Dark Souls / Tropes A to L

• Ability Depletion Penalty: Running out of stamina makes you unable to do any actions that require it (sprinting, rolling, attacking, etc.) until you're regenerated enough. If your stamina is depleted while you're blocking, you will be Guard Broken, causing you to take more damage during the recoil animation, as well as leaving you vulnerable to a well-timed riposte.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: Each time a stat is raised by one point, a level goes up. Since each stat caps at 99, the maximum level in these games is around the mid-700s to low 800s (depending on the specific game). Typically speaking, one can reliably defeat the Final Boss at around level 100. Since actually reaching that level cap takes forever, most players intentionally limit themselves, at least as far as PvP is concerned.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Ornstein's Dragonslayer Spear, apparently. His Leo Ring states that it is rumored to have cleaved a boulder in two.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Depths look a lot like this, though some parts of them also resemble catacombs.
• Achievement Mockery: The achievement that nobody wants, but everyone gets: It's the "This is Dark Souls" achievement you get for dying the first time in Dark Souls II.
• Acid Attack:
  • The Acid Surge is a pyromancy spell foreign to the Great Swamp. The user emits a cloud of acid that corrodes weapons and armor.
  • The Acid Horn Beetle residing in the Shrine of Amana is a subspecies of the Poison Horn Beetle. They can emit an acidic cloud which corrodes weapons and armor.
  • The Corrosive Ant Queen is a species of corrosive ants native to Jugo. Only one exists in Drangleic. She can emit a blue acidic mist which corrodes weapons and armor, but cures poison. The fact that she lives in the Gutter implies that she used to be one of Lord Aldia's experiments until she outlived her usefulness.
  • The Corrosive Urn item is filled with secretions harvested from giant corrosive ants, in which you can throw it at someone to inflict acid damage on their equipment.
• Action Survivor: The player character is this compared to other action games. You aren't all that powerful compared to enemies, and you always need to be careful and on the defensive. Most of the other NPCs are this as well.
• The Ageless: The Everlasting Dragons. The Gods. Undead who have a steady supply of humanity.
• Airborne Mook: The Mosquitoes in Blighttown, double as Goddamn Bats.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: Useful items are often hidden inside or behind containers, furniture, and other such objects.
  • As a prominent example, you'll never find Ash Lake and the Path of the Dragon covenant unless you notice that a particular chest hidden by an illusion wall is actually in front of another illusion wall.
• An Adventurer Is You: Its pretty standard set of jobs. Many of them return from Demon's Souls.
• The Alcatraz: The Undead Aslyum, where civilization locks up people cursed with the Darksign, either out of fear or to fulfill the ancient prophecy Oscar mentions.
• Ambiguous Gender: Due to the nature of the Japanese language, many characters lack a defined gender. Popular examples include Great Grey Wolf Sif and the Furtive Pygmy. A lot of minor bosses/characters such as the Stone Dragon, Moonlight Butterfly, Belfry Gargoyles, and all of the Demon Bosses are referred to, if at all, using gender neutral language.
  • Anri of Astoria, in the third game, changes genders based on the player character's. They wear full plate armor, and their lines are delivered by a different voice actor to convey their gender. One of the game's endings involves marrying Anri, so they will always be the opposite gender from the player on any given playthrough.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The games' plots have you walking into one.
• And I Must Scream: The eventual and inevitable fate of all those cursed with the Darksign and whoever links the Fire, the latter of which adds being burned alive into the mix. Worse, it's heavily implied that linking the Fire and continuing the Ages bring more curses like the Darksign or the death of civilizations.
• An Aesop: Many, most of them tragic.
  • Of them all, the most optimistic you'll find is the central mechanic of being an Undead, in that you can die a hundred times but still get back up to try again and achieve success. It's a common theme in videogames in general but is reinforced plot-wise by the fact that others with the Undead curse must always persevere and never lose hope, or they will go Hollow and become a shell of their former selves. This is all unfortunately undercut by the fact that all of your perseverance is in vain as you are only attempting to prolong what was already long lost. To phrase it optimistically; the adventure and the hunt is what provides meaning to our lives, not the prize at the end of the tunnel.
  • Let broken things end, rather than hoping for a redemption you know will never come. All three games send the player across a wasted landscape where great cities and empires are well past any chance of regaining even a fraction of their former glory, populated with barely a soul that's neither monstrous nor mad. After crossing this wasteland of decay, each game asks you to choose to link the flame, perpetuating the crumbling ruins you've just passed through, or to let the fire die, knowing that anything—even oblivion—is better than this.
• Animal Motifs: The Four Knights of Gwyn are themed around specific animals, which are represented by the signet rings they wear;
  • Artorias the Abysswalker's animal was a wolf, he was one of Gwyn's most powerful knights and he was an inspiration to his fellow knights and civilians. He was also accompanied by his wolf, Sif, and he would later inspire the Undead Legion of Farron, who fought as a wolf pack.
  • Lord's Blade Ciaran's animal was a hornet, she was an assassin who worked for Gwyn and would kill people under Gwyn's orders. Ciaran's "hornet ring" also boosts the power of critical attacks.
  • Hawkeye Gough's animal was a hawk, he was an archer during the war against dragons. His title was to reflect his accuracy with a bow, his "hawk ring" also reflects this.
  • Dragonslayer Ornstein's animal is a lion, he is the alleged captain of the four knights and the lion was to represent his leadership capabilities.
• Animated Armor: Most of the golems are giant walking suits of armor.
• Animesque: Notable Inversion; despite being made in Japan, the Souls games are mistaken by casual fans or non-fans as a western-made game due to its aesthetics.
• Annoying Arrows: Played straight with the weaker arrows. Enemies can potentially require multiple headshots before they die. Anything less than a headshot and it seems they barely feel it.
  • Averted with heavier ammunition like Dragonslayer Arrows. Getting hit with one of these will do heavy damage or at least knockback targets a noticeable amount if they try to tank it — one of the more noticeable hazards in Anor Londo in the first game are knights carrying dragonslayer arrows to knock the player off of narrow ledges, of which there are many. One of Gwyn's four knights, Hawkeye Gough, is able to cripple a dragon with a single greatarrow.
  • In Dark Souls II, taking an arrow hit at a bad time can inflict a stagger with a startling duration while the archer's friends put sharp things into places you don't want sharp things to be put.
• Antidote Effect: If the player character has enough health or healing, one can just wait out a poison effect. Yet there are situations where a poison moss is necessary.
• The Anti-Nihilist:
  • A common interpretation of the hollowing process, that Undead only keep from hollowing if they have a mission that they can dedicate themselves and stay motivated towards, is essentially a metaphor for this. Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
  • Interpretations of letting Ages of Dark fall on the realm also play with this — though the world ends, it's just a natural cycle of things, and life will go on.
• Anyone Can Die: Any NPC could die, either at one another's hands or due to you killing them. This even applies to some merchants/trainers, so watch out! Several named merchants wander off and become hollow after purchasing everything they have.
  • No NPCs get Plot Armor, so even some of the more important characters can disappear for good. Though you can talk to a variety of NPCs and even go on some side-quests for them, you don't have to at any point. It's entirely possible to complete the game as an anti-social and/or psychopathically murderous character.
  • Averted in Dark Souls III, where the Fire Keeper, Andre of Astora, and the Shrine Handmaiden will respawn when killed. The Fire Keeper will apologise for not dying, while Andre and the Handmaiden will hold a grudge — Andre will refuse to reinforce your stuff, and the Handmaiden will charge you more, until you go to the statue of Velka in the Undead Settlement or the Purging Monument in the Ringed City and pay for absolution.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: The games have several attacks that are ineffective when the target is too close. Most of these are certain spells, and attacks using long-handled weapons. Many bosses are safest when battled up close, as most of their attacks have a minimum range, and the exceptions are clearly telegraphed.
• Arc Number: The number 4 shows up several times in the series, which may or may not be a reference to Four Is Death.
  • In Dark Souls, there are four beings that possess Lord Souls who must be defeated to open the way to the First Flame an defeat Gwyn. Additionally, Gwyn had four knights who fought alongside him the dragon war.
  • In Dark Souls II, there are four Great Souls that must be collected to open the way to Drangleic Castle. The Scholars of the First Sin DLC pack also establishes that Manus' soul was split into four fragments, each becoming a queen and seducing their respective kings into ruin.
  • In Dark Souls III, there are four Lords of Cinder who must be put down and returned to their thrones to access the Kiln of the First Flame. Also, with the addition of The Ringed City DLC, Gwyn has four confirmed children.
• Armor Is Useless: The value of armor has fluctuated rather significantly between different Dark Souls games and compared to Demon's Souls.
  • In Dark Souls, armor is much better than it was in Demon's Souls. The armor's damage resistances can be increased by upgrades, so they don't end up being irrelevant compared to unarmored defense (which increases with level) and enemy damage (which increases as the game progresses). Heavier armor started granting Poise, a stat that makes one Immune to Flinching when high enough. Equipment Load is very easy to get as it's still increased by the same stat that governs Stamina, plus some percentage-based boosts from rings. In PvE, the heaviest armor prevents stunlock and decreases damage so much that even bosses lose to you simply because you can kill them faster even if you barely try to block or dodge attacks. Poise became a large part of the PvP metagame. Many try to get a specific value to protect against certain weapons. Raising Equipment Load extremely high to get heavy armor and unhindered movement is extremely common, resulting in the infamous "Giantdad" and "Haveldad" builds.
  • Dark Souls II made armor significantly less powerful. Physical damage reduction starts out worthwhile in PvE and remains so in PvP (so much that several of the heaviest armors had their physical defense nerfed), but is trivialized by late game enemies' enormous damage-per-hit. Elemental damage reduction becomes percentage-based, and is generally pretty marginal. The effects of Poise are nerfed significantly, so it mostly just matters when in the middle of using a large weapon's attack. On top of this, armor's cost is increased both in terms of stat investment (Stamina and Equipment Load are determined by separate stats while the corresponding rings are less powerful) and penalties for high Encumbrance (stamina regeneration penalties are much more severe).
  • In Dark Souls III, armor is heavily revamped compared to the previous games. The biggest change is that, instead of armor and natural defense adding together, various stats add Defense (flat damage reduction) and armor adds Absorption (reduces percentage of damage after Defense is subtracted^*Although there's a penalty to Defense if you wear nothing in a given armor slot, even wearing tattered rags gets rid of it.). The difference in Absorption between medium and heavy armor is so small that it doesn't justify the extra points in Vitality itself, but Vitality also raises Physical Defense, and the penalties for higher Weight Ratio aren't nearly so severe (no difference in stamina regeneration and fairly little difference in roll invincibility) as long as you're below 100%. Poise now reduces stagger damage by a percentage (1% per point of Poise), but this only matters during attacks that already have hitstun armor, making it both more situational (only the heaviest weapons have any attacks that grant armor) and often excessive (these attacks tend to be difficult to interrupt even with almost no Poise).
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Most armor and shields are ineffective against lightning weapons and spells.
• Arrows on Fire: Fire arrows are not only on fire, they add fire damage to attacks. In the second game, one will cause an explosion if it hits a player or enemy covered in pitch.
• Artificial Stupidity: Sometimes the enemies will commit suicide accidentally by jumping off a ledge.
• Ascetic Aesthetic: The path that leads to the Kiln of the First Flame. It's unlike anything else seen in the game. The area is almost a White Void Room with a downward staircase floating in the void. Ghostly apparitions of the Black Knights walk across the staircase. It really builds up the dread of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Author Appeal: Director Miyazaki has stated that he isn't a sadist, like many assume, and more of a masochist and that he made the game based on what he liked. The game is also Dark Fantasy and loaded with Berserk references, which he has admitted is an influence.
  • The extreme Story Breadcrumbs was inspired by Miyazaki reading poorly-translated fantasy novels that made him piece together their plots himself.
• Automatic Crossbows: The Avelyn, a unique crossbow that can shoot three bolts at once.
• Autosave: The game autosaves almost constantly, so don't even think about Save Scumming. The "Now autosaving" icon pops up every time you kill an enemy.
• Back from the Dead: Those afflicted with the Darksign, repeatedly.
• Back Stab: Many humanoid enemies (and a few nonhumanoid ones) can be backstabbed. Especially effective when paired with the Hornet Ring, which increases Critical damage by 50%.
  • In multiplayer, backstabs are infamous for being overpowered or at least very unfair because of Hit Box Dissonance and lag, especially since the moment you start an attack from a position considered the "back" your opponent is immobilized until the attack is complete, letting people "fish" for backstabs by suddenly rolling to someone's side, locking on mid-roll to change direction, then attacking. For this reason Dark Souls II changed the mechanic so an attack from the back just starts a stab which doesn't immobilize the enemy until it makes contact, giving them a chance to dodge or turn around.
  • The Ironclad enemies in Dark Souls II wear armor that resemble tortoise shells that No-Sell backstabs. Getting behind them is actually a bad idea since they will simply fall backwards to deal heavy damage. Player characters who wear the armor also enjoy immunity to backstabs. The Jester's Robe also prevents backstabs and other sources of Critical Hits from doing extra damage, though the animation will still play.
• Badass Boast: Several NPCs have some type of Badass Boast should the player make them hostile.
• Badass Longcoat: The Wanderer's Coat and the Black Cleric Robe, and Chester's longcoat in the DLC.
• Barrier Maiden: The Fire Keepers, for reasons that aren't exactly clear, are all female and all use their "infinite humanity" to kindle and protect certain bonfires found throughout the world.
• Bag of Holding: Present in the form of the Bottomless Box, a sort of portable bank that can only be used at bonfires.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: Downplayed. While the player can't actually block attacks empty-handed, they can still parry by slapping the offending weapon aside.
  • Occasionally played straight (while averting Blocking Stops All Damage) with a mis-timed parry; the player will still take the full brunt of the damage, but won't be knocked down or back, even if they have no poise whatsoever.
• Basilisk and Cockatrice: Basilisks are common monsters, who are, however, more reptilian than serpentine in appearance. Basically, they look like Labrador-sized short-tailed lizards with giant eyes (even though those aren't really eyes). They do, however, share the most important attribute with classical basilisks — turning people into stone. Thankfully, petrification occurs not through their stare, but through giant clouds of poisonous gas they exhale when attacked.
• Beautiful Void: Lordran, excluding all of the unpleasant monsters and zombies.
• Beef Gate: The Skeletons near Firelink Shrine when first encountered. They teach players pretty quickly that this is the wrongest path you could possibly take. Realizing that it doesn't deter the most hardcore of Determinators, FromSoftware made the skeletons in the area from that path, Catacombs, reassemble themselves upon death, just to make sure the message hits home.
  • Darkroot Garden has three such gates, though two of them only function as such as a result of Sequence Breaking with the Master Key:
    • The entrance by the Undead Parish is blocked by a Titanite Demon, which is a pretty tough fight compared to most of the enemies fought between there and the Undead Burg.
    • The entrance from the Undead Burg is blocked by Havel The Rock, a miniboss capable of one-shotting low-level players.
    • The entrance from the Valley of Drakes is "only" guarded by a Black Knight, which can be tricked into jumping off the cliff. That being said, the player has to go through a narrow canyon populated with lightning-spewing Lightning Bruiser drakes to get there, so the Valley itself would be the gate in this case.
  • The mace-wielding Old Knight in Heide's Tower of Flame in Dark Souls II. If you can't get past him, you're not going to stand a chance against some of the later fights.
• Big Bad: Notable by its absence. Throughout all three games, there is not anybody consciously directing the terrible things happening as a whole; there is no great evil you can defeat to save the world, and most of the bosses you fight are too insane or mindless to be called willingly evil. There are evil characters here and there taking advantage of the situation (and who is evil and who is good is often ambiguous, left open for the player to decide), but they are not particularly important in the grand scheme of things. The closest thing to an overarching villain and antagonist is entropy, the slow decay and death of all things as a natural consequence of time.
• Big Fancy Castle: Anor Londo is a city built like this. Lothric Castle has a similar aesthetic in Dark Souls III.
• BFS: There's a weapon category called Greatswords which are somewhat big. Then you have a weapon category called Ultra Greatswords, which are huge. Both categories see a lot of use in PVP, specifically the Zweihander, which is an Ultra Greatsword that becomes a Game-Breaker with the right character build and weapon upgrade path.
  • In many cases, the enemies whose weapons can be looted at least twice the size of the player. Those weapons don't get scaled down when you pick them up. The Gargoyle Halberd, for example, has only slightly better stats than the regular Halberd, but is half again as large.
  • The prize for most comically oversized weapon probably goes to Smough's Hammer, which has a barrel-sized head.
  • Another good example would have to be the Fume Knight Ultra Great Sword. The damn thing's large enough that it works as a shield simply by putting its rock slab of a blade between you and the other guy. Heck, doing so is the windup for its heavy attack.
• Black Magic: Sorcery spells, which are related to souls (most likely dragon souls). Abyss sorceries and hexes, which draw on the power of the Dark Soul, take this up to eleven.
• Blackout Basement: The Tomb of the Giants is pitch-black. And filled with some of the toughest monsters in the game.
  • The, aheh, torch is carried into Dark Souls II by No Man's Wharf and the Gutter, although there are things you can ignite for persistent lighting.
• Bladder of Steel: There is no pausing, so you'll need to park your character in a (relatively) safe location if you want to take a break without quitting entirely. Your world can also be invaded by other players so long as you have online connectivity and you reversed hollowing at a bonfire, so leaving your character idle means risking being invaded while you're not there to defend yourself.
  • Averted, if you are not participating in multiplayer. In every other moment, you can quit the game (assuming that you aren't going to get your ass murdered while you're accessing the menu). When you reload the game, it will be (mostly) in the state that you left it.
  • In DSI, at least, not even bonfires are safe. Getting kicked from the bonfire menu and invaded is a nasty surprise to those who thought themselves safe.
• Bleak Level: Kiln of the First Flame.
  • Blighttown. Sure, the Depths wasn't sunshine and rainbows, but it mainly just looks like a typical unlit sewer. But the precise moment you step through the door from the Depths to Blighttown, the tint of the game becomes a sickly green, darkness becomes inky and barely broken by improvised torches, and solid stone structures give way to ramshackle, rickety wooden planks over a putrid swamp full of disgusting giant bugs. You see ruin before Blighttown; in Blighttown, you see rot.
  • The end of the Ringed City DLC. You emerge from the cutscene in front of the mummified corpse of Filianore to find a vast region of ash and dust, with ruins jutting out — including ruins of the city you were just in. The only things still alive there are you, one invasion to pay you back for what you've done, the Final Boss of the DLC, and a single Ringed Knight, and the area is huge.
• Blob Monster: The Slimes◊ found in the Depths.
• Blown Across the Room: Certain enemy attacks and several special attacks of various weapons, most notably the Black Knight weapons.
• Blow Gun: The blowdart snipers in Blighttown carry these.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The combination of a spear and a shield is neither the fanciest or the most destructive of styles, but the long reach and the ability to block even when attacking is about as safe as you can get in this game. The v1.06 patch increased the amount of stamina that attacks from behind a shield consume in an attempt to take some of the "practical" out of this.
  • Upgrading your initial armor set (particularly for Thieves and Wanderers) provides one of the most useful armors for many situations with a balance of weight, damage block, and resistances, as there is not a universal "best" armor for lightweight armor, and they're pretty simple to upgrade. The best thing for players to do is just stick with an armor set, rather than progressively upgrade several ones. For heavy armor, the player has the ability to access Havel's armor and the Black Iron set by the mid-game, as well as the aforementioned Stone Giant set, and sticking with one of these is best. The reason these are awesome instead of boring? Havel's set and the Stone Giant armor are carved from solid stone and the Black Iron set is identical to fan favorite Iron Tarkus's equipment.
  • Most Straight Swords are this, being an excellent balance between range, speed, and power, and many of them have great stat scaling to boot. You don't need any flashy elemental effects when normal versions of the Longsword or Balder Side Sword work even better.
  • Just a stout medium shield and a good one-handed weapon will get you through ninety percent of your enemies with a simple strategy of block the enemy's attack, counter attack, repeat. It is not a flashy technique, is not heavy on damage, and any PvP-er worth their salt knows how to get around it, but it is very hard to mess up and enemies keep falling for it if you have enough patience.
  • Simply kicking your enemies when they have their shields up to you can be quite effective. Not only does it stagger the enemy for a few precious seconds for a follow-up attack, but if they're close to the edge of a Bottomless Pit you can kick them repeatedly and let gravity finish them off. This even works against human players, and in fact is often the only way to deal with hackers, since pits don't care how much HP your opponent has given themselves.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The Black Knights early on. Havel the Rock. The Titanite Demons, which the game seems to enjoy making you fight them in tight areas with little ability to maneuver.
• Boss-Only Level: The Kiln of the First Flame in Dark Souls III is the last area of that game, and only consists of two bonfires, an empty "Flameless Shrine", the walkway to the Final Boss, and then the boss fight with the Soul of Cinder, with the First Flame bonfire appearing in his arena when he dies.
  • The Throne of Want in II is a long stone bridge, starting at a door in Drangleic, that culminates in the boss arena for the Throne Watcher and Throne Defender. The Final Boss will appear through the boss fog when you defeat them. There are summon signs, and the Emerald Herald will appear near the entrance until you talk to her, but there's nothing to do but head for that that one boss arena that gets used twice.
• Boss Subtitles: Downplayed and not shown as an introduction, but most bosses (and NPC invaders) who are established characters have a title added to their names atop their health bars. For example: Dragonslayer Ornstein; Mytha, the Baneful Queen; Aldrich, Devourer of Gods.
• Boss Tease: Dark Souls is extremely fond of showing off bosses before the player can fight them.
  • Just after leaving your cell in the asylum, the Stray Demon can be seen in a cavern through a small window. It is impossible to fight this boss until the character leaves the asylum and returns.
  • The Hellkite Wyvern will land on a bridge directly in front of the player quite a while before it can be fought.
  • The Depths contains a miniboss in the form of a giant rat. You can see the creature through bars in several different areas before fighting it.
  • The Iron Golem can be seen from the roof of Sen's Fortress.
  • In the Demon Ruins, the Centipede Demon can be seen clinging to the wall near the second bonfire.
  • Seath the Scaleless also counts, as the first time that you fight him, he's impossible to kill. You must destroy his MacGuffin in a different area before fighting him for real.
  • Similar to the Hellkite Wyvern, the dragon Kalameet will briefly touch down in front of the player long before he can be fought.
• Bottomless Pits: All over the place, and one of the most common reasons of death in the game. However, this works both ways, and can be used offensively with a little maneuvering on the player's part and careful timing of their kick attack.
• Branch-and-Bottleneck Plot Structure: All games in the series are built around complementary branches, giving you a quest to defeat four powerful bosses, each found at the end of one of the respective game's major areas. Said quest usually occupies the middle bulk of the game and is preceded and followed by largely linear sequences of objectives (except in the first game, where the first act also contained two complementary branches in-between the Undead Asylum and Sen's Fortress^note even though the Bell of Awakening atop the Undead Church is much easier to reach than the one in Blighttown, it doesn't really matter in which order you ring them, as long as you do both).
• Breakable Weapons: All equipment is subject to wear and tear, though it's easy enough to repair everything. Crystal equipment is especially bad since it can't be repaired and has very low durability in the first place. A few enemies use attacks with the nasty side effect of breaking your equipment.
• Bright Castle: Anor Londo is an absolutely stunning castle city, with beautiful Gothic architecture. Although it becomes a lot more shadowy if you attack the illusion of Gwynevere.
• Broken Faceplate: The Balder Set. Good armor, but it is clear it has seen better days.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: Blighttown, the Gutter, Harvest Peak, the Road of Sacrifices, Farron Keep. From Software love this one.
• Burn the Undead: Yep, pyromancy can be even more effective than sorcery against common undead, as can flame weapons.
• Came Back Strong: Those branded with the Darksign spontaneously return to life, effectively making them immortal. However, they grow closer and closer to becoming a mindless zombie called a Hollow every time. The Protagonist uses a magical essence often called "humanity" to reverse this process, making it more of a case of being Cursed with Awesome... though it is still only delaying the inevitable. There's a reason it seems to take you so long to simply become a mindless hollow, and Kaathe clues you in to it later in the first game.
• Camera Centering: The button that allows for locking on also centers the camera if no enemies are present.
• Camera Lock-On: Returns from Demon's Souls, finicky as ever, though a patch has helped somewhat.
• Carry a Big Stick: On the more sensible side of this trope, we have a good number of maces and clubs, the former of which is apparently the weapon for newly-created Clerics.
• Central Theme:
  • The heart of Dark Souls is what beauty means in a Crapsack World, according to Director Miyazaki. There's no obvious moral here, but
  • The passing of time and the finitude of all things are both topics present throughout the games. All three games feature bosses and villains obsessed with the past, hoping to maintain an era that is long gone. They go through great suffering in their attempt to stop their own deaths or power from fading, simultaneously causing too much damage to the entire world in the process, and unknowingly pushing away not only any hope for that Age to return, but any hope for the future (better or worse) to blossom.
• Chainmail Bikini: Like Demon's Souls, this is mostly averted, as all of the armor is now unisex. You're only going to see boob-curves if your character is wearing something flexible and form-fitting like leather armor (even then, it's still sensible). The major exception to this is the "Hollow Warrior" armor set, which really doesn't cover that much at all. The pants/shoe component is just one shoe (and no pants!) and the chest armor covers just the shoulders and upper chest. It doesn't look that skimpy on a zombie, but on a healthy human female it's hilarious.
• Challenge Run:
  • The entire point of the Deprived class is to make the beginning of the game harder. In the long run, class doesn't matter. The Deprived start at the highest level of any class, meaning it takes longer to get stat increases compared to the other class. They start with the absolute worst equipment of any class for any purpose. The fact they have 11 in all their stats makes them a Master of None out the gate, so they need to spend points just to get one aspect of the game they are moderately good at. Due to the other class selection, absolutely any character concept would be better served by a different class selection, even weird ones without a class really designed for it. For example, Thief starts with a better combined Intelligence and Faith score than Deprived, despite that not being a focus of the class.
  • This is the only purpose behind the Calamity Ring, which doubles all the damage you take without adding any benefits whatsoever.
  • The "No-Bonfire Run" challenge — a.k.a. completing the game without ever using a Save Point — became so popular that the developers added the Illusionary Sword in the game as a reward for completing it.
• Character Customization: You're given a choice of classes to determine your starting abilities, "gifts" that can be added to your starting equipment, and you have access to a powerful appearance editor with more options than you can shake a stick at (even though you're hollow most of the time in I and II, and you're probably wearing a face obscuring headpiece).
• The Chains of Commanding: In Dark Souls II and beyond, the Kiln of the First Flame is referred to as a throne. A throne that the heroes must sit on to sacrifice his or her self if they truly want to be the lord of the world. Dark Souls 2 is about King Vendrick, who threw away his life avoiding the throne, and goes down in history as a false king. And in Dark Souls 3, the player must hunt down previous Lords of Cinder who once took the throne and abandoned it in an undead stupor.
• Chest Monster: The mimics. Opening one accidentally will cause them to do a massive attack that will most likely kill the player, and teach them to never open a chest without attacking it first. Then II starts punishing you by causing chests and their contents to be destroyed if they take too many hits.
• Chrome Champion: The effect of the Iron Flesh pyromancy makes you look like this.
• Cobweb Jungle: Quelaag's Domain. The entire area is almost entirely covered with cobwebs and filled with giant spider eggs.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Instead of just having Black and Blue Phantoms, the color will change depending on which covenant you are in during Online Play and which multiplayer item you use.
• Combat Pragmatist: You. Standing toe-to-toe with many enemies and fighting them head-on is asking for another "YOU DIED" screen. The game itself actively encourages you to not fight fairly, and many boss arenas have areas where you can hide and snipe with relative impunity. Running around behind a foe to backstab him, sniping him with arrows or magic from across the map, climbing up onto ledges they can't reach and plinking them, luring them into running off cliffs or into traps... all's fair in this game. Really, the only reason to fight "fairly" is so you can figure out the enemy's tells, moveset, and patterns by receiving their abuse firsthand.
• Competitive Balance: Each character class is given the chance to thrive in the world of Dark Souls.^note This is just in the beginning; during the game, you can build your character to whatever playstyle you like best. This also extends to the three most common forms of combat, all of which have their own advantages and disadvantages.

  • Melee combat is extremely practical, dealing out a huge amount of damage, reliable attacks against rushing enemies, and a massive arsenal at your disposal, all while having a very low cost to repair weapon durability. However, a large percentage of the enemies encountered can murder you easily if they get up close, and about a third of the bosses are very resistant to melee, and most mid-to-late-game weapons require high levels in four of the main stat categories (Strength, Dexterity, Magic, and Faith).
  • Archery plays it safe, with clever use of sniper spots that enemies can't reach, exploitable blind spots against bosses and mobs, and weak points (usually the head) that can't be reached without manual targetting. There are many downsides, though; a decent arrow costs a rather large amount of souls, and you have to buy them in the hundreds to keep going; most bows are weaker than melee weapons; you have to remain stationary when preparing to fire an arrow, and manual aim is impractical at close range.
  • Magic has a large variety of uses, with healing, defensive, and offensive spells that can potentially devastate most enemies and bosses with little effort. However, most of the stronger spells are acquired late in the game, often sold at a very high price (sometimes way more souls than you can gather for one level up), and wielding them requires investing into Magic/Faith and Attunement, stats that don't show a considerable increase in power until you reach around 30-40, yet requires long casting times, and inevitably this translates to "Enemy hiding behind the corner takes your head off." Also, magic has a finite amount of charges, and some enemies (such as Chaos Witch Quelaag) will have extremely high magic resistance, rending your primary form of offence only a fraction as effective against them, and possibly causing you to run out of charges before you can down them.

• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: If your attacks hit a wall, they'll bounce right off. If your enemies' attacks hit a wall... they'll clip right through.
  • Remember how the Vancian Magic nature of spells means that you run out of spells after so many casts? Don't expect that to happen to enemies.
  • On the other hand, AI Black Phantoms and White/Gold Phantoms always perform overweight "fat" rolls, despite their equipment suggesting that, at your level, they should be able to roll at <50% weight speeds.
  • Your arrows go straight where you fired them — enemies can have their arrows curve mid-flight to hit you.
  • When an enemy dodges, he is immune for the entire animation, unlike the player.
  • The Dark Hand is a weapon that creates an energy shield that provides no deflection... when used by the player. When the Darkwraiths in New Londo Ruins block with their own Dark Hand, they deflect any melee attack with ease.
• Constructed World: While there is a lot of elements from Medieval cultures, Dark Souls is a very separate fantasy world.
• Continuing is Painful: Dying returns you to the last bonfire you rested at and respawns all monsters that aren't bosses or minibosses. You'll also drop all of your souls and humanity where you died, and if you die before recollecting them, they vanish permanently. Finally, if you were in human form, dying always returns you to hollow form, effectively losing the humanity you spent getting it.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: Returns from Demon's Souls, with the same summoning rules.
• Cosmic Keystone: The First Flame. The Lordvessel.
• Counter-Attack:
  • Parrying returns from Demon's Souls, but has been made a bit easier to execute. Certain enemies can also do this to you if you're not careful.
  • A well-timed normal hit after blocking an enemy attack may also cause additional damage.
• Crapsack World: The world of Dark Souls is a pretty bleak place to live. For starters, the First Flame is on the cusp of dying. When this happens, all fire will die, and there is absolutely no telling what will happen to the world other than the gods losing their power and possibly going hollow. In addition to that, a curse called the Dark Sign has absolutely ravaged the humans of the world. This curse makes its victim undead, allowing them to return to life after death. However, as they die, they lose some of their humanity, eventually becoming mindless, violent hollows. Many nations have collapsed because of this curse, including Lordran, the setting of the game. Undead that still have their senses are brutally mistreated, hunted, and sacrificed to maintain the First Flame. Most of the gods are MIA, although it doesn't seem like they would or could do anything even if they weren't. It really seems as though the world is on the brink of ending. And that's just the start of it. This doesn’t cover the vast amount of deadly monsters, demons, terrible ways to die, the torturous fates of the many characters, and the multi-millennia long conspiracy and battle to control the fate of the world.
• Creepy Cathedral: The Undead Parish, Cathedral of the Deep, and corrupted Anor Londo. Averted with the Cathedral of Blue in the second game, though; it's gorgeous and, apart from the Old Dragonslayer boss fight, is pretty much monster-free.
• Critical Hit: Backstabs and ripostes (the latter initiated after parrying an opponent) deal a high amount of damage whenever they connect, often enough to kill most lower enemies in one hit. This works mostly for human-sized NPCs and other players. You can also parry some bosses, though riposting them is rarely possible.
• Critical Status Buff: The Red and Blue Tearstone Rings, which grant their user a whopping 50% increase in damage and defence respectively when their health drops below 20%.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Oh, yes. Most enemies have special attacks that will end your life in the most brutal of ways. Getting your throat sliced by assassins, cursed and turned to ashes by monstrous amphibians, lethally poisoned by blowdart snipers or baby skeletons, eaten alive by too many nasties to list them...
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The nation of Thorolund, including the Way of the White. The religion surrounding Velka might be this as well, given that they mention bishops by name.
• Cursed with Awesome:
  • Bearing the Darksign means your character is incapable of staying dead, through there are drawbacks. See Came Back Strong and Came Back Wrong above for details.
  • The actual "Cursed" status effect, on the other hand, is pretty horrible: when your curse resistance meter fills, you die and become cursed, which halves your HP and prevents you from gaining Humanity or using it to become human again. The halved HP effect used to stack before being fixed in a patch. But cursed beings and weapons are the only things that can hurt the otherwise invincible ghosts in the New Londo Ruins. There is no downside at all to using Transient Curses (which inflict a temporary and harmless curse on you) or "Cursed" weapons.
• Curse Relay: All curses work like this. When someone is cursed, they can't simply have it be broken. Instead, they must find someone or something else to pass the curse onto, causing them to become inflicted by the curse instead.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Most boss fights go down like this (in the boss's favor) on the player's first one or two tries before the player understands the boss's tells.
  • A few mobs can kill the player if they're not careful: the Stone Knights and the Demonic Foliage guarding the Elite Knight Set can Zerg Rush you and prevent you from escaping with a movement-reducing spell; Black Phantoms spawned by a Gravelord infection often fight alongside their original counterparts, making crowd control difficult for players.
  • Since bosses don't scale to the player, you can flip this the other way around by level grinding enough. For example, the Skeleton Lords in II are much, much less scary if you hit them thirty levels after you were supposed to.
• Dark Is Evil/Dark Is Not Evil: Zigzagged. Dark-aligned NPCs like the Darkwraiths, the Four Kings, and generally anything to do with the Abyss wreak havoc and suffering on everything around them, but at the same time, there are implications that the overextension of the Age of Fire is taking a toll on the world and is responsible for numerous calamities, such as the Darksign.
• Dark Fantasy: It takes place in a Tolkien-style world that's full of the undead, tries to stave off the age of dark while recovering from past ones, and has humanity be the potential for the greatest darkness. Many fates end in death — or worse. Many enemies have tragic backstories through no fault of their own. By Dark Souls III, it's implied that all civilizations are on their last legs.
• Day-Old Legend: Played straight and subverted. Many weapons you upgrade get the normal treatment, but a few of the truly unique weapons require using soul of their owner to forge them, implying that you are literally remaking that legend again.
• Dead to Begin With: The player character starts off as an undead.
• Death as Game Mechanic: It is theoretically possible to not die (although not likely), but dying is not the end. When you're killed, you can play the game as undead and there are various different mechanics in play, both beneficial and detrimental. In fact, with the Soul Tendency system, death is actually a tool to get cooler loot by making the game harder. Also, the mechanics of multiplayer in the games revolve around death: undead players can become phantoms who assist living players, and get rewards for doing so including being resurrected. Undead players are also protected from invasion by other players, so it can be quite to one's benefit to not revive.
• Death Is Cheap: Unlike Demon's Souls, coming back to life (regaining humanity) in the first game is not only more common, but the item to restore it is no longer dropped rarely by a single, and very hard, enemy. Also, death no longer takes away half of your health (unless you get cursed), meaning that death, while still hefty, comes much cheaper than in Demon's Souls. The health penalty comes back slightly in Dark Souls II, with your maximum health being slowly lowered with each death until you restore your humanity, while it makes a comeback in full in Dark Souls III, where dying lops off a good 40% of your maximum health until you use an Ember to restore it (although DSIII may have been balanced around being in Unkindled form rather than Lord of Cinder form).
• Death of a Thousand Cuts:
  • A common motto for Dark Souls players is "If you can hit it, you can kill it." And this is true. Any weapon can be used to kill any enemy under the right circumstances. Just don't expect it to be done quickly this way. It's not uncommon to see conventional weapons barely even dealing Scratch Damage to later bosses, usually to emphasize that there's a better way.
  • Poisons will generally do this to the player. It turns into more of a hassle than an actual threat because if you lack any items to remove it, all you can do is immediately turn around and head back to your bonfire or try to keep pushing through to get to one. Without an appropriate number of estus flasks or a fairly high health pool, you will die from it, but it will take a long time.
  • Poisons will also do this to certain bosses. Slave Knight Gael, for example, is vulnerable to poison, but his 15,000-ish HP isn't just going to succumb to a couple of measly Dung Pies.
• Death or Glory Attack: Considering the difficulty of the game, and the fact that the more a weapon is big and powerful, the slower its attacks are. Because of bad timing, missing a hit or being parried by a powerful enemy leaves you stuck and unable to block or attack again for a few seconds, which makes you very vulnerable. If the enemy is close enough, it has enough time to strike, which usually results in the loss of a lot of hit points (or a One-Hit Kill for some bosses or Demonic Spiders).
• Death World: All of the nations that fell to the Darksign are implied to be this, which is why the curse of undeath is so frightening.
• Dem Bones: The skeletons,◊ giant skeletons, and feral skeletons.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Undead without a purpose or goal to keep their minds focused eventually become hollow. There are several NPCs you can assist with goals they are pursuing, but this almost inevitably ends with them going hollow and attacking you, since you are also taking their purpose away from them.
• Determinator: The undead hero, and by extension the player controlling him or her. And boy, do you earn it.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Occasionally, the player may come across some breakable items that are just in the way. It's a lot easier to just smash the things to bits than go around them.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Fireball class spells are powerful, but are much less intuitive than other offensive spells. These spells arc when thrown, requiring you to figure out the distance and drop of the spells when throwing them at the target. The arc and height of the shot are also dependent on where the lock-on icon is located, and since taller enemies have higher lock-on reticules, you can throw the spells at longer distances than with smaller enemies. Therefore, any use of fireballs is going to involve you figuring out arcs and distances. But once you figure out the range issues with the spells, and level up the pyromancy flame high enough, the damage output is insane.
  • Greatswords, and other slow two-handed weapons like them. What makes them difficult is the fact that they're slow as crap, require two-handing unless you have lots of strength, and usually makes your dodge roll crap. The awesome part is due to their insane damage (especially with a Zaphander or a Chaoshander) and reach compared to similarly-leveled one-handers. They're also great against some of the larger enemies since a blow with a large weapon can interrupt their attacks, and sometimes even knock them flat on their backs, leaving them vulnerable to a follow-up attack, while a smaller weapon will only take away a sliver of their health without interrupting their attack animations at all.
    • The Black Knight weapons (Sword, Greatsword, Halberd, and Greataxe) take these up a notch: they're even slower than most other two-handers, they weigh a ton, their damage scaling is average (and in the first game can't be upgraded to do elemental damage, relying solely on their physical damage), but they deal ridiculous amounts of damage (to the point that most mooks and some bosses can be killed in 1 or 2 hits), can break just about any enemies' block in 2 hits, will stagger most enemies and some bosses (including Havel the Rock in the first game, who has a ridiculous amount of poise), and do 20% extra damage to demons (one of the more prevalent types of boss and mini-boss). Once you get used to how slow they are and how vulnerable they leave you, many bosses can be slaughtered by just tanking hits until you get close enough to wail on them.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: The higher the attribute, the less you benefit from increasing it further. All attributes have a hard cap of 99, but they have two "soft caps". The first is at 20 with the greatest returns up until then. After that, the returns are less, but still appreciable until level 40 or 50 (which one depends on the stat and game). Any level after that provides minimal/no benefit. For example, in Dark Souls II, every level of Vigor adds 30 HP to the player up to level 20; 20 HP per level up to 50, and only 5 HP per level after that.
• Disc-One Nuke: The games tend to leave a handful of very powerful weapons to the players early on.
• Distant Sequel:
  • Dark Souls II takes place at least a thousand years after the events of Dark Souls, by which point the Chosen Undead's journey to determine the fate of the Age of Fire is nothing but a faded memory.
  • While the first two games take place close enough to each other that the First Flame is showing no sign of permanently fading, Dark Souls 3 is set countless thousands of years in the future after so many cycles have come and gone that the Flame is at risk of permanently going out and the events of the first two games aren't just legends, but the legends of long-dead civilizations. The Ringed City DLC is implied to be set even further in the future.
• Divine Birds: Crows are strongly associated with the mysterious goddess Velka, so whenever you spot a crow (especially a giant one), you can be sure that she has her fingers in the surrounding events.
• Do Not Drop Your Weapon: Get gnawed on by the Gaping Dragon? Get your throat slit by an undead thief? Get stomped on by a giant? You aren't dropping your sword and shield.
• Double-Edged Buff:
  • In the second and third game, The Iron Flesh spell increases the user's defense at the expense of increasing their weight and making them unable to dodge.
  • In the first and third game, the spell Power Within raises your attack power and stamina regeneration in exchange for 1% of your HP per second of duration.
• Down in the Dumps: Blighttown.
• Down the Drain: The Depths are your classic sewer maze, complete with giant (zombie) rats.
• Dracolich: The undead dragons and the bounding demons, considering that the latter are the lower half of the former. Seath is also considered one by virtue of his Primordial Crystal, which grants him Complete Immortality unless it's destroyed.
• Draconic Humanoid:
  • In Dark Souls, the Chosen Undead can become one by joining the Path of the Dragon covenant and using the Dragon Stones. By becoming a dragon, the Chosen Undead receives a pair of claws for unarmed combat, as well as the ability to breathe fire and a roar that can stagger their foes. However, in order to turn back into a human, they have to die either as a phantom, which turns them back into a human, or to die in their own world, which turns them into a hollow.
  • In Dark Souls II, the Dragon Remnants covenant achieves similar results. Unlike the previous installment, the dragon form resembles a suit of light armor, but you still can breathe fire and roar.
  • In Dark Souls III, the Ashen One can become one as well, with the additional Twinkling Dragon Stones for summoning the illusion of dragons. There's also Oceiros the Consumed King, who's the former king of Lothric turned into a draconic humanoid.
• Draw Aggro: Through the series, tough players (such as those starting with the Knight class) and NPCs can get bosses to go after them while the ranged characters shoot them from afar. You can get items such as the Skull Ring and the Atonement miracle to increase this effect.
• Dual Wielding: As in Demon's Souls, you can equip an off-hand weapon, sacrificing your ability to parry for extra attacks, unless that weapon is something like the Parry Dagger, curved swords, katanas, thrusting swords, whips, or fist weapons.
• Dungeon Shop: Merchants tend to set up shop in hostile environments.
• Dungeon Town: Most of the game. The Undead Burg, Undead Parish, and The Depths are all part of one large city. Several other areas are cities as well like New Londo and Anor Londo.
  • Lordran is in fact a dungeon country, as it's completely surrounded by a huge castle wall (visible from the Firelink Shrine).
• Dysfunction Junction: The cast by and large is more messed up than they appear, even if they are nice people overall.
• Earn Your Fun: Like its predecessor, Dark Souls is going to make you work your ass off to make it to the end. One of the game trailers puts it best.
  PREPARE TO DIE. FIGHT. STRUGGLE. ENDURE. SUFFER. LIVE
  • This even includes the DLC. While many other games would allow you to access your DLC purchase immediately, this series doesn't. The earliest parts of it are available somewhat early, but for the rest of it you may need to sink quite a few more hours into the game before the relevant parts are unlocked. Dark Souls III doesn't let you get anywhere near the Ringed City DLC unless you've 1) beaten the Ashes of Ariandel DLC and its hard-as-nails final boss, or 2) gotten up to just before (as in, like 50 meters before) the Final Boss of the main game.
• Eaten Alive: Several enemies will do this to you; the mimics being one of the sneakiest, since they don't look dangerous until they chomp on you.
• Elite Mook: Several, from the boulder throwing trolls to the Dark Knights.
• Emote Animation: Aside from writing messages on the ground, the small list of gestures such as waving or bowing is by design the only way players can directly communicate with each other in-game. Breakable totems containing pre-recorded messages perform the same function.
• Empty Shell: Undead that have hollowed become this, and it's also the only way for them to be Killed Off for Real. Gwyn himself has turned hollow after burning in the Kiln of the First Flame for a millennium.
• Encounter Bait: There is a thrown item that lures certain types of enemies wherever it lands. Very useful around environmental hazards like ledges and open flames!
• Energy Economy: This is how souls work. You can use them up (energy) or sell them to other people, who also probably use them as energy for themselves.
• Escape Rope: The Homeward miracle and the Homeward Bone items allow you to instantly warp to the last bonfire rested with all your belongings intact.
• Ethereal Choir: If it isn't Ominous Latin Chanting or a One-Woman Wail, its this.
• Event Flag: Often occurs by talking to someone.
• Everything Fades: Averted, areas stay littered with broken bits of scenery and enemies' ragdoll corpses. Only bosses and elites disintegrate.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: The only things that don't are a handful of NPCs (and even then, some of them do eventually go hollow and try to kill you). The things that are trying to kill you include: zombies, walking skeletons, knights that have gone insane, giant rats, giant cats, giant leeches, mosquitoes the size of cats, vicious dogs, blobs of slime, lizards that turn you to stone, metal boars, animated statues, snake men, dragons, demons, ghosts, mushrooms, the inhabitants of a painting... and that doesn't even cover the bosses (which includes gods and even more demons) or the other players who will invade to try and steal your humanity...
• Evil Is Burning Hot: Sure enough, all the demons originate from the Fire and Brimstone Hell full of lava, and are resistant to pyromancy.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Sen's Fortress. The area is also incredibly malicious, filled with countless Booby Traps.
• Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Unique weapons tend to be rare drops off enemies or forged from special souls, while their armor is usually found hidden in a chest somewhere.
• Experience Booster: The Covetous Silver Serpent Ring and the Symbol of Avarice helm. Also the overkill mechanic, where you get more souls if you deal 150% of the monster's max hp in one blow.
• Experience Points: You acquire souls by killing enemies or consuming certain items, which can either be spent to level up or used as currency.
• Faction Calculus: There are several covenants the player can swear themselves to the games.
• Fake Ultimate Mook:
  • Ceaseless Discharge can be seen as this. It is the largest boss in the game and very intimidating, but is one of the easier bosses in the game.
  • Capra Demon also qualifies; when you first fight one, it is in a small area aided by two extremely fast enemies, so beginners would naturally find this difficult. However, fighting them alone is much less hassle, but it is rare to happen, as once they become a regular enemy, they are placed tightly together so you will usually attract two or three at the same time.
• Falling Damage: Damage is based on the height fallen and your equip load.
  • In the first game, you could use the spell "Fall Control", which negates falling damage as long as the distance wouldn't have killed the player.
  • In the second game, you also get equipment which negates damage based on hard amounts. So even fatal distances can be leaped and survived (while still needing to take a healing item).
• Fan Disservice:
  • Try stripping off your clothes/armour whilst Hollow.
  • If you're a bit uncomfortable about scantily dressed dudes, male armor is a loincloth thong, whereas female characters have briefs.
• Fanservice:
  • After beating Smough and Ornstein, the player is rewarded with, among other things, Gwynevere's lavish cleavage.
  • Try stripping off your clothes/armour while not in Hollow form. Or wearing Hollow armour.
• Fights Like a Normal: Often invoked by players running a "quality build" in PVP; that is, putting all of your points into strength and dexterity (40 in both) and ignoring the magic stats (intelligence and faith), and to a lower extent, pure strength and pure dex (60 in respective stat). The advantage is mix and matching and versatility (and in III, generally higher base damage to compensate for lower highest potential damage vs hybrid builds using spell buffs).
• Final Boss: Gwyn, Lord of Cinder in Dark Souls I and The Soul of Cinder in Dark Souls III are the very final enemies fought in gameplay in those games, with the First Flame bonfire that is the goal of the game appearing in their arenas immediately after they are defeated. As for Dark Souls II, the final boss of that game's main storyline is Nashandra, although you can continue with your playthrough after defeating them, and Scholar of the First Sin edition adds a new True Final Boss in Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin.
• Fireballs: Many different kinds, thanks to pyromancy.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The three forms of magic you can use. Pyromancy allows you to wield fire-based spells, miracles allow for the use of lightning, and sorcery, while not technically ice-based, is characterized by bright blue and white colors and many of the spells sound like ice breaking when they impact. Further solidified by the sorcery spells that generate enormous ice-like crystals when they detonate.
• Fishing for Mooks: At times an essential tactic.
• The Flame of Life: The series centers around a cycle of Ages of Fire and Ages of Darkness. The series portrays souls as small fist-sized flames, and the mystical art of pyromancy is tied directly to the caster's soul.
  • From the game's opening cinematic:
  In the Age of Ancients, the world was unformed, shrouded by fog. A land of gray crags, Archtrees and Everlasting Dragons. But then there was Fire and with fire came disparity. Heat and cold, life and death, and of course, light and dark. Then from the dark, They came, and found the Souls of Lords within the flame.[...]Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain. Even now there are only embers, and man sees not light, but only endless nights.
• Flaming Sword: Quelaag's Fury Sword. Also wielded very effectively by Gwyn, Lord of Cinder. You can also gain it if you keep his soul and use it in a Weapon Ascension, though the crafted version isn't on fire. Normal upgradeable weapons can be temporarily this by applying Charcoal Pine Resin, which adds fire damage to your weapon.
• Flavor Text: Most weapons, keys, and other equipment have a lot of flavor text on them. Unique souls from bosses will often explain parts of the backstory you wouldn't understand otherwise. The only way to even attempt to piece the backstory together is to try and gather every piece of equipment, find a safe spot to park it, and start writing.
• Forgot I Could Fly: It's entirely possible (and beneficial) to lure winged enemies to fall to their deaths off cliffs.
• Fragile Speedster: The Thief, The Wanderer to start out. Any character who builds into light armour is this (or possibly Glass Cannon) by default, as the main advantage of wearing it is being able to dodge more easily.
• Freelook Button: Is available when you find and use the binoculars.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • One of the defining characteristics of Dark Souls is how much gameplay mechanics translates to the storyline and lore of the world, the most obvious example being how the main character is undead and thus will continuously revive whenever they are killed to justify the player retrying again and again.
  • A major example of this trope is how time is more like guidelines than actual rules in Dark Souls. As such, it's generally believed when you die as the last remaining Hollow in your world (who will no longer respawn at a bonfire upon death), instead of getting Killed Off for Real, in reality you're arriving in an Alternate Timeline where the people you killed are still alive, but you cease to exist in the world you just left. This is especially apparent in Dark Souls 2, in which if you kill enemies enough times to grind them, you start running out of worlds where they still exist. Nothing is infinite, not even timeline branching, it seems.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • There are a number of segregations across the three games, but the most recurring one is whenever the player character faces something which in lore should make them go Hollow and suffer a Final Death (such as the Abyss and its corruption, which can affect anything including the fabric of space and time), you somehow still revive in the bonfire.
  • In regards to time convolution described above, items from people you kill somehow persist even if you die before you can collect them and end up in another version of the world.
• Gang Up on the Human: The Hollows somehow know not to attack each other, just you and any other Undead that still has his or her mind.
  • It is implied that they can sense that you have Humanity, and they mindlessly want it to try and cure their own Empty Shell status.
• Garden of Evil:
  • The Darkroot Garden is one of the more lush areas, but it's full of living plants that are trying to kill you.
  • This notably still applies to its Oolacile counterpart/ equivalent from millennia in the past the Royal Garden, which is full of stone giants and animated scarecrow "gardeners" who are none too pleased by your trespassing.
  • Lost Izalith is some kind of twisted inversion of the usual traits of this trope. It's a deep underground city full of lava and demons, but everywhere you go, there's bare tree roots covering everything. The source of it all is the Bed of Chaos, or rather what's left of the Witch of Izalith. So it follows the "plantlife everywhere" part of the trope while visually reminding you of death and fire instead of smothering greens and poison like most gardens of evil.
• Gender-Blender Name: A recurring motif. No, Gwyn is not a girl, he's a guy, as is Gwyndolin (though he was Raised as the Opposite Gender), Ingward, Sif, Tseldora, and Aldia. On the other hand we have Ciaran, Lucatiel, and Guthry.
• Glass Cannon: The Bandit, The Hunter
  • Depending on how point allocation goes, anyone doing a pure quality build. This is because they invest a lot of their stat points into STR (strength) and DEX (dexterity) to use a lot of different weapons, and maximize on damage output.
• Golem: If it's a giant enemy, but wearing full armor so you can't see anything underneath, it's likely a golem.
• The Goomba: The Hollow Warriors seen in the first section of Undead Burg. Their move set is almost identical to that of the Dreglings in Demon's Souls, and are the easiest enemies in the game to fight. That said, they still pose a threat, especially in groups.
• Great Big Library of Everything: The Duke's Archives. Naturally, Big Hat Logan loves hanging out here and reading the unbelievably vast collection of tomes. A little too much for his own good.
• Great Bow:
  • The Trope Namer is the Dragonslayer Greatbow from Dark Souls, a bow so large that it towers over the wielder, to the point it requires an Anchored Attack Stance to be used. Naturally, due to its immense size, it can fire lance-sized projectiles made for hunting dragons, and the Silver Knights are more than happy to knock you down from the roof of Anor Londo with their bows and arrows. Hawkeye Gough, the predecessor of the Silver Knights, has his own homemade bow that is heavier, bigger, and he uses it to shoot down Black Dragon Kalameet despite being blind himself.
  • Dark Souls II has the Alonne Greatbow, a type of Greatbow brought by the Alonne Knights from the Far East to entertain the Old Iron King. Another one is the Possessed Armor Greatbow, carried by the Possessed Armors, who wield a bow and a sword at the same time.
  • Dark Souls III has the Millwood Knight Greatbow, which comes with a Weapon Skill that creates a shockwave when the arrows land onto the surface, knocking down anyone nearby. There's also a giant living at Undead Settlement, who shoots anyone next to the white branches all over the world. He's actually trying to help you; should you have the Young White Branch given by him in your inventory, he helps you to shoot down your enemies from a far distance.
• Great Offscreen War: The lore makes the occasional mention of an event called the "Occult Rebellion" where a group of humans or giants made war upon the gods of Anor Londo using forbidden weaponry that channeled Dark. The only name tied to this event was Havel The Rock, who was apparently exiled. The ember used to make the weapons was hidden in the Painted World and the entire conflict, as well as it's participants, was otherwise erased from history.
• Groin Attack: When you use a sword to riposte enemies the same height as you, you drive your sword through their midsection. When you riposte enemies slightly taller than you, your animation is exactly the same, resulting in vicious crotch stabs. Conversely, when Backstabbing taller enemies, the animation looks like an Ass Shove.
  • Projectiles aimed at the arm or leg hitboxes deal about 10% extra damage, making it look a lot like this.
• Guide Dang It!: The hidden walls and secret areas. Almost nothing in-game will tell you where they are or how to access them. The one thing that keeps this trope from being played 100% are the player messages. If the online servers for these games are ever shut off, then this trope will be played straight as an arrow from then on.
• Guns Akimbo: You can wield in the same time in each hand any combination of catalysts, talismans, pyromancy flames, and crossbows, and attack/cast spells with the left-hand weapon too.
• Hailfire Peaks: The Ash Lake is a mix of Palmtree Panic and The Lost Woods. The Painted World of Ariamas is a mix of Slippy-Slidey Ice World and Big Fancy Castle. New Londo Ruins is a mix of Big Fancy Castle and Big Boo's Haunt.
• Hammer of the Holy: In all three games, the Cleric class has the mace as its starting weapon, which is noted to be a common weapon for that line of work.
• Hammerspace: Any weapons you equip or switch to appear out of thin air, no matter how massive they are.
• Hand Wave: The game explains the ability to help other players clear areas and bosses that you've already beaten in your own game as time distortion and leaves it at that.
• Haunted Castle: New Londo Ruins.
• Healing Checkpoint: The bonfires.
• Healing Potion: Estus. It looks like glowy orange juice, which led to a lot of players referring to it as SunnyD.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: Averted, most normal enemies go down in just a few hits, but so does the player.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Every game has it. Dark Souls II and III have censors that prevent you from putting in swear words, but they, uh, don't work very well.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Averted. While there are a few helmets that let you show off your face, most of them are pretty obscuring. There is no option to cosmetically hide the helmet either.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Swords are the most numerous weapons in the game. In addition, four of the ten classes start with swords as their weapons.
• Heroic Willpower: The defining trait of the Chosen Undead. As a person cursed with virtual immortality, they must resist going insane, and powering through dying numerous times while being pitted against all-powerful beings.
• High-Class Gloves: Fancy outfits include fancy gloves as part of the ensemble. This includes the lace gloves for the Antiquated dress in the first game, and the brocaded gloves for the Archdrake set in the second game.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Essential for most powerful enemies and bosses.
• Hometown Nickname: Most NPC names are followed by their land of origin (eg. Solaire of Astora, Siegmeyer of Catarina, Orbeck of Vinheim).
• Homing Projectile: Sorceries like soul arrow, soul spear, homing soul mass, and arrows. The Hurl Lightning and later lightning miracles don't home, but they move so fast that it doesn't matter.
• How Do I Shot Web?: If you try to use a spell item without having a compatible spell attuned, your character will hold the item out, shake it around a little, and then scratch their head in confusion.
• Hub Level: Firelink Shrine is the center of the game world, houses most of the trainers should you find them, and has quick access to many areas of the game once you unlock the shortcuts.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: Humans are treated as something alien, incomprehensible, and kind of scary by the gods and their disciples, and the entire Age of Fire is built around regulating them and the Dark Souls they carry so that they won't get out of hand. This is because Humanity is linked to the world-destroying Abyss, and an excess of it turns you into Cthulhu. Or it does now, once Humans could outright wield the Abyss uncorrupted, but Gwyn was scared of their power matching his and cursed them to be corrupted by their own magic.
• Humans Are Good: Miyazaki has said that he wanted to show that deep down, people are truly good. This is shown through how concerned a majority of the NPCs act towards the player. Even Lautrec, a selfish, murderous undead, fervently loves the goddess of Fina and does everything he does out of his devotion to her.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: On the other hand, the extremes of humans are portrayed as a very, very bad thing. Manus is a crazed ape from having his humanity go wild, and "Humanity" is the Dark Soul, swallowing everything else up. By contrast, the Gods tend to be portrayed as good even when they do some questionable things, like fabricating the myth of a "Chosen Undead". Or creating the curse that caused "Humanity" to run wild and corrupt those who wield it.
• Humans Are Special: Implied through Humanity in general. In addition, according to Elizabeth, Artorias stood no chance against the Abyss because he wasn't human, whereas the Chosen Undead can defeat Manus thanks to being human — though the Chosen Undead still needs the Covenant of Artorias to traverse the Abyss itself to defeat the Four Kings.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Many of the blunt weapons, the most ridiculous of these are Grant and Smough's Hammer.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: There's no limit on how much junk you carry around other than your patience for scrolling through long menus of worthless Hollow armor. (Your weight limit is for the stuff equipped on your body). If that gets tedious but you don't want to throw anything away permanently, you can also get a "bottomless box" to throw stuff into.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: The Iaito's strong attack.
• Immortality Hurts: The Curse of the Undead leaves humans unable to die, but still feel the pain of death. Then there's The Four Lords, who are all immortal, insane, and suffering.
• Immortality Immorality: The overarching theme of Dark Souls is that nothing lasts forever, and efforts to make it so (whether literally or figuratively) are either doomed to fail or a Fate Worse than Death if successful.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: They're just chilling in odd spots around the world.
• Infinite Stock For Sale: About half the items merchants sell is in limited quantity, with the limited ones being more useful or more powerful.
• Infinity -1 Sword: All the Disc-One Nuke equipment and some of the Ascended weapons seem like Infinity +1 Sword material, but the often limited upgrade options compared to the generic equipment make them qualify for this. Certain magic spells have a high number of uses, but actually end up using most of them during one casting.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Averted, since you can excel with any decently upgraded weapon, whether they're acquired early or late in the game, and subsequent playthroughs make sure you're never out of tough enemies. However, the Moonlight Greatsword, which is acquired by cutting Seath's middle tail, is a potential candidate for this, due to its unique scaling and damage type, making it a favourite for magic builds.
• Insane Equals Violent: By in-game definition, any hollowed humans and demi-gods are essentially empty husks with all traces of personality and sanity gone, hence the name "hollow". They are all extremely violent and hostile to any beings with their sanity intact, for some reason. The knights remaining in Anor Londo too, although just simply insane and not exactly hollowed, are inexplicably hostile towards the undead player despite the player doing nothing except passing through.
  • Some undead manage to avert that, most notably those residing in cells of Undead Asylum and upper New Londo. While obviously hollowed and insane, they're devoting their time to sobbing or headbanging the nearest wall, and pose no real threat unless the player hits first.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: You can't climb anything, but ladders and what can or can't be stepped over isn't always obvious. This is part of what makes the cities so maze-like.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Averted, all of the keys in the game are permanent and — besides the Master Key — only open specific doors.
• In the Hood: The Thief starting set, the Hollow Thief hood, the Gold Hemmed Robe hood, etc. The Dark Set is a hood with a metal skull mask, and Knight Artorias's helmet is a hood with a metal top.
• Invincible Minor Minion: The Skeletons in the catacombs. You can defeat them, but they'll quickly revive and reassemble themselves as long as the necromancer hiding himself nearby is alive. Or, if you kill them with a Divine weapon, they can't revive themselves.
• Invisible Monsters: Two of the Forest Hunter NPCs. Semi-invisible at least.
• Invulnerable Civilians: Monsters and non-Phantom NPCs will completely ignore each other (unless a mob unintentionally hits them, in which case, those same NPCs end up attacking you); also, invading phantoms are unable to attack NPCs and monsters alike.
• Ironic Nickname: "Trusty" Patches, who is a greasy son of a bitch who will try to trick you into death traps multiple times so he can loot your corpse (then again, you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest); and Hawkeye Gough, who is blind (although he wasn't back when he first got the nickname, and even now he still exemplifies it quite well).
• Item Crafting: Weapons and armor can be created and upgraded with the right materials and some help from a blacksmith NPC or a toolkit usable at bonfires.
• Jack of All Stats: The Deprived
• Joke Item:
  • The whip. The item's description states that it's not intended for combat and extremely ineffective against enemies. Whip-based characters are a common self-imposed challenge.
  • One of the starting gifts, the pendant. It was only added for roleplaying purposes, and thus has no actual use.
• Kaizo Trap: You can pretty much guarantee that after slaying a boss or King Mook, a regular enemy will appear out of nowhere, blindside you, and give you a cheap shot. This can prove fatal if on low health. The games never let you get complacent or have a breather after a victory.
• Katanas Are Just Better: At least for Dexterity-focused characters, as their damage increases with higher Dex. They tend to be quick, too.
• Laser Blade: The Moonlight Greatsword is something of a magical version of this. The actual physical blade is tiny, about the size of a dagger. The larger blade that makes up the bulk of the weapon is a magical projection of moonlight.
• Lava Adds Awesome: So many areas are loaded with lava.
  • Chaos pyromancies leave lava on the ground.
• Leap of Faith: Some hidden pieces of loot require this to reach them. One can buy items (Prism Stones) specifically meant to check how far down the bottom of a pit is.
• Lethal Lava Land: The Demon Ruins and the first half of Lost Izalith.
• Level Grinding: Leveling up a couple stats to to their "soft caps" of 40 or 50 isn't so bad. Leveling up most stats that high will take a lot of soul farming.
• Level-Locked Loot: Dark Souls uses stats to determine the effectiveness of weapons. Any player can equip any weapon, but if the player character doesn't have the minimum stats to properly wield it, that weapon's performance will be severely penalized.
• Life Drain:
  • Some weapons restore a small amount of your health with every hit. As does the Ring Of The Evil Eye with every kill.
  • The Dark Hand weapon uses "The art of Lifedrain" to steal the Humanity of NPCs and other players.
  • The "Ring of Evil Eyes" restores HP when you kill an enemy.
• Life Energy: The player character levels up by absorbing the energy of the souls of fallen enemies. (You can also buy things with it.)
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Some starting builds are this, due to having high stamina, a strong weapon, and light armor.
  • Many of the toughest bosses and enemies are because of their high speed and power.
• Lightning Lash: The whip, though generally weak, can be upgraded to a lightning whip.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: High end spells in these games can devastate most enemies more than high end melee attacks. Though the sequels downplay this more than the first game.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Those statues of people you find around Basilisk nests? Yeah those were other players who got cursed by them. And you can smash them.
• Living Currency: Souls are the standard currency in the game.
• Living Statue: The Titanite Demons. The Stone Guardians. The Demon Statues.
• Locked Door: Lots and lots of them. Many give way to convenient shortcuts as the player progresses.
• Loincloth: Your character underneath all the armor.
• Loading Screen: There are surprisingly very few. Aside from a few select zones, all of the areas are interconnect and devoid of loading screens. For the areas that aren't connected, the loading is masked by cut scenes. However, there are loading screens when the player dies or warps to a different location, which shows a description of a random item.
• Lost in Translation: There are dozens of misconceptions and inaccurate translations throughout the main 3 games and their expansions, ranging from relatively minor things such as the names/titles of characters and bosses^note such as "Manus, Father of the Abyss" actually being "Manus, Master of the Abyss", somewhat important things such as the origin of certain spell classes ^note the most infamous of which is the Demon Catalyst versus Ceaseless Discharge — Miyazaki himself had to clarify that the latter was the first demon in a developer interview contrary to the former's item description to outright story-critical things such as the Lord Souls never being explicitly stated to be from the First Flame; rather, they were found ''near'' it as told via official release info in Japan at the time of the original game's release. It does not help that misconceptions of lore have morphed into commonly accepted fact which everyone accepts despite said "facts" not being true. However, the English lore community along with the major members of it (Vaatividya being the most well-known example) are coming to correct past mistakes via people referencing original texts to verify official ones' integrity.
• Lovecraft Lite: With enough patience and skill, you too can kill Eldritch Abominations and gods.
• Lower Half Reveal: The introduction to Quelaag shows off a beautiful, naked woman barely covered up by her hair... and then the camera pans down, revealing she's fused to a horrific spider from the waist down.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Humanity increases the drop rates of items, capping out at 10 humanity. The Golden Serpent Ring also provides a big boost in item drop rates. This ring plus 10 humanity gives the highest possible drop rate.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: No matter what class you're playing as, you need a shield. It is suicide to play without one; that's why even the "Deprived," who starts off naked, gets one.
  • Averted for the knights of Carim, who are noted in-game to fight without shields, preferring the use of an off-hand or two-handed weapon instead. The player can also do this, naturally.