Dark Souls / Tropes M to Z

• Magical Eye:
  • The Red Eye Orb allows players to invade and kill others, while the Eyes of Death let players curse others' worlds and generate stronger versions of typical enemies. The Ring of the Evil Eye is also said to contain a demon of the name. It lets you heal by killing people.
• Magic Is Mental: Sorcery at least. The player gets spell bonuses from catalysts when you increase you Intelligence.
• Magic Knight:
  • Due to the classes being nothing more than starting status, hybrid builds are quite common. Some weapon upgrade paths even allow you to base weapon damage off intelligence or faith instead of strength and dexterity.
  • Pyromancy is practically made for this. It doesn't have any stat requirements, what you need to cast it is weightless, and damage increases simply by upgrading the Pyromancy Catalyst (but just in the first game). There isn't a single build in the game that doesn't benefit from having some pyromancy available aside from giving a few levels to open up an attunement slot or two.
  • In general, it is highly unwise to try and go for a "full Pyromancy/Sorcery/Miracle" build, where you only attack using spells. This is because spells are limited use and can run out in the heat of battle, often requiring you to fall back on your weapons to survive. However, each spell type has a number of support spells to assist you in melee combat — sorcerers get access to free Magic Weapon buffs and a number of other useful support spells like Hush or Spook, pyromancers get access to free Fire Weapon buffs and can use strong AOE debuffs like poison clouds or magma pools, and Miracle builds get (you guessed it) free Holy Weapon buffs and a number of versatile healing and support spells. As mentioned above, many weapons scale with Intelligence or Faith just as well as they do with Strength or Dexterity, often making it beneficial for a player with a high amount of either of those stats to invest in some unique weaponry. In the first game, sorcerers are even given incentive to build some Dexterity, since spell cast time is tied to how high the stat is, making it (and Intelligence and Attunement) the three core stats of a decent wizard build.
• Magic Staff: Catalysts. They can also be used as melee weapons.
• Magic Wand: All three types of spells require the appropriate catalyst/talisman to cast.
• Mascot Mook: The Black Knights appear on the game's disc and various promotional images.
• Master of None: Whenever you level up and increase stats, the cost of leveling up any stat after that also increases. This means that if you're trying to have every option available to use with a single character, you'll eventually hit a point where further leveling becomes prohibitively expensive. It is still possible to eventually become a Master of All, but you'll have to grind a lot of souls to do so and your options for online co-op or invasion might get reduced pretty drastically due to the level range typically required for each.
• Master Swordsman: Gwyn and Abysswalker Artorias.
• Medieval European Fantasy: This is a dark High Fantasy world.
• Medieval Stasis: It's not explicit exactly how much time passes between the sequels, but it's long enough that the previous protagonists' actions and choices don't matter to the current story in the slightest, and the events of previous games are all but lost to history. Yet the level of technology and sociopolitical structure never seem to progress; the lands are still ruled by kings and queens, you're still using swords, shields, and plate armor, and mages are still practicing the sorcery invented by Seath well before the first game, countless eons ago.
• Menu Time Lockout: Averted. Time will not stand still as one burrows through their inventory.
• Mercy Kill: Many of the franchise's enemies and bosses are heroes gone insane or Hollow, with the player putting them out of their misery, and their Souls to positive use.
• Metal Slime: The crystal lizards/geckos (making a return from Demon's Souls), which shine brightly but tend to turn invisible (and are thus un-attackable) when you run into them. Should you manage to catch one, you're likely to get some rare ores for weapon refinement.
• Metroidvania: These games involve one connected world, where players find ways to unlock paths to new areas, or sequence break to them.
• Mighty Glacier: The Warrior
• Milking the Giant Cow: The "Praise the sun!" gesture the player can learn. It's also performed by Warriors of Sunlight, including Solaire of Astora, when the player summons one of them as a helpful Phantom.
• Mooks Ate My Equipment: The Gaping Dragon and his acid vomit AOE attack. There are also different enemies that could do the same — most of them reside in Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith, where there's no blacksmith around.
• Money Is Experience Points: In addition to buying items and equipment, You can only level up by spending souls to increase your stats.
• Monster Knight: A few enemies qualify. The Capra Demons, the Balder Knights, the Black Knights, and the Darkwraiths.
• Moral Disambiguation: With some rare (and mostly minor) exceptions, the series doesn't really have 'villains' or people who are downright evil. This is most exemplified in the supposed Big Good of the game, the Lord of Light Gwyn. He killed all the Everlasting Dragons and built civilization in the new world, but he's also an Abusive Parent amongst other rather morally dubious actions. His sacrifice by throwing himself in the First Flame to revive it make him come off as at least somewhat heroic in the end... And then Dark Souls III (specifically the Ringed City DLC) reveals that he's a lot more villainous: most importantly, he "gifted" the Pygmies, the ancestors of humanity who helped in the war against dragons, with a city/prison at the edges of the world, cancelled them from the annals of history, and branded all of them with a "ring of fire"; all because Gwyn was afraid of the inherent Darkness in human souls, and wanted to seal it away as much as possible. In doing so, humans lost control of their dark souls, the ring of fire turned into the Darksign, creating the Undead, and caused the Abyss to be spawned. And his sacrifice was pointless, as every linking of the fire causes the First Flame to weaken and the world to slowly collapse on itself through sheer entropy, meaning that the world is in a worse state than if he just let the fire fade in the first place. Through his fear and paranoia, Gwyn was responsible for almost all of humanity's woes in the franchise.
• Mortality Grey Area
  • The Dark Sign cursed Undead are stuck "in-between" life and death. Non-Hollow Undead still possess souls and are thus technically "alive", but they're quite literally incapable of dying and will get back up so long as the Undead in question still has Heroic Willpower to not go Hollow. Hollows, which act more like typical zombies, are also hit with this, as it's left ambiguous if Hollowed Undead really die once killed as Hollows, or if they too eventually get back up. Contrasted with the animated skeletons of the Catacombs, which are explicitly just bones given souls and animated by necromancers, the Undead cursed by the Dark Sign are a very explicit anomaly in the world, and a sign of things going very wrong.
  • Dragonslayer Ornstein is stuck with a very bizarre case of this: In the first game, he's fought as a Dual Boss with Smough the Executioner and killed by the player in order to progress through the game. Then came along Dark Souls II with a boss called the Old Dragonslayer...who was all but named to be Ornstein, despite the game being a Distant Sequel of the first game. Then came along Dark Souls III, in which his armor can be found and described the fact that he left "the ruined cathedral" (the place where he's fought in the first game) in search of the Nameless King, and thus it's technically impossible for him to have been fought in the first game at all! To say that this created a lot of Epileptic Trees is an understatement.
  • Smough himself gets in on this as well. Despite being fought as a Dual Boss with Dragonslayer Ornstein and killed by the player character, his armor description in Dark Souls III states that he made a Last Stand in Anor Londo as it was conquered by Pontyff Sullyvan's forces, an event implied to have happened millenias after the events of the first game.
• Multi-Platform: The Dark Souls games are published on multiple systems, with Bandai-Namco and From continuing to make them available on additional ones. This is in contrast to the other 2 games in the Soulsborne Thematic Series, Demon's Souls and Bloodborne, which are published and owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment and are therefore exclusive to PlayStation consoles.
• Multiplayer-Only Item: Summon orbs. They allow you to "invade another player", which means entering another player's game to do PvP. Of course, they are absolutely useless in solo mode — the few times you can invade NPCs (Lautrec in the first game, Licia in the second) requires using unique orbs meant only for that purpose.
• Ms. Fanservice: Gwynevere displays some generous proportions and cleavage.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Enemy NPCs have unlimited ammo, whether arrows, bombs, or spell casting.
• Mythology Gag: The games contain some recurring elements:
  • The Sword of Moonlight, a sword that appears in nearly every game made by FromSoftware, including Armored Core.
  • Dragons in the Souls series love bridges (and burning those who try to cross said bridges).
  • The yellow "crown" worn by Xanthous King Jeremiah is a direct reference to the "Monk's Head Collar", a head gear from Demon's Souls. Both are enormous pieces of clothing that are a bright yellow. The definition of the former pokes fun at that fact by saying: "The crown bears high-quality cloth which is quite soft to the touch, but its bright yellow color stings the eyes, and it is clearly far too big.".
  • The infamous Pendant is a Call-Back to the Onyx Pendant from Shadow Tower Abyss, both of which are useless except for a trade in Dark Souls. For a time, Miyazaki trolled the community by pretending the Dark Souls' pendant had a use, before confirming later that it didn't.
  • In both Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, there's a moment where a group of gargoyles will grab the player and carry him to an area not accessible otherwise. Said gargoyles are met later as enemies.
  • Trusty Patches is a recurring character in the series: in Demon's Souls, he would try to trick you into a fight with a giant bearbug and would also try to trap you by kicking you into a pit. In Dark Souls, he kicks you into a pit again, in addition to another attempted murder earlier in the game.
    • In addition, said pits the player gets kicked into happen to contain NPCs that need rescuing. Demon's Souls has Saint Urbain; Dark Souls has Rhea.
    • He appeared also as Patch the Good in Armored Core For Answer, and utilizes a sneaky fighting style in that game, not too far from his roguish ways in the other games.
  • Arguably, the Lady of the Darkling is the Brass Maiden; i.e. Wynne D. Fanchon from Armored Core.
  • Ornstein appears in Armored Core; his logo has the symbol of a large cat (maybe a mountain lion)
• Nature Is Not Nice: The Age of Dark may be "natural" (compared to the divinely-engineered Age of Fire), but that's pretty much the only good thing said about it. It is more or less stated to be the end of the world and the little seen of it is not pretty. Either the world bends in on itself crushing it into a fractal looking mass of ruins or the entire planet is burnt to ashy desert. The last few seconds of the seriesreveal some life can survive in the Age of Dark, but all real civilizations are gone.
• New Game Plus: Dark Souls is designed for these; the developers have implemented secrets that they don't expect players to find until their second or third time playing through the game!
• Night of the Living Mooks: Many of the enemies encountered are undead of some sort: zombies, skeletons, ghosts, etc. Then again, almost everyone you meet is undead, including the player character.
• The Night That Never Ends: The Age of Dark, which is the opposite of the Age of Fire, and will occur if (or, rather, when) the First Flame completely dies. Kaathe calls it the Age of Man, but he may not be telling the truth.
  • The very end of the series reveals the Age of Dark actually will end and 'tiny flames' will return but what this means is ambiguous.
• Nintendo Hard: One of the things this series, as well as its predecessor and successor, is most famous for. Brutally powerful enemies who respawn every time you use the bonfires or warp, bosses with numerous deadly moves that can easily kill you in a couple of hits, deviously-hidden traps and ambushes, Shmuck Bait everywhere, minibosses who will come out of nowhere, and in a few select points there are enemies set up in positively sadistic locations. The Tag Line is entirely accurate.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Completely averted. At longer distances, arrows will start travelling in arcs, losing some damage in the process. This is why range is a stat for these weapons, as it lets players know how far the arrow will travel before it arcs.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: Love and sex are never mentioned in the series, though marriages are.
• Notice This: Fallen bodies (either of your enemies, or other unfortunates who have passed on) with items to loot have a huge glowing soul-like aura above them. This even applies to treasure chests that are opened but unlooted.
• Oddly Shaped Sword: Quelaag's Furysword, shaped like a piece of a spider's exoskeleton. Also, it ignites when you swing it.
• Ominous Fog: As in Demon's Souls, it serves as a gateway into boss battles and new areas.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: It isn't Latin, but there is lots of chanting in the music and it is ominous.
• Once per Episode: The series has a lot of elements that recur across all three installments, as well as the other two entries in the series (Demon's Souls and Bloodborne).
  • Every game has a dragon that sits above a bridge periodically breathing fire at you, forcing you to time your runs across the bridge to avoid being incinerated (Bloodborne, despite not having any dragons, repeats this by having you cross a bridge while an Amygdala fires lasers at you).
  • Every single game has featured the Sword of Moonlight.
  • Patches shows up in every game but Dark Souls II, and he plays roughly the same role in each (II features an Expy of him in the form of Pate).
  • Strangely, each game has a boss whose gluttony turned it into a monster (Gaping Dragon in the first, Covetous Demon in the second, Aldrich in the third).
  • Additionally, seeing as the series owes much to Berserk, a boss in each game's DLC content is in some way an expy of Guts (Artorias in the first game uses his fighting style and lacks use of his left arm, the Fume Knight in II wields an expy of Dragonslayer, the Orphan of Kos in Bloodborne shares his backstory of being born from a corpse into a life of violence, and Gael in III uses a very similar fighting style alongside an Automatic Crossbow).
  • Each game features a large poisoned swamp area where walking in the swamp water slows you down (Valley of Defilement in Demon's Souls, Blighttown in Dark Souls, Shrine of Amana in Dark Souls II, the Nightmare Frontier in Bloodborne, and Farron Keep in Dark Souls III).
  • The Wheel Skeletons appear in every Dark Souls game, one of the few enemies to do so.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: You can use a variety of heavy weapons with only one hand, and if you have a high enough Strength stat, you'll be able to do it without penalty (the listed strength requirement is to wield one-handed, wielding two-handed effectively increases your strength by 50%). Amusingly, the inverse is also possible, allowing the player to use a six-inch dagger or small shield with both hands. Artorias himself does this in his boss fight because of his bad arm, although he could wield it one-handed anyway due to his skill with it. That said, even with enough strength to wield a greatweapon in one hand, the possible moveset is more limited than when wielding it with both hands.
  • The Farron Greatsword and Ringed Knight Paired Greatswords in III are greatswords that cannot be two-handed — pressing the button to do so draws the offhand weapon instead.
• One-Time Dungeon: Averted. All areas of the game can be revisited.
• One-Woman Wail: Several of the boss themes and the ending credits.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Averted. While armor isn't generally region-specific (excepting the head), being shot with an arrow or bolt in the leg or arm does more damage than being shot in the torso.
• Orchestral Bombing: Used to great effect in the boss battles, especially Ornstein and Smough in the first game.
• Our Demons Are Different: They're powerful, monstrous, Always Chaotic Evil creatures born from the Bed of Chaos, the Witch of Izalith's failed attempt at recreating the First Flame.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Western-style dragons, but with stone scales instead of reptilian hide and two pairs of wings instead of the one. Then there's Seath, Wyverns, the Hellkite Dragon, the Gaping Dragon, Kalameet, et cetera. They are made even more different since Miyazaki gone on record as saying that the Everlasting Dragons are "half living, half element", something like a powerful spirit creating a bodily construct.
• Our Gods Are Different: They're Greek pantheon-style superhumans with magical powers and range in size from 10ft to 30ft. Some of them are exceptions to the humanoid form, like Gravelord Nito.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: There are multiple types of giants. First are the Lords and gods like Gwyn and Izalith and demigods like Smough and Ornstein^Spoilersthough given that the human race is descended from "the furtive pygmy", it's implied to be less a case of them being unusually large as humanity being unusually small. Then there are the enormous stone giants who seem to be the manual labor of the gods, as they are seen operating machinery, smithing, and opening gates. There's also a separate race of giants that came into conflict with Drangleic in the backstory of Dark Souls II, which apparently lack faces and have tree-like properties.
• Our Humans Are Different: Humans are a race of beings descended from the Furtive Pygmy, who created mankind by sharing fragments of the Dark Soul. Because of this, mankind has an inherent link to the dark, with "Humanity" implied to be fragments of the Dark Soul watered down over the years and maintaining mankind's human characteristics. When the First Flame starts to fade, mankind becomes marked with the Darksign, a curse that leaks Humanity out of humans cursed onto mankind when Gwyn branded the pygmys with fire in hopes of controlling the Dark and turning them into the Undead, unable to die and slowly wasting away until they become Hollows. Conversely, get too much Humanity, and you'll lose control and become a Humanoid Abomination like Manus. An alternative title for "the Age of Dark" is even called "the Age of Man".
• Our Souls Are Different: Souls are more like Life Energy than western definitions of the soul, and symbolized by fire in the Dark Souls franchise. A person can have many. An Undead is a human whose souls are burning out until they become Hollow. An Undead can gather more souls from enemies. The curse of the undead is a direct result of the First Flame burning out. Finally, The First Flame can only be rekindled by Chosen Undead with powerful souls when he/she sacrifices themselves in the First Flame, burning all their souls up until they too become Hollow.
• Our Wyverns Are Different: While the true dragons are long gone by the time of the franchise, various four-limbed dragons collectively referred to as wyverns show up at various points in the franchise. While still very large and powerful creatures by human standards, these wyverns are still of much lesser power and intellect than their mighty progenitors that used to rule the world.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The Undead are unmistakeably zombie-like, at least the hollow ones are. Before they go mad, they are revenants.
• Outside-Context Problem: Regardless of which side you choose, the central conflict of the game doesn't become apparent until halfway through the game, and it isn't all that apparent.
• Parental Abandonment: Sieglinde, who has just lost her mother and is chasing after her dad, who left their family looking for adventure. By the end of the game, she loses her father as well.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: The area next to the hidden bonfire in Darkroot Garden. Two Darkmoon soldiers in Dark Anor Londo are also a good grinding spot.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • All acquired souls and liquid humanity are permanently lost if the player dies a second time without retrieving them.
  • The Darkwraith Covenant if you bring the Lordvessel to Kingseeker Frampt rather than Darkstalker Kaathe in The Abyss.
  • Seven of the nine Covenants can be lost forever if the player gets a bit bloodthirsty. The exceptions are the Warriors of Sunlight (because you don't need an NPC to enter, just kneel at a statue with enough Faith) and the Path of the Dragon (the Everlasting Dragon is completely impossible to kill). Although permanently barring yourself from the Forest Hunters requires attacking Alvina and Oswald (you can't kill Alvina, she just leaves if you attack her until you get Oswald to pardon you).
  • The Ring of Favour and Protection if you remove it.
  • Anything offered by NPCs will be lost forever if you kill them before getting it.
  • The "tail" weapons if you kill the enemies without cutting off the tails first.
  • Because all the above can be re-obtained or re-accessed upon restarting a playthrough, the only true items that can potentially be lost forever in a single character savefile are covenant items such as unique weapons (or armor, in the case of Darkwraiths) should you decide to drop them and fail to recover them for one reason or another.
• Personal Space Invader: Several enemies have devastating grab attacks.
• Pieces of God: Word of God states that Humanity are pieces of the Dark Soul, the soul of the Furtive Pygmy, who was the first human. Played with in that humans also have regular souls.
• Piñata Enemy: The Forest Hunters and the Darkmoon Soldiers. They are quick, cheap sources for souls. The single respawning Titanite Demon is this as well for the Upgrade Stone it drops.
• Planet Heck: The Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith are clearly meant to evoke this. They're underground, Lethal Lava Lands filled with decrepit ruins and overrun with demons.
• Player Data Sharing: The online component allows players to leave each other notes and also leaves blood stains to show where other players have died. There is also a more direct co-op element, which allows players to join one another's games during boss fights or "invade" their game and kill them (see Player Versus Player below).
• Player Versus Player: There are a variety of ways to go toe to toe with other players, whether invading and killing them to steal their humanity, or hunting down aggressive players in the name of justice. The Battle of Stoicism Gazebo in the Artorias The Abysswalker DLC matches players with each other based on soul level tiers (1-50, 51-100, 101-200, 200-713) for the sole purpose of dueling each other.
• Playing with Fire: Pyromancy spells
• Plot Coupon: The Twin Bells of Awakening. The Lordvessel. The Lord Souls.
• Point of No Return: Averted. All areas of the game can be revisited as many times as the player desires.
• Poisoned Weapon: Certain unique weapons can poison enemies, as can poison arrows and throwing knives. Blighttown has enemies using poisoned darts and poisoned giant wooden clubs!
• Possession Implies Mastery: Nope. While you can use all weapons and armor you pick up, using them without the proper stats will make using the weapon less effective, leading to awkward attack animations and severely reduced damage. One-handed weapons even need to be used with both hands to wield even remotely effectively. One place where this stumbles slightly is the use of the Painting Guardian Sword, which is explicitly stated to be a weapon and technique exclusive to that order — there's no way for the player to properly imitate their Dual Wielding style.
  • In a meta sense, some weapons have quirky movesets or unique attacks that require practice on the player's part to use effectively even if the player character has no issues performing them.
• Power Crystal: The most powerful sorceries are crystalline.
• The Power of Friendship: It's subtle, but it's still a major theme. Players in general are encouraged to summon allies, as they tend to make this Nintendo Hard series easier. Killing shopkeepers is also discouraged, as they don't respawn. Also, sidequests can happen if players visit them enough.
• Power Fist: The Dragonbone Fist, crafted from a fist weapon and the Iron Golem's core.
• Powerful Pick: The war pick, and the pickaxe which both deals thrust damage and has very good strength scaling.
• Prepare to Die: Not only is the whole game based on the premise of dying repeatedly, this very trope is used as a tagline for the game. Even the official site has its URL named accordingly!
• Press X to Die: Using the Darksign "kills" you, warping you back to the last bonfire. Unlike regular deaths, you don't leave behind a bloodstain, which means that all the souls you're currently carrying are lost forever. On the upside, the Darksign doesn't Hollow you, and any souls and humanity left by a "regular" death are unaffected, meaning that you can use the Darksign to "reset" your attempts to reclaim those souls with no limitations, until you either succeed or die trying.
• Pressure Plate: Show up as a way to activate elevators, and to trigger deadly booby traps that will kill you.
• Ragdoll Physics: Fully in effect and as wonky as ever; even large stone giants turn completely weightless after they die, sending them sliding around from the smallest touch. You'll also every so often see enemy corpses getting stuck on your character and wobbling around for a while as you move before falling off.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: The game attempts to avoid this by providing most armours as a full-set, but the upgradable armour and greater variety of choices (compared to Demon's Souls), combined with the equipment weight limit, further combined with differing abilities with certain equipment, means it can be quite easy to end up looking like this.
• Randomly Drops: Many enemies drop rare unique weapons, like the Titanite Demons and the Channelers. A few drop rare armor, like the Mimics.
• Random Drop Booster: The games let you equip the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring and the Symbol of Avarice (the latter is a helmet that also increases soul drops, but does damage over time when worn).
• Rate-Limited Perpetual Resource: Estus Flasks are infinitely refillable at Bonfires in the series, but you can only carry small amounts at a time.
• Razor Wind: The Drake Sword and the Dragon Greatsword. Both are unique from Demon's Souls' Stormruler in that its special ability can be used anywhere. That said, the special ability takes a huge chunk out of the sword's durability.
• Recurring Traveler: Solaire, Siegmeyer, and Sieglinde.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: A lot of hollows have these.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Red and Blue Tearstone Rings. They both activate when HP is below 20%, but the red ring increases damage while the blue one increases defense. There are also Red and Blue Eye Orbs, used by Darkwraith and Darkmoon Blade covenants, respectively.
• Reduced Mana Cost: The Dusk Crown Ring, effectively, with it doubling the number of sorcery casts at the price of halving HP.
• Reforged Blade: The True Greatsword of Artorias, forged from a broken sword!
• Religion is Magic: Grants healing powers, shockwaves, the ability to instantly teleport to the last bonfire you used, and Bolts of Divine Retribution.
• Renovating the Player Headquarters: Many characters the player meets throughout the game will come back to Firelink Shrine after being discovered, becoming merchants or performing other useful services.
• Reset Button: Visiting a bonfire (or dying and returning to one) heals you to full and fills up your Estus Flask, but also makes all the enemies (except bosses, minibosses, and a few assorted Elite Mooks) reappear.
• Resources Management Gameplay:
  • You're going to have a very tough time in Dark Souls if you don't learn to how ration your spells and healing items between bonfires.
  • Spamming attacks in this game is ill-advised, as each attack/roll you make will deplete your stamina meter. Failing to take this into account will make things difficult for the player. But at least the stamina regenerates rather quickly.
• Respawning Enemies: The immediate area is repopulated with baddies whenever you use a bonfire.
• Respawn Point: The bonfires serve as these in addition to granting you healing items and also allowing you to level up and use storage.
• Resurrection/Death Loop: The Undead are cursed to forever wander the world until they die enough times that they become Hollows, and lose their self completely. However, this is more or less a Gameplay and Story Segregation. While you, the player character, can't permanently die and are relocated back to a bonfire, NPCs and bosses don't spawn back when they die. It's also left vague if dying after becoming a Hollow results in permanent death or not.
• Resurrection Sickness: When you die, you drop all your humanity and souls where you died and come back looking hollowed. Being hollowed means you can't summon assistance and can't kindle bonfires to increase how much estus you get from them.
  • There are rings you can wear to avoid losing anything when you die, but in the first game, the ring is Permanently Missable (though you can get more), while in the second game, if it breaks, you have to spend 3,000 souls each time you need to repair it.
• Resurrective Immortality: Undead, at least until they turn Hollow, after which they die for good.
• Reviving Enemy: The skeletons in the Catacombs.
• Revenant Zombie: The closest form of zombie the Undead resemble. Revenants in other fiction tended to be driven by a single purpose (so strongly that they refuse to let death stop them), and many of the Undead you meet are indeed on a quest of some sort, though none of them had a choice in becoming Undead. The game's director has even implied that a loss of purpose and giving up on everything is what ultimately turns an Undead Hollow (and killable).
• Ritual Magic: In the sense that it's "Magic anyone can use", Pyromancy's effectiveness is unaffected by Intelligence or Faith scores. In the setting, most pyromancers come from a place called "the great Swamp" and it's seen as "uncivilized" magic.
• Roaming Enemy: The various special NPC hollows, which appear under special circumstances, and are tragic to fight.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Giant evil rats!
• Rolling Attack: Wearing pieces of the Thorn armor set will allow you to damage any enemies you touch while rolling.
  • The skeletons in the Catacombs all use some kind of rolling attack. The normal ones start to roll when you are far away to close the distance and then go to a lunging attack when you are in reach. Later, you will find skeletons fused to spiked wheels. They will roll around at lightning speed and do extremely heavy damage if they catch you full on.
• Royal Rapier: Richard's Rapier, the rapier of a prince of a distant nation.
• Sacred Flames: The First Flame is the origin of all light and souls (except the Dark Soul, which the setting's humans possess) in the game.
• Save Point: It's easy to think of the bonfires as save points, but the game actually auto-saves quite frequently. If you see a little flame in the upper-right hand corner of the screen, the game has just saved.
• Scary Impractical Armor: A variety of armor is like this, Ornstein's and Smough's armor sets immediately come to mind.
• Scenery Gorn: There are many decrepit and ruined areas in the game.
• Scenery Porn: The levels in these games are designed to look amazing, whether to awe or horrify the players. The high amount of detail was even a major cause of framerate issues in the first game (so the second game had to reduce the graphics in the 7th generation system versions compared to the PC and 8th gen versions).
  • A commonly found, tongue-in-cheek message you can find from other players is "Be wary of gorgeous view."
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: Due to the open-ended nature of the game, you'll end up running into a place meant for a much higher-leveled and better equipped character. Especially in the beginning, where the way to Undead Burg is at the very side, and the most obvious paths available lead to an area filled with ghosts immune to regular weapon damage or a graveyard with high-level skeletons, which if you manage to get past, you'll have to fight resurrecting skeletons and exploding skulls that do high damage.
  • Blighttown as well. It's right after the sewers, which has One-Hit-Point Wonder enemies that give humanity after dying and a boss that can be defeated with two NPC summons. The area is filled with enemies that telegraph their moves and can easily be backstabbed, but there are a shitload of them and they actually seek you out. On the plus side, it has a lot of loot in obvious places. Too bad the loot can only be accessed by jumping over bottomless pits, maneuvering around swaying bridges, or should you find an easy place to jump down to it, you'll find that the floors collapse if they're jumped on from a certain height.
• Schmuck Bait: Nearly every trap in the games are designed to draw the unwary player in. Savvy players will be able to spot the trap or at least go in with their eyes open for the ambush that's coming, while the unsavvy will keep falling for it.
  • The Mimics are chest monsters that look almost identical to real treasure chests and actually contain treasure. The moment the player tries to open then, they sprout More Teeth than the Osmond Family and an Overly-Long Tongue and proceed to messily devour the player. Attacking them doesn't help much either, as they're quite difficult enemies for first-time or unprepared players.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: Complete sets of player equipment for all the classes you didn't start as can be found throughout the game. Whoever you weren't playing as still left their equipment behind when they died...
• Scolded for Not Buying: All the merchants have several responses to the player leaving without making a purchase, including the first one encountered in the game telling you to go fall off a cliff and calling you a cheap bastard.
• Sequence Breaking: Possible through a variety of ways, from glitches to intended paths. These games aren't designed to be linear.
• Serpent of Immortality: The description of the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring: "The serpent is an imperfect dragon and symbol of the Undead."
• Shapeshifter Showdown: In player vs. player battles, you can use the "Chameleon" spell to disguise yourself as random clutter objects like jars and chests, but you also have to worry about your opponents using the same ability to sneak up on you.
• Shield Bash: Greatshields and smaller shields with spikes on them can do this instead of parrying, with the main benefit being breaking the enemy's guard. Other shields can only bash if used in your main hand, only allowing you to use them as a weapon, making it rather useless.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: The Giants in Anor Londo. Completely invincible from the front. Other enemies have shields, but they aren't as difficult or invulnerable as these guys.
• Shifting Sand Land: While the heat has mostly died out, the Kiln of the First Flame is a desert made of ash and cinder.
• Shock and Awe: There are a variety of enemies that use lightning as an ability, such as the Titanite Demons and Dragon Slayer Ornstein. The player can forge lightning weapons which have additional lightning damage and are some of the best weapons in the game and can also obtain three miracles that lets them throw lightning bolts Zeus-style.
• Shockwave Stomp: The two-handed power attack of the Dragon King Greataxe is slow, but damages all enemies around you with a shockwave at the cost of weapon durability.
• Shout-Out: The games are full of these, usually to Berserk (as confirmed by Word of God).
  • In Royal Garden, there is a mushroom that says the princess you seek is no longer there.
• Shown Their Work: When blocking with a zweihander, your character puts on one hand on the blade and holds it vertically, which is an actual German technique called Halbschwerten. Most of the weapon designs based on historical swords are actually accurate, as they are thin and sharp instead of being slabs of steel paddles seen in other fantasy roleplay games.
• Sinister Scimitar: Many of the curved swords and greatswords.
• Sinister Scythe: There are two various available as weapons.
• Slice-and-Dice Swordsmanship: Averted. The majority of thrusting weapons can only thrust, and most slashing weapons only slash. There are a few oddities like the estoc, a long, unsharpened sword meant for thrusting, having a slash attack.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Painted World of Ariamis and the Crystal Caves.
• Smash Mook: The Infested Barbarians.
• Soul-Powered Engine: Pyromancy and sorcery. A pyromancer's flame grows by being fed souls, and sorcery spells are often soul-themed. While this isn't represented in-game at all, it's played straighter with Hexes from Dark Souls II, some of which consume your souls with every cast, but in exchange are extremely powerful.
• Special Attack: There are a large variety of weapons with unique special attacks. These can range from devastating uppercuts with powerful knock-back, the Drake Sword and Dragon Great Sword's Razor Wind attacks, special grabs in which you steal another's humanity, and many others.
• Sphere of Destruction: The Wrath of the Gods miracle. Grant, the holy hunk of iron on a stick, has this as its special ability. This is also true of the two-handed attack of the Dragon King Greataxe.
• Spin Attack: The heavy attack of certain weapons. The Belfry Gargoyles in Anor Londo also have an aerial one.
• Sprint Meter: The stamina bar will drain when running, as well as various other actions.
• Spiritual Predecessor:
  • Bloodborne, itself a spinoff by the same company (From Software). Replace undead gods with alien Eldritch Abominations, shields with guns, zombies with werewolves, Undead with Hunters, and souls with blood. Then constrain the gameworld to late 19th century Prague. There you go.
  • Dead Cells. An invincible (but not invulnerable) undead creature who uses a certain part of the enemy to upgrade themselves (Souls in DS, stem cells in DC).
  • Hollow Knight. A resurrectively immortal, void-touched ghost searches a bleak fallen kingdom for the means to undo the curse placed upon it. You also respawn on the last bench you sat on, similar to the Bonfires of DS.
  • Salt and Sanctuary. A fantasy ARPG with combat based around dodging and stamina management. It also takes the plot point of fighting zombie gods and runs with it. The enemy that kills you takes all your EXP and buffs themselves with it. While Salt is not souls, it is derived from the souls of mankind and levelling up uses it in a ritual to grant you its power.
  • Hyper Light Drifter, which is also very much a Zelda-like.
  • The Surge, Dark Souls IN SPAAAACE!!! Er, 20 Minutes into the Future and with giant robots!!! Yes, anyways, monstrous difficulty while directly using bits of the enemy to upgrade the player character.
  • Similarly, Immortal: Unchained transports Dark Souls' dark lore of endless suffering and eternal conflict to the distant future and gives a particular emphasis on firearms.
  • Lords of the Fallen and NieR: Automata, both Alternate Company Equivalents belonging to Deck 13 and Square Enix respectively.
• Squishy Wizard: The Sorcerer starts out with high intelligence and spell slots, but weak attack and defense. Players may still stick with this at higher levels if they prefer.
• Stab the Sky: The Stone Greatsword's special attack does this before casting a spell that slows enemy movement speed.
• Stance System: Your attacks depend on whether you choose to wield your weapon with one or two hands.
• Standard Fantasy Setting: Downplayed: No elves, no dwarves, but definitely swords, magic, and dragons.
• Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting: The first game was originally inspired by a Japanese guy reading and only partly understanding Western fantasy novels. As such, it has many of the hallmarks of this trope, including complex and fallible deities of Light (not entirely good) and Dark (not necessarily bad), deities of Life and Death (the flaws in both of which give rise to tormented demons and soulless undead hordes), Knight Templar priesthoods and holy warriors who draw on the Light to perform miracles and morally suspect offensive magic (divided into scholarly sorcery and primal pyromancy).
• Starter Equipment: Each of the game's ten classes has its own set, though you can find all of those equipment sets lying around somewhere.
• Status Buff: Nearly every single ring provides you with a bonus, from the obvious (increasing elemental resistance), to the awesome (changes rolling to cartwheels), to the tricky (deals extra damage with a pierce weapon when the enemy is in mid-attack animation/stagger from attacking your shield). Other status buffs include attack power increase granted by the Dragon Torso Stone's ability to roar and the Channeler's Trident dance.
• Stat Sticks: The Grass Crest Shield is sub-par as a shield, but it improves stamina regeneration rate when out, which is enough to make it the most widely used item in the entire game. You will see every type of character from Glass Cannons to Mighty Glaciers with this shield, and they will all be wearing it exclusively on their back while two-handing their weapon.
• Stealth Pun: Catarina's distinctive armor would make its wearer a Onion Knight. And given the situations its wearers tend to be in, that makes them pickled onions.
• Stone Wall: The Knight
• Story Breadcrumbs: There is a lot of story and lore if players care to look for it, but it is very unintrusive and requires players to go out of the way to look for it in the form of item descriptions, bits of NPC dialogue, and being observant of your surroundings.
• Strong Enemies, Low Rewards:
  • The skeletons in the cemetary by Firelink Shrine serve to indicate to a new player that they're going in the wrong direction; they have a ton of hitpoints and drop a mere fifty souls on death (in contrast, the Hollows on the "correct" path go down in two hits and drop upwards of sixty apiece). The player is intended to come back when the skeletons and Hollows pose about as much of a threat.
  • Crystal Cave is home to a number of Moonlight Butterflies, most of which don't act unless provoked. A new player may eagerly recall the 10000+ soul reward achieved from defeating the first one... only to find out these butterflies drop a mere 400 souls apiece, without dropping one bit in difficulty. It's best to leave them alone unless you're farming for certain items.
  • The Chaos Bugs in Lost Izalith really only exist for two reasons: to create a gut-punching revelation regarding Solaire, and to be farmed for Sunlight Medals. They're also one of the few completely non-hostile mobs in the game (not counting NPCs) and only drop a mere 20 souls apiece; no point in bothering them unless you really need those Medals.
• Summon Magic: A particular covenant gives you the ability to summon black phantoms into three random players' realms. The phantoms will chase them down relentlessly and attack them without asking questions until they are destroyed by the invaded player. This gives benefit to the summoner via giving him half the souls of the slain player each time they are killed, as well as the satisfaction of giving another player a hard time. You hear it right, guys, Dark Souls has a freaking griefing mechanic! However, it can backfire if the invaded players find the sign you used to summon the phantoms.
• Super Drowning Skills: Sufficiently deep water is instant death. Yeah, you can cartwheel on lava, but deep enough water is instant death.
• Swamps Are Evil: The swamp section of Blighttown, an obvious callback to Demon's Souls Valley of Defilement.
• Sword and Gun: Instead of wielding a shield, you can choose to bear a crossbow or a magic-related item in the left-hand, allowing you to throw bolts or cast spells with one hand while hitting with the other.
• Sword Beam: The Moonlight Greatsword has this as its special attack, making it even more reminiscent to the Moonlight Sword seen in previous From Software games.
• Sword Drag: The Black Knight Great Sword and Black Knight Great Ax do this as part of the build-up for their strong attacks.
• Sword Lines: Great Grey Wolf Sif when wielding the massive Greatsword of Artorias.
• Sword Sparks: Hitting a wall causes this.
• Temple of Doom: Sen's Fortress. While it isn't in a jungle or desert, its an ancient fortress built as a testing ground for undead who want to succeed Lord Gwyn. It's one of the most dangerous places in the game and packed full of booby traps.
• Tin Tyrant: Several enemies wear full armor, if not being only armor, when you fight them.
• Tragic Monster: The Hollows are all undead humans, just like the Player Character, whose minds cracked as a result of their condition. Some of the few lucid people you encounter will inevitably share the same fate.
• Treacherous Checkpoint: The series has Bonfires that normally serve as checkpoints, but:
  • In Dark Souls, the very last bonfire is actually the First Flame: by "activating" it, you Link the Fire, which is the ending where your character burns themselves to cinders in order to prolong the Age of Fire for a few more centuries.
  • Subverted in Dark Souls II: If you have the DLC installed, some Bonfires explode in your face when you try activating them, sending you flying across the room and releasing what seems at first to be an unholy monstrosity. The subversion comes when you realize that fiery explosion didn't hurt you and the "monster" is actually a talkative NPC who leaves and lets you use the Bonfire normally after a Cryptic Conversation.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: The whole game is learning how long you can go without dying to a hazardous area or a boss, and what mistakes to avoid whenever you do wind up as a smear on the wall.
• Troll: The game can be a haven for them, considering the difficulty and the ability to leave online hints for other players to find. What distinguishes a "troll" from a "griefer" in this matter is that unlike in griefing, the comments left have no ability to directly make life difficult for another player. However, some trolling players get kicks by the thought of Naïve Newcomer players falling to their deaths after reading messages saying "Try jumping" near a Bottomless Pit, and other such things. Players must quickly learn to be careful about what messages they trust.
• True Companions: Both Solaire and his covenant, the Warrior of Sunlight. Solaire is available as a summon before a large amount of the game's boss fights, and in an incredible case of consensus among a game's community, members of the Sunbros are unfailingly helpful to anyone who summons them, even to the point of self-sacrifice. If you see a golden summon sign, the guy you summon will not troll you and will not betray you, and will fight VERY hard to make sure you succeed. This attitude leads to Solaire and the Sunbros being quite beloved by the Dark Souls fandom. This attitude extends to the other games in the series, too.
• 24-Hour Armor: Invoked. Without it, you would die more often.
• Unblockable Attack: Many bosses and normal enemies possess powerful grapple attacks that have to be dodged.
• The Undead: Almost everyone you meet is undead, whether or not they look or act like it. This makes sense within the setting, as those who bear the Darksign stay warm and fleshy for a while before they turn into mindless ghouls.
• Undead Child: The baby skeletons in the Tomb of the Giants.
• The Unfought: The Furtive Pygmy, who never shows up or is even properly mentioned outside of the intro, unless you buy the speculation that he became Manus, Father of the Abyss. Artorias for the original version of the game, but averted in the Updated Re-release.
• Undeath Always Ends: Theoretically, a human cursed with the Dark Sign lives forever, but people rarely live that long in Dark Souls. Ultimately, it is inverted as no cure for the Dark Sign is found by the end of the game. Linking the Fire ends it for a time, but only until the Flame wanes again and the curse returns. It also turns out to be an unintended side effect of the Dark Sign, which Gwyn meant to use to prevent the Dark Soul from becoming too powerful.
• Underground Level: The Catacombs and the Tomb of the Giants.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Your primary method of dodging attacks. Tap the Circle/B button to somersault in any direction, granting you precious invincibility frames to avoid damage. If you're brave enough to play without a shield, this is the only way to avoid getting hit.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Multiple examples:
  • It is far easier to remain indefinitely hollow than to keep up your human form, but being human (as well as holding "soft humanity") confers multiple advantages. Humans can summon NPC helpers in some areas as well as other players if playing online. Higher humanity gives a better chance at items that randomly drop, and some items dropping early in the game allows for Disc One Nukes that can help players snowball into further success. Higher humanity increases resistance to curse, a rather nasty status effect that persists through death and halves your maximum health until cured. Being human as opposed to hollow does suffer the disadvantage of being open to invasions by NPCs and other players, but since NPC invaders can provide useful items upon defeat, there is still an incentive to open yourself up to at least those invasions. To further rub it in, the items that grant human status and soft humanity are somewhat rare or otherwise difficult to obtain, leading to players typically either starving for humanity if they're doing poorly or having an excess of it if they're doing well.
  • When you die, you lose your souls and humanity, though you do get one chance to recover them. (This can to be boosted to more than one chance, but that requires the use of a rarely available and finite-quantity item, which is its own little Unstable Equilibrium scenario, since skilled players can use it as insurance while poorly performing players will lose it for no gain.) Since souls function as a combination of xp and currency, losing your souls frequently likely means you are worse off than a player who only rarely dies. The game also doesn't care about the amount of souls at stake. Whether it's a measly 100 or a hefty 1,000,000, when they are lost, they are gone for good. Even worse is the fact that particularly bad losses can actually reward other players with a unique vagrant enemy.
• Useless Useful Stealth: Stealth isn't really all that great in the game, because even though there are many branching paths, they almost all include small paths with enemies packed in too tightly to avoid. Though some enemies with their back turned to you can pick up on your clattering armor. If you walk slowly up to them, you might get a backstab in, dealing heavy damage. There are also rings that obscure the sound of your movement or turn you mostly invisible, but you can still be seen when you get close enough, and in III, you can still be targeted. Plus, enemies will still turn hostile if you get close enough within their line of sight, and once they see you, they can keep tracking you until they de-aggro. Being invisible also doesn't stop them from pinpointing your exact location if you attack from range.
• Vader Breath: Human (i.e., non-phantom) players make a subtle breathing sound effect while standing still. This adds to the games' atmosphere, and makes it easier for invaders to find you while you're staying in one place.
• Vancian Magic:
  • Spells have a set number of uses. Items will partially restore uses while resting at a bonfire restores them in full. There are also pieces of equipment that increase the number of uses.
  • In the second game, increasing attunement (which determines how many different spells can be used at a time) also increases spell uses at certain level amounts (which varies per spell). There are also consumable items which restore spell uses, and the eponymous Crown of the Old Iron King restores 20% of spell uses every two minutes.
  • The third game opted to do away with this entirely and just had a Mana Meter. You can turn any or all of your Estus Flasks into Ashen Estus Flasks which restore your Focus Points.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Kiln of the First Flame
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • Yes, the co-op focused Covenants give you rewards if you follow through on their missions, but many players enjoy co-op simply for its own sake, helping other players who are in trouble progress through the game or defending them from Invaders. It's not unknown to find players who identify themselves as Warriors of Sunlight, Darkmoon Blades, or Blue Sentinels because they agree with the Covenants' mission of improving the gameplay experience for others, not just for the rewards.
  • Benevolent Invasions are rare, but documented. This happens when an Invader, whose job is generally to kill whomever they invade, instead drops useful items for their target before banishing themselves away. There is absolutely zero reward in-game for doing this... indeed, it harms the player who does it, since the items they drop cannot ever be recovered.
  • Quelaag's Sister, aka the Fair Lady, is an extremely sympathetic NPC. Despite her monstrous appearance, she's helpless, non-hostile, self-sacrificing, and in terrible pain. Pain that can be alleviated by giving her Humanity. There are records of players giving her thousands of Humanity items, despite the fact that actual rewards for doing so cease after 30, and cosmetic changes cease after 80.
• Videogame Cruelty Potential: It is perfectly possible to kill any and every NPC (including the blacksmiths and merchants) that you come across, should you feel inclined to do so. There are some exceptions, such as in the first game the Everlasting Dragon in Ash Lake which you can damage for a weapon, but will neither die nor turn hostile.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: The developers tried to limit this by requiring player-set messages to be assembled from a given list of words. In response, the fans got creative with their double entendres:
  • "need head"
  • "Amazing chest ahead"
  • "try holding with both hands"
  • "try tongue, but hole"
• Vulnerable Civilians: All NPCs can be killed. Even worse, one accidental hit on one, be it a merchant, or a blacksmith, and that NPC is permanently hostile, and often leads to their death, which can be disastrous later on if you happen to kill a merchant. You can, however make all hostile, yet alive, NPCs non hostile by paying Oswald of Carim an obscene amount of souls. 500 souls times your Soul Level to be exact, resulting in (for example) people at level 50 needing to amass 25,000 souls just so the woman who sells moss doesn't try to kill you. If you made Oswald hostile, however, you're boned.
• Virtual Paper Doll: You get a fair variety of armor set in the games, that are not only visible when worn, they are all split into four parts (head, hands, torso, legs), so players can mix and match as they like (usually for exploiting stat bonuses for each armor).
• Weapon Across the Shoulder: Single-handed greatswords, ultra greatswords, great axes, and large hammers are carried resting on the shoulder by the player character and enemies that have them equipped. Some, such as the Greatsword of Artorias and its variations, are carried this way even two-handed.
• Wise Serpent: In the original, the player's two primary guides are the primordial serpents Frampt and Kaathe, each one pulling the player towards the side of fire and dark respectively. Later entries in the series, most notably Dark Souls III: primordial serpents are revered as being ancient teachers and are used decoratively and religiously as symbols of wisdom.
• With This Herring:
  • You find a proper weapon and shield within the tutorial dungeon, but just starting out, you have nothing more than the broken hilt-shard to wield against zombies. Justified since you are in a literal dungeon.
  • The Deprived's "proper weapon and shield" are a wooden club and plank. He/she also doesn't start with any armor.
  • Averted in II, where apart from the Deprived, all the classes start out with swords, daggers, magical catalysts, and maces after talking to the Fire Keepers in Things Betwixt...except the Warrior, who gets a shield (the only class to have one from the word go) but has to wield a Broken Straight Sword and like it, especially if the Random Drops aren't forgiving.
• When Trees Attack: The Demonic Foliage that patrols Darkroot Garden, and the Curse-Rotted Greatwood in III.
• White Magic: Miracle spells are this by default, although III also has dark miracles.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The premise is that your hero can never die, no matter what, he'll just keep coming back (though the form is the usual game respawning).
  • The Dark Souls universe views death as good, natural, and in the events of the games, a luxury. A differentiation between life and death did not exist before the First Flame, and as it dies out, humans become Undead. Sure, they can't die, but their soul burns out instead.
• World Tree: The Great Hollow. The level is just one long descent down the inside of an enormous tree. The Ash Lake shows that there are hundreds of these under the world.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Given an in-story justification. You can find copper, silver, and gold coins which the Flavor Text notes are perfectly valid currency outside of Lordran. However, they are worthless to you since everyone in the land uses souls as currency instead. II has a room full of gold coins that your character doesn't even touch, because to all appearances, everywhere is on the soul standard.
• Wutai: The "Far East" is like this, and we meet a few characters from there who are a samurai and a ninja, but we never get to go there personally.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: Letting your guard down or trying to rush forward because you're facing enemies you've easily beaten before is generally a terrible idea and will end up with you feeling like an idiot for dying to simple zombies or skeletons you could've easily beaten with some patience. There's also repeatedly dying by falling off into a Bottomless Pit because of preventable causes.
• You Are Not Alone: In a meta sense — winning the games are largely dependent on shared knowledge and assistance between players, hence the use of online messages and summons. The games may be harsh and unforgiving, but players can feel safe in the knowledge that ultimately, they aren't going through the struggle alone.
• You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: The Chosen Undead is undead, remember. They can't be killed in a way that matters. They just teleport back to the last Bonfire they used, reverted to their Revenant Zombie form.
• Your Soul Is Mine!:
  • The level-up system is explained as absorbing the souls of fallen enemies into the player character's own. The game raises questions about what exactly is the soul.
  • Enemies and players who have the 'Lifedrain' ability (Dark Hand weapon) can drain humanity from a target.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Many nations, including Lordran, were absolutely devastated by the Darksign's appearance.