Video Game / Dark Souls III Cinders

This page assumes you have played the original Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, and Dark Souls III, so don't even bother adding spoiler tags for those. You Have Been Warned.

Dark Souls III: Cinders is a Game Mod expansion of the original Dark Souls III. Cinders expands further on certain aspects of III while trying to provide more methods of gameplay by virtually changing progression entirely. Furthermore, the mod also brings back unused content from the vanilla game and also adds new items and weapons, along with complete overhauls to the gameplay mechanics.

The mod can be found here.

This page is under construction. Help would be appreciated.

Tropes:

• Adaptation Expansion: Aside from gameplay overhauls and adding unused stuff back, the game also adds new weapons and rings to use in combat, and also added new items that can be transfused.
• Adaptational Badass: Almost every boss in the game has the health beefed up in order to compensate for the drastically changed mechanics of the game.
  • On the other side of the spectrum, the Ashen One was a Fragile Speedster in their game due to how their was no passive Poise, but having the ability to roll a lot. In here, to compensate for the additional stamina requirements for rolling, passive Poise makes a return, and with the right armor and stats, the Ashen One can potentially be a Lightning Bruiser!
• Adaptational Wimp: On the other hand, NPC White Phantoms don't receive the same benefits that the player has, resulting in them getting killed early on in the boss fights. Later versions buffed up their HP and damage to compensate for this.
  • Zig-Zagged with Yhorm the Giant. On one hand, his resistance to the Storm Ruler is increased. On the other hand, he now takes further damage from other weapons.
  • The Ancient Wyvern is much more vulnerable to the head/legs/body, almost negating the need to plunge at the head.
• Adapted Out: The Blessed, Simple, Hollow, Deep, Crystal and Chaos gem infusions don't appear in this mod, mostly being replaced by similar substitutes.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Passive Poise returns, allowing the player to tank hits without needing hyper-armor.
  • The FP bar now continuously regenerates, allowing for more FP conservation while almost negating the need for Ashen Estus Flasks.
  • Infusing Essences replace the gem infusion mechanic for shields, and unlike them, the Infusing Essence can be use to create any infusion. That said, it's a bit costly in order to compensate.
  • Items you used to have to grind for can now be found either in fixed locations in the world or are 100% certain drops from specific enemies.
  • Most basic weapons can now be bought directly from Andre, with more being unlocked as you give Ashes to the Shrine Handmaid.
• Ascended Meme: There are 3 hostile NPCs at the Smouldering Lake ballista named the Father, the Mother, and the Child, each wearing their respective masks from Dark Souls. The Father is, naturally, Giant Dad. The description on the Mask of the Father also says that it once belonged to the "valiant legend".
  • In the Ringed City you get invaded by Glaive Master Hodir, a fan-made character made by people excited for Elden Ring. If you beat him he drops the Elden Ring.
• Balance Buff: Spells, such as Sunlight Spear, have been adjusted to fit the more fast-paced combat of Dark Souls III.
  • You can now upgrade weapons with Twinkling Titanite and Titanite Scale up to +10, further increasing the AR of the weapons.
  • Some weapons have their requirements to wield properly reduced. One such thing is the Fume Ultra Greatsword, where in the vanilla game had to be nerfed due to being overpowered. Now the dexterity requirements being lowered to 10, with the right infusion, it could one-shot various enemies.
  • In order to compensate for Cinders being more PVE oriented, the Obscuring ring now makes you invisible when you wear it regardless of how far you are from the enemy, making it similar to the Fog Ring of Dark Souls I.
  • A lot of elemental weapons couldn't be augmented with weapon buffs, but here this is not the case, allowing players to augment even the Dragonslayer's Greataxe of all things, and further augment them with with Embers, the game's replacement of coals.
  • Every armor has an passive effect on them, giving the player incentives to use them.
  • Pyromancies no longer have stat requirements to use as of Ver. 1.29, but have increased FP consumption in order to compensate.
  • As of Ver 1.73, Crossbow type weapons now scale with your stats like almost every other weapon type, but have their base damage reduced to accomodate.
• Beef Gate: To show that the player is supposed to go to the Undead Settlement first, the number of enemies in the High Wall of Lothric have been increased along with their health, making it a risky proposition to start there. That said, should the Ashen One go through, they can end up with some early loot that was meant to be found later in the game. Ver 1.32 later returned to Lothric Castle being the starting area alongside Catacombs of Carthus, but adds a beef wall in the form of an Early-Bird Boss version of the Ancient Wyvern. Ver. 1.33 removed the Wyvern, replacing it with a Outrider Knight.
  • It's actually possible to go to the Dreg Heap early if you have The Ringed City installed. However, aside from the Murkmen, the Angels' beams provide a deadly threat to the player unless they can dodge it.
  • You can interact with the corpse of an Wyvern in the High Wall of Lothric to gain access to Archdragon Peak early, but since the player is unlikely to be highly leveled for the area, they'll most likely die to the snakemen early on. Managing to dodge them to the point of getting to the Ancient Wyvern boss fight will have a rude surprise for those who played the vanilla game, as the drop-off point where the player can perform a plunging attack on the Wyvern is blocked by another Wyvern. Surpassing these will likely net enough souls for a low-levelled player to have.
• Checkpoint Starvation: The mod seemingly does its best to return bonfire frequency to DS1 levels. No more bonfires two rooms apart, now you have to work for them. For instance, the Tower on the Wall bonfire has been moved down next to Greirat's cell, and the number of Hollow Assassins in the tower has been significantly increased. On the merciful side, many boss room bonfires have been moved to just before the boss, making for an easy runback if and when the boss flattens you.
• El Spanish "-o": The Crab Bait item allows you to summon a friendly crab to help you fight enemies, named El Crabbo.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The Censuring Palm gives you access to a repetoire of punches that makes a barehanded playstyle viable. Unlike in Dark Souls II this is a weapon instead of a ring, the damage output is reasonable instead of through the roof, and the Censuring Palm can be fully upgraded with Titanite and lets you Infuse them to gain access to Elemental Punch attacks.
• Guide Dang It!: The Transposing Klin is now found at the tower where you find the Estus Ring, now by defeating the Curse-Rotted Greatwood. This was eventually updated so that Ludleth can simply transpose souls right away, no kiln required.
  • You can actually get infused versions of Bows... But not from infusing them from Andre. Instead, you have to get them from certain enemies. Ver. 1.29 removed it citing dissatisfaction with the implementation.
• Harder Than Hard: The Company of Champions covenant return, this time decreasing Absorption when equipped. You also get Cinders from defeating certain enemies as a rare drop.
  • Then there is the Accursed class added in Ver. 1.64 you can choose at the start of the game, which starts you off with no items beyond Estus and Burial gifts (no armor, shield, or weapon, that is) and absolutely NO stats, setting them all to zero.
  • Furthermore, there is a giant tree available from the very start of the game (found very near to the new spawn point, the Fire Keeper grave tower) which allows you to ascend the game cycle. Why doing this right after creating your new character (especially the Accursed class) is a bad idea needs no explanation.
  • There's also several Curses you can add at Firelink Shrine, which in turn increase Soul Drops and range from the inconvenient (Curse of Folly, making you perform gestures at random intervals) to ones promoting aggression (Curses of Vitality and Wrath, regenerating health and increasing damage as the fight goes on respectively) to the challenging (Curse of Attraction, adds more enemies) to the debiliating (Curse of Obscurity, makes it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead).
  • Marks increase the number of enemies that spawn in the world or increase the health and damage output of bosses. This is compensated by having the bosses always drop high-level reinforcement materials and increases the number of souls you get from defeating enemies, on top of the souls you'd get from defeating the enemies normally.
• Irony: The Black Knight set gives out a small boost to fire damage, yet the Black Knights were burned by the flames of Chaos.
• Mighty Glacier: The Greatwood Remnants ring increases physical defenses by 50% in exchange for making rolls cost more stamina, while the Rare Ring of Humanity increases all defenses by 25% in exchange for weighing a whopping 10 pounds. With these two rings equipped and the DS1-style Poise implemented in the mod, being a fatrolling, lumbering tank is very much a viable playstyle.
• Money Multiplier: Aside from the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring, the Symbol of Avarice, Shield of Want, and the Mendicant's Staff, the Fire Keeper Set along with the Jailer set also increases souls gained.
• Mythology Gag: Most of the weapons and armour sets added in the mod come from the previous two Dark Souls games, Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, and even a couple from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Even Elden Ring joins in on the fun, even though next to nothing was known about the game yet.
• Nerf: The Dark Hand was considered to be an great early-game weapon due to it's dark damage and ability to scale with Strength, Dexterity, Faith and Intelligence. Now it only has a fixed AR of 200. A later update made it upgradeable in order to compensate for this.
  • Certain weapons had their stat requirements to wield properly doubled, such as the Hollowslayer Greatsword.
  • Rolling now takes more stamina. Down played as it's still possible to continuously roll around, it's just that you have to make it more strategic this time. Ver 1.26 returned it to it's vanilla values.
  • The Ringed Knight Spear and Paired Greatswords were extremely overpowered due to their fire infusion giving massive damage increases to their Weapon Arts, but Ver 1.28 fixed this.
• No Fair Cheating: The real Knight Slayer Tsorig has lost his susceptibility to Alluring Skulls, so no more getting him to kill himself by throwing skulls in the lava, you have to fight him legit. At least his invasion in the Catacombs can still be dealt with in the usual way.
• Optional Boss: Vordt of the Boreal Valley, the Crystal Sage and the Deacons of the Deep are regulated to optional fights due to alternations in game progression. That said, the Deacons do drop 5 Human Dregs in order to compensate for the Small Doll now being found at the gates of Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, and are required to progress Anri's questline, which is nice to have. Later updates made Vordt a mandatory boss fight.
• Palette Swap: Most of the new weapons in the game are reskins of currently existing weapons, with a more Egregious example being the Fume Sword, while it looks like a smaller Fume Ultra Greatsword, it looks nothing like it's Dark Souls II counterpart.
• Piñata Enemy: The Ravenous Crystal Lizards respawn this time, including the one at the Cemetery of Ash. They're going to make you work for those Titanite Scales.
• Random Drop Booster: The Varangian Set boosts item discovery rate by 10 for each part equipped.
• Shout-Out: One of the items you get in the mod is called Elden Ring, and is dropped by Glaive Master Hodir, whom in the item description says "So, it appears you have made a... glaive mistake".
• Skippable Boss: It's entirely possible to skip High Lord Wolnir by interacting with the Giant at the ballista in Smoldering Lake, granting access to Irithyll Dungeon early.
• Squishy Wizard: Prior to Ver. 1.28 spell damage was reduced when wearing heavy armor, which was removed from that patch onwards. Instead this is now encouraged by having armor that boosts spellcasting through increased attributes, decreased FP cost, faster cast times, or gives more FP or damage output all be robes or light armor.