How Many Dark Souls Bosses Do You REALLY Need to Kill?

the first dark souls is fondly remembered for many things its interconnected world variety of equipment unique memorable npcs and their quest lines and last but not least its boss fights for better or for worse these generally big dudes and dudettes are going to be the primary topic of today's video there are 26 bosses in the game overall including the four located within ulaseal as part of the artorias of the abyss dlc naturally not all 26 bosses need to be slain in order to reach the game's ending that being said while traversing through lord june casually players generally dread the thought of missing out on some amazing optional fights that the developers might have hidden away from them not killing all 26 bosses within one's first playthrough can be a fantastic incentive to repeat the extraordinary journey through dark souls but what if one's goal isn't killing all of the bosses scattered around the world but the exact opposite for whatever reason maybe one just likes them so much they can't bear accepting life without them or maybe it's because there exists an actual speedrunning category called least bosses no matter what the case is let's explore the question of how many bosses really need to be bested in order to reach gwyn and complete the first installment of the dark souls series we will begin by evaluating the lowest number casually then see how low we can go utilizing special strategies and finally look at the remaining bosses and discuss why they might or might not be skipped please enjoy first we need to establish what a casual player needs to achieve before finally being allowed to clash with the game's final boss quinn is located in the kiln of the first flame locked behind a massive gate situated in firelink alta in order to open this gate two lord souls and two lord soul shards need to be offered to the lord vessel which must be placed on the altar these items are dropped by the so-called four lords seeth the scaleless in the depths of crystal caves hidden behind the duke's archives nito set in his domain behind the tomb of the giants four kings residing within the abyss below new londo ruins and finally bed of chaos surviving at the heart of lost iceland these are the four main bosses which any player hoping to finish the game must beat all other necessary fights and progression are done in order to achieve that goal thief bravo isn't too pleasant of a companion and does not have anyone else standing in one's way before encountering him well except for himself on the first confrontation but that doesn't count the same cannot be said about nito and at the entrance to the tomb of the giants pinwheel is awaiting the player's arrival four kings also have one prerequisite before the player can take them on wearing the covenant of artorias ring which allows the chosen undead to survive within the abyss unfortunately artorius's ring was eaten by his buddy great greywolf sith who's grieving by his master's grave in dark root garden killing him is thus necessary to obtain this job to the disappointment of many although i do not understand this sadness they must have never watched the dark souls speedrun be ruined by this bad boy with the last lord that of chaos things are a little bit more complicated and some family matters need to be settled first one of her daughters the chaos which quelaag must be defeated in order to even reach lost izalith then her big son spreading too much lava around ceaseless discharge has to go down so that the player may further progress through the area once this feed is done two more goons stand in the way demon fire sage and also centipede demon however both these bosses can be skipped in a casual playthrough if one discovers a room with quelax's sister the fair lady concealed behind an illusory wall the chosen undeath can join her covenant and upon offering 30 humanities open up a shortcut allowing for a direct passage from ahead of the demon firestage arena leading all the way to bed of chaos this puts us at 9 required bosses so far but we cannot end it there i mentioned the lord vessel a key item which needs to be obtained and placed upon the firelink alta and satiated for the gate to kiln to open placing it there also dissipates golden 4 gates blocking entrances to all of the lords obtaining the vessel is no easy task in itself it is placed in the anolondo cathedral behind the notorious ornstein and smoke boss fight before the chosen undead may be transported to the city of gods however they must defeat the iron golem on top of sen's fortress to prove themselves worthy the fortress itself doesn't contain any other bosses but its gate is initially locked two bells of awakening need to be rung for it to open the upper bell is guarded by bell gargoyles in some more two on one action and the lower bell rests right after quelax domain who we have already counted finally at the very beginning asylum demon needs a can of rupas in order for the chosen undead to leave the starting area of northern undead asylum all in all 13 is the minimal number of mandatory bosses if one hopes to finish dark souls casually so only 50 of the overall number that's a very solid amount of optional content if you ask me but chances are most people fought way more than just the aforementioned 13. bosses like taurus demon capra demon or gaping dragon can be omitted from one's playthrough by either using the master key as a starting gift or cleverly navigating the map they are therefore not required but i bet the general player base had a dance with them during their playthroughs [Music] so far it seems like it might be difficult to radically reduce the counted number but rest assured many things are possible within the realm of speedrunning let us now enter it and dive straight into the any person category 80 means finishing the game as fast as possible with no restrictions on the matter of completion that means anything goes when it comes to abusing the in-game mechanics to our advantage the biggest exploit of all within this category is the homeboard wrong warp glitch i have covered wrong warping in detail in one of my previous videos which is linked in the description and also up there so i won't explain it thoroughly long story short wrong warping allows the player to manipulate an intended destination of a warp and change it for another luckily for us one of the available destinations is located behind the gate leading to the kiln however in order to manipulate the warp in this manner one must first rest at the farling alta bonfire which is only accessible after receiving the lord vessel nevertheless remember what i said opening the kiln gate requires the 4 lords to be killed and with it also several other bosses being able to bypass the gate while it's closed thus cuts out substantial amounts of the game's content and reduces the boss count to let's see asylum demon at the start gargoyles and quail act to ring the bells and as such open sense fortress but more importantly also open the firelink altipit in firelink shrine iron golem to reach analondo and ornstein and smo to obtain the lord vessel after wrong warping one lord must nonetheless be killed gwyn himself the massive wrong warp allows for the game to be finished with mere six boss fights completed less than a fourth of the overall amount that is an incredible achievement using just one glitch and might seem hard to top after all the any person category is the fastest completed speedrun so is this the end of the road when it comes to reducing the number of necessary bosses in many games there are copious amounts of glitches exploits and tricks which are known but do not find a common use in traditional speedruns their existence is still important as familiarity with them can contribute greatly to the overall knowledge of the game and sometimes lead to even greater discoveries potentially more relevant for speedrunning even if they are not faster they might be fun to perform and constitute the bases for fun challenges and non-traditional speedrunning categories dark souls is no exception and the number of quirks hiding within the game's code is remarkable i mean just look at the chosen undead having a comfy barbecue feasting aside let us investigate what more could be done to reduce the boss counter even further from the 6 within any percent even though it might come with the necessary time loss the first unlikely step is trying to bypass the very first boss fight the chosen undead encounters the asylum demon killing asylum demon is rather quick whether by utilizing like fire bombs or fighting him regularly on the second go skipping the demon thus isn't a great incentive when speed is the goal and soon you will see why when the goal is killing the few as boss as possible however things take a turn leaving the undead asylum requires unlocking this massive door within asylum demons arena using the big pilgrims key this key can be obtained in one of two ways by default asylum demon is in possession of the key and when slain during the second encounter drops it for the chosen undead however if asylum demon is killed during the first encounter he will drop the demon's grade hammer instead and it will be oscar handing out the key or dropping it whatever you decide skipping past the giant doors without the big pilgrims key unfortunately isn't possible what is possible is obtaining the ki without asylum demon being slain but how in either of possible alternatives asylum demon has to die sooner or later so how can we avoid this scenario well truth be told asylum demon still dies with the skip being performed but not really dark souls only acknowledges the boss's defeat once the victory achieved screen pops up instead of when the health bar is depleted this means there is a certain delay between killing the boss and the game saving the state of the boss fight for example when i kill taurus demon here and dark side before the victory achieved message the boss stays alive this can sometimes come to bait the speedrunners as they will try to optimize their teleports using the dark side or hormone bones as soon as possible to minimize waiting time and leave the fight just as the victory screen pops up but mistime it and leave the boss alive but asylum demon however this delay can be exploited when asylum demon is killed on the first go the game has to react accordingly and change the flags for item jobs switch out the big pilgrims key for the hammer and give the key to oscar with this implementation checking for the boss's death would be too late as you already get the jobs at that point instead the developers need to monitor the demon's health points if they reach zero or lower the item drops get exchanged this is a perfect opportunity to exploit the delay between health power depletion and boss death recognition by reloading the game using a dark side or saving quitting after lowering asylum demon's health fire to zero but before the victory achieved screen appears we can activate the item exchange while keeping asylum demon alive this way the big pilgrims key can be looted from oscar [Music] and during the second encounter with the boss the doors can simply be opened asylum demon is never considered dead and the player can progress further into the game bringing us down to five necessary bosses the next fight we will take a look at is quelaag as mentioned before the only reason she needs to be killed is to reach the lower bell of awakening which is required for opening the pit to filing alta killing quelaag itself therefore doesn't present a necessary condition if you want to finish the game any kind of simple quail axe skip could have potentially been faster than regularly fighting her but unfortunately given the level structure and her domain being the only connecting piece between lighttown and lost izalith there isn't much wiggle room in fact there is just about nothing outside of the game's boundaries as soon as one reaches the tunnel preceding the fight the only way to skip quelaag would be to somehow brute force ourselves through the arena which would mean getting past the fog wall separating it from the room where the bell is situated with this in mind we need to think outside of the box and abuse something a little more peculiar just like in asylum demons case in december 2016 one of the best known skips in dark souls was discovered the sentence gate skip this skip allows the speedrunners to enter sen's fortress without ringing the bells by abusing a mechanic called the deathcam although one does not need to ring the bells to enter sense fortress utilizing this exploit ringing them is nevertheless necessary to enter filing alta an alternative way to enter it would be by killing sif then for kings and then using kath to transport you there however obtaining the covenant of artorias requires persif to be dead just as four kings need to be defeated for cath to spawn virtually making these two boss fights unskippable at least for now anyways the deathcam is a special state which is generally used for a cinematic effect when the chosen undead falls to their death but the top down view is not the only feature involved as soon as the deathcam is active the game won't load or deload any areas or assets the chosen undead is expected to die after all in a lot of cases the death cam trigger is actually separated from a kill box which reduces the player's health power to zero and these two triggers tend to not fully overlap as such in many areas it is actually possible to activate the deathcam while staying alive but why would you want to do it and simulate the original grand theft auto in dark souls in order to save computing power the game loads assets to areas later than the areas themselves in the case of the sense fortress deathcam the start of the fortress is loaded at that point while the gate is not it was this 2016 discovery which prompted the community to explore other areas of the game for potential deathcam skip spots the speedrunner kumul was the one to look for possibilities in heavily vertical blighttown for his words it naturally had to be in some weird place because one needed to hit the deathcam while falling but then ending up someplace safe kamul managed to find such a place utilizing some crafty parkour and proceeded to navigate through the swamp eagerly awaiting what would be loaded and what wouldn't [Music] so [Music] to his surprise both the entrance and the balfour gates were loaded quelac was loaded as well including her ai attacking the chosen undead as he tried to navigate around her arena blindly but how so the death cam was activated so far away from the fight there is no way all of that is loaded the entire time right the suspicion is correct as none of these assets are loaded at the time of triggering the death camp so what's the culprit you might have guessed it by now the opening kwela cutscene which plays after entering the fight is responsible when entering the arena for the first time a trigger initiating certain event script calls is activated the calls work normally even while in the deathcam state and they play the cutscene load quelag her ai and also the further four gates however the whole process happens only on the first go and on recurring instances no event scripts are called which means no cut scene no quail arc and also no fog gate as such the quail arc fight has to be entered first and left afterwards then the fight is entered again but with the death cam activated unfortunately this is the reason why quellax skip turns out to be much slower than fighting her regularly once the pesky fog gate is bypassed the task is not over yet as the entire room with the bell is considered to be part of quelax arena performing the save and quit there would thus put you back in front of the first four gates luckily a further area is also loaded and thus navigating outside of the room just by the stairs is possible once the saving quit is performed the bell can be run freely while quilac is still chilling in her domain you can easily choose her from here but that is not what we are after is it down to just 4 bosses once the chosen undead slays iron golem atop of saints fortress they are deemed worthy of entering anorendo the city of gods a little ring spawns in the middle of the arena and upon interacting with it a cutscene in which a group of batwing demons transport the player to the intended destination place they could certainly be a little bit more attentive but i suppose they get the job done the issue facing the speedrunners here is quite different than in the cases of asylum demon or quaylock in both those instances the desired destination was directly connected to the bosses arena and simply blocked away either by a locked door or by a fog gate with our own golem however we are at a dead end the only way to progress is by essentially getting teleported through interacting with an object which spawns only after iron golem's defeat this unprecedented situation will yet again necessitate an original solution analondo is above sense fortress all the way behind this fortification or so it is made to seem exploring the area within a map viewer reveals that it is not exactly the case and parts of analondo are situated on the same footing as the iron golem arena could there be a way to exploit this in video games there are certain interactions or particular attacks which are programmed in a very rigid way quite often with some creative inputs these setting stone animations can be exploited to speedrunners advantage one example might be the partake skip from dark souls 3 where a hard-coded grab animation is abused to clip out of balance iron golem does have a relatively varied moveset containing the grab attack within it getting grabbed and thrown by the golem is known to have some fascinating results such as bypassing kill boxes surrounding the arena and surviving to fall down to the bottom of the fortress there is no way such a throw could get us through the wall separating the arena from anor londo or far enough to reach it for that matter [Music] besides hard-coded animations there is another potentially exploitable area in video games animation overlaps in ds1 particularly certain animations might be skipped if they are initiated on the same frame as the player suffers a hit from an enemy in this case even though entering a 4 gauge should grant me invincibility frames i was attacked by a hollow on the very first frame of the animation instead of playing out fully the animation is cancelled but the four gates still dissipates this principle can be applied to enemies attempting a grab attack if an enemy takes damage on the very first frame of them grabbing the chosen undead this happens [Music] the nature of the launch depends on the difference between players positioned on the frame of the grab and the position where the grab attempts to put them with such a high velocity collision is a mere suggestion as the game's engine fails to check for it on time with iron golem's case the grab cancel has been utilized to cheese the boss by leaving his arena after the fight had been initiated as kamul demonstrates in this 2017 he's all bosses run however reaching analondo with this exploit is not possible as the distance covered is quite short so what do we do about it can we not make this strategy work after all well in may 2018 dark souls remastered released running at smooth 60 frames per second as you probably know physics engines in video games tend to be tied to frame rates and jumping from 30 to 60 fps is quite the difference this difference manifests besides many other instances during a grab cancel as well although i must note the framerates are not the only shenanigans at play here with the proper lineup which is not consistent at all given the nature of the trick and it being frame perfect the chosen undead can end up reaching analondo which loads in time for them to land on a piece of collision and not just fall into the void but this area is out of bounds so how do we get back within the map's boundaries you know how i talked about the homework wrong warp earlier there's another way of activating the wrong warp exploiting the ability to force quit the game during a loading screen again i don't want to go into too much detail as my 80 4 squid world record history video covers this topic thoroughly in short foursquare wrong warping puts the player to a fail-safe location within an area arbitrarily selected by the developers without having to rest at a bonfire within that specific area unlike with the homework wrong warp for anor londo the location is its very beginning making the skip go from iron golem precisely to the originally desired destination the chosen undead arrives at the iron golem skip puts the remastered version of dark souls down to just three bosses an outstanding achievement by the speedrunning and glitch hunting community unfortunately this particular skip is a terrible one to execute relying on enemy ai is always a nuisance let alone when one needs to line up the balls line up themselves and then frame perfectly cancel a specific attack given this and also where the player ends up after performing the skip it is obvious why simply killing the golem presents the faster option let's now pay attention to the three remaining boss fights the bell gargoyles ornstein and smo and gwyn none of which at the moment can be skipped goggles are the ones who could be skipped at least in theory ringing the bell they guard isn't directly tied with the state of the boss fight and as such similar opportunity as with krelac presents itself however the issue are available death counts the one regularly used for the aforementioned sensegate skip represents the closest one the upper floor of the church is loaded at the point of its activation but unfortunately there are two letters leading up to the gargles arena as i mentioned earlier assets to areas are loaded in later than the areas themselves and with this deathcam the ladders are not present making the rooftop out of reach so while in theory skipping goggles to ring the bell might be possible we currently do not have a way to do so moving on with ornstein's mode the situation is reversed there's a suitable deathcam available near the cathedral even though its properties differ from the ones we have examined earlier this deathcam doesn't consist of a plane separated from a kill box and is instead programmed to kill the player upon landing on solid ground with the use of fall control this death cam can however be delayed for as long as the spell is active while in this death cam the ominous fight is loaded allowing us to enter it just like with quelaag it is even possible to bypass either of the two four gates separating the elevators from the fight's battleground unfortunately there are two problems first fall control runs out way before that point is reached killing the chosen undead second even if fall control's limited duration wasn't an issue the elevators do not activate until the fight's super phase is finished making any effort in reaching them a deadlock while we have seen a skip be possible when progression was tied to boss's death in the case of iron golem and super ornstein even enjoys a grab attack in his arsenal it is not possible to gain any height in order to reach the arena's upper level by abusing it due to all the problems presented it doesn't look like we'll be getting a skip for this iconic duo any time soon skipping gwyn is the most improbable of all bosses both the game's endings are tied to his death whether one chooses to exit the arena and become the dark lord or link the flame instead there are games which do not connect credits triggers directly to the final boss's status such as in prince of persia the sense of time but it is possible to activate the ending by hitting a trigger high up above the level [Applause] dark souls however does not present any such opportunities so unless a way to manipulate event flags to start one of the endings without killing win is discovered there is pretty much no way of bypassing the plimplin plan still being able to finish dark souls with mere 3 bosses killed is outstanding it is less than a fourth of the casually required bosses and 23 fights remain untouched overall miyazaki was completely okay with hiding content from the players but i do not think this is what he envisions although all three remaining bosses seem unlikely to be circumvented new strategies and glitches are being actively sold out and discovered by the speedrunners even a decade after the game's release it is quite possible that in the future this video might need some updating if you don't want to miss any new discoveries consider subscribing to the channel as i will surely cover them until then thank you for watching and have a great day you

Channel: catalystz

Views: 662,977

Keywords: catalystz, catalyst, speedrun, dark souls, How Many Dark Souls Bosses, Dark Souls bosses to kill, how many bosses in dark souls, dark souls bosses, dark souls all bosses, dark souls speedrun explained, least bosses, skip dark souls bosses, speedrun documentary, dark souls speedrun documentary, dark souls speedrun, dark souls skips, dark souls boss fight, dark souls in 3 bosses, dark souls remastered, How Many Dark Souls Bosses Do You REALLY Need to Kill?, dark souls funny, twitch

Id: UHqWjTcAlW0

Length: 25min 44sec (1544 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021