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About this mod
If you're the sort of player who loves Dark Souls, but you feel the game is a little uneven when it comes to some of its encounters and mechanics, this mod might just be for you. Rather than being a complete overhaul, this mod aims to refine the vanilla experience - thus the name "Vanilla Refined".
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
- Donations
IDEA
I approached the creation of this mod as if I was on the official team and was tasked with refining and improving the game as best I could before its release - so in an alternate timeline I'd consider this to be the definitive version of the game. It was my task to not make the game harder or easier - just less frustrating and more flexible. Nothing was changed without critical forethought and rigorous testing in-game. If you want to know all of the changes and the reasoning behind them, you can read the text file included in the zip download, but you'll understand the changes mostly just by playing the game. Here's a summary of what to expect:
IMPROVED RINGS - If I've done my job right, you'll be enticed to try out and swap out different ring combinations as you play, and it will feel rewarding to do so. You'll be pleased with how useful and tactical nearly every ring is.
TWEAKED ENEMY ENCOUNTERS - While most of the game's encounters are left unchanged, certain choke points and duplicated enemies have been altered to provide a cleaner run from the bonfire to the boss room, and should feel more logical given the areas you're in. Isolated spikes of frustration that result in preventable deaths have been ironed out.
BOW GAMEPLAY - Not just a change to bow damage and scaling, but a change to bullet params themselves. Arrows fly further, faster and feel more impactful to shoot. Bows can be upgraded to either scale with STR, DEX, INT or FAI equally while preserving their physical damage, or upgraded to deal pure fire, lightning or magic damage (you'll still need the required embers for each upgrade types). More details can be found in the text file provided with the zip download.
GREEN BLOSSOMS - Green blossoms are no longer an infinite resource that increases stamina regen. They are now a very rare HP regen item that can eliminate the problem of getting wailed on while drinking from your estus flask, if only for a short period. Hold on to your green blossoms, because they're in very short supply and are extremely hard to farm.
IMPROVED SHADOW ARMOR SET - Now a full utility outfit, granting an improved ring of fog effect (Shadow Mask), flip ring effect (Shadow Armor), quiet movement (Shadow Leggings) and a hornet ring effect (Shadow Bracers). It won't really make the game easier but it's very useful.
CRYSTAL LIZARDS - Crystal lizards are now much easier to kill, so grab your bow and have fun hunting them.
EXTRA TREASURES - Some outfits and weapons that previously required killing non-hostile NPCs or farming for hours are now treasures that can be found in the map. Explore and you'll find them all. Killing Seath now awards the Moonlight Greatsword by default.
TWEAKED SHOP PRICES - Sets of armor, goods, rings and weapons are no longer overpriced. Buy everything where you can. In fact, I recommend it.
TITANITE AVAILABILITY - After obtaining the Annex key in the DLC, Gough will sell you large titanite shards, titanite chunks and titanite slabs. You can now max out as much regular gear as you want before entering NG+.
BED OF CHAOS - There is no real way to make this a good boss fight short of a complete rebuild from the ground up. I chose to compromise by turning the "fight" into a purely mechanical process. In other words, I removed the one element that overexaggerates the metaphor of "chaos" this fight attempts to present to the player. This is the one change that does affect the game at a deeper level, but to be honest, the devs should have come up with a less cheap and ham-fisted way to translate the subject of chaos to the player in the first place. Forgive me Miyazaki.
SMALLER TWEAKS - Armor weight overall has been reduced to avoid the reliance on Havel's Ring just to mid roll, or having to dump a huge amount of points into endurance to offset this. Certain armor sets provide unique gameplay effects (details in the text file). Astora Straight Sword and Darkmoon Bow have been improved. Shields now require no more than 30 STR to wield.
My hope is that those new to Dark Souls as well as long time players will find this mod to be the new "vanilla" way to play the game. If you enjoy the mod, consider donating or at least spreading the word about it. Have fun and don't go hollow.
INSTALLATION - Download the zip. Extract the zip. Make a backup copy of your DARK SOULS REMASTERED game folder. Copy the folders you extracted from the zip to your DARK SOULS REMASTERED folder. When asked to overwrite, click yes.
COMPATIBILITY - Just assume this mod is incompatible with any others you have, unless you know a way to merge your mods' files. I do not, so do not ask me about this.
Tools used to create this mod - DSMapStudio
This mod is for use ONLY with the remastered version of the game.
I approached the creation of this mod as if I was on the official team and was tasked with refining and improving the game as best I could before its release - so in an alternate timeline I'd consider this to be the definitive version of the game. It was my task to not make the game harder or easier - just less frustrating and more flexible. Nothing was changed without critical forethought and rigorous testing in-game. If you want to know all of the changes and the reasoning behind them, you can read the text file included in the zip download, but you'll understand the changes mostly just by playing the game. Here's a summary of what to expect:
IMPROVED RINGS - If I've done my job right, you'll be enticed to try out and swap out different ring combinations as you play, and it will feel rewarding to do so. You'll be pleased with how useful and tactical nearly every ring is.
TWEAKED ENEMY ENCOUNTERS - While most of the game's encounters are left unchanged, certain choke points and duplicated enemies have been altered to provide a cleaner run from the bonfire to the boss room, and should feel more logical given the areas you're in. Isolated spikes of frustration that result in preventable deaths have been ironed out.
BOW GAMEPLAY - Not just a change to bow damage and scaling, but a change to bullet params themselves. Arrows fly further, faster and feel more impactful to shoot. Bows can be upgraded to either scale with STR, DEX, INT or FAI equally while preserving their physical damage, or upgraded to deal pure fire, lightning or magic damage (you'll still need the required embers for each upgrade types). More details can be found in the text file provided with the zip download.
GREEN BLOSSOMS - Green blossoms are no longer an infinite resource that increases stamina regen. They are now a very rare HP regen item that can eliminate the problem of getting wailed on while drinking from your estus flask, if only for a short period. Hold on to your green blossoms, because they're in very short supply and are extremely hard to farm.
IMPROVED SHADOW ARMOR SET - Now a full utility outfit, granting an improved ring of fog effect (Shadow Mask), flip ring effect (Shadow Armor), quiet movement (Shadow Leggings) and a hornet ring effect (Shadow Bracers). It won't really make the game easier but it's very useful.
CRYSTAL LIZARDS - Crystal lizards are now much easier to kill, so grab your bow and have fun hunting them.
EXTRA TREASURES - Some outfits and weapons that previously required killing non-hostile NPCs or farming for hours are now treasures that can be found in the map. Explore and you'll find them all. Killing Seath now awards the Moonlight Greatsword by default.
TWEAKED SHOP PRICES - Sets of armor, goods, rings and weapons are no longer overpriced. Buy everything where you can. In fact, I recommend it.
TITANITE AVAILABILITY - After obtaining the Annex key in the DLC, Gough will sell you large titanite shards, titanite chunks and titanite slabs. You can now max out as much regular gear as you want before entering NG+.
BED OF CHAOS - There is no real way to make this a good boss fight short of a complete rebuild from the ground up. I chose to compromise by turning the "fight" into a purely mechanical process. In other words, I removed the one element that overexaggerates the metaphor of "chaos" this fight attempts to present to the player. This is the one change that does affect the game at a deeper level, but to be honest, the devs should have come up with a less cheap and ham-fisted way to translate the subject of chaos to the player in the first place. Forgive me Miyazaki.
SMALLER TWEAKS - Armor weight overall has been reduced to avoid the reliance on Havel's Ring just to mid roll, or having to dump a huge amount of points into endurance to offset this. Certain armor sets provide unique gameplay effects (details in the text file). Astora Straight Sword and Darkmoon Bow have been improved. Shields now require no more than 30 STR to wield.
My hope is that those new to Dark Souls as well as long time players will find this mod to be the new "vanilla" way to play the game. If you enjoy the mod, consider donating or at least spreading the word about it. Have fun and don't go hollow.
INSTALLATION - Download the zip. Extract the zip. Make a backup copy of your DARK SOULS REMASTERED game folder. Copy the folders you extracted from the zip to your DARK SOULS REMASTERED folder. When asked to overwrite, click yes.
COMPATIBILITY - Just assume this mod is incompatible with any others you have, unless you know a way to merge your mods' files. I do not, so do not ask me about this.
DO NOT USE THIS MOD IN ONLINE MODE - YOU WILL GET BANNED
Tools used to create this mod - DSMapStudio
This mod is for use ONLY with the remastered version of the game.