i'm guessing dark souls 3's bonus estus refreshes work in a similar manner? i haven't seen a definitive explanation for how that works, though it seems to be a similar points-based system from certain enemies.
Ah so that actually is randomized in some way, but I have no idea how. I was able to determine that it doesn't use a similar point system because I found that killing the same enemies the same number of times had no bearing on when I got it. I once did a run where the very first enemy I killed gave an Estus charge- ua-cam.com/video/Fi67nMH12Aw/v-deo.html
oh wow, ok then. should've guessed that reddit speculation wouldn't be fully accurate :) just to echo what others have said - really enjoy these videos.
Wait, it doesn't work the same way as in Dark Souls 1? I thought it was whenever somebody sat at a bonfire, it would randomly give an online player estus! How interesting.
@@zyibesixdouze4863 Yeah. In Dark Souls 1, the Estus comes from other players online kindling their bonfire. In Dark Souls 3 it works offline and is tied to killing enemies, but it's random and doesn't use a point system like this one.
One thing I've noted in particular in the smouldering lake on the note of this topic is that if you kill the pre-spawned fireballs from the demons down there, they have a disproportionately high chance of dropping estus charges. I'm not sure why but testing has given me charges from the fireballs specifically much more frequently than killing anything else.
@@Roach1 Ah, misunderstanding. Some NPCs drop Humanity Consumables (Reah and Lautrec are particularly high with seven and five respectively) Presumably invading gains soft Humanity mentioned in the video. I wouldn’t know, because I never invaded in DS1 or DS2.
The hollows in the depths have been eating other people, fed by the butcher. Just like rats dropping humanity because they ate humans, depths hollows are thus worth more towards humanity.
I really enjoy how the humanity is automatically popped this way, instead of being in item form. When I first played dark souls, I didn't really understand anything of it because I didn't speak english(complex systems in a language you don't understand is a bad combination). I knew from a friend that the humanities where used in coop, and I remember being afraid of using them in case I needed them. So those random humanity drops where really useful because, since I didn't want to lose the humanity, I would just become human when I got them and would try to avoid dying as much as possible. I got invaded by some NPC's that way that I wouldn't have seen in that first playthrough otherwise. It's a creative way to incentivize people to actually use the humanities to become human instead of just hoarding them, or popping them for heals.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. It becomes especially true in games like DS2 and 3, where no soft humanity mechanic exists at all, so I end up finishing the game with a dragon's horde of human effigies/embers and have been invaded right around 0 times total.
Ah the brilliance of Dark Sould: Include a couple of well-made but obscure mechanics, and then all the bugs aren't bugs, just mechanics we don't fully understand yet.
I agree, this is impressive and reflects positively on the FromSoft team. More than anything, it goes to show that Miyazaki isn't the only gifted individual there. He obviously has some very bright and talented people on his team.
Easy explanation for the bonewheels in the painted world is that they're fictional imitations, I wouldn't even rule out that it was intentional, though it probably wasn't.
@@RevyaAeinsett In what way does DS3 DLC lore support that ? How could the crows not be part of the painting ? Genuinely curious, I know very little about DS3 lore.
the reason dark souls is so generous with humanity all roots back to demon souls being so assenine about giving stone of ephimeral eyes and also forcing the player to play with half health most of the game
You know, I used to hate Demons’ Souls for that mechanic. For years I wondered why the game punished you so hard for dying like that until I came to a revelation that I think some other people are starting to see, which is to understand that FromSoft understands you’ll probably be in soul form most of the game, and therefore you are meant to treat the “half” hp as your full, and your “full” as a bonus, kind of like the bonus you get for being kindled in Dark Souls 3. Honestly once I switched my view like this, it all suddenly made sense and I felt kinda stupid for complaining all those years.
@@BLIGHTROT666 I disagree. That's like saying your standard form in Mario is little Mario, or players are never meant to get Varia or Gravity Suit in Super Metroid. It was a design decision that backfired in their face.
That the depths hollows have a higher rate is kinda cool since the rats eat the remains with humanity and the hollows might eat the rats. And painted world stuff, yeah, I don't know how they got created, but the painted world might lack humanity
@Selarom Ogeid the painted world is a place to put thing the gods want hidden away, the crow demons are implied(At least using unfinished content) to have a relation to vecna who the gods feared, so it makes sense there they might send her real human followers there , the skeletons meanwhile have no explanation, necromancy was not particularly reviled by the gods(i mean they were pretty chill with nito whos basically the god of necromancy) while the skeletons might be artificial painted constructs that are there purely to act as guardians, of course that begs the question of why use those things of all creatures as the basis for your guardians
The painted world is actually one of the best farming locations for hard humanity. There are around 10 or so rats that can be killed in less than 1.5- 2 minutes of a run from the bonfire then homeward bone back to start over. Add another ~20 seconds to kill the horde of enemies in the courtyard area for a bonus ~20k souls, while farming the rats. I easily net between 2-6 hard humanity + the ~20k souls each run farming the painted world. To get more, have 10 soft humanity to boost item discovery, paired with the 2 rings (one that boost souls collected and other boosts item discovery), easily making the painted would one of the best locations in the game to farm humanity (probably 2nd best for farming souls compared to the forest)
Friend... You have no idea how much we appreciate this... I clearly see, how (annoyingly) much work involved with this presentation. Just wanna stand up and give you a "proper bow" gesture... Like Reah would say "Thank you so very much"...
BRO. When you were showing old play throughs of the game and showed Northern Lion I felt so proud. The day he posted that video I went out and got Dark Souls for the 360. Gonna have to watch his play through now for nostalgia.
Fantastic video! I remember getting those 'random' soft humanity's when the game first launched. It's really cool to come back so many years later and still learn more about Dark Souls!
Loved the old tumblr posts from years ago and discovered your channel again this week. Glad to see you're still putting out this kind of great, in-depth content! I especially liked the care that went into framing the Area Type shots, the Blighttown one in particular is incredible. It's strange how seeing these familiar visuals from new angles can be so refreshing. Also, I never noticed before that hollows' eyes blink like Halloween decorations, lol. Looks silly as hell.
Thanks so much! Actually the blinking eyes are a glitch of some kind, I believe it relates to setting 60FPS with dsfix, but I've never looked up the cause! I'm glad you noticed the Blighttown shot, even though it only lasted a second. I actually worked hardest on that one, not using the default/ natural lighting of the area (but wasn't post-processed, I used lighting options in debug). Some areas are just really dark/dull even when upping the overall brightness.
5:33 It's possible the hollows in the depths give more points because of how humanity is described. It sinks to the lowest depths of the earth and collects there. Also, it's possible only hollows are weak enough to drop their humanity upon death, explaining why most NPC's don't drop it. I don't have a good explanation for the painted bonewheels, though.
Love how since there's no official explanation for all these mechanics, players can just go wild with their own theories, it's one of the reasons I love this series so much.
"No one really farms all 10 humanity this way intentionally, that would be incredibly slow and inefficient." Well, I guess you can just call me no one then :-p
@@gozinta82: **shrug** ...so maybe I'm strange. For better or worse we all have our own personal quirks. Besides, it's not really a "waste" of time if playing that way is something I enjoy. To clarify though, it's sort of more of an opportunity/availability thing for me. Mostly I only farm all 10 soft drops in the early game zones. After I have accesses to the depths, I usually switch to farming hard humanity off the rats instead.
I mostly do it to max my item find from humanity asap and from there I keep going until I’ve got all 10 because I am happy in my little mob farm. I mostly try to do everything that can be done in the game without killing any bosses and from there I go out on spree clearing off my checklists. Since the depths needs the capra demon to die I can’t farm rats until after I’ve done everything else.
12:38 Couldn't the reason for this be the fact, that the boss of the area (the four kings) are technically in a different area? When you're going to fight them you drop down into the abyss and the game shows the standard name-of-the-new-area text. So a possibility is that the four kings don't count as the boss of the new Londo ruins, in the games files and therefore it won't turn the humanity counter on for that area.
I don't think that should play into it, since the different title cards for areas are their own thing and shouldn't relate to how different areas are zoned. For example, the Crystal Cave is where the Seath encounter happens, though for both multiplayer and humanity drop, it's considered one big map that's the same thing as the Duke's Archives. Same also happens in Oolacile Township & The Chasm for Manus, it's just one area with one boss entity ID. Still, I can't say I've actually ruled out some weird interplay between New Londo Ruins and the Abyss being involved.
@@illusorywall i just have to mention that manus is actually physically in the map and can be cheesed through an opening in the chasm of the abyss area outside his fog wall.. so he is "in" the area map.. four kings though.. if you dont have the ring equipped, you get killed instead (with a unique death message).. maybe it has something to do with how the game processes this info
@illusory wall Actually now that I think about it, Seath is kind of a non standard example considering he moves locations. After you get out of prison, he's still in the room you first met him in. Idk when the move happens but he doesn't permanently leave that room until you've triggered his cutscene in the cave. Maybe the transient boss location messes with the humanity counter bc of some weird superposition in the game's code?
@@illusorywall I'd more bet on just sloppy implementation of the fight, perhaps due to what seems to have been somewhat troubled development. We know from unused assets that there was supposed to be a way to get their sword at some point, for one thing. Not to mention whatever was up with Jar-Eel.
This is amazing! I'm finally playing through Remastered with some friends and we were just talking about this mechanic. Thank you for explaining it so well. I think I might keep Seath alive so I can farm humanity to level up my chaos covenant to save Solaire lol.
Phenomenal information. I was aware of the basics (point system, boss checks) but there was so much more under the hood. The Duke's bug was unknown to me, as was the fact that it only applies to "human" enemies. Well done. I really love this series.
The painted world bonewheels thing could be intentinal torture Breaks you so maybe it includes your humanity aswell. But that would just be cruel on the Lore side of things and would actually explain why Priscilla says their kind and pure.
Wow, I remember unknowingly replicating the archives trick once. I think I kept forgetting to sit at the bonfire so Seath kept sending me back to the parish and each time the crystal guy in the cog storage room was giving me one.
Still learning about this game. Love this series man. It feels like I'm 17 again and watching fresh lore videos. This community never fails to amaze me
I remember this being a thing, including the "random" drops from seemingly not doing anything, however I never realized what exactly was going on and the random ones I had assumed were from "glitched" AI dying in the background. After all, it wasn't uncommon for enemies to accidentally kill themselves from time to time, so I kind of assumed this drop was coming from some off screen enemy that clipped through the floor or something.
I thought the dukes archive humanity was because I was killing the Pisacas and that last hollow was putting me past the limit. Surprising to see that the Pisacas don't count for anything and the humanity drop is actually a bug. Thanks! Speaking of bugs; now that a bug had been identified with humanity drops in New Londo, would it be possible for a mod to fix it?
I could swear I've gotten a humanity drop from the hollows in the initial area of New Londo, before I've done anything. Great video. Would love to see you tackle the Gravelord covenant, I've always wanted to try deliberately gravelording myself for more challenge.
This was probably made for people that enjoy farming enemies for souls, to give them a bonus of humanity while they farm souls. That's just what I think.
1:33 oh I assure, sir. _I_ have. First bonfire in Undead Burg. I wanted a +4 Enchanted Great Scythe right after Taurus, so I spammed the soldiers up top by getting the red drake to burn the bridge. It was incredibly tedious, but I managed to get 10 soft humanity so I could farm the crystal golems. This also obviously gave me more than enough for the Artoris Crest too lol
As everyone else says; this series is excellent. Watching these is giving me a new found appreciation for what is already my favorite game. I can't think of any other franchise with this much esotericism through out the whole of it's design. Maybe some of the old Might & Magics? Or Wizardry?
This series is absolutely fantastic, thank you for making these videos! I never knew about the Undead Parish/Duke's Archive exploit. I backed the You Died book Kickstarter the very moment I learned you contributed to it. I wish Future Press had sought your insight for their guides, it would have been neat to have some technical trivia dropped here and there. Really looking forward to more in this series. Do you plan to do videos on Bloodborne?
I love how even though you break down all these weird game mechanics, dark souls still retains that magic feeling. Like, in Minecraft, once you get the hang of it, it just looks like ones and zeros. Dark souls has so much weird sh❤️t going on, when you figure out why and how it works, I guess it's like you get a newfound appreciation
Always knew this mechanic had to do with killing a bunch of enemies in an area but never knew it was so convoluted. Interesting to see how Fromsoftware programmed so many obscure and obtuse mechanics in DS1. Also that bug in new londo is hilarious. Certainly it'd have helped me years ago if it was fixed haha
What a great series! I love learning more about the hidden depth of this game. I am SUPER looking forward to learning more about drop rates! Like, who the f knows how those things work!? Also, although it's significantly less useful to know, this video made me think it'd be cool to have a video about a. The eccentricities of the unpatched game (like getting multi-cursed). b. Lore implications of hidden mechanics (like certain weapons dealing extra damage to certain enemy classes). or c. Both... because there seems to be some overlap between the two. iirc. skeletons used to not give souls and silver knight weapons used to do lightning damage, which both seem lore significant. But both were patched out, presumably for gameplay balance.
Had this pop up in my recommended feed, and thought this was gonna be a lore video about what a Humanity drop in Dark Souls actually is, but this is also really cool. Had no idea that the game had a system like this.
I for one am REALLY looking forward to your item discovery and drop rates video. I couldn't tell you how many times I've tried to help someone on the forums with ID and drops only to end up writing three or four paragraphs just to cover it all, without leaving anything out. And I'm sure there are things I've could have misunderstood or simply not known about. But, hey, that's what you're here for, illusory wall! :) Love this series, please keep on chugging away! There's no end to interesting things to learn about and discuss, just within the first Dark Souls game.
So many of these mechanics feel like last minute feature creep that was added and pushed out as soon as it worked at all without very much testing time.
Thank you so much for the video man. I've been pkaying dark souls vanilla for a life time and you just solved a mistery from years for me. Keep the good work, love your videos and your love for the game.
Sir illusory wall! I am so happy that I encountered your channel! Love your videos and your passion for figuring out DS1 mechanics! 🤘 All the chosen undead and unkindled ash needs to come across this!
I'm guessing that whenever this happens it's caused by some geometry unloading before the enemies are unloaded, causing the enemies to fall into the kill zone, then when they 'die' they give the player (wherever they've gone as the game doesn't actually move the character behind the scenes anywhere, it just unloads the map data and loads IN the new data, meaning that enemies that die are being killed as the world changes, then the moment after they die they get unloaded but because whatever game object/script that handles enemy death and soul/humanity accreditation hasn't been unloaded it still tallies the deaths and rewards the souls/humanity. There was that one glitch in Blood Borne that i remember where if a player walked across a particular room after going through a series of moves across the map they caused the game to load and unload a specific area that had an enemy that could be repeatedly be killed by just loading and unloading their map through walking across a room level-load boundary. I suspect it's much the same throughout their games that use their level loading system and isn't careful to make the game handle the unloading of enemies occur before the level geometry.
Ah, this idea has been brought up a few times though I believe it doesn't actually apply to the glitched/ free humanity here. The issue is that these odd instances of humanity aren't accompanied by Souls, and it's sometimes occurring in places where the mechanic isn't possible by actually killing enemies. So enemies dying, by falling out the map or some other means, doesn't appear to be the cause. Knowing now that simply loading certain, different maps is enough to glitch out the counter in the current version of the game, I suspect the unpatched game is finding a way to award these indepedent of enemies actually dying. Counter-argument, the game at release did have more issues with enemies falling out the map (at least Shiva's bodyguard in particular), and there were some enemies that awarded 0 Souls originally (skeletons and ghosts maybe?). Though even with this in mind I think it's still happening without enemies dying.
@@illusorywall It might also be that they handled the process wherein the souls don't get added to the player's tally, but forgot or couldn't do so for the points used to generate the humanity. So the enemies do get killed, but don't give souls, but do give credit toward the humanity tally.
Ah, yes, the all-time classic of spaghetti code. Reusing the same variable names whilst failing to correctly see the scope you're working in. This is peak level programming failure that can lead to serious bugs, and at the same time it's not always easy to avoid accidentally overwriting variables unless all of your code is 100% object-oriented. As a rule, when in doubt, just make it so your variables only serve one purpose, not more, and always give them a unique name, and *don't be afraid of duplicates.* If you don't, those kinda things are bound to happen when you're too tired to remember how everything works and interacts with itself. If you do, you will just lose a small bit of processing power but save yourself a lot of trouble. The later is always preferable to being mindfucked when you're trying to understand what went wrong in dozens of files interacting with each other, and you can always optimize later on when everything is working correctly. Trying to make code simpler while creating a program is a path to failure such as those. First, make sure it works, and only then try to make it more elegant, optimized and simpler. One step at a time.
Then again, you have this major problem: _when_ should code be optimised? If it's left too late, it'll take far longer to optimise than it would have done much earlier, which, among other things, can *massively* bloat a project's development time and scope - it ends up with the entire codebase having to be rewritten in some cases, and if one can't write good comments in the code, one circles back round to the same problem you identified, only after the rewrite. Still a bad idea to not use good variable names, though. This example isn't so bad either, since it's a minor mechanic in a game where it wasn't really needed, but for an entire project... yikes.
@@hostiusasinhostilityhostil7853 I think it is also dependant on the quality, by which I mean the logic of the base code. Optimization is often bloating a project if and only if the base code was written not only in a verbose manner, but also with very poor and obfuscating logic and poor commenting. Against this, optimization is indeed helpless, it is helpless because it's not its job anyway to deal with this. Optimization is about dealing with code that can easily be rewritten in a more efficient manner without having to alter its philosophy; it's not about rewriting the logic of a project or portions of it. The latter is dependant on planning and cannot be damage-controlled. If base code logic is flawed, then the project is compromised since day 1 anyway. What I was referring to was basically that the bug the video presented was probably caused by an attempt at reusing code assets on-the-fly rather than duplicating them momentarily. Duplication is easy to spot if it is accounted for in the base code and explicitly stated through variable names and commenting. If your code is verbose and is clear, optimizing will not be an issue. I just maybe naively believed that people reading my comment would understand that indeed, base code needs not to be confused. But I didn't state it so yeah, lol, I myself wasn't clear, the irony. As to the issue you raise on deciding when to optimise the code, I think I have an answer: First, code the project in a sensible way and comment it properly, but do not pay particular attention to asset duplication or the use of deprecated technique because avoiding those in the heat of the moment, when you are entirely focused on the logic, is extremely difficult.
@@hostiusasinhostilityhostil7853 In my opinion the solution can be found out in the agile methodology. You work in small incremental steps, and you should consider some of those steps to be specifically dedicated to optimize existing code (maybe something like 20% of all your steps). It's called refactoring.
1:05 Looking forward to this. Although I know you don't usually dive too deep into lore I'm curious about the lore implications of humanity drop on "humans", "gods", "lords" and "giants". For example, while Artorias drops a "lord soul" both he, Gough, and Ciaran don't drop any humanity. Ornstein and Smough drop 1 humanity while Bell Gargoyle drops 1 twin-humanity. Sif, Bed of chaos, and Nito all drop 1 humanity. No other dragons drop any humanity. Firekeepers drop firekeeper souls and not humanity. Many "humans" don't drop any humanity while others drop a great number like Sieglind and Lautrec. Logan, Domnhall, and Rickert seem reasonably sane while not dropping humanity. If only "humans" drop humanity then why do the Bed of chaos and Seath drop humanity, and if it's exclusively to main bosses then why don't Artorias drop humanity while Manus does? Maybe Artorias lost his humanity to the abyss but then humanity does carry lore weight and the witch of Izalith and Nito are humans while Gwyn and Gwyndolin are not? Anyway, that's only my wild speculations. Love your videos and looking forward to more top tier DS content!
The problem with humanity is that it works somewhat different lore and gameplay wise, anyway if I tried to explain why for example Logan doesnt drop humanity it would be maybe because he doesn't have "excessive" humanity, let me explain, suppose you are hollow, you get 1 humanity and turn human again in a bonfire, then you would be human again but with 0 humanity, because that humanity would now be in your human body I'm sorry I'm not that good at explaining things
This video just goes to show what a fantastic game Dark Souls really is. You'd think after a decade people would tire of this arcane stuff, but no, Souls fanatics are just jonesing for this kind of in-depth explanation of every single thing. I am really looking forward to Dark Souls: Nightfall - the familiar world of Dark Souls, but something else altogehter.
With the announcement of Elden Ring DLC I’m back on a fromsoft binge. Had northernlions play through on half the day, and then come here and see a dark souls clip from 12 years ago from the same man, wild. All of the “how tall were you when dark souls 1 came out” references are making more sense now 😂
The hollow guarding the bonfire room of the depths always drops soft humanity upon killing it for the fist time. Edit: Unless 9:05 explains this phenomenon (instead of trudging through the water, I always drop through the shortcut behind the first butcher, kill the giant rat, pick up the key to the bonfire room, and go to the bonfire room)
14:29 is probably an out of bounds basilisk that loads in when you get close to it, which procs its gravity and fall damage. The Great Hollow has a couple that were left jettisoned fsr, which is why we still get random souls flowing through the walls in there.
Ah I've had a couple people suggest this, but the Basilisks aren't flagged to work with this mechanic and you also get these free humanity independent of Souls (which you do get from the OoB Basilisks when they die). It's likely something to do with some weird data being triggered by the Blighttown map loading and interferring with this mechanic.
Interesting! The game data suggests that it's not dependent on area at all but is actually mapped NPCID:bossID, but now that I've said that I can't find the link between area bosses and the NPC entries. Maybe it was in MSB files... but I remember it being arbitrary instead of based on location, which only comes up in Anor Londo
Yup! It's tied to the bosses so directly, such that stepping into an area where your summon sign doesn't work will shift the boss ID back to none. I'm not sure how that works behind the scenes though.
@@illusorywall If I had to guess the "bounding boxes" for the multiplayer areas have an ID tied to them, and any entity that's spawned inside of those boxes also belong to that ID, with the ID your enemy has applying instead of your own. It's not in the param data anywhere besides the area boss param file, and while it's still arbitrary which boss it's tied to, it is dependent on the largest box. Last I checked, Gwyndolin's boss area event data applies to the Silver Knights and Giant Sentinels, but not the Painting Guardians down on the floor. A simple way to test that is to just set the area boss humanity point counter to 0 for all 10 stages, load it in the debug viewer, and then ensure whatever you're killing has a valid Humanity Lot ID. You probably know more than I do but I'd rather say it than not.
And here I thought that whenever you rest in a bonfire, the humanity drop would be given to a random enemy individual on the area. The humanity drop would be bestowed on you upon killing that specific enemy individual. I've tested this on Undead Burg but there were times when there would be no humanity drop even if I had alreafy killed all the enemies on the area. My conclusion when the irregularity happens is "maybe the humanity drop was on an enemy individual on the Lower Undead Burg". Thanks for making this video. Its really cool to know that this mechanic make sense lore-wise. And a really genius idea. Dark Souls really is a one of a kind game.
A really great series, i am happy that you keep on doing it, high production quality and good script writing. Is there any way i can support you in material way? (patreon, donations, etc)
I might have found a bug about this in Dark Souls Remastered, I play on Xbox Series X and Offline. I was farming the Painting Guardian Sword in the room of the painting in Dark Anor Londo, having defeated Ornstein and Smough, Dark Sun Gwyndolin and Crossbreed Priscilla (I know she's now even in Anor Londo but its just data). It happened 3 times (that I could notice), twice when I went from the Darkmoon Tomb bonfire to the room to the painting (farming the Guardian Sword), and once when I escaped from the Painted World of Ariamis and spawned into the painting room and started killing the guardians to go to the bonfire. I don't know if anyone has noticed this before but I wanted to leave it here in case you want to take a look at it sometime.
I'm playing DSR for the first time. I didn't kill Seath yet, so I'll use this trick to kindle every bonfire to the max thanks to the free soft humanities :D
At the end you muse that Fromsoft has a lot of creativity rewarding players with humanity in a 5th unique way, which is certainly true, but I think it also has the effect of making death more meaningful. Since players know that humanity is valuable the player will only use hard humanity before they will use it for something, ie summoning or quelana. But giving the player valuable soft humanity ups the stakes making death more impactful. Having moments where a player doesn't know they'll receive humanity, ups the stakes, especially if they're going through an area for the first time, which is when these humanities tend to drop anyway. Awesome stuff imo
Watching your videos has made me realise that dark souls was far buggier than I ever imagined but was hidden by their “culture” of vagueness. The idea that everything is left to players and the community to discover is still my favourite thing about Miyazaki’s design vision.
Cool vidoes, one mechanic you could do next is the Estus Flask recovery when defeating enemies. Ive never really understood that one and it also returns in DS3 where it is even more frequent.
In DS1 it happens when someone connected to your world kindles a nearby bonfire. In DS3 it's essentially a random chance when u kill an enemy. Both do essentially the sane thing but aren't connected in any meaningful way.
I get the 10 humanity before the Taurus Demon so when I kill the Boar not to far after it I have the best chance possible of getting its head. It usually doesn’t take long and I get some souls for gear and levels while doing it.
i'm guessing dark souls 3's bonus estus refreshes work in a similar manner? i haven't seen a definitive explanation for how that works, though it seems to be a similar points-based system from certain enemies.
Ah so that actually is randomized in some way, but I have no idea how. I was able to determine that it doesn't use a similar point system because I found that killing the same enemies the same number of times had no bearing on when I got it. I once did a run where the very first enemy I killed gave an Estus charge-
ua-cam.com/video/Fi67nMH12Aw/v-deo.html
oh wow, ok then. should've guessed that reddit speculation wouldn't be fully accurate :)
just to echo what others have said - really enjoy these videos.
Wait, it doesn't work the same way as in Dark Souls 1? I thought it was whenever somebody sat at a bonfire, it would randomly give an online player estus! How interesting.
@@zyibesixdouze4863 Yeah. In Dark Souls 1, the Estus comes from other players online kindling their bonfire. In Dark Souls 3 it works offline and is tied to killing enemies, but it's random and doesn't use a point system like this one.
One thing I've noted in particular in the smouldering lake on the note of this topic is that if you kill the pre-spawned fireballs from the demons down there, they have a disproportionately high chance of dropping estus charges. I'm not sure why but testing has given me charges from the fireballs specifically much more frequently than killing anything else.
>infinite Humanity via Duke's Archives
>recently learned about how to make vagrants
Oh yeah, it's all coming together
Very nice! Spawning them on purpose is a gift to the community.
Kronk? is that you?
Ok I’ll redownload it and start vagrant bombing
@@illusorywall I try to drop a transient curse in a normally unreachable area as often as I can
@@leahcarson1822 A valuable community service!
Actually, to me this was in-lore. The crestfallen knight does mention that you can pillage "scraps of humanity" from enemies.
This. I just assumed there's a small chance each mob to give humanity or some point system thing to be in place.
It seemed to me that he was referring to invading other worlds.
@@KarmasAB123 He said that you can either pillage scraps or you can hunt down others. The "hunting" is invasions.
@@Roach1
The third option is also killing NPCs, since the majority of them are Undead as well.
@@Roach1
Ah, misunderstanding. Some NPCs drop Humanity Consumables (Reah and Lautrec are particularly high with seven and five respectively)
Presumably invading gains soft Humanity mentioned in the video. I wouldn’t know, because I never invaded in DS1 or DS2.
So you're telling me the event flag that turns on the humanity drop mechanic in New Londo ruins, labeled flag 404, can not be found? Hmm..
Illuminati confirmed.
I cant accept if they say this was unintentional and not an in joke to future debuggers
made my joke
The hollows in the depths have been eating other people, fed by the butcher. Just like rats dropping humanity because they ate humans, depths hollows are thus worth more towards humanity.
I always assumed the rats dropping humanity was a subtle reference to mankind being...y'know, pretty nasty
@@paid14 It pulls double duty! Ain't symbolism great?
@@Phhase I never knew they ate humans either! I love this game
@@Phhase Double doody? Nice!
@@Phhaseno my ass
I really enjoy how the humanity is automatically popped this way, instead of being in item form.
When I first played dark souls, I didn't really understand anything of it because I didn't speak english(complex systems in a language you don't understand is a bad combination). I knew from a friend that the humanities where used in coop, and I remember being afraid of using them in case I needed them. So those random humanity drops where really useful because, since I didn't want to lose the humanity, I would just become human when I got them and would try to avoid dying as much as possible. I got invaded by some NPC's that way that I wouldn't have seen in that first playthrough otherwise.
It's a creative way to incentivize people to actually use the humanities to become human instead of just hoarding them, or popping them for heals.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. It becomes especially true in games like DS2 and 3, where no soft humanity mechanic exists at all, so I end up finishing the game with a dragon's horde of human effigies/embers and have been invaded right around 0 times total.
Ah the brilliance of Dark Sould: Include a couple of well-made but obscure mechanics, and then all the bugs aren't bugs, just mechanics we don't fully understand yet.
"Any sufficiently advanced mechanic is indistinguishable from a bug."
-Arthur C. Clarke
I agree, this is impressive and reflects positively on the FromSoft team. More than anything, it goes to show that Miyazaki isn't the only gifted individual there. He obviously has some very bright and talented people on his team.
Easy explanation for the bonewheels in the painted world is that they're fictional imitations, I wouldn't even rule out that it was intentional, though it probably wasn't.
but the crow demons are also only found in the painted world, and they give points
@@skawesomeone That would most likely just mean that the crow demons are actually not a part of the painting, which is supported by DS3 DLC lore
@@RevyaAeinsett fair enough, I never got around to the DS3 DLC
I like it!
@@RevyaAeinsett In what way does DS3 DLC lore support that ? How could the crows not be part of the painting ? Genuinely curious, I know very little about DS3 lore.
the reason dark souls is so generous with humanity all roots back to demon souls being so assenine about giving stone of ephimeral eyes
and also forcing the player to play with half health most of the game
You know, I used to hate Demons’ Souls for that mechanic. For years I wondered why the game punished you so hard for dying like that until I came to a revelation that I think some other people are starting to see, which is to understand that FromSoft understands you’ll probably be in soul form most of the game, and therefore you are meant to treat the “half” hp as your full, and your “full” as a bonus, kind of like the bonus you get for being kindled in Dark Souls 3.
Honestly once I switched my view like this, it all suddenly made sense and I felt kinda stupid for complaining all those years.
@@BLIGHTROT666 I disagree.
That's like saying your standard form in Mario is little Mario, or players are never meant to get Varia or Gravity Suit in Super Metroid.
It was a design decision that backfired in their face.
@@Zeithri Yeah well I didn't ask for your opinion pal.
@@BLIGHTROT666 " _Yeah well, that's just like, your opinion man_ "
This reply made me chuckle :p
@@BLIGHTROT666 having this pov made me a *lot* less mad at dying and loosing the extra HP in FromSoft’s games.
And also taught me to pump Vigor early.
That the depths hollows have a higher rate is kinda cool since the rats eat the remains with humanity and the hollows might eat the rats. And painted world stuff, yeah, I don't know how they got created, but the painted world might lack humanity
@Selarom Ogeid I did not know that
i think its a bit more direct, as its implied at least some of the hollows in the depths practice cannibalism
@Selarom Ogeid the painted world is a place to put thing the gods want hidden away, the crow demons are implied(At least using unfinished content) to have a relation to vecna who the gods feared, so it makes sense there they might send her real human followers there , the skeletons meanwhile have no explanation, necromancy was not particularly reviled by the gods(i mean they were pretty chill with nito whos basically the god of necromancy) while the skeletons might be artificial painted constructs that are there purely to act as guardians, of course that begs the question of why use those things of all creatures as the basis for your guardians
The painted world is actually one of the best farming locations for hard humanity. There are around 10 or so rats that can be killed in less than 1.5- 2 minutes of a run from the bonfire then homeward bone back to start over. Add another ~20 seconds to kill the horde of enemies in the courtyard area for a bonus ~20k souls, while farming the rats.
I easily net between 2-6 hard humanity + the ~20k souls each run farming the painted world.
To get more, have 10 soft humanity to boost item discovery, paired with the 2 rings (one that boost souls collected and other boosts item discovery), easily making the painted would one of the best locations in the game to farm humanity (probably 2nd best for farming souls compared to the forest)
Friend... You have no idea how much we appreciate this...
I clearly see, how (annoyingly) much work involved with this presentation.
Just wanna stand up and give you a "proper bow" gesture...
Like Reah would say "Thank you so very much"...
Thank you, I'm glad there are people who find these odd deep dives interesting!
*v e r y g o o d*
*takes a fat shit under this comment
BRO. When you were showing old play throughs of the game and showed Northern Lion I felt so proud. The day he posted that video I went out and got Dark Souls for the 360. Gonna have to watch his play through now for nostalgia.
Fantastic video! I remember getting those 'random' soft humanity's when the game first launched. It's really cool to come back so many years later and still learn more about Dark Souls!
Loved the old tumblr posts from years ago and discovered your channel again this week. Glad to see you're still putting out this kind of great, in-depth content! I especially liked the care that went into framing the Area Type shots, the Blighttown one in particular is incredible. It's strange how seeing these familiar visuals from new angles can be so refreshing.
Also, I never noticed before that hollows' eyes blink like Halloween decorations, lol. Looks silly as hell.
Thanks so much! Actually the blinking eyes are a glitch of some kind, I believe it relates to setting 60FPS with dsfix, but I've never looked up the cause!
I'm glad you noticed the Blighttown shot, even though it only lasted a second. I actually worked hardest on that one, not using the default/ natural lighting of the area (but wasn't post-processed, I used lighting options in debug). Some areas are just really dark/dull even when upping the overall brightness.
I didn't think crag spiders could get any more disturbing, but here we are.
I am so happy to see NL be used in a clip for DS Dissected.
I actually laughed my ass off when the clip of NL played. Of all the content creators to pick from hahaha
Wait, what is that music? I know it ... it's right there ... gawd I hate this please answer lol ...
@@quacj2254 Thanks!
I guess he really likes eggs.
3 billion hours in Issac and he still doesn't know most of the basic game mechanics or what half the items do. Lmao
5:33 It's possible the hollows in the depths give more points because of how humanity is described. It sinks to the lowest depths of the earth and collects there. Also, it's possible only hollows are weak enough to drop their humanity upon death, explaining why most NPC's don't drop it. I don't have a good explanation for the painted bonewheels, though.
Love how since there's no official explanation for all these mechanics, players can just go wild with their own theories, it's one of the reasons I love this series so much.
"No one really farms all 10 humanity this way intentionally, that would be incredibly slow and inefficient." Well, I guess you can just call me no one then :-p
:o
So, basically, knowing there are more effective ways to get more humanity vs time spent, do you still do this? That would seem pretty strange.
@@gozinta82: **shrug** ...so maybe I'm strange. For better or worse we all have our own personal quirks. Besides, it's not really a "waste" of time if playing that way is something I enjoy.
To clarify though, it's sort of more of an opportunity/availability thing for me. Mostly I only farm all 10 soft drops in the early game zones. After I have accesses to the depths, I usually switch to farming hard humanity off the rats instead.
I mostly do it to max my item find from humanity asap and from there I keep going until I’ve got all 10 because I am happy in my little mob farm.
I mostly try to do everything that can be done in the game without killing any bosses and from there I go out on spree clearing off my checklists. Since the depths needs the capra demon to die I can’t farm rats until after I’ve done everything else.
@@EmeralBookwise just dupe a fire keeper soul man. it saves so much time
12:38
Couldn't the reason for this be the fact, that the boss of the area (the four kings) are technically in a different area? When you're going to fight them you drop down into the abyss and the game shows the standard name-of-the-new-area text. So a possibility is that the four kings don't count as the boss of the new Londo ruins, in the games files and therefore it won't turn the humanity counter on for that area.
I don't think that should play into it, since the different title cards for areas are their own thing and shouldn't relate to how different areas are zoned. For example, the Crystal Cave is where the Seath encounter happens, though for both multiplayer and humanity drop, it's considered one big map that's the same thing as the Duke's Archives. Same also happens in Oolacile Township & The Chasm for Manus, it's just one area with one boss entity ID.
Still, I can't say I've actually ruled out some weird interplay between New Londo Ruins and the Abyss being involved.
@@illusorywall i just have to mention that manus is actually physically in the map and can be cheesed through an opening in the chasm of the abyss area outside his fog wall.. so he is "in" the area map.. four kings though.. if you dont have the ring equipped, you get killed instead (with a unique death message).. maybe it has something to do with how the game processes this info
@illusory wall Actually now that I think about it, Seath is kind of a non standard example considering he moves locations. After you get out of prison, he's still in the room you first met him in. Idk when the move happens but he doesn't permanently leave that room until you've triggered his cutscene in the cave. Maybe the transient boss location messes with the humanity counter bc of some weird superposition in the game's code?
@@illusorywall I'd more bet on just sloppy implementation of the fight, perhaps due to what seems to have been somewhat troubled development. We know from unused assets that there was supposed to be a way to get their sword at some point, for one thing. Not to mention whatever was up with Jar-Eel.
“Consider keeping Seath Alice to have easy access to humanity.”
Illusory Wall is a minion of Seath. It is confirmed.
This is amazing! I'm finally playing through Remastered with some friends and we were just talking about this mechanic. Thank you for explaining it so well. I think I might keep Seath alive so I can farm humanity to level up my chaos covenant to save Solaire lol.
Phenomenal information. I was aware of the basics (point system, boss checks) but there was so much more under the hood. The Duke's bug was unknown to me, as was the fact that it only applies to "human" enemies. Well done. I really love this series.
This is PEAK content. Thank you for the effort and time you put in. I absolutely love these videos!
The painted world bonewheels thing could be intentinal torture Breaks you so maybe it includes your humanity aswell. But that would just be cruel on the Lore side of things and would actually explain why Priscilla says their kind and pure.
This was a really well made video, and you explained everything really clearly. Great work!
These videos are so well made! And you also used footage from Northernlions DS1 playthrough which is pretty cool!
Wow, I remember unknowingly replicating the archives trick once. I think I kept forgetting to sit at the bonfire so Seath kept sending me back to the parish and each time the crystal guy in the cog storage room was giving me one.
@illusory wall you are a legend for being this dedicated to this game for so long.
This series is about as close as I can get to feeling the magic of Dark Souls again, love learning about these game's many quirks.
Still learning about this game.
Love this series man. It feels like I'm 17 again and watching fresh lore videos.
This community never fails to amaze me
Brilliant series, I'm so glad there are people out there that still cherish these games like I do.
I remember this being a thing, including the "random" drops from seemingly not doing anything, however I never realized what exactly was going on and the random ones I had assumed were from "glitched" AI dying in the background. After all, it wasn't uncommon for enemies to accidentally kill themselves from time to time, so I kind of assumed this drop was coming from some off screen enemy that clipped through the floor or something.
I thought the dukes archive humanity was because I was killing the Pisacas and that last hollow was putting me past the limit.
Surprising to see that the Pisacas don't count for anything and the humanity drop is actually a bug. Thanks!
Speaking of bugs; now that a bug had been identified with humanity drops in New Londo, would it be possible for a mod to fix it?
I could swear I've gotten a humanity drop from the hollows in the initial area of New Londo, before I've done anything.
Great video. Would love to see you tackle the Gravelord covenant, I've always wanted to try deliberately gravelording myself for more challenge.
You deserve more subs, dude. This stuff is really interesting and you go so in depth. Thank you for the quality content.
This was probably made for people that enjoy farming enemies for souls, to give them a bonus of humanity while they farm souls. That's just what I think.
1:33 oh I assure, sir. _I_ have. First bonfire in Undead Burg. I wanted a +4 Enchanted Great Scythe right after Taurus, so I spammed the soldiers up top by getting the red drake to burn the bridge. It was incredibly tedious, but I managed to get 10 soft humanity so I could farm the crystal golems. This also obviously gave me more than enough for the Artoris Crest too lol
As everyone else says; this series is excellent. Watching these is giving me a new found appreciation for what is already my favorite game. I can't think of any other franchise with this much esotericism through out the whole of it's design. Maybe some of the old Might & Magics? Or Wizardry?
This series is absolutely fantastic, thank you for making these videos! I never knew about the Undead Parish/Duke's Archive exploit. I backed the You Died book Kickstarter the very moment I learned you contributed to it. I wish Future Press had sought your insight for their guides, it would have been neat to have some technical trivia dropped here and there. Really looking forward to more in this series. Do you plan to do videos on Bloodborne?
Love this video series. Thank you for all of your hard work.
I love how even though you break down all these weird game mechanics, dark souls still retains that magic feeling. Like, in Minecraft, once you get the hang of it, it just looks like ones and zeros. Dark souls has so much weird sh❤️t going on, when you figure out why and how it works, I guess it's like you get a newfound appreciation
Really great work you've been up to recently, especially with this video.
As always it's a great start to the day when I see a new video from you. Praise the sun my friend.
Always knew this mechanic had to do with killing a bunch of enemies in an area but never knew it was so convoluted. Interesting to see how Fromsoftware programmed so many obscure and obtuse mechanics in DS1.
Also that bug in new londo is hilarious. Certainly it'd have helped me years ago if it was fixed haha
I'd guess it has something to do with messing something up with the implementation of the Four Kings fight.
I’m not sure if the seath area exploit is as useful as farming depth rats but this is something to keep in mind
Bro. Your content is super interesting. Also as a game dev myself is nice to see how my favorite games work under the hood.
In the Daughters of Ash mod they placed dark wraiths in Anor Londo and now I get why they dropped humanity like this!
What a great series! I love learning more about the hidden depth of this game.
I am SUPER looking forward to learning more about drop rates! Like, who the f knows how those things work!?
Also, although it's significantly less useful to know, this video made me think it'd be cool to have a video about
a. The eccentricities of the unpatched game (like getting multi-cursed).
b. Lore implications of hidden mechanics (like certain weapons dealing extra damage to certain enemy classes).
or c. Both... because there seems to be some overlap between the two.
iirc. skeletons used to not give souls and silver knight weapons used to do lightning damage, which both seem lore significant. But both were patched out, presumably for gameplay balance.
Had this pop up in my recommended feed, and thought this was gonna be a lore video about what a Humanity drop in Dark Souls actually is, but this is also really cool. Had no idea that the game had a system like this.
2:47 I'm pretty sure it also works with Ariamis' Phalanx. I remember getting humanities while farming souls.
Ah so it doesn't come from them, it was probably just building up from the regular hollows killed on the way.
Appreciate you man, filling up my souls craving consistently
I for one am REALLY looking forward to your item discovery and drop rates video. I couldn't tell you how many times I've tried to help someone on the forums with ID and drops only to end up writing three or four paragraphs just to cover it all, without leaving anything out. And I'm sure there are things I've could have misunderstood or simply not known about. But, hey, that's what you're here for, illusory wall! :)
Love this series, please keep on chugging away! There's no end to interesting things to learn about and discuss, just within the first Dark Souls game.
So THAT'S why I always get a humanity from the second butcher
So many of these mechanics feel like last minute feature creep that was added and pushed out as soon as it worked at all without very much testing time.
Thank you so much for the video man. I've been pkaying dark souls vanilla for a life time and you just solved a mistery from years for me. Keep the good work, love your videos and your love for the game.
Thanks for clearing this up, I was so confused on why I was ending up with humanity while playing the game. Never knew about 'soft humanity'.
Sir illusory wall! I am so happy that I encountered your channel!
Love your videos and your passion for figuring out DS1 mechanics! 🤘
All the chosen undead and unkindled ash needs to come across this!
The irony of game not being able to find the flag №404 is fantastic.
I love your videos, thank you for great and precise information about obscure dark souls mechanics :) glad i found these series
Just found your channel and I absolutely love your content.Thank you good sir for the hard work you do to entertain us.
Still waiting for "Item discovery and drop rates video"
I want to believe
I'm guessing that whenever this happens it's caused by some geometry unloading before the enemies are unloaded, causing the enemies to fall into the kill zone, then when they 'die' they give the player (wherever they've gone as the game doesn't actually move the character behind the scenes anywhere, it just unloads the map data and loads IN the new data, meaning that enemies that die are being killed as the world changes, then the moment after they die they get unloaded but because whatever game object/script that handles enemy death and soul/humanity accreditation hasn't been unloaded it still tallies the deaths and rewards the souls/humanity. There was that one glitch in Blood Borne that i remember where if a player walked across a particular room after going through a series of moves across the map they caused the game to load and unload a specific area that had an enemy that could be repeatedly be killed by just loading and unloading their map through walking across a room level-load boundary. I suspect it's much the same throughout their games that use their level loading system and isn't careful to make the game handle the unloading of enemies occur before the level geometry.
Ah, this idea has been brought up a few times though I believe it doesn't actually apply to the glitched/ free humanity here. The issue is that these odd instances of humanity aren't accompanied by Souls, and it's sometimes occurring in places where the mechanic isn't possible by actually killing enemies. So enemies dying, by falling out the map or some other means, doesn't appear to be the cause. Knowing now that simply loading certain, different maps is enough to glitch out the counter in the current version of the game, I suspect the unpatched game is finding a way to award these indepedent of enemies actually dying.
Counter-argument, the game at release did have more issues with enemies falling out the map (at least Shiva's bodyguard in particular), and there were some enemies that awarded 0 Souls originally (skeletons and ghosts maybe?). Though even with this in mind I think it's still happening without enemies dying.
@@illusorywall It might also be that they handled the process wherein the souls don't get added to the player's tally, but forgot or couldn't do so for the points used to generate the humanity. So the enemies do get killed, but don't give souls, but do give credit toward the humanity tally.
Ah, yes, the all-time classic of spaghetti code. Reusing the same variable names whilst failing to correctly see the scope you're working in. This is peak level programming failure that can lead to serious bugs, and at the same time it's not always easy to avoid accidentally overwriting variables unless all of your code is 100% object-oriented.
As a rule, when in doubt, just make it so your variables only serve one purpose, not more, and always give them a unique name, and *don't be afraid of duplicates.* If you don't, those kinda things are bound to happen when you're too tired to remember how everything works and interacts with itself. If you do, you will just lose a small bit of processing power but save yourself a lot of trouble. The later is always preferable to being mindfucked when you're trying to understand what went wrong in dozens of files interacting with each other, and you can always optimize later on when everything is working correctly.
Trying to make code simpler while creating a program is a path to failure such as those. First, make sure it works, and only then try to make it more elegant, optimized and simpler. One step at a time.
Wow, as a beginner... This is a pure gold advice
Then again, you have this major problem: _when_ should code be optimised? If it's left too late, it'll take far longer to optimise than it would have done much earlier, which, among other things, can *massively* bloat a project's development time and scope - it ends up with the entire codebase having to be rewritten in some cases, and if one can't write good comments in the code, one circles back round to the same problem you identified, only after the rewrite. Still a bad idea to not use good variable names, though. This example isn't so bad either, since it's a minor mechanic in a game where it wasn't really needed, but for an entire project... yikes.
@@hostiusasinhostilityhostil7853 I think it is also dependant on the quality, by which I mean the logic of the base code.
Optimization is often bloating a project if and only if the base code was written not only in a verbose manner, but also with very poor and obfuscating logic and poor commenting.
Against this, optimization is indeed helpless, it is helpless because it's not its job anyway to deal with this. Optimization is about dealing with code that can easily be rewritten in a more efficient manner without having to alter its philosophy; it's not about rewriting the logic of a project or portions of it. The latter is dependant on planning and cannot be damage-controlled.
If base code logic is flawed, then the project is compromised since day 1 anyway.
What I was referring to was basically that the bug the video presented was probably caused by an attempt at reusing code assets on-the-fly rather than duplicating them momentarily. Duplication is easy to spot if it is accounted for in the base code and explicitly stated through variable names and commenting.
If your code is verbose and is clear, optimizing will not be an issue. I just maybe naively believed that people reading my comment would understand that indeed, base code needs not to be confused. But I didn't state it so yeah, lol, I myself wasn't clear, the irony.
As to the issue you raise on deciding when to optimise the code, I think I have an answer:
First, code the project in a sensible way and comment it properly, but do not pay particular attention to asset duplication or the use of deprecated technique because avoiding those in the heat of the moment, when you are entirely focused on the logic, is extremely difficult.
@@hostiusasinhostilityhostil7853 In my opinion the solution can be found out in the agile methodology. You work in small incremental steps, and you should consider some of those steps to be specifically dedicated to optimize existing code (maybe something like 20% of all your steps). It's called refactoring.
1:05 Looking forward to this. Although I know you don't usually dive too deep into lore I'm curious about the lore implications of humanity drop on "humans", "gods", "lords" and "giants".
For example, while Artorias drops a "lord soul" both he, Gough, and Ciaran don't drop any humanity. Ornstein and Smough drop 1 humanity while Bell Gargoyle drops 1 twin-humanity. Sif, Bed of chaos, and Nito all drop 1 humanity. No other dragons drop any humanity. Firekeepers drop firekeeper souls and not humanity. Many "humans" don't drop any humanity while others drop a great number like Sieglind and Lautrec. Logan, Domnhall, and Rickert seem reasonably sane while not dropping humanity. If only "humans" drop humanity then why do the Bed of chaos and Seath drop humanity, and if it's exclusively to main bosses then why don't Artorias drop humanity while Manus does? Maybe Artorias lost his humanity to the abyss but then humanity does carry lore weight and the witch of Izalith and Nito are humans while Gwyn and Gwyndolin are not? Anyway, that's only my wild speculations. Love your videos and looking forward to more top tier DS content!
The problem with humanity is that it works somewhat different lore and gameplay wise, anyway if I tried to explain why for example Logan doesnt drop humanity it would be maybe because he doesn't have "excessive" humanity, let me explain, suppose you are hollow, you get 1 humanity and turn human again in a bonfire, then you would be human again but with 0 humanity, because that humanity would now be in your human body
I'm sorry I'm not that good at explaining things
From memory those humanity drops were added in later patches, so you can't really tie it lore wise
This is the 4th time watching fully and I have future times to watch and go back to.
Hoping your DS2 series will continue soon
Thank you! Another DS2 video is being worked on right now!
Thanks so much for doing the legwork on this, I remember using the data back in the day.
im very late, but the random, soft humanity from the game loading new zones, seems like how bloodborne treats insight when going into a new area
Dude... Duuuuuuuuude ! So much commitment ! You are making me learn things about this game when I thought I knew everything ! And I love it !
I wish more content creators would show up on camera like this. Kinda cool touch for some reason I think
Great content and editing. Hope success comes your way.
This video just goes to show what a fantastic game Dark Souls really is. You'd think after a decade people would tire of this arcane stuff, but no, Souls fanatics are just jonesing for this kind of in-depth explanation of every single thing.
I am really looking forward to Dark Souls: Nightfall - the familiar world of Dark Souls, but something else altogehter.
With the announcement of Elden Ring DLC I’m back on a fromsoft binge. Had northernlions play through on half the day, and then come here and see a dark souls clip from 12 years ago from the same man, wild. All of the “how tall were you when dark souls 1 came out” references are making more sense now 😂
Hey i just found your channel man and honestly thank you so much for making these videos it really helps answer alot of my questions
Awesome, glad it's been helpful!
9:40 it me
The hollow guarding the bonfire room of the depths always drops soft humanity upon killing it for the fist time.
Edit: Unless 9:05 explains this phenomenon (instead of trudging through the water, I always drop through the shortcut behind the first butcher, kill the giant rat, pick up the key to the bonfire room, and go to the bonfire room)
14:29 is probably an out of bounds basilisk that loads in when you get close to it, which procs its gravity and fall damage. The Great Hollow has a couple that were left jettisoned fsr, which is why we still get random souls flowing through the walls in there.
Ah I've had a couple people suggest this, but the Basilisks aren't flagged to work with this mechanic and you also get these free humanity independent of Souls (which you do get from the OoB Basilisks when they die). It's likely something to do with some weird data being triggered by the Blighttown map loading and interferring with this mechanic.
These video’s are amazing keep up the good work !!!
Interesting! The game data suggests that it's not dependent on area at all but is actually mapped NPCID:bossID, but now that I've said that I can't find the link between area bosses and the NPC entries. Maybe it was in MSB files... but I remember it being arbitrary instead of based on location, which only comes up in Anor Londo
Yup! It's tied to the bosses so directly, such that stepping into an area where your summon sign doesn't work will shift the boss ID back to none. I'm not sure how that works behind the scenes though.
@@illusorywall If I had to guess the "bounding boxes" for the multiplayer areas have an ID tied to them, and any entity that's spawned inside of those boxes also belong to that ID, with the ID your enemy has applying instead of your own.
It's not in the param data anywhere besides the area boss param file, and while it's still arbitrary which boss it's tied to, it is dependent on the largest box.
Last I checked, Gwyndolin's boss area event data applies to the Silver Knights and Giant Sentinels, but not the Painting Guardians down on the floor. A simple way to test that is to just set the area boss humanity point counter to 0 for all 10 stages, load it in the debug viewer, and then ensure whatever you're killing has a valid Humanity Lot ID.
You probably know more than I do but I'd rather say it than not.
Please God, do a video on item discovery soon, that has been one of the most curious stats in the game for me.
And here I thought that whenever you rest in a bonfire, the humanity drop would be given to a random enemy individual on the area. The humanity drop would be bestowed on you upon killing that specific enemy individual. I've tested this on Undead Burg but there were times when there would be no humanity drop even if I had alreafy killed all the enemies on the area. My conclusion when the irregularity happens is "maybe the humanity drop was on an enemy individual on the Lower Undead Burg".
Thanks for making this video. Its really cool to know that this mechanic make sense lore-wise. And a really genius idea. Dark Souls really is a one of a kind game.
A really great series, i am happy that you keep on doing it, high production quality and good script writing. Is there any way i can support you in material way? (patreon, donations, etc)
I might have found a bug about this in Dark Souls Remastered, I play on Xbox Series X and Offline. I was farming the Painting Guardian Sword in the room of the painting in Dark Anor Londo, having defeated Ornstein and Smough, Dark Sun Gwyndolin and Crossbreed Priscilla (I know she's now even in Anor Londo but its just data). It happened 3 times (that I could notice), twice when I went from the Darkmoon Tomb bonfire to the room to the painting (farming the Guardian Sword), and once when I escaped from the Painted World of Ariamis and spawned into the painting room and started killing the guardians to go to the bonfire. I don't know if anyone has noticed this before but I wanted to leave it here in case you want to take a look at it sometime.
I'm playing DSR for the first time. I didn't kill Seath yet, so I'll use this trick to kindle every bonfire to the max thanks to the free soft humanities :D
At the end you muse that Fromsoft has a lot of creativity rewarding players with humanity in a 5th unique way, which is certainly true, but I think it also has the effect of making death more meaningful.
Since players know that humanity is valuable the player will only use hard humanity before they will use it for something, ie summoning or quelana. But giving the player valuable soft humanity ups the stakes making death more impactful. Having moments where a player doesn't know they'll receive humanity, ups the stakes, especially if they're going through an area for the first time, which is when these humanities tend to drop anyway. Awesome stuff imo
Watching your videos has made me realise that dark souls was far buggier than I ever imagined but was hidden by their “culture” of vagueness.
The idea that everything is left to players and the community to discover is still my favourite thing about Miyazaki’s design vision.
So that's why I get so many soft humanities farming souvenirs of reprisal
Also Saulden says: You can collect bit by bit from corpses; perhaps this was the way the developers found to tell the players about this mechanic
now that's a lot of information about a mechanic i had never noticed existed before
Dude, great work. I gorged myself on this information.
Cool vidoes, one mechanic you could do next is the Estus Flask recovery when defeating enemies. Ive never really understood that one and it also returns in DS3 where it is even more frequent.
In DS1 it happens when someone connected to your world kindles a nearby bonfire. In DS3 it's essentially a random chance when u kill an enemy. Both do essentially the sane thing but aren't connected in any meaningful way.
This saved me more than once in ds3 it feels so random but I'm sure it's just a weird value criteria
Although the mechanic has issues perhaps it’s intended design was to give players humanity who repeatedly die in a given area.
Now to the real mysteries: How does durability actually work? How does defense work? How does stability translate to stamina consumption?
I will never look at the Dukes Archives the same way again after today. I wish I knew about that exploit before today.
Gonna need that item discovery video.
Good lord, I can’t believe it’s been 12 years since NL played Dark Souls
Northernlion mentioned poooooooog.
great video by the way, im def gonna abuse the dukes archives humanity farm my next playthrough.
I get the 10 humanity before the Taurus Demon so when I kill the Boar not to far after it I have the best chance possible of getting its head. It usually doesn’t take long and I get some souls for gear and levels while doing it.
My god hearing old northernlion is a blast from the past.