Video Game / Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash

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Prepare to Die...again

Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash is a Game Mod expansion of the original Dark Souls. Daughters of Ash is a What If? version of the game where FromSoftware had 6 more months to polish the original. To reflect this, the mod changes item locations and enemy positions in vein of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. Along with new bosses and enemies, Daughters of Ash also introduces a whole slew of NPCs and questlines, as well as various twists in certain characters' questlines.

The discord server can be found here, and the subreddit can be found here.

The mod can be downloaded over here, but while the mod was compatible only with Prepare to Die Edition, compatibility for Dark Souls Remastered was released later at May 1, 2019, which can be downloaded here.

A Spiritual Successor (as it's been declared a fan sequel to Dark Souls rather then a sequel to Daughters of Ash itself) has been announced; Dark Souls: Nightfall a Fan Sequel to 1s Darklord Ending (taking place seconds after the Chosen Undead's coronation). It is being worked on by numerous modders, and is massive in scope, depicted the Age of Dark for the first time, complete with a massively reimagined Lordran, full voiced new NPC's, new enemies, bosses, equipment, secrets, and an entirely new protagonist.

This page is under heavy construction. Help would be appreciated. A Character Sheet is also under the works.

Examples exclusive to the mod:

• Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: The mod maker added a wall in order to block players from shooting the Hellkite Drake's tail from underneath the bridge. Except the wall only covers one specific spot, and there are plenty of spots under the bridge from which the tail can be shot.
• Abusive Parents: The running theme of the mod. Velka's quest is about punishing four Sinners who wronged their daughters in some way or another.
  • Sen was a terrific blacksmith, but a pretty bad parent. Gwyndolin apparenly barely remembers her.
• Adaptational Badass: Several bosses were buffed from their previous selves. In particular:
  • The Four Kings now have the ability to cast Abyss spells such as Pursuers. You also now fight the four of them at once, and they have separate lifebars, meaning no overkill damage resulting in fighting only 2-3 kings.
  • The Bell Gargoyles are now stronger with a lot more health, and the second gargoyle spawns with 75% of its max health instead of 50%. They can also inflict bonerust. This is to make up for the fact that you can't even fight them unless you have strong enough gauntlets to pull the lever that rings the bell, by which point you'll likely be much stronger than when you fight them in the normal game.
  • Pinwheel is just as much of a pushover as before. Until you notice the music doesn't stop after you kill him. He then revives himself with much more health, and completely fills the room with his clones. Enjoy uttering the phrase "I died to Pinwheel" for the first time in your life.
  • The Capra Demon was moved from its boss room (which now contains a bonfire and the female Undead Merchant) to the large area that would normally be where you enter the Lower Undead Burg. This might sound good at first, since you have more room to manoeuvre, but if you go far enough into the room to trigger the doors opening, you have to contend with the dogs and Hollow Thieves that normally spawn in that area in addition to the boss itself. If you want to avoid this, you pretty much have to limit yourself to fighting in the small zig-zagging hallway between the two sets of doors. Not to mention that Capra Demon itself has been powered up like the gargoyles to make up for you being stronger by the time you fight it. And when you do manage to kill it, the music stops briefly... only for Kalameet's theme to suddenly start blasting as the Capra Demon becomes the Capricious Thrall and gets its machetes beefed up with fire, increasing their range and damage, and adding an explosion to its "baseball bat" attack.
  • The Great Felines, known here as the Gravestalkers, replace Sif's boss fight. Unlike the original, there's no exploiting their A.I. against a wall.
  • The Titanite Demon found between Undead Parish (now Allfather's Parish) and Darkroot is now a boss called the Haunting Semblance. It moves faster than normal, and summons a ghostly copy of itself called the Profane Image that casts Abyss sorceries instead of lightning miracles.
  • Gravelord Nito himself is not buffed, but his fight is made much more difficult since he is now backed up by Ciaran unless the player fulfills certain conditions beforehand.
  • Likewise, the Moonlight Butterfly itself didn't get buffed, but its fight is made more difficult with the addition of a gold Crystal Golem called the Walking Bastion. In fact, it can be argued that the Bastion is the actual boss and the Butterfly is backing it up.
  • The Gaping Dragon, now called the Bane of Lordran, is not only stronger than normal, but the Channeller that normally spawns overlooking the boss area now spawns inside it, so you can't kill him before fighting the boss to prevent him from buffing it up. And he respawns until you trigger the boss fight, so you can't just make a detour to kill him before acquiring the item you need to make the boss appear.
  • Artorias was able to defeat Manus, albeit with assistance from the player. He was still corrupted by the Abyss, but when Manus is unleashed during the Dual Boss fight with Sif and Artorias, a shade of Artorias comes back to help the player.
  • King Jeremiah gets upgraded from Red Phantom invader to boss. He shows up in Lost Izalith's poison pit if you have the Chthonic Spark from killing the Capricious Thrall, and if he kills you, he steals it!
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The mod adds several consumables, weapons, rings, souls, and bosses along with the expansion of Dark Souls' original lore.
  • Sen, the presumed owner of Sen's Fortress, received literally zero mention in the original game outside of the area name. This mod actually gives the character some lore in item descriptions.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Havel the Rock is unhollowed, unlike his vanilla self, and if you free him from his cell, he can kill Seath offscreen.
  • Artorias, while still a boss, is fought protecting Sif from the player, and you encounter him first as an ally against Manus. During the fight with his inner abyss, the good part of Artorias comes out to fight alongside the player.
• Adaptation Name Change: The mod changes several place names, along with some boss names.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • It's implied through Manus' soul description that he was tortured at Princess Dusk's behest.
  • Gwyn is portrayed much less ambiguously in this mod than in the vanilla game. While he does have a touch of a Tragic Villain as he was desperate to form friendships and handed pieces of his soul to several people as a result, he's presented as a coward and is one of the sinners you're asked to punish in the main addition of the mod. Additionally, the lore suggests that Gwyn's hollowing is not the result of linking the fire, but from sacrificing his daughter Gwynevere to the flame in his place and eventually mourning over it.
  • Same goes for Nito, who's also on the list of the sinners to punish while the original game never really elaborated on his morality.
  • While Petrus was a nasty person in the vanilla game, he becomes an invader under the name Depraved Apostate.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The giant crow can now be found at the beginning of the Painted World of Ariamis, and will take you back to Firelink Shrine if interacted with, preventing you from getting stuck in an area too hard for you to beat.
  • Should you get cursed during your trip to Ash Lake, there's now a Purging Stone available there without needing to be farmed from the enemies.
  • Because the mod expects you to explore New Londo earlier than in the base game, the ghosts are all absent until you drain the water.
  • Some bonfires were moved to more practical locations, such as the one in Sen's Forge that many players missed in the original.
  • The game no longer ends after Gwyn's death and lets you exit without picking an ending, letting you decide when to go to NG+. It also breaks a few flags in the game script because the game wasn't coded to handle this perfectly.
  • The Ver. 1.3 update changed bonerust so that resting at a bonfire cures it, and made Green Moss Clumps drop more frequently from the Demonic Foliage. Bonerust now also provides a boost to physical defense, which balances its rather severe negative effects.
• Ascended Extra: While Undead King Jar-Eel was mostly cut content, he is a fully functional Optional Boss that can be fought after Gwyndolin's defeat.
• Balance Buff:
  • You can now repair Crystal weapons.
  • The Calamity Ring was given a 50% AR boost, allowing the user to turn into a Glass Cannon.
• Bishōnen Line: A minor example. The rematch against a souped-up Ornstein & Smough starts with Ornstein already giant-sized. Killing Smough first will cause Ornstein to revert to his normal size once he powers up even further.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The Serous Bond gives you the Rusted Iron Ring's effect of not being slowed down by terrain. The problem is, getting it requires you to go all the way down to Ash Lake and then back up to Firelink Shrine, so by the time you get it, you'll have already passed through Blighttown twice and likely done everything there is to do there, so you'll have basically no use for the damn thing. The modder apparently took note of this, and added the Rusted Iron Ring back into the game with Patch 1.3 so that you can get it before going to Blighttown.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Remember that crow that carried you to Firelink Shrine? That's actually Velka.
• Call-Forward:
  • Sen's bonds describes visions of other worlds that references other games of the series. Most noticeably, the Serous Bond and the Bond to Beyond both reference Bloodborne.
  • The Mark of Stone questions whether or not the Painted World can last forever or will eventually rot. The Painted World rotting and needing to be burnt and rebuilt is the theme of Dark Souls III's DLC Ashes of Ariandel.
  • During the second fight against Gwyn, the theme used is Soul of Cinder's theme.
  • During the fight against Sif, Artorias, and the Abyss within Artorias, the theme used is Slave Knight Gael's theme.
  • Petrus' actions by invading the player under a different name reference Licia invading under the name of the Nameless Usurper.
• Discard and Draw: The Crystal Golems lose the ability to curse you, but can now camouflage and stay invisible until approached.
• Dual Boss:
  • The Moonlight Butterfly is now fought with the Walking Bastion, which helps cover for its Squishy Wizard status.
  • You fight Gravedaughter Ciaran alongside Gravelord Nito, unless you give her Artorias's soul in the DLC.
  • Sif at first seems like the vanilla boss fight, but with Slave Knight Gael's theme playing, but then Artorias comes to assist him.
• Early Game Hell: Even moreso than the vanilla game. While the Undead Asylum was mostly an area to teach new players, the mod expects you to already know how the game works, and if you don't, you'll die constantly. And when you reach the Asylum Demon, a lot of curveballs are thrown at you relentlessly.
• Faking the Dead: Priscilla's tail is already cut off in this mod, and the dagger that is normally obtained from doing so is found in Sen's Fortress, which its description suggesting that she cut her tail off herself to fake her death. Indeed, obtaining Priscilla's Dagger is the only way to "prove" Priscilla's death to Seath so that he leaves to mourn her at Ash Lake without actually killing Priscilla and failing Velka's quest.
• Final Death Mode: Making a pact with Quella, Goddess of Dreams will enable permadeath. If you die, you get sent straight to the Abyss, where it says the dream ends (basically saying that you cannot continue on, start a new save).
• Fantastic Racism: This version of Havel is noted to despise all dragons, while vanilla Havel just hated Seath in particular, primarily because he hated sorcery, which Seath invented. This Havel hates sorcery because Seath, a dragon, invented it.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Unlike the Stray Demon, the Asylum Tyrant does not damage the hollows, making for an even more frustrating boss fight.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The alternate method of doing the DLC added in the mod is confusing to trigger. You need to kill the Gravestalkers for the Silver Pendant and then give the Pendant to Snuggly to get the Broken Pendant, with your only hint to this being that the Silver Pendant's description now says it gives off a warm light. Also, you have to do this before getting the Lordvessel, which is now the trigger for the DLC to unlock normally and will prevent you from accessing the new path.
  • Obtaining Sen's bonds requires fulfilling extremely specific conditions with the Pale Eye Orb in your inventory and then examining the correct statue. You will probably get rid of the Pale Eye Orb soon after getting it, since you can't go to Anor Londo from Sen's Forge until you put it back in its proper location. To give one example, the "Damp from trickling water" statue in Firelink Shrine requires you to get the Hydra in Ash Lake to jump over you to get a bond from it.
• Kaizo Trap: In the Undercrypt (Tomb of the Giants), there are now bonfire Mimics that One-Hit Kill the player with a massive explosion should they try to light them. The first one comes immediately after the fight with a newly-buffed Pinwheel, meaning the player will almost certainly be very glad to see it and try to light it without hesitation.
• Killed Offscreen:
  • If you free Havel from his cell and make Seath leave for Ash Lake to mourn for Priscilla, then Havel will kill him there, as well as the everlasting dragon who leads the Path of the Dragon covenant.
  • King Jeremiah will kill the Fair Lady and Eingyi if you lose to him in Izalith, unless you've rescued the Daughter of Chaos near the Centipede Demon, who will relocate to stand guard outside the Fair Lady's room and will kill Jeremiah instead. Otherwise, Quelana will kill him when he tries to go after her next.
  • If you give the Chthonic Spark to Vamos so he can make Chthonic weapons and haven't yet fought Jeremiah, Jeremiah will kill Vamos to get the Spark and his inital boss encounter will be in Vamos's room instead of Izalith.
• Jump Scare:
  • Ringing the Bells of Awakening nets you a cutscene of Nito rising from his sleep.
  • Every encounter with the Capricious Thrall after the first.
• Meaningful Name: The Capricious Thrall. In addition to containing most of the word "Capra", "capricious" is defined as "given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior". An appropriate name for a boss that repeatedly shows up to Jump Scare you, and if you either die to it or take too long to kill it, it gets bored and leaves.
• Meta Twist: You'll still have to help Siegmeyer of Catarina get past the Silver Knights, but this time he's trapped by the infamous Silver Knight Archers.
• Mickey Mousing: The Soul of Cinder's theme transitioning into its second part is the point where the four Black Knights start assisting you during the fight against Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight.
• Mythology Gag: The Eastern Set is now found in the Painted World, referencing the sidequest cut from the original game that involved fighting Shiva there.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • The Four Kings had their names never mentioned, though here they're named Boltarsh, Silgore, Ganzeyer, and Rendain, respectively.
  • The Soul of Ariamis reveals that the Gaping Dragon was none other than Ariamis himself.
  • Ceaseless Discharge is given the name Quelos.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • The Bane of Lordran. Made all the more noticeable by the boss already being a case of Adaptational Badass.
  • A good number of the late-game rematch bosses counts, but special mention goes to Ornstein, Scion of Naught.
• Nerf:
  • Due to a typo in the damage, the Painted Catalyst was considered to be the most overpowered catalyst for INT builds until ver. 1.14 fixed it.
  • In the original game, the Master Key was unbreakable and able to be used multiple times. Now it breaks upon a single use.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While Lord Gwyn is heavily implied to have unintentionally caused most of the problems that plague Lordran, banishing Jar-Eel to the north prevented the full eradication of the Darkwraiths as the Sealers intended.
• The Night That Never Ends: Dispelling the illusion over Anor Londo will make it dark everywhere, not just in Anor Londo itself. This was actually planned to be in the vanilla game but was not implemented.
• Not His Sled:
  • Should the Asylum Demon fall down the hole, the Stray Demon will kill him.
  • The Taurus Demon drops down in front of you rather than on the other side of the bridge.
  • Ringing both Bells of Awakening doesn't open Sen's Forge (as it's already open). It awakens Nito instead.
• Odd Friendship: Between Velka, the reclusive goddess of Sin, and Sen, the workaholic Ultimate Blacksmith.
• Optional Boss:
  • Abyssal Prince Jar-Eel is fought after defeating Gwyndolin and dispelling the illusion over Anor Londo.
  • Killing Jar-Eel will cause more powerful Red Phantom versions of some bosses to show up in their boss rooms for a rematch.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: It's possible to kill the Centipede Demon using arrows while on the roots on the Demon Ruins. In fact, that's most likely how you will kill it, since it's suicidal to go out and fight it up close without the Orange Charred Ring... which it still has in this mod, same as vanilla.
• Perpetual Beta: Even though the mod had a 2-year development cycle, that doesn't mean that there aren't still bugs to fix. That said, the creator is willing to listen for issues on this, and those are mostly fixed within a few minutes.
• Power at a Price: The Motes give out various buffs, but drain HP per second, similar to Power Within.
• Recurring Boss: If you lose to the Capricious Thrall, it leaves the area, and will show up to surprise you somewhere else.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • If you arrive at Seath's boss room with Priscilla's Soul or Dagger, you'll notice that he left behind his Lord Soul. You later find him at Ash Lake, implying that upon hearing of Priscilla's death, he arrived at Ash Lake to mourn for her.
  • If you take too long to kill the Capricious Thrall, he'll eventually get bored and leave for his next location.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The Etched Ring you can choose as a starting gift enables you to make pacts with deities, increasing the difficulty of the game. You can remove it, but it curses you for that. Pacts include:
  • Struggle: Weapon Durability degrades faster.
  • Greed: Decreases the amount of souls gained.
  • Tears: Take double damage.
  • Blood: Stamina Regen is heavily reduced.
  • Dreams: Die once, and the game's over.
• Skippable Boss:
  • A brand new, alternative method to obtaining Nito's Lord Soul is added with the mod, where the player can simply waltz up to Nito's boss room and pluck the soul from his snoozing body. This locks you into an escape sequence where you have to evade an ever-respawning Gravedaughter Ciaran, but it does allow you to skip an otherwise troublesome boss. By extension, the Bell Gargoyles can also be avoided entirely.
  • It's impractical to do so, as killing them grants you the ability to warp between bonfires, but the Capracious Thrall can be completely circumvented; dying to the Gaping Dragon (called the Bane of Lordran) warps the player to the Painted World of Ariamis, and once they clear the area, they can leave to enter Anor Londo. There is a back-up encounter with the Thrall in case you missed the first one, but that one can be dodged too by doing a Sequence Breaking jump on the spiral staircase close to Ornstein & Smough.
• Status Effects: The mod adds a new status effect called "bonerust" that slows stamina regeneration and makes healing items/spells restore less HP. And if that doesn't sound bad enough, the effect is permanent until you cure it... Or in Ver. 1.3, curing it by resting at a bonfire.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: It's implied that Gwynevere and Jar-Eel were in love with each other if Jar-Eel's soul description is any indication.
• The Extremist Was Right: The Flame of Chaos wasn't a monumental failure doomed to fail from its very inception in this mod. It was successful enough until Jeremiah decided to intervene to fuck it up and make it the abomination factory we know.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Wearing the Xanthous Crown makes the Fair Lady look like a Sunlight Maggot. Coupled with the description of the crown and Jeremiah's soul, it either implies that the crown is sentient and drove Jeremiah mad, or that Jeremiah is the crown and the dude wearing it was just a poor shmuck who got possessed by it once he put it on. Now what are you doing still wearing it?
• True Final Boss: Completing a complicated, lengthy sidequest nets you a secret boss fight with Gwyn in his prime as the Lord of Sunlight. Functionally, the fight is the same as Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, with three major differences: Gwyn can no longer be parried, the battle takes place in Ornstein and Smough's boss arena, and when his health is brought down halfway, the Black Knight phantoms will appear to help you deal the coup de grâce.
• Ultimate Blacksmith: Sen, who is implied to be Gwyn's wife by some item descriptions, is this. To name a few of her achievements, she:

  • Forged the armor of the Silver Knights and Black Knights, and in this continuity, Black Knights aren't just Silver Knights that became blackened when they followed Gwyn into the Kiln, and the Silver Knight armor is said to be impossible to blacken.
  • Forged Havel's Ring out of the heart of a dragon.
  • Taught Velka how to create Rings of Sacrifice. Gets even more impressive when you find out Velka is the giant crow who carries you from the Undead Asylum or the Painted World to Firelink Shrine. You read that right, Sen taught a (admittedly divine) bird how to make rings.
  • Is generally credited for several breakthroughs in weapons design, such as Runic weapons.

Her skills are attributed to her having visions of other worlds and taking her ideas from there. Alas, she went on to discover things she shouldn't, and the reveal apparently drove her to die in her "Great Inferno".

• Wake-Up Call Boss: Variant; the Taurus Demon now jumps down from the tower behind you while you're dealing with an archer rather than in front of you far away, being the first real indicator that, no, this isn't just a new mook remix mod.