The first game in the Dark Souls series has Sequence Breaking that rivals Super Mario 64 in terms of the sheer number of them and how much time or effort they save when done. A few of them (such as the Master Key) are intentional, while the rest are not so much. Many of them are listed here on Speed Souls
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Examples from this game:
- You can bypass the gate to Sen's Fortress by using abusing the triggers for death in this game. Death by falling into a Bottomless Pit (or similar) in this game consists of two parts: the game going into a Top-Down View "deathcam" in order to display you falling to your death, and the game killing you proper. The former can be triggered without progressing to an actual death, but since the game expects death to occur in short order, it won't bother to load anything it hasn't loaded already while the camera is in this state, such as doors you aren't supposed to be able to open yet. For example, it's possible to enter Sen's Fortress without ringing both Bells of Awakening by parrying and riposting an enemy using your bare fists in the exact right spot on the stairs between the Undead Parish and Andre's building, clipping you into the stairs briefly and triggering the deathcam. You can then make your way down to Sen's Fortress and enter it, as the gate won't be loaded. Once inside, quit and reload to reset the camera to normal.
- You can avoid the mandatory death to Seath in the Duke's Archives by going to the top of one of the elevators, sending the elevator back down, falling onto the elevator's railing and then rolling off the railing onto the third floor.
- The Bed of Chaos is designed so that you can only reach the core by running across the arena several times to destroy orbs on each side of the boss, traversing a collapsing floor on the way... except that the mad dashes to the orbs can be skipped by throwing firebombs at those orbs from the middle of the boss room.
- With enough HP and fire resistance it's possible to hike across the lavafall in the Demon Ruins, allowing you to skip the Ceaseless Discharge boss fight.
- There are a couple of ways in which lethal fall damage can be negated entirely, allowing you to do things like jump down the elevators in the DLC area:
- Fall Control can be exploited ruthlessly to survive any high fall that doesn't go out of bounds, by simply saving and quitting when you touch the ground, but before the game properly finishes registering your death. This causes the game to return you to where you impacted the ground, without killing you.
- Similarly, there is a method that allows you to survive lethal falls even without Fall Control in specific locations by using a combination of a plunge attack (which must slide off of something on the way down) and a roll in order to cause the lethal fall damage to coincide with the invincibility frames that rolling grants, cancelling all damage.
- The chasm in the Catacombs can be jumped down, skipping almost the entire stage. Unlike the other examples on this page, at least some parts of this were clearly intentional, as there are items (the Holy Set and a Mace) that can only be obtained this way.
- All the Lord Souls can be rendered unnecessary by the Kiln Skip, a glitch in which you forcibly quit the game at a specific point during a loading screen in the Lordvessel's room, causing you to respawn inside the Kiln of the First Flame upon reloading.
- There exists several glitches that allow the Bed of Chaos to be defeated without even obtaining the Lordvessel:
- The attacks of a giant worm enemy in the Demon Ruins can be exploited to clip downwards towards the Centipede Demon's boss arena.
- Egg carriers have a grab attack that can cause you to clip out of bounds, allowing you to drop off all the way at the Centipede Demon's boss room.
- You can clip through a Door to Before elevator in Quelaag's Domain by repeatedly saving, quitting, and reloading. This drops you down the elevator shaft... straight on top of the Demon Firesage himself, allowing you to survive the fall via a plunging attack and skipping the vast majority of the Demon Ruins in the process.
- It's possible to glitch under the New Londo Ruins to reach the Four Kings without draining the water, via yet another Fall Control quitout exploit.
- Careful use of Fall Control exploits in the room in Anor Londo containing the Painted World allows you to zip past the locked door to the Giant Blacksmith, allowing a player to enter the building containing Ornstein and Smough without passing a rather dreaded pair of Silver Knight Archers.
- A different variant of the Kiln skip involves the use of the Purple Coward's Crystal (used to exit matches in the Battle of Stoicism, a multiplayer battle arena unlocked by killing Artorias, the boss of the Downloadable Content), an item swap glitch to use the crystal, and then immediately using a bonfire warp item. If the last bonfire you rested at was the Lordvessel at the Firelink Altar, you will instead be dumped in the Kiln of the First Flame. Wanna know how it works?
- Some area-of-effect attacks can clip through the shortcut door between Izalith and the Demon Ruins that unlocked by giving humanity to the Chaos Servant covenant. This allows you to rescue Solaire by killing an enemy on the other side of the door that corrupts him if you leave it alone without donating to the covenant.
- You can even cause the Chaos Servant shortcut door to disappear entirely by using the same death-clip exploit used to pry open the Sen's Fortress gate, but by doing it on the stairs leading to the Demon Firesage boss room instead.
- In Anor Londo, it's possible to avoid most of the enemy encounters on the way between the bonfire with Solaire and the boss room by simply jumping from the stairs at the right spot.
- Indeed, so much of the game's content is skippable (intentionally or otherwise) that it's possible to beat the remaster with only 3 boss fights (Bell Gargoyles, Ornstein & Smough, and Gwyn) out of the 22 in the base game registering as completed. (The any% Speedrun route will complete 6 fights, however, as the skips for Asylum Demon, Quelaag, and Iron Golem are too long and/or finicky to be worthwhile in a speedrun.)
