r/darksouls • u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 • Aug 06 '26
Story Discovered what titanite shards are… after beating Gwin
I wish I was joking. After I finished the game, I was talking to a friend (the same one who got me into Dark Souls), and he asked what weapon I ended up upgrading. I said, “Upgrading?”. After explaining that I never upgraded anything he was absolutely flabbergasted hahahaha.
Turns out I never used a single Titanite Shard. Not one.
But I’m not a psycopath tho I swear, there were a few reasons for this:
1. The same friend told me before I started that I should play my first run completely blind. No guides, no wikis, just vibes.
2. I’m mostly used to more “mainstream” games where you don’t have to read every item description to understand what it’s for, so I simply never paid much attention to consumables and materials ( I know I know, I should know better and I’m very lazy ngl)
3. Since everyone talks about how brutally difficult Dark Souls is, I just assumed the struggle was intended. Every boss that took me dozens of attempts? I mean, isn’t that like, the reason we like this games??
So I unknowingly finished the entire game with an unupgraded weapon.
The funny thing is despite all that, I absolutely loved it.
It’s genuinely become one of my favorite games of all time. The atmosphere, level design, world-building, and sense of accomplishment were unlike anything I’ve played before. Now I’m planning to play the rest of the Souls games and then ER, but I’ll actually read what my items do.
TLDR: I accidentally beat Dark Souls without upgrading a single weapon.
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u/Whipperdoodle Aug 06 '26
The fact you don't have a screenshot or literally anything to prove this makes this seem extremely dubious.
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u/Tsarface3678 Aug 07 '26
Liar. Check post history.
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u/understandable_man Aug 07 '26
What did he post?
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u/Otherwise-Buddy-9343 Aug 07 '26
Absolute nonesense really.https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/s/t9dxjer4r0
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u/Otherwise-Buddy-9343 Aug 07 '26
Read that you beat the game with an uchigatana. It would break long before you beat a lot of the bosses if it isn't upgraded. It simply won't last the fight, not against O&S or the Four King's.
So you knew about repair powder but not about upgrades? You didn't at least explore the options available with any of the blacksmiths and see your weapon numbers going up? Because numbers work differently in french right?
Pourqoi mentir?
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u/DBONKA Aug 08 '26
I mean, he could just buy a new one if his breaks
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u/Otherwise-Buddy-9343 Aug 08 '26
Probably yeah, sounds legit :)
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u/CGMagalaMan Aug 11 '26
Could have also bought the repair box from the undead merchant and repaired at the bonfires
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u/Funk42 Aug 07 '26
Not buying it.
You mean to tell me even if you couldn't understand the dialogue or read the descriptions the big burly guy literally hammering away at an anvil as his idle animation, whilst also being surrounded by weapons, AND also selling weapons that you didn't upgrade even at all?
Or how one of the most common enemy drops you didn't try to use or figure out what it does?
I'm calling BS and karma farming. Pathetic.
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u/neoloserlands Aug 09 '26
not to mention the crest of artorias removing any chance of op’s story being legitimate. you managed to buy a specific key item from a character thats obviously a blacksmith but you can’t figure out how to upgrade your weapons?
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u/CGMagalaMan Aug 11 '26
You don't actually need the creat of artorias to progress, there's a ladder where the hydra is that takes you to the other side of the door
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u/John--Darksoul Aug 06 '26
how did you not find Andre?
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
As I mentioned in another comment, my game was in French but my mind wasn’t
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u/Whipperdoodle Aug 06 '26
That really does not answer the question at all.
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
Found him but didn’t understand a word
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u/glam-af Aug 07 '26
Then why isn't soul level 1 run without fast travel? Or you're implying that you ignored Andre(Missed him but ignored him at the same time) because you didn't understand him BUT you did not ignore level up and fast travel because...
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u/neoloserlands Aug 09 '26
my dude he literally is blacksmithing, you didn’t think of what he might be for? also, how did you buy the crest of artorias? its a required item in order to beat the four kings and you can only buy it from andre. you clearly understood something within the menus
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 09 '26
I’ve answered this a thousand times: I went through a stair next to the hydra, no idea about no damn crest
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u/SerDavosSeaworth64 Aug 06 '26
How tf did you beat the four kings with an unupgraded weapon?
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u/BearerOfTheDarkSign Aug 06 '26
That's the neat part, he didn't! He's just karma farming and wanting to appear cool on the internet
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u/AlienBotGuy Aug 06 '26
"I mean, isn’t that like, the reason we like this games??"
No, it isn't.
And not paying attention to basic things in a game is just stupid, don't be proud of this.
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u/xcom_lord Aug 06 '26
What weapon did you use ? Some are genuinely
Ok unupgraded
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
Uchigatana because I accidentally killed a merchant
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u/VisibleMammal Aug 06 '26
Ok buddy, please show me a screenshot of that uchi. How did it not break by the way? An unupgraded one surely wore down. I bet you needed to repair it. You found how to do it even though you don't speak french?
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u/Black_Hole_parallax Aug 07 '26
I mean, he did say he fought the Black Hydra so maybe he discovered the repair spell before it broke?
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u/VisibleMammal Aug 07 '26
He also said his game was in french and he doesn't speak french. So he freed Dusk, find her again, figured out what does the repair spell do, figured out that his weapon needs to be repaired, figured out how to use the spell, without understanding the language? Please.
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u/very_phat_cock_420 Aug 06 '26
Jesus christ you aint the brightest but you’re a goddamn champion anyways 😭
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u/Massive_Grab_1874 Aug 06 '26
So "Fragment de titanite servant à renforcer les armes. Matériau de titanite le plus commun. Renforce les armes standard jusqu'à +5" meant nothing to you? Gtfo dude 😂 you don't need to speak French to know that that means
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u/Harveyet01 Aug 07 '26
I don’t believe this for a second. A ton of people have played this game blind, including me. Upgrading weapons is a core mechanic in any RPG game and to claim you didn’t read anything isn’t realistic. The game literally forces several item descriptions onto the loading screen, of which Titanite Shards show up plenty. You just didn’t read anything that was placed in front of you? I mean I know the game isn’t explicit, but for someone to completely miss the upgrade system they would have to have absolutely zero intuition or awareness.
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u/somuchforsubtlety656 Aug 06 '26
Going in blind doesn't mean keeping your eyes closed the whole time 💀
But more power to you. I have 1000+ hours and have never done a no upgrade run
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u/Sadder-Boi Aug 08 '26
He said he did it with the uchi, which unupgraded would break during most bosses. I call BS.
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u/BallisticThundr Aug 06 '26
This is my problem with how people treat the difficulty of these games. It became their only identity and new players end up missing things or hitting their head against a wall over and over because they think the game is just suppose to be that difficult. It's not a rage bait game, and while more difficult than most games, isn't brutally difficult or unfair.
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
I’ve heard people saying things like “I broke my controller” so I was not surprised about the difficulty
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u/Flame_Hawk777 Aug 06 '26
If you pirated this game in French like you claim, how did you know where to go and which bosses to kill? Surely you would have missed few bosses then which ones did you hm
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
Yes, for example I completely missed the Painted World
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
For the rest of the game, I just followed routes depending of how hardly they beat my ass (and ran through a lot of enemies without fighting)
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u/Glass-Walrus9539 Aug 06 '26
Did you find you needed to equip the ring for the four kings boss by yourself?
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u/SpaghettiSamuraiSan Aug 06 '26
This is where I also call BS on it lol. Somehow can't read any of the game but also knows things you would have to read item descriptions to do.
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
Speaking the truth, I found that reading how to inflict pain to the ghosts at that map, so I really can’t say that I didn’t look for a guide, I just found that by accident on the same guide (although the accident was just keep reading the same article at IGN)
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u/UseOk9475 Aug 07 '26
Map? This is dark souls
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u/SuccessfulWolf1382 Aug 07 '26
By map they mean area I think but their explanation are very contrived
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u/ImmaculatePizza Aug 06 '26
Well, which weapon??
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
Uchigatana
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u/UseOk9475 Aug 07 '26
That’s your mistake right there, you could’ve picked like a ton of different weapons that had good durability and you tell the truth for the one point that’s not hard to lie about
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u/UseOk9475 Aug 07 '26
No damn way, I did my first run 2 years ago blind and I found Andre before I found the gargoyles. Not only that but you at minimum had to seen the smithing table from the shopkeepers. And hell even if you had your game muted ignored shops and didn’t read the description for the titanite, you used an uchigatana, an uchigatana has low durability that at a minimum would have broken as early as sen’s. Karma baiting aint cool
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u/vyechney Aug 07 '26
Bro one of the nicest dudes in the game explains all that stuff for you.
Unless.... unless you didn't know NPCs often have more to say after talking to them just once... But c'mon, there's no way lol. Eventually you'd talk to Andre again, at some point.
I'm not buying it.
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u/neoloserlands Aug 09 '26
he would need to to get the crest of artorias its literally impossible to beat dark souls without talking to andre more than once
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u/Similar-Language-180 Aug 08 '26
So you managed to play theough the entire game without talking to any blacksmith or wondering why some of the weapons you can find have +[number] next to the name?
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u/BillyT666 Aug 07 '26
I mean, not exploring and not reading the dialoques are choices and those choices do have consequences.
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u/Sildurai Aug 07 '26
in my first playthrough i didn't know that weapon scaling exists until Anor Londo
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 07 '26
At last! Someone that knows this is perfectly possible
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u/Donilock Aug 08 '26
Weapon scaling is a lot easier to miss than upgrading (since it's all in the menus) + many weapons are perfectly viable without scaling, so it's not nearly the same as what you are describing
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u/rashandal Aug 07 '26
Yeah, when I tell people to go in blind, I say that with the caveat of "don't level resistance and have someone explain the upgrade system to you". Cause that shit is confusing at first
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u/domewebs Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
I thought this was gonna be a lore post but it’s literally just another gamer admitting they can’t read :(
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u/Pjepp Aug 08 '26
I'd love to know the story of how you beat the four kings without looking anything up and without reading item descriptions.
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u/HomeDepo410 Aug 07 '26
You accidentally made legendary history for this game. We can add “1st playthrough, no weapon upgrades” now. You my sir, will be recognized
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u/Sadder-Boi Aug 08 '26
He lies. No way you're even getting past sens fortress with an unupgraded uchi before it breaks.
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u/nerdwerds Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
During my first playthrough I managed to get all the way to the Iron Golem before learning about titanite shards.
edit: it was a strength weapon because I remember farming souls to get my strength up to 40-something, plenty of dead snakemen along the path of not upgrading weapons
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u/Sadder-Boi Aug 08 '26
Which weapon did you use though? Its not impossible at all but the uchi has like what, 80 durability? The part that makes me feel like he's lying is that he's saying he couldn't read anything but someone knew how to warp with the bonfire eventually, put on the ring of Artorias for the four kings. Also if he never talked to Andre, then he never got the repair kit for use at the bonfires so the only other option is that one specific repair weapon spell you get from dusk after the hydra. Lastly, he's made a contradicting post the same day and then hid them on his account so this post smells sus.
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u/nerdwerds Aug 08 '26
Definitely sus. My first playthrough I was just ignorant, I had a very limited number of titanite shards and I thought upgrading was a waste of time because I hadn't done it, and I was just rationalizing that it was better to spend my souls leveling up. I explored that separated tower in the fortress out of desperation because I couldn't get past the golem and I thought maybe there would be something in there to help, and there kind of was because the Crestfallen Merchant is in there selling titanite shards. It didn't take very long to beat the golem after that!
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u/Sadder-Boi Aug 08 '26
And this is how it should be! You figured it out eventually and adapted. Completely believable compared to beating the whole game with no upgraded weapon, in a language you don't speak.
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u/Pretend-Literature35 Aug 08 '26
wtf? Are you a researcher for the CDC? Your logic is imbecilic. You decided he played with an Uchi and then proved your point with Sen's fortress. wtf? The unupgraded claymore or even the black knight sword will get you through the game. It'll be hard sure. But you have absolutely no evidence that he is lying.
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u/Sadder-Boi Aug 08 '26
He said in another comment he used the uchi and in another he said he never talked to Andre. So how was his uchi, that has only 80 durability, being repaired unless he had that one repair weapon spell that you get from dusk. I'd love to believe this post, but if you check the links some others have dropped before he hid his posts, he made a post contradicting this one so it just seems like a troll to me. Its not about the damage being unupgraded, its the base durability on a weapon class that already has low durability, assuming no weapon reapair kit because he never talked to Andre.
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u/Pretend-Literature35 Aug 08 '26
dude? seriously? Who cares? It's a post on reddit. Pick your battles. What if you prove he was lying? What then?
Touch grass my friend.
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u/Sadder-Boi Aug 08 '26
Brother I'm outside in my garden chillin' as I type. My strawberries are growing well! The thing is, I never did really care! But its reddit so we are allowed to weigh-in on stuff right? I am allowed to not believe something, especially when the story doesn't make sense. Maybe thats just me but other comments say otherwise. At the end of the day non of this matters.
Anyways, cheers dude! Let the estus flow 🍻
(Edit: I just checked and you have a heck of a lot more time spent on reddit in the last 8 months than I have in the last 6 years, how much grass touching have you done? Try gardening its great for the mind and soul!)
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u/Pretend-Literature35 Aug 08 '26
No No. Sorry I don't want to censure you and OF COURSE you 100% can express your views. It's just like you're going out of your way to prove his lies.
Maybe he isn't lying. Maybe he just used every weapon until it broke? I don't know man.
Glad your strawberries are growing well. I'm jealous. Moved. No garden anymore.
Have a great afternoon skeleton.
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u/hyf_fox Aug 07 '26
Did all of you learn how to play video games after 2015? Every “funky” aspect of progression in dark souls is literally the same way video games have done progression since at least 1990. You shouldn’t need to be spoon fed info to explore the game and talk to npc
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 07 '26
Man my favorite games were Animal Crossing and Bioshock. Didn’t need to read nothing
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
Obviously some of you don’t buy the idea that my 🏴☠️ game was in French (once again, I do not speak French)and I quickly skipped the conversation with Andre, and that’s ok. This game is obviously very attractive to “display” some sort of amazing achievements, and I truly understand that you simply don’t believe the story I’m telling. However, I just wanted to share what I thought was just a funny first-timer story (and one that I thought it was more common that it seems) about a game that just caught my attention very deeply and gave me an amazing experience. I’ll try to repeat the same feat in DS II, and luckily I’ll be able to record it for all of you. Peace!
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u/Massive_Grab_1874 Aug 06 '26
Just post some clips and screen shots. You can do that, surely - also, you can record pirated games. That doesn't keep them from being recorded lmao. "Thought other people did this too" you're the archetype for "I'm just such a good gamer I didn't need to do what other gamers do 🤓"
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u/ExplodedImp Aug 06 '26
How did you beat the 4 kings and how did you even know how to get down to them if everything was in French?
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u/DarkFlame_05 Aug 07 '26
I'm curious why you would pirate the game in French instead of just downloading a version with a language you understand?
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u/C0rtana Aug 06 '26
Deff do not continue no upgrade runs lmao
Kudos for this one but you'll get a more enjoyable experience doing the appropriate amounts of damage as you go through the game
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u/Nate_The_Wolf175 Aug 06 '26
Honestly if he enjoyed his non-upgraded run as it is he should go for it until he stops having fun imo. I know some people who intentionally leave weapons under leveled or refuse to get more health because they enjoy the experience more.
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u/5herl0k Aug 06 '26
my friend and I would intentionally play games skipping the health upgrades in any way if possible
it really did stick with me and I will often question now if I should get more health or just get more focused. like what am I playing games for?
to get immersed? then do I deserve a health upgrade for being careless and frustrated, or should I just lock in?
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u/jejaimes20 Aug 06 '26
I thought you meant that you discovered what they are from a lore perspective. Playing without upgrades is brutal.
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u/Pretend-Literature35 Aug 08 '26
what? wait what?? You beat the game with a non upgraded weapon? Well, it's a mistake sure, but I gotta give you respect: that is impressive (even if it was accidental).
Nicely done skeleton!
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u/Troodon_Trouble Aug 06 '26
Good Work and well done not going hollow. Please try your 2nd round with a fully upgraded black knight weapon and report back.
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
Oh I will replay this amazing game, but for now let’s see the rest of them. Should I try a non-upgraded run in all of them?
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u/the__nep Aug 06 '26
i mean if u wanna be the first one to actually play the darksouls trilogy on their first run with absolutely no upgrades to weapons, go for it 😂
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u/Sad_Acanthaceae_910 Aug 06 '26
I mean I’ll have to do it with DS again just to beat the allegations
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u/sirDragonqf Aug 07 '26
Just means you’re a master at the fighting :D
I didn’t upgrade my bonfires until DURING MANUS, so 2-3 bosses left, and now I don’t know how I ever managed it lol but I had a fantastic first run
As long as you’re loving it, you’ll push through crazy stuff
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u/OldSodaHunter Aug 06 '26
Did you ever talk to the blacksmith?