Want a fresh Dark Souls experience? There’s a mod for that

[Nergal]

 

Prepare to Die Again is a mod for Dark Souls that aims to recreate that precious, singular experience of exploring the game for the very first time. At first it did this by simply moving enemies, but its latest version, which is now compatible with Dark Souls Remastered on PC, goes further.

Prepare to Die Again – Ultimate adds new NPC enemies that didn’t exist in vanilla, as well as two armour sets that were cut from the game. Boss fights have been revised, some with new mechanics. New spells and rings have also been added, the starting classes and gifts have been tweaked, and there’s an in-game hard mode. “Almost every bonfire” has been moved, as well as many treasure corpses and chests, which may also drop new loot. This is on top of regular enemies having been repositioned.

The changes sound far-reaching enough to give a substantially fresh experience, but discovering that things like enemy placement actually chime with Dark Souls’ lore is a critical part of the magic of that experience. That’s why the mod’s author, FTRichter, says they’ve tried to be as lore-friendly as possible.

The whole exercise has been informed by FTRichter playing through the game and making notes on individual encounters they’d like to remix, so it sounds like a great deal of thought and care has gone into it.

Interested? Here’s Prepare to Die Again on Nexus Mods – head to the ‘files’ tab to choose your version and download away. Users are almost universally satisfied, with comments like “this mod is basically like getting new DLC to me” being pretty typical.