History DemonicSpiders / DarkSouls

** If you take the shortcut through the Depths and go straight for the boss, bypassing the Channeler you would have encountered on the normal route, guess what? ''The Channeler can buff the boss''. Although many players consider that particular boss a bit too easy, so maybe you would prefer fighting it this way.

* The [[CatsAreMean cat]] [[MegaNeko beasts]] in Darkroot Forest definitely count. There are three of them, each has hundreds of health, [[LightningBruiser and they attack and move rapidly]]. To make matters worse, ''you cannot block their roll attacks'', not even with the [[GameBreaker Greatshield of Artorias]]. Fortunately, however, [[ArtificialStupidity their AI is easily exploited]], with multiple locations that they can't pathfind through, and an easily discovered glitch that will get them stuck on a incline. Even more fortunately, they don't drop anything, aren't guarding anything, and aren't in your way, so you have precisely ''no reason to fight them.'' Thank God.

* The [[CatsAreMean cat]] [[MegaNeko beasts]] in Darkroot Forest definitely count. There are three of them, each has hundreds of health, [[LightningBruiser and they attack and move rapidly]]. Fortunately, however, [[ArtificialStupidity their AI is easily exploited]], with multiple locations that they can't pathfind through, and an easily discovered glitch that will get them stuck on a incline. Even more fortunately, they don't drop anything, aren't guarding anything, and aren't in your way, so you have precisely ''no reason to fight them.'' Thank God.

** The so called [[MemeticMutation Dragon Butts]] in Lost Izalith. They are big, they do a lot of damage, and they all stand in a giant lake of lava, meaning you take constant damage while trying to fight them. As of the current patch, they are relatively easy enough to simply avoid, but in the initial release, their agro radius was ''huge'' meaning it was almost impossible to get through the area without all of them wanting to kill you.

* The Hollow Slave is an imp-like enemy that carries either an axe, a Warpick, or a Flamberge, and are really great at appearing out of nowhere. They're annoying but manageable in the Undead Settlement, but hit DemonicSpider status in the Cathedral of the Deep, often showing high up on ledges where falling to your death is a constant danger. They also love to ambush and dogpile you!

* [[EvilSorcerer Channelers]]. They like to hide on platforms out of your reach and bombard you with Soul Arrows, which take off major chunks of health and tend to be very hard to dodge. Even worse, when you finally close in on them, they do their buffing dance and boost the attack power of anyone near them, including themselves (and they ''know'' how to use that trident). Even worse, they tend to [[TeleportSpam teleport]] before you can finish them off, retreating about thirty feet away to rain Soul Arrows upon you once more.

* [[ChestMonster Mimics are powerful monsters]] disguised as treasure chests, trying to open one could result in a OneHitKill. During combat, these enemies are highly agile, hit like a truck, and have a deadly grab attack. In VideoGame/DarkSoulsII, [[HitboxDissonance their grab attack has a ridiculously large hitbox]] that can reach you [[https://66.media.tumblr.com/8cb9b9667a97bdec41b28f3801cb5b4d/tumblr_n5ccnzhvTv1ro156wo2_r1_400.gif even if you are directly behind them.]] In the [[VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII third game]], their damage output went UpToEleven meaning they could take out three-quarters of your health from a single kick attack.

* [[OurGiantsAreBigger The Sentinels guarding most open areas of Anor Londo]]. They have a considerable amount of health coupled with massive damage resistance, and their halberd strikes are guaranteed to stagger you no matter how much poise you stack. Even worse, their massive shield is impenetrable, meaning they'll be impervious to any kind of damage unless you hit their blind sides. [[EliteMooks Royal Sentinels]] [[UpToEleven crank this up]] by having even better defenses and two miracles: [[BlownAcrossTheRoom Wrath of the Gods]] and [[HealThyself Great Heal]]. You'll have to strike them down hard and fast if you don't want them to regenerate and beat you to a pulp.

* ''[[UpToEleven Every single red phantom enemy]]'' spawned by a Gravelord infection becomes this. Increased health, attack power and, most importantly, ''aggro-range'', causing them to chase you even more aggressively than you would initially assume, and sometimes ''before you even notice them''. Woe betide a player who attempts [[HarderThanHard New Game+7]] and gets gravelorded along the way, as those same red phantoms will usually OneHitKill even players with ''maximum health''.

** The Harald Knights, dear god, the Harald Knights. Bulbous armored soldiers carrying large cleavers and with a mass of Humanity for a head. They barely take any damage to begin with and can only be staggered by being hit in the face (which is rare unless using arrows or certain pyromancies). Their combos are relentless, they have devastating range, and they do so much damage with a single swing that even if you have heavy armor and 40 points in Vigor, you're guaranteed to lose 70% of your health. Did we mention​ that, like the Murkmen they often come in packs and like to spawn out of the ground, meaning you almost never encounter less than 3 of them at a time? The only reliable way of killing them is plunging attacks, which do absurd amounts of damage to them and often can kill them outright. However, if you miss, you're usually placed right next to one of these terrors with enough fall damage incurred to make a single swipe fatal.

* The Mist-Shrouded Soldiers in Shaded Woods. You arrive at a patch of the woods covered in fog. Inside that fog are Hollow soldiers who can both fight at melee range or shoot at you with crossbows. But hey, sounds like the typical mook, nothing much to worry about except the fog makes them a little less visible, right? ''WRONG''. The bastards are '''''[[VisibleInvisibility transparent]]''''', ''Franchise/{{Predator}}''-style. They can only barely be seen by their silhouette if you squint hard enough, and practically invisible when standing still. By the time you see one, there's probably another one right behind you ready to stab you in the back and OneHitKill you. Oh, and to make matters even worse, they're practically indistinguishable from the shades of other players, so you'll run over to fight one you just saw only to find it's another player, leaving you open for yet another backstab. InterfaceScrew much?

* The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin demonic spiders]] in Tseldora. While a bit of a pushover in the first playthrough, in [[NewGamePlus New Game Plus]] they will swarm you relentlessly while you are attempting to defeat the [[GiantSpiders Duke's Dear Freja]] and while you face one, or even two red phantoms. The spiders are weak to your attacks by this stage, but their movements are unpredictable and they hit for massive damage.

* Necromancers provide a rare support-oriented version of this trope. They aren't particularly difficult to fight: they only have one attack, which is highly telegraphed. What makes them a problem is that, while they're still alive, the skeletons in the area have ResurrectiveImmortality, effectively becoming InvincibleMinorMinion monsters. Worse, necromancers themselves don't like to come out into the open; instead, they'll hide in the Crypt's many chambers, forcing the player to go on a SnipeHunt while being harassed by a throng of immortal skeletons. This tends to result in a lot of suicide runs, since even if the necromancer is found and killed, the player is still being pursued and killed by a dozen skeletons exploiting the game's StunLock mechanics. Thankfully, necromancers don't respawn, so at least you only have to deal with them once each.

** Another invader from two of the {{DLC}}s deserves to be noted, and that is Maldron the Assassin. Unlike most NPC invaders who attempt to fight the player in straight up combat, Maldron acts like the biggest troll you can imagine, mimicking behaviors of invading players who don't try to play fair. In the Brume Tower, he'll run away from you after spawning, forcing you to chase him down a tower filled with durable enemies and traps to the bottom where an Ashen Idol lies that will heal him. And even sneakier, in Eleum Loyce, he wears a ring that makes him look like he's an NPC rather than a phantom, and doesn't even attack you when you first see him. He acts like a friendly NPC until the moment you turn your back on him, at which point he will cheerfully stab you in the back. And similar to his other appearance, he LOVES to run away, forcing you to chase him down in order to kill him. And if you try to ignore him, he'll continue to harass you as long as you are in the area.

** Another invader from two of the DLCs deserves to be noted, and that is Maldron the Assassin. Unlike most NPC invaders who attempt to fight the player in straight up combat, Maldron acts like the biggest troll you can imagine, mimicking behaviors of invading players who don't try to play fair. In the Brume Tower, he'll run away from you after spawning, forcing you to chase him down a tower filled with durable enemies and traps to the bottom where an Ashen Idol lies that will heal him. And even sneakier, in Eleum Loyce, he wears a ring that makes him look like he's an NPC rather than a phantom, and doesn't even attack you when you first see him. He acts like a friendly NPC until the moment you turn your back on him, at which point he will cheerfully stab you in the back. And similar to his other appearance, he LOVES to run away, forcing you to chase him down in order to kill him. And if you try to ignore him, he'll continue to harass you as long as you are in the area.

* The Lothric Knights. If any enemy shows off [[ArtificialBrilliance the new and improved AI]], it's them. For starters, they'll shield bash you if you get behind them and keep track of you very well. If you try to rush them, they can stunlock you to death before you get the first hit. There's also a second version that carries a greatshield and a spear, and those get all the qualities mentioned, plus the ability to hide behind their shields as they poke you to death. Did we mention this is one of the ''first enemies introduced in the game''? When you run into them again at Lothric Castle, they gain the ability to apply Blessed Weapon for even greater attack power (in the Grand Archives this gets upgraded to ''Crystal Magic Weapon''), and introduce a third variant wielding an ''enormous'' greatsword which does lightning damage in addition to physical, meaning you can't block 100% of the incoming damage.

** The worst offender tends to be the Adjudicator Giants. From far away they spawn phantoms of Ruin Sentinel platoons to bombard you with arrows and turn you into a pincushion, Halflight with his blue flame trail that follows you, Ledo with his stone hammer fully buffed and ready to smash you with (who often spawns ''right next to you''), and very rarely, "an archdragon spewing forth flames from above". Getting close enough to kill them is an effort in itself, and even sniping them out of aggro range will cause them to spawn phantoms in your immediate vicinity to kill you. Fortunately some of the time when you get close enough they resort to easily avoided melee atttacks, but more often than not, they'll summon the Sentinels and Ledo in tandem. Worst part? Contrary to what their restricting passage manner would suggest, they respawn, meaning you that you have to go out of your way to kill them repeatedly if you want to explore certain areas safely.

* Bonewheel Skeletons. They're one of the few enemies in the game that are always faster than the player, and considering their main method of attack is rolling at you, this is a big problem. Blocking doesn't work well either; without either godlike stamina or a ridiculously good shield, you'll find yourself out of stamina alarmingly quickly, and then out of health. They're also surprisingly good at correcting their course, so dodging them is difficult without light equipment and very good timing. Weaving while running is about the best way to dodge them...until you enter the basement of the [[BonusDungeon Painted Realm of Ariamis]], and find them in [[OhCrap tight, narrow corridors]]...
** Even if you ''do'' dodge them, unless you're right next to a wall they will probably zoom so far past you that you won't be able to get a chance to attack them before they start another attack of their own.
** So notorious are the Bonewheel Skeletons that some rampant psycho decided to make [[https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/1383 a mod]] that replaces almost every enemy in the game with them.

* [[ChestMonster Mimics are powerful monsters]] disguised as treasure chests, trying to open one could result in a OneHitKill. During combat, these enemies are highly agile, hit like a truck, and have a deadly grab attack. In VideoGame/DarkSoulsII, [[HitboxDissonance their grab attack has a ridiculously large hitbox]] that can reach you [[https://66.media.tumblr.com/8cb9b9667a97bdec41b28f3801cb5b4d/tumblr_n5ccnzhvTv1ro156wo2_r1_400.gif even if you are directly behind them.]] In the 3rd game, their damage output went UpToEleven meaning they could take out three-quarters of your health from a single kick attack.

* [[ChestMonster Mimics are powerful monsters]] disguised as treasure chests, trying to open one could result in a OneHitKill. During combat, these enemies are highly agile, hit like a truck, and have a deadly grab attack. In VideoGame/DarkSoulsII, [[HitboxDissonance their grab attack has a ridiculously large hitbox]] that can reach you [[[[https://66.media.tumblr.com/8cb9b9667a97bdec41b28f3801cb5b4d/tumblr_n5ccnzhvTv1ro156wo2_r1_400.gif even if you are directly behind them.]] In the 3rd game, their damage output went UpToEleven meaning they could take out three-quarters of your health from a single kick attack.

* Mimics are back again, and they've been eating their spinach (or eating adventurers who ate ''their'' spinach)! While in the previous two games, Mimics were manageable if you knew what you were doing, and weren't ''huge'' threats to high level players, now they'll knock even high level players on their asses, and their grab and bite will eat away nearly three quarters of your health, if not kill you outright. And just to be extra cruel, there's a mimic right in your path in the first major area after you leave Firelink Shrine!

* The [[KillerRabbit Basilisks]] who were immediately notorious after the release of the game. They have a breath attack which inflicts Curse, the most debilitating status effect in the game. The way status effects work, you have a meter that fills up as you are exposed to something that has a status effect. Players in their first play through will likely have zero resistance against curse, meaning the meter will fill up in about a second, almost instantly if you get caught in the cloud created by two of them. Curse kills the player [[OneHitKill instantly]]. When players revive, their health is permanently halved, even if they die again. Getting the curse removed is [[GuideDangIt a quest in and of itself]].

* Most of the NPC summons are both this and BossInMookClothing, particularly the NPC summons in the ''Lost Crowns'' DLC thanks to ArtificialBrilliance. [[spoiler: Jester Thomas]] from ''Crown of the Sunken King'' is probably the most [[MemeticBadass infamous]] example thanks to his sky-high resistances, insane speed, and Pyromancy spam.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1343180226734_3079.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:[[NintendoHard Expect to die like this very often]].]]

** Even if you if you ''do'' dodge them, unless you're right next to a wall they will probably zoom so far past you that you won't be able to get a chance to attack them before they start another attack of their own.

* The [[CatsAreMean cat]] [[MegaNeko beasts]] in Darkroot Forest definitely count. There are three of them, each has hundreds of health, [[LightningBruiser and they attack and move rapidly]]. Fortunately, however, [[ArtificialStupidity their AI is easily exploited]], with multiple locations that they can't pathfind through, and an easily discovered glitch that will get them stuck on a incline. Even more fortunately, they don't drop anything, aren't guarding anything, and aren't in your way, so you have precisely ''no reason to fight them.'' Thank god.

* The Black Knights are back, albeit much more rare than they were in the first game, and are just as tough as ever. To put it in perspective, one fan hacked a single Black Knight as hostile to other enemies and pitted it against such Demonic Spiders as the Darkwraiths, Mimics, Chaos Demons, as well as actual bosses like Iudex Gundyr, Vordt, and even ''the Abyss Watchers''. The Black Knight destroyed all of them... except the Abyss Watchers, and even then the fight was down to the last sliver of health. If you kick that up to ''two'' Black Knights? They're completely capable of stomping [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbmyK8k9ZlQ Champion Gundyr]], a late-game fight widely considered to be ThatOneBoss.

* The Black Knights are back, albeit much more rare than they were in the first game, and are just as tough as ever. To put it in perspective, one fan hacked a Black Knight as hostile to other enemies and pitted it against such Demonic Spiders as the Darkwraiths, Mimics, Chaos Demons, Iudex Gundyr, and even ''the Abyss Watchers''. The Black Knight destroyed all of them... except the Abyss Watchers, and even then the fight was down to the last sliver of health.

** The Corvian Knights that come in two varietes, wielding either the Crow Talons or the Crow Quills. They have a lot of health, are difficult to stagger and deal a lot of damage with their fast and unpredictable combos. On top of it all their weapons cause bleeding, augmenting their high damage even more. The Crow Quills variety are also highly mobile as well, being able to dash around rapidly while tossing throwing daggers at you (which, due to the size of the Corvian Knights, are about the size of greatswords) while the Crow Talons ones have a very telegraphed but extremely dangerous multi-hit attack that more often than not guarantees death should you be hit with the full force of it.

* The second DLC, The Ringed City, manages to top this, in that you can count the types of enemies that aren't​ hellishly difficult on one hand.

** The Hollow Clerics, mad Miracle-users that crawl on all fours. Their main attack is a spell with a deceptively long range that drains your health quickly and can even target you when you aren't even able to be seen by them. And their defenses are absurd due to that lump of stone. And if you do manage to get them to low health, they cast a self-healing miracle that can also drain your health faster than the Irithyll Jailers ever could. And sometimes they'll hit you with a swipe that can take out more than a quarter of your health.killing these guys often takes constant movement and trying to out damage them before they can heal, which is made difficult already due to their defenses and even worse because they're often surrounded by difficult enemies and in places you can't easily reach, meaning killing​ them can either take forever or be borderline impossible depending on your loadout. Later versions of these enemies also have a deceptively fast spinning attack, which are fast and deadly enough to make the older bonewheel skeleton​ jealous.
** The Ringed Knights can give the Lothric Knights a run for their money with their strong armor, speed, powerful attacks, and ability to buff their attacks with fire. Said knights also seldom come alone, and carry dragon shields that can both blow you away and torch you with flames. It doesn't help that a lot of their attacks can literally catch you off of a roll, meaning you actively have to time all your rolling​ just to avoid them getting a guaranteed hit on you.

** The worst offender tends to be the Adjudicator Giants. From far away they spawn phantoms of Ruin Sentinel platoons to bombard you with arrows and turn you into a pincushion, Halflight with his blue flame trail that follows you, Ledo with his stone hammer fully buffed and ready to smash you with (who often spawns ''right next to you''), and very rarely, "an archdragon spewing forth flames from above". Getting close enough to kill them is an effort in itself, and even sniping them out of aggro range will cause them to spawn phantoms in your immediate vicinity to kill you. Fortunately some of the time when you get close enough they resort to easily avoided meele atttacks, but more often than not, they'll summon the Sentinels and Ledo in tandem. Worst part? Contrary to what their restricting passage manner would suggest, they respawn, meaning you that you have to go out of your way to kill them repeatedly if you want to explore certain areas safely.

* The Skeleton Swordsmen in the Catacombs of Carthus are absolute bastards to deal with. They're [[LightningBruiser Lightning Bruisers]] to the core that can dash, sidestep, and ''teleport-roll'' as fast as Hunters in ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'' and hit like freight trains, all their weapons do some form of bleed damage, they often are equipped with Carthus Curved Swords that can get around your shield for ScratchDamage, they throw Kukris at range that do bleed damage and can stun-lock (as well as occasionally throwing out 3 at a time), and they have deceptively high health. Even worse is the fact that they are almost always encountered in pairs so that you have to worry about where one is while trying to kill the other. They're so bad that most people would prefer to deal with the '''Bonewheel Skeletons''', the other skeletal DemonicSpider of the series, rather than try and take these walking Cuisinarts on.