, because missing would require a Fall Control quitout. However, quitting out resets the Pisacas back into the cell room making obtaining the two miracles way slower. Luck plays a role here, because there is a slight chance I might end up getting grabbed or otherwise interfered with. The run could actually straight-up die here as well, as the miracles dropped by the two passive maidens de-spawn during a loading screen, and getting grabbed would kill me, so it’s a checkmate, because not quitting out AND quitting out both result in the miracles’ disappearance. Fortunately, that didn’t happen and thanks to some nice positioning allowing me to kill the two Pisacas in one shot I managed to get out safely. Normally, warping away from this cell bonfire is impossible, but that actually isn’t a property of the bonfire, but rather the room itself, so simply standing on the outside and resting from there lets me warp away, right after levelling and attuning Logan’s Crystal sorceries. I get 50 Vitality for upcoming strategies in Lost Izalith and also 25 Faith to be able to join the Sunlight Covenant at the end of the run. You notice I warped to Anor Londo first and then to Undead Parish, from where I immediately boned back. That was not a mistake. Loading Sen’s Fortress was necessary in order for Siegmeyer to move forwards in his questline to Anor Londo. The goal of my visit here is to pick-up the weapons stored in the cellar hidden behind the illusory wall and more importantly to farm the Silver Knight weapons. I need to obtain their Sword, Spear and Shield for the Knight’s Honor achievement. The chances are 8% for the weapons and 4% for the shield, but unlike the Trident, there are more Silver Knights to be slain. It is no surprise that most runs usually cannot continue past the first two farming sections. I make sure to first head upstairs to open the shortcut door and to also further progress Siegmeyer’s quest. That is done by cleaning this room of Silver Knights and then talking to him. Also, this first Silver Knight is an archer and they do not drop what I need. The Tiny Being’s Ring itself is irrelevant, again, I am doing this to receive the Emit Force miracle from him in Firelink. The shortcut is also necessary to access the Silver Knights here who wield swords, as there is only one of them downstairs. After killing the spear-wielding archer here, I head back downstairs and jump over the railing so I can open another shortcut. This one is used to farm the spears. Before resting at the bonfire here, I also pickup these sunlight medals, the last necessary covenant item. I did not get any weapons from my initial cycle, which is not good. Let’s hope Miyazaki’s blessing will be on our side. The Occult Club is really neat, as it will serve for both the Occult weapon achievement and also the Divine achievement once I revert it. This means I do not need to obtain the regular Divine Ember, only the Large one, making routing much more convenient, because the Darkroot Garden, where the former is located, is going to be done in New Game+, while the Catacombs with the Large Divine Ember are done in New Game. So, I get the Spear here, meaning going upstairs is now necessary. I don’t like farming upstairs, because the Silver Knights there love to dodge Soul Spears. Well, the only remaining drop is the shield now, with the lowest drop chance, so hopefully it does not take too long! Shields are dropped by both the Sword and Spear knights, so I can just stay downstairs again. And here’s the shield! Let’s go! You can see I lost close to two and a half minutes here compared to optimal farming, but with the good Trident drop, the run is very comfortably on sub two hour pace. From here, the next destination is continuing Lost Izalith to kill Bed of Chaos and also pickup the several embers located there. At first, I offer humanities to the Fair Lady, opening the big shortcut door before Firesage and also receiving the Chaos Storm pyromancy. At least 30 humanities need to be offered, but since I have so many, notice I don’t waste any time trying to offer the exact amount. I also talk to the bigot eingyi whose pyromancies I would not be able to purchase without the egg infection. He also conveniently provides us with another Pyro Flame. Since I will be offering the Ascended one to Snuggly, I need another one to keep using pyromancies. Killing Ceaseless Discharge… is slow. So, I’m not going to do it. However, that means I need to have a way of traversing the lava separating this area from the next. This is why I levelled 50 Vitality in the Prison and why I am attuning the Flash Sweat pyromancy from Laurentius. Flash Sweat reduces incoming fire damage, which is perfect for my need. To be able to get the achievement for +5 Chaos Weapon, the Chaos Flame Ember must be obtained. But since the lava is in the way, I have to abuse the level design and utilize blind spots at the edge of the area. First, I quitout to despawn the Taurus Demons who chill in the lava. Then I cast Flash Sweat and roll over to the first blind spot. There I heal with a humanity and proceed further towards the Ember. Reminder that I also equipped my second Ring of Sacrifice, meaning that I can bee line towards the Ember and not worry about a way out. In case you are wondering, damaging Ceaseless from down here is not possible. Unfortunate. With the second planned death out of the way, another skip over the lava must be performed. There’s a good chance you have seen this one before, as it is quite popular. Ceaseless or Lava skip, as it is called, once again abuses blind spots on the ground. Furthermore, Flash Sweat and the high Vitality my character has makes it quite easy to perform. Notice that the sequence of the skip starts with a Slope Roll similar to the one I did when descending Blighttown right before going into the Great Hollow. The biggest concern during this skip is to avoid the incoming Capra Demon and also not taking too much damage during the skip, as that would force me to heal and thus lose at least 3 extra seconds. In order to one-shot incoming Taurus Demons, I switch back to the TCC – Tin Crystallization Catalyst. Before opening the shortcut, the Large Flame Ember must be picked up, so let’s go to the left here. Taurus Demons die very slowly and would not only block me, but possibly even make my character fall off the cliff with their despawning corpse, so I rather simply quitout to avoid these animations. Navigating around these worms is easy when you know where they appear. Another quitout is done here at the chest to reset the triggered worms. From here, there are just two things left to do in Izalith, pickup Chaos Fire Whip and kill Bed of Chaos. As this Titanite Demon is in the way, I politely ask him to move aside. Here on the slide, I reorganize some of my upgrade materials, this is very important for duping at Frampt which will follow shortly. Incorrect order could mean a failed dupe and a sad reset. Bed of Chaos can be an extremely frustrating boss. Fortunately, I have a very convenient strategy at my disposal. I’ll run directly into the center of the arena and instead of going to each side to destroy the two orbs and disperse the barrier in the middle, I’ll simply throw two precisely aimed Firebombs to do it instead. This is a place where mouse and keyboard are once again beneficial, as aiming with the mouse is very quick and very precise, making this whole ordeal much more efficient than on the controller. You notice the egg hatched into its second stage. This is because I obtained 100,000 souls through killing enemies. It doesn’t change anything besides giving the player a slightly wackier running animation and a new kick attack. Worry not, however, as I’ll get rid of it shortly. Now the goal is to go into the Catacombs, where I also need to offer Eyes of Death to Nito, so this means I’ll need to dupe them first. However, since I will be duping, I also want to dupe all the upgrade materials that I can now, so I’ll first head over to back to Undead Asylum to get the Titanite Slab and Red Titanite Slab from Stray Demon and Snuggly respectively. While I’m pretending to be an egg, although I literally just rid myself of them, unnecessary items are dropped, again, to make sure the inventory is as clean as possible for once I upgrade and ascend equipment. I also prepare the Pyro Hand for dropping. I’d say there is almost no time off during a Dark Souls speedrun, but this category is an exception. You’ll see later. Let’s head right to trading. Quitouts are done to reset the area and spawn the trade. Two things to trade means two quitouts. Now, instead of heading directly to stray, I’ll use the shortcut I opened right at the start of the run. This is done to collect the Crest Shield from hollowfied Oscar. The shield has fantastic Magic damage mitigation, so I’m going to even use it later on. It took a while, but I got him eventually. I was standing too close, but Oscar likes to roll around sometimes and standing close gives me a good chance to hit him in his recovery frames. I cast Soulmass to get around the hollows who can be quite annoying in terms of blocking and as you can see it is quite a reliable spell. I have to take more damage when dropping to Stray, so it’s best to avoid the Torch hollows specifically. That’s no problem in this run as they got stuck having a party in the Asylum Doorway. For Stray, I use the Soulmass again and Soul Spears. Because of the missed casts on Oscar, I need to finish the fight with one Great Heavy Soul Arrow. There’s a Black Knight on the way to the Peculiar Doll, so I switch back to the Serpent ring for extra item discovery. This dude carries the Sword, which has a 45% chance of dropping. Any Black Knight also has a 15% chance of dropping his Shield instead of the weapon. All of the respective Black Knight equipment needs to be collected for Knight’s Honor, presenting the third farming requirement, but this one is a little bit different. Because there will be a decent number of BKs killed throughout the run, I am hoping to just obtain all the 5 items without having to farm them. I got the sword, nice, but that’s also the most likely weapon to obtain as the run goes on, since the sword carrying Knights present a plurality of all of them. Alright, time to dupe now. I start by putting all of the items to be duped in the Bottomless Box. Now, if I somehow offer a higher quantity of an item to Frampt than I have stored in the Box, the game will underflow dupe it to its max stack instead of depleting it to zero. This is achieved by prompt swapping from an adjacent item with a higher quantity than the stack I want to dupe. I first dupe my upgrade materials by using the consumables I have a lot of. Then I dupe the covenant items by prompt swapping from the consumables. It is precisely this reason why I make sure to order my items accordingly, otherwise the quantities would not line up and duping would not be possible and I would most likely simply offer the items to Frampt and lose them. Now I can finally head to the Catacombs. The ability to dupe any item I have collected is the primary reason why All Achievements can be obtained in just two playthroughs instead of the regular three. Three playthroughs were usually needed to ascend three different weapons from Soul of Sif, but I can simply dupe it after obtaining it for the first time. Nevertheless, two NG cycles are necessary for both endings, having both Ornstein’s and Smough’s souls, talking to both Frampt AND Kaathe and also having the Gwyn soul. I kill the Necromancer and quitout to skip the animation of pulling the lever. Upon taking the bonfire, I need to withdraw the now duped covenant items from the Box. As you briefly saw, I have 99 of all of them now. Through the Catacombs, I’m going to first visit Nito and offer the Eyes, then I need to get the Tranquil Walk of Peace miracle and the Great Scythe, after which I visit Vamos. This is the only time I will be nearby, so it’s the perfect opportunity, although funnily enough Remastered added a bonfire into his room, so I could technically re-visit him with ease, if necessary. This is the singular part of the run where one can chill for a bit and snooze in the coffin. I usually use this opportunity to snack on my oatmeal, but it was too early at this point of the stream, since this was literally the first attempt of the day. Another thing the Remaster added is offering more items at once to Covenants, as you probably already noticed earlier with the Fair Lady. One of the few quality-of-life changes the Remaster makes. Okay, now that I got the Gravelord Sword Dance, let’s shoot towards Vamos and the item pickups. Here on the ladder, I reorganize the Hilt and the Falchion to the top, in order to optimize the menuing done on Vamos. The reason I need to visit him is to obtain Fire and Chaos weapons. Specific embers can only be given to specific blacksmiths and Vamos specializes in these two. To get to Vamos quickly, I use a Fall Control quitout. When talking to the blacksmith, I will first give him the two necessary embers, then forget to purchase Titanite Shards and be confused about it, once I finally realize it, I’ll upgrade the Sword Hilt and the Enchanted Falchion, which gives me the Enchanted Weapon achievement, then the Hilt is turned into Fire, upgraded to +5 and modified to +6, followed by upgrading all the way to +10. This gives me the Fire Weapon achievement. Then it’s reverted and turned into Chaos, the Falchion is also reverted into Magic. I could upgrade the Chaos Hilt again, but it’s going to be faster to do it later. My business here is done. Heading over to the Tomb of the Giants now. These bonewheels can be incredibly dangerous, even with such high health and resistances, so I rather quitout to reset them. Now for the crowd favorite Pinwheel. Hey, Soulmass didn’t disappoint for once, nice. There’s a popup for the Rite of Kindling which Pinwheel drops that would show up right about now and prevent me from entering the ladder, but simply opening a menu prevents that from happening and I can quite comically start climbing the ladder even through a wall. Some fancy parkour here, navigating the area is not that difficult when you know where to go. I’ll be taking this bonfire as there are three trips I need to take from here and I’m also turning human, as there is an NPC invasion incoming, which I will need for the gear Paladin Leeroy drops. First, I will head over to Nito’s domain, but since Patches just look at me wrong, I decided to kill him. Luckily, I also need the Crescent Axe he drops, but I’ll pick it up later. A neat little platforming skip here to avoid the fog gate and also the second Black Knight. There are only 3 Knights dropping the Halberd normally killed during the run, so getting this drop would be quite nice. But he drops the shield instead! I think that’s even better in this situation, because remember, the Shield drop is three times less likely than the weapon. Another small skip here with a boost jump. Tomb of the Giants overall is a pretty good place for platforming shenanigans, but you won’t see much more in this category. While I wait for Leeroy to invade, I prepare Homing Soulmass and swap rings. Since he also takes a while to die, I heal up back to full for the next fight. Leeroy drops Grant and the Sanctus Shield. A fun fact, the shield’s design was actually a winner of a Design a Shield Contest conducted in Japan for the game. The shield does indeed look quite nice, but I won’t be using it, unfortunately. Running around these enemies is pretty straight forward with consistent pathing. On the Remaster, it is quite difficult to distinguish the small, fast projectile the Pinwheels cast from the bigger, slower one before it flies out, but I figured out that Pinwheels’ lanterns actually rotate clockwise or counterclockwise depending on the spell they are casting, so I use that instead to tell. I found that animation difference quite cool. Before heading to Nito’s arena, I derail for a short bit to pickup the White Titanite Slab. Before the fight, Power Within is cast and I also Fall Damage Cancel into the fight in order to avoid fall damage. This one is without Fall Control, so I need to perform the mid-air roll. The fight itself is going to be pretty calm most of the time, unless Nito decides to start doing his scream attack repeatedly, separating himself from his minions, who will attack me independently. Fortunately, that nightmarish scenario doesn’t happen and I manage to cast three Spears before the skeletons fully engage. Nito’s called first of the dead but his death animation last for an eternity, so I use that time to drop some clutter instead of just standing around. Time for the second trip in the Tomb. After climbing the ladder, I pickup the Axe from Patches and will now proceed to save Rhea and progress her quest. Her bodyguards became hollowed so I need to slay them and then talk to the maiden. Much like Oscar, even these guys can sometimes dodge spells like crazy, but it didn’t happen this time. Lucky for me, less lucky for you, as I’m sure there would be an angry reaction to it. Last trip in the Tomb is to pickup the Large Divine Ember I will need to upgrade the Occult Club once I revert it back to Divine. I make sure to equip the SDR, because skeletons located closest to the Ember will not hear me stand up after I quitout on the item pickup, thus giving me just enough time to Homeward Bone to safety. I will now return to Anor Londo to tie up some loose ends. The reason I don’t visit it earlier is because of Gwyndolin. I needed to wait until I had duped the covenant items, but first let’s head over to Painted World. On the ladder here I swapped to the Crest shield, this because, as mentioned earlier, it does a very good job at mitigating magic damage, so it can be used to block Gwyndolin’s attacks in case of bad luck and also for Four Kings if necessary. I can use an FC quitout to get from the rafters down directly to the painting. I take this bonfire because collecting the pyromancies located here leaves me in sort of a dead spot, so it is simply quicker to Homeward Bone back. To avoid having to roll the hollow’s attacks, I toggle escape them, but that will turn out to be a bad decision. First, I do a very simple jump over the fence here, allowing me to get to the town square early. However, I do lose a little bit of time to a phenomenon called the stored roll, where the roll cancelling the landing animation doesn’t come out. This can happen due to several reasons, but I believe it was uneven ground at fault here, where the game thinks I landed on a slope and forces me to quote unquote slide to the bottom of it before allowing me any further inputs. Anyways, I’ll collect Acid Surge and head over underground through the well. Out of nowhere I get hit by a spear from the Phalanx and my first instinct is to take the ladder to not risk dying from fall damage. Looking back, it was quite ridiculous to think that would’ve happened, but while in the moment of a well-paced speedrun, especially one this long, you prefer not to risk it for potential seconds. That decision was doubly silly because I decided to heal here anyways, as there was a slight chance the Bonewheel behind me could catch-up and roll me to death, so I should have simply healed at the top of the ladder. Whatever, it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it serves as a good showcase of very random and unlikely things can occur during the course of a Dark Souls run, like that Phalanx spear. Here I finally collect the last pyromancy and the achievement is obtained! Now I perform a jump called Annex Key skip, allowing me to get to the portion of Painted World where the Dark Ember is, but because we already have the Occult Club, I don’t need to waste time picking it up. I still need to get there because of other items, however. The skip itself is similar to Lower Burg Skip from the beginning of the run, where I briefly touch a platform with a jump and then quitout, abusing the game storing my position on top of it in time. From here, I get the Velka’s Rapier and proceed towards Vow of Silence. After killing this Bloated Hollow, I quitout immediately. This is not just skip waiting for his death animation, but also to despawn the already active crows. Now towards Priscilla, utilizing invisible collision around the bridge. The Painted World was actually a prototype level From Software made and Miyazaki liked it so much he wanted it in the game. Its snowy nature, however, made it stand out from the rest of the environment, so they decided to contain it within a painting. And honestly, I agree, I think the Painted World is quite nice and deserved its place within the game, although some parts of it definitely needed some extra polishing. On Priscilla, I’ll start the fight by carefully aiming a Soul Spear in order to cut her fluffy tail for Knight’s Honor, then I lock-on to potentially see where she teleports as she goes invisible. Luckily she doesn’t teleport outside of my field of view, so I can simply attack her immediately. This is it for the painting. Now I have to get poor Tarkus’ set down here and also the Great Magic Weapon from the chandelier which I dropped almost an hour ago. The last thing left in Anor Londo is Gwyndolin. Nice backwards block of the dagger. This is actually quite a common occurrence in the Remaster. No idea why exactly, but it sometimes happened on the original, too. While turning the lever, I put Quelaag’s Soul to the top of my inventory for easier duping following shortly. I also need to run down the stairs here in a specific way, because the collision of the spinning spiral staircase does not match its model exactly and I would be sent airborne. The same way I broke the wall trapping Logan in Sen’s, it is also possible to break the illusory wall leading to the Dark Sun’s arena. The small tombstone I jump off of essentially serves in the same fashion as the cage I had to jump off for Logan. This is great, because I don’t need to pickup the Darkmoon Seance Ring, although I did run by it when in the Catacombs. After offering the Souvenirs originally obtained thanks to the Pendant starting gift, I enter the fight and hope for favorable attacks in order to close distance on the boss. In order to one cycle him, a Crystal Soul Spear and Crystal Soulmass are required. With the big blue orb or the arrows, I can approach safely, but with the homing attack, I will be blocking through it, as dodging it is very inconsistent. This is what I equipped the Crest Shield for. Then I hide behind a pillar on the right side, because going left would pop two orbs of the Soulmass and result in insufficient damage. Luckily, I immediately got the arrows as a follow up and could go for the kill. Next is looting the chest with Sunlight Blade and heading back to Firelink to finish up questlines, as I will be leaving New Game soon. I make sure to also put Gwyndolin’s Soul to the top of my inventory, alongside the Soul of Quelaag. I put both those souls and some newly acquired upgrade materials in the Bottomless Box and head over to Undead Parish to talk to Rhea. On the elevator, I do some highly important menuing. I’m making sure that the correct consumables with higher quantities line up with the correct upgrade materials in the adjacent tab. I’ve lost a run or a couple to incorrect duping here. Then I clean my inventory again and prepare for Air Rolls. At Rhea, I discover the covenant and buy up all of her items, before returning to Firelink again. Now I finally receive the miracle from Siegmeyer and quickly head towards Rickert. Rickert is the only blacksmith who can work with the Magic Ember. I already have a +5 magic weapon from reverting the Enchanted Falchion at Vamos earlier, but I need Rickert to modify it to +6. I need to go through Rickert’s dialogue once in order for the option to offer my ember to show. As soon as the weapon is modified, I return to Firelink for a second round of duping. If you didn’t catch it the first time, I am variable underflowing the items I had placed in the Bottomless Box by offering more than are stored there. This is achieved through our favorite Prompt Swap glitch. The last thing needed to be done in New Game is visiting Andre to use the Large and Large Divine Embers. Before warping there I also attune Homeward and Fireball for a Wrong Warp glitch coming up. I have obviously not collected the Soul Shard from Four Kings, so I cannot simply enter the Kiln normally. Before upgrading, I buy all the different weapons Andre has to offer to use them for Boss Weapon ascensions later. Then you see me rocking back and forth to the rhythm in the webcam, as I am furiously trying to upgrade all the equipment as fast as possible. I dislike mashing on controller and my hands tend to get tired quickly doing it, so I really have to try! Here I finish up the Chaos Weapon achievement thanks to the Hilt, as well as Magic Weapon, Occult Weapon thanks to the Occult Club from Anor Londo, Lightning Weapon due to Lightning Spear from Sen’s Fortress and Crystal Weapon from the Crystal Halberd. I then revert the Chaos Hilt back to normal for ascension, turn Occult Club +5 to Divine +5, and also revert Lightning Spear into Spear +10. The Divine club is modified to +6 along with all the other +5 weapons and I also make a Raw Broadsword for the Raw Weapon achievement. As I have said, at this point of time, I haven’t killed the 4 Kings and thus cannot open the closed Kiln of the First Flame. That’s why I will perform a Wrong Warp to access it anyway. Managing to change the location of the last bonfire right before a warp is performed, this warp can be corrupted and the game will lose track of the player’s position, putting them to the so-called default position which acts as a fail-safe instead. This position is arbitrarily selected by the developers, but it so happens that for the area of Firelink Altar, it is at the bottom of the stairs leading to the Kiln. In order to change my last bonfire while warping, I will use a separate frame-perfect glitch called Spellswap. Spellswap allows me to cast Homeward – a spell which warps me to my last bonfire – with the animation of Fireball. This animation can then be cancelled by falling off a ledge after the warp has already been triggered and before it executes, the brief period of freedom is used to rest at the Parish bonfire without the warp being interrupted, resulting in a Wrong Warp. Incorrectly timed inputs, improper positioning or resting either too early or too late will all result in failure of the glitch. I understand this glitch is quite complex, so if you’d like a more detailed explanation, I have you covered with a dedicated video of how exactly the Homeward Wrong Warp works and how it was discovered. In the Kiln, I don’t need to kill the Sword wielding Black Knights, as I’ve already dropped both the Sword and the Shield. Still, getting rid of the first guy is good so he doesn’t interfere. The Greatsword, the Greataxe and the Halberd are the remaining Black Knight weapons. The guys here in the Kiln are a little bit special in that once killed, their loot needs to be picked up from the ground, instead of going straight into the player’s inventory. Alright, two out of two so far! One more! And no Halberd… that’s okay, we still have a 45% chance in New Game+, so it should be fine. As I’m entering Gwyn’s arena, I equip the upgraded Crystal Halberd and cast Homing Soulmass. Now, depending on how many individual orbs hit, I need to switch between the Crystal and Regular versions of Soul Spear, in order to not deal too much or too little damage. Once Gwyn’s low enough, I swap to the Halberd and finish him with a riposte. You might be wondering why I just didn’t finish the fight with spells. Well, whenever an enemy is killed through a riposte, they die instantly. That means Gwyn’s long and dramatic death animation is completely skipped. Furthermore, I combine the riposte with a well-timed quitout, which puts me to last stable ground, just outside of the arena where very conveniently, the Dark Lord ending trigger is already active. Woo, alright, that’s one playthrough done! New Game+ though, is scary. Like really scary. Not only do enemies deal a lot more damage now, but there are several sections which are just asking for things to go wrong. One of the big reasons I also swap between the two Soul Spear types is because I want to keep at least one Crystal cast in order to kill Asylum Demon in two hits. Obviously, no items need to be collected here, so I head straight to Oscar. Similarly to how I broke Logan’s or Gwyndolin’s walls, I also break the wall here without triggering the boulder. However, there is no unstable ground here, so just position myself next to it is enough. After receiving the keys from Oscar, I Darksign immediately and return to the bonfire near the Asylum door. The game gave me this bonfire because I ran through the shutting cage door before Asylum Demon was fully dead, otherwise I would have returned to the cell. Of course, this strategy couldn’t have been utilized in New Game because I wanted to open the shortcut when returning back. Okay, now that I’ve left the Asylum, the goal is to finish up what I haven’t done in New Game, so that is obtaining Ornstein’s soul and then visiting the areas of Darkroot Garden and New Londo Ruins. This routing is basically because of Kaathe. Without extreme shenanigans, it is impossible to talk to both Frampt and Kaathe in one playthrough, and I still need the latter serpent because of joining his covenant and receiving the Dark Hand. However, getting Kaathe to spawn means having to kill the 4 Kings and killing 4 Kings requires collecting the Covenant of Artorias from Sif. Hence why all of this is done in New Game+ rather than New Game. One downside of this strategy is never having the ability to use the Hidden Body sorcery, but as you’ve seen through the run, different tactics for running through areas like Duke’s Archives were developed and Hidden Body would be a mere boost of comfort, rather than a substantial time save. Instead of running around Upper Burg, I simply roll down this shortcut to the Blue Tearstone Ring and run around the Black Knight, as he’s another Sword dude. A bow will be used to aggro Hellkite again, so I equip it here. Taurus Demon should pose no threat, so the biggest concern is dodging the arrows flying in from behind. I quitout here with such a timing that the hollows around me get destroyed by Hellkite’s fire, but I don’t. The Sunlight Altar bonfire is taken to have the Sunlight covenant accessible later on, I still only carry one Soul of Gwyn and thus cannot afford to offer it, since it must also be used to craft the Great Lord Greatsword. Speaking of Greatswords, if I was missing the Black Knight one, I could have run to the top of the tower here and try to drop it from the Black Knight stationed there, but that’s obviously not needed this run. Alright, now I will head over to Undead Parish and perform the Sen’s Gate Skip again. Funnily enough, there is a slight chance when performing the Sen’s Gate Skip riposte on the left side like I did here that the Hollow might catch up to me and be too close before I can rest at the Undead Parish bonfire. However, left side is also slightly faster than riposting on the right. In the early game, I don’t mind very occasionally losing an attempt to it, but late game would obviously be a blow, so how come I still riposte on the left? Well, there’s this neat feature where the bonfires which you lit in New Game are kept lit in New Game+, meaning I can rest at the bonfire immediately, without having to light it first. As such, the hollow can never catch up on time and therefore it is safe to collect the INCREDIBLE 1.3 second time save from this method of SGS. A similar quitout to the one first time around is done here to reset the incoming boulder and then I also intentionally take counter-hit damage from the arrow trap. This is so that I can have both the RTSR and Power Within active on Iron Golem at the same time and save a Soul Spear cast. Instead of making the Golem fall, it is faster to just shoot him from the middle of the roof and finish the fight directly next to the ring taking me to Anor Londo. Right after destroying the Golem, I use the Divine Blessing I purchased from Rhea a while back. It comes in very handy. Because Power Within is a body buff and is still active here, I can’t apply Fall Control, so I quitout to be able to do that. Running through the rafters is going to be similar, but I won’t actually perform the Silver Knight Archer Skip this time around. While it would be slightly quicker than taking the path around the cathedral, I want to rest at the indoors bonfire in order to regain my spell castings, otherwise I would not have enough for the OnS boss fight. Navigating around these Batwings, I am making sure to listen to their potential Lightning Spears being thrown in order to avoid them, but there were none. Depending on what this Archer does, it might be faster to let him fall on his own. Other times, as in this case, I will simply avoid the arrows and Soul Spear his face. Now that I have my casts back, let’s head over to OnS. The fight can be very scary on New Game+. I mean it is already scary in New Game but it is so early in the run that it’s not too intimidating. Of course, with a run paced like this all the way here in the late game, the nerves can also play a big role. The difficulty of the fight stems from having to kill Smough first and Ornstein second. Super Ornstein cannot be staggered and manipulated like Super Smough was and he can be pretty elusive too, with the spells missing awkwardly. Meanwhile during phase one, the opener will decide how I try to play the fight. The goal is to simply kill Smough as soon as possible without letting Ornstein get too close. While it might also seem like I am quite safe with all the health, as mentioned before, NG+ enemies have a substantial damage boost over their New Game counterparts and I’ll also have Power Within active the entire duration of the fight. I get the walking opener which is not preferred to the dash, but let’s hope for the best. I go to the right and let Ornstein attack while running past him closer to Smough, but I actually ended up getting blocked. After creating some distance, I cast Homing Soulmass, wait for Smough to shovel again to not hit his hammer and then go for the kill. One Spear and Soulmass hit make him stagger. It also so happened that there was a pillar between me and Ornstein, keeping me relatively safe, so I went for the second Spear cast immediately. Phase one done! Soulmass while waiting for the second to begin and to my fortune, Super Ornstein decided to take a break and be very passive. Nice! You might have noticed I didn’t just spam the Soul Spear casts, because you can never be sure when Ornstein decides to attack. There is no point going full YOLO at this stage of the run. This time around the lady with big charisma is shot with an arrow, as there is no need to talk to her again. Now with the Lordvessel acquired, I am heading directly to Darkroot Garden. I purchase the Crest of Artorias here to access the forest without having to run around. The bonfire hidden behind this illusory wall is unwarpable. You see, not every bonfire in Dark Souls can be warped to with the Lordvessel, forcing out some interesting routing strategies. In this case, I won’t be leaving Darkroot until everything here is done, otherwise I would have to run from Parish again. Now I’ll move towards the Moonlight Butterfly, whose soul I need for the Horn and Shield it can create. Yes, that’s two weapons, meaning I’ll be duping that soul as well. However, before I get to Butterfly, I will be killing the Stone Guardians for the final farming requirements, besides the Black Knight Halberd I’m missing. I must drop the Stone Greatsword and the Stone Greatshield from these dudes and unfortunately, the chance for a drop is 8%. A bit better than some of the drops earlier, but obviously not great this late into the run. The good news is that there are 5 of these Guardians alive per each cycle, the bad news is that they are pretty far from the bonfire. I also need to deal with these trees, or Demonic Foliage, as their official name hilariously states. The piercing property of Soul Spears is taken full advantage of here. No drops on the first cycle, unfortunate, but remember that the current pace is 1 hour and 52 minutes, so I can spare several minutes here if unlucky, and still be on route to sub 2 hours. The Butterfly fight itself is pretty simple. I equip the TCC and cast Power Within. Then I need to make sure to not shoot my spells too early, because while the boss is entering the fight, it has full invincibility. Now let’s run back again for another round of Stone Guardians. Hey! Got the Sword, but the Shield is still required… And of course, I drop another Sword, thanks Miyazaki, way to rub it in buddy. Alright, another round. I also need to mention that obtaining the Sword is also possible by progressing Shiva into Blighttown and purchasing it from him there. Maybe it would be worth if you could also buy the Shield, but that is not the case and as New Game+ never goes anywhere near Blighttown, using Shiva to get the Sword would lose too much time. The All Achievements speedrun is already the most luck-based run in all of Dark Souls, so what’s one extra drop, am I right? Got the shield as well! And still comfortably on sub 2 pace! Now I need to free Princess Dusk, who has several more sorceries for me to obtain. In order to do that, the Darkroot Garden Hydra needs to be slain, followed by reloading the area and locating a Golden Golem at the very edge of the lake. Killing him frees Dusk, but that’s not over yet, as I need to wade back through the like all the way to the side where Dusk can be summoned. It is not a regular summon like most other NPCs, so being in human form is not necessary. In order to reach RTSR range, I equip the Havel’s Shield mid-air. Its extreme weight ensures that I take enough fall damage, as the amount dealt to the player slightly scales with the equipped weight load. No shield would mean no RTSR setup. Then I cast Fall Control and enter the fight with a Fall Damage Cancel. Even with the overwhelming damage my Soul Spears deal at this point, NG+ Hydra still requires me to hit four individual shots. Because of my limited castings, I really want to make sure to hit each of them. The first easy, the second one needs to timed not too early and not too late, while also aiming to the correct spot. The third is quite similar to the second except I am making sure to be moving towards my next destination in between. Same thing for the fourth shot, but I had to also make sure to roll Hydra’s attack here. That went as well as it could. I reload the area here as mentioned and will see what the Golden Golem does. He’s really beefy in New Game+, so I want to make sure my spells won’t whiff, therefore I to see what he’s doing first. I got a good attack and after he lands I go for the kill immediately as a Soulmass Soul Spear combo staggers him. Then it’s just one more Spear. I confirm to Dusk that I’m going to help her and start rolling back to the edge of the lake. Navigating around the lake is really annoying, as the edge isn’t very consistent at allowing you to run or forcing you to walk. While rolling here, I equip the SDR, which will make one of the two Crystal Golems situated near Dusk’s summon location not hear me. Speaking of the location, there are actually four different spawns, all located near each other, but each losing different amounts of time. This is a decent spawn, but also means the other Golem will see me. I make sure to maintain distance so he doesn’t start dashing towards me too soon. I do not really have any powerful casts to deal with him, so I’m hoping I can get away before he arrives. If really unlucky, he could even kill Dusk and thus the run. He was kind this time, however, and I was comfortably able to purchase all of Dusk’s sorceries. There is just one more thing left to do in the Garden and that is killing the good boy Sif. Well actually, I also need to discover Alvina’s Cat Covenant first, then it’s straight to Sif. While opening the gate, I equip the Magic Falchion, because I want to use it for Four Kings coming up soon. I also cast Power Within and then a Soulmass. I get perfect RNG here, as my first Soul Spear connects as a counter-hit, inflicting extra damage. This damage bonus is just enough to save me an extra Soul Spear so I went for the kill immediately afterwards. Really good fight. Now it’s time to wrap up the last few remaining achievements. This makes it sound simple, but trust me, basically everything left in the run is scary and could result in a reset. Whether it’s the Ghost House in New Londo Ruins, Four Kings, or incorrect duping or upgrading, anything can happen. That being said, let’s head over to the first mentioned. There is no need to unseal New Londo, as I’ll be performing a skip to enter the Abyss from out of bounds anyways, but the hecker Ingward sells the last remaining sorcery which I am missing. Here you see me do a slight movement to the left towards the wall. It forces the ghost ahead who would normally block the player to move out of the way. Because the pace is good, I go for a slightly safer strategy running around the Ghost House first in order to pull the ghosts away as far from the ladder leading up to Ingward as possible. That does not guarantee success, however, and I can still get destroyed while climbing up anyways. It’s happened to me multiple times before. Well this time, I didn’t even get touched on the ladder, so that’s great! While I was climbing it, also positioned the souls of Sif and Butterfly near the top of my inventory for, you guessed it, some duping action. There’s a plot-twist, however, as I need to dupe them differently. Before heading down the ladder, I make sure to quitout so the ghosts are reset to their default positions. Running back from here is way less scary than climbing up, so it should be fine. Instead of going straight to Four Kings, I still need to pickup the Very Large Ember here for the +15 weapon achievement, so I head over towards the building I came from. I perform a simple FC quitout here to get to the lower floor, which is flooded at the moment. But with more than 100 minutes of the run behind us, little water can’t stop us now. If you remember the Silver Knight Archer Skip from Anor Londo, there’s a similar deathcam placed here, so I cast Fall Control again to not get killed and when getting above to the trigger at the upper floor, I quitout to get rid of the state. After looting the chest, it’s another FC quitout to get to the bottom and head over to Four Kings. I will be using a special strategy for this fight, that if executed properly, allows me to finish the fight with just two Kings, instead of all four. In Dark Souls, attacking dead enemies still deals damage to them, however, since their health is already it zero, it achieves nothing. This is different during this fight, because each individual King has his own health bar, while the boss health bar at the bottom of the screen is actually a cumulative health bar for all of them. This means that as a King is dying, I can still attack him, deal damage and lower the health of the shared health bar. This means I do a setup to damage the first individual King as much as possible without killing him and then prepare an onslaught of spells to deal as much extra damage as I can. Then, I attempt the same thing on the second king and if no memes occur, I will deal enough extra damage by then to make up for two individual Kings, meaning I finish the fight in just two cycles, instead of four. The second King always spawns after a set period of time, so the speed on the first enemy doesn’t matter too much, as long as it doesn’t take so long that the second King had already spawned. That’d be really bad. I begin the fight by casting Power Within, then I cast a Soulmass and switch to Falchion. The Soulmass and four two-handed Falchion R1 attacks put the individual king’s health as low as possible. Because the King opened with his homing magic attack, the Crest Shield comes into play as I use it to block the projectile. Then, I prepare another Soulmass, making sure it doesn’t it in advance and thanks to 45 Dexterity can connect with three Soul Spears before the King’s hitbox disappears. The item I had dropped at the beginning of the fight serves as an indicator of where the second King spawns, because not only the time, but also the location is consistent. I’ve dealt enough extra damage to where a simpler, quicker setup can be used on the second King, consisting of one Soulmass and then a barrage of Soul Spears. The hope is that he doesn’t move out of the way, making me miss and forcing a backup. Fortunately, the RNG was good when it mattered and the kill went amazing. I make sure to take the Abyss bonfire, so I can return here after being transported to the Altar and also at the end of the run, as the Firelink Altar bonfire, similarly to Darkroot Garden, cannot be warped to. Speaking of Kaathe, I need to make sure to say ‘Yes’ here, otherwise he’d get angry and the run would be over. He transfers me to the Altar immediately, but I need to talk to him first, so I’ll Homeward Bone back. Both discovering and joining the Darkwraith Covenant is necessary, as upon doing so I receive the Dark Hand for Knight’s Honor. Then, I place the Lordvessel and proceed to Andre, where I’ll modify my Spear to +11 using the Very Large Ember and also perform the so-called Negative Dupe of souls of Sif and Butterfly, as Frampt is obviously unavailable. When prompt swapping at a merchant, it is possible to select a quantity while purchasing a non-stackable item, in this case the Longsword. Purchasing the weapon in this way inherently pairs it with the selected quantity, although I only obtain the weapon once. Then, when selecting to purchase it again, the game has to determine whether to offer me a quantity selection and if so, what is the maximum quantity I should be able to purchase. It does this by taking the maximum stack of the selected item, which for a weapon is always 1 and subtracts the stack number I possess, again, for a weapon it should either by 0 or 1. However, as I have prompt swap purchased the longsword, it keeps the inherent quantity of 999, thus the game performs a calculation of 1 minus 999, resulting in the value of -998 being stored in the game’s memory. After that, going through the same procedure as when Quantity Using a consumable, I manipulate this stored quantity into the DROP prompt of Soul of Sif and then Soul of Butterfly. Dropping a negative number of an item results in receiving a surplus and therefore duping the item instead. You might think that at this point I would be quite nervous, being this close to the end of the run and with a decent leeway for the sub 2, but trust me, I was not, as I had lost close to 10 individual runs within the late game during the lead up to this particular run. When I say lead up, I mean like the 10 previous streams. Speaking of which, if you are still watching, thanks for enjoying the run so far! I stream speedruns live over on my Twitch, so if you think you’d like to hang out with us and join the discussions as I attempt to go fast in the background, it’s twitch dot tv slash catalystz. There’s a link in the description. Instead of heading directly to the Blacksmith, I need to drop down this broken window in order to acquire the Dragonslayer Greatbow. The last permanent item pickup left. At my big friend over here, I purchase Large Titanite Shards and proceed to upgrade all of the necessary equipment to the max. This wraps up the Divine Weapon achievement, along with the Raw Weapon and Strongest Weapon for +15 Spear. Then I immediately revert the Spear back to +10 so I can ascend it, which is the next step, ascending all the weapons to their Boss Soul advancements. However, I need to somehow keep the Gwyn soul that we haven’t duped, because it also needs to be offered to the Sunlight Covenant. Therefore, I make sure to keep the Gwyn Lord Greatsword ascension for last and at the end of the menuing sequence prompt swap the ascension popup into a different tab, allowing me to obtain the boss weapon while keeping The Soul of Gwyn, as material from the targeted item tab is used instead and at this point, Knight’s Honor is almost collected, except for that elusive Black Knight Halberd with a 45% chance of dropping. I’m sure you almost forgot about it by now, and probably so has Miyazaki. Anyways, I now warp to the Sunlight Altar bonfire to offer Sunlight Medals and also the Gwyn soul, finishing the collectathon of all miracles. Once that is done, I use nearby boxes as means of cancelling the spellswapped Fireball animation and perform a wrong warp. This one is actually even more difficult and precise than the one executed in Parish earlier. I mess up my position and don’t have enough time to rest at the bonfire in time before being warped back to the Altar. This is actually not that big of a deal as I can virtually re-try immediately, but I chose to go to Parish instead to make it a little bit easier for myself. Now in the Kiln, there is just a 45% dream of a Black Knight Halberd dropping between one speedy boy and freedom from the All Achievements speedrun prison. With hundreds of viewers jointly watching in prayer, I will leave you to enjoy the rest of this thriller. Thank you so much for taking your time to watch my speedrun and please, consider subscribing if are interested in further Souls content. And with that, three months of grinding for the first ever All Achievements run to be completed in under two hours was finished. Shoutouts to everyone who helped me with learning the route for this speedrun and everyone who cheered me on as the attempts piled up. And once again, thank you so much for checking this run out. I really hope you enjoyed. Until next time, take care and have a great day.

Channel: catalystz

Views: 384,733

Keywords: catalystz, catalyst, speedrun, dark souls, catalystz dark souls, catalyst dark souls, dark souls speedrun, dark souls speedrun world record, dark souls world record, dark souls speedrun explained, dark souls explained, dark souls all achievements, dark souls all achivements speedrun, dark souls all achievements speedrun world record, dark souls remastered, dark souls remastered speedrun, dark souls remastered speedrun world record, dark souls speedrun commentary, dark souls AA

Id: Ylu3_O3pto4

Length: 137min 11sec (8231 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/catalystism]

Hey! I hope you enjoy watching this run if you indeed decide to go through it. I tried my best to offer some post-run insight and dive deep into the strategies and glitches utilized, while also talking about some of the logic behind the routing.

When I started with this category, the World Record stood at 2:04:50 and over the three months of learning and working on this, I was able to push it under two hours, which was my final goal. There is obviously room for improvement, but if you want to deal with the rng, be my guest! I would be more than happy to pass the crown. Anyways, happy holidays!

[u/NostalgiaRuns]

Yo congrats, 2 hours that’s insane

[u/CarryThe2]

These videos are always fantastic.

[u/Bochen64]

I applaud your dedication and commitment bro! Gotta love that type of people and content.

Even though i unfortunately don't have time to watch it whole i have some video editing questions / insights to share.

Have you thought about adding Dark Souls or other soundtracks over the footage?

I feel like it could add that extra layer of interest to the video and enrich it.

Another (and again subjective) nitpick is the audio levels. I felt that either voice over was too loud or the gameplay sounds were too quiet.

Of course these are just my personal insights as a fellow video editor, but anyways wish you success in speedrunning and on Youtube!