Article by Glenn Butera

Like Dark Souls' Lordran, Dark Souls 2's Drangleic is a world packed with secrets. There are secret paths to ferret out between areas. Bosses that you may never face in a normal playthrough. Estus flask shards and Pharros' Contraptions and Souls Vessels to find. We've compiled a guide to Dark Souls 2's most vital secrets. If you're just starting out (have you read our beginner's guide?) or a seasoned veteran, you'll find a wealth of useful information for your journey through Drangleic.

Want to skip ahead to a specific part of our secrets guide? Click one of these links to jump to the information you're looking for, whether it's the location of every single estus flask shard in the game, a list of the most important Pharros' Contraptions, or the NPCs you absolutely must talk to.

Page 2: Estus Flask Shards and Sublime Bone Dust
Page 3: Pharros' Contraptions and Soul Vessels
Page 4: The most important NPC merchants

Check out our Dark Souls 2 hub for more guides, a ton of 4K screenshots, videos, and analysis of the PC version from Dark Souls modder Durante.
Level Shortcuts
Looking to take some time off your speed run or skip a tough boss fight? These helpful shortcuts will quickly and safely lead you through the world of Drangleic.

Entry to The Lost Bastille: There are two ways to reach The Lost Bastille.

Finish No-Man s Wharf and use the ship to get to the Exile Holding Cells bonfire.

Use the Soldier s Key (obtained from The Last Giant) on the door in the giant sword room of the Forest of Fallen Giants. Head up to the ramparts and defeat the Pursuer. Continue past the boss fight area and you will find a nest up a small set of stairs. The Pursuer s eagle will take you to The Tower Apart bonfire.

Ruin Sentinels boss skip: This skip requires the Exile Holding Cells bonfire and a Pharros Lockstone.

Head down the ladder after the Heide knight and turn right. Break through the wooden planks on the wall and head to the opposite corner of the room. Strike the locked door with your weapon to get the Royal Swordsman to open it from the other side. Defeat the enemies in this area and head into the next room by climbing up the short ladder outside and falling through a window. Turn right and use a Pharros Lockstone in the next room. The further of the two secret rooms will open and have an elevator cage to take you up to the entrance to Sinner s Rise, or you can backtrack down the staircases to the Servants Quarters bonfire.

Smelter Demon boss skip: In the large lava room that leads to the Smelter Demon boss, lower the bridge using the lever and halfway across drop off to your left. Turn the wheel to close off the fire from the kiln room and enter the kiln from either doorway. Climb the ladder and kill the Alonne Knight Captain to reach the next area.

Shrine of Winter: There are two ways to reach the Shrine of Winter.

Open by lighting the Primal Bonfires after defeating The Rotten, Old Iron King, Duke s Dear Freja, and The Lost Sinner.

Acquire a set number of souls in a playthrough (e.g. if Soul Memory entering NG+ is 2,500,000 you will need 4,500,000 additional souls to enter the Shrine of Winter): NG: 1,000,000. NG+: 2,000,000. NG+2: 3,000,000 and so on up to NG+7: 8,000,000.


Helpful Hints
Drangleic is a dangerous land full of challenges waiting to steal your souls. There's lava that will kill you. Phantoms that will kill you. Poison that will kill you. Here are some tips to survive some of Drangleic's toughest environments and save your souls even in death.
To safely walk on the lava rocks in the Iron Keep, use the Pharros Contraption water pools (roll in them), Flame Quartz Ring +2, and the Smelter Demon armor. Make sure to use an Estus Flask while on the lava before opening any chests.

There are three Rings of Life Protection that you can acquire throughout the game that will allow you to keep your Human Form and Souls upon death. The rings only cost 3000 souls each to repair, allowing you to nullify death.

No Man s Wharf: At the top of the second set of stairs with the Varangian Sailor throwing oil jars, turn left and the ring will be just inside the house in an alcove.
Shaded Woods: Take the left doorway at the Ruined Fork Road bonfire and go all the way around the circular stone structure to find the ring guarded by 2 Goblins.
Felkin the Outcast: Sells for 6000 souls

If you do not have any White Phantoms summoned you can quit the game in a boss fight.When you reload you will be placed outside the boss fog gate.




Estus Flask Shards
Lifegiving Estus Flasks don't come easy in Dark Souls 2. You'll have to hunt for flask shards to assemble complete flasks. Here's where you can find each and every one of them.

Majula: Strike the stone resting on the edge of the well to raise a corpse with the shard.

Forest of Fallen Giants (Cardinal Tower bonfire): Head up the staircase behind Merchant Hag Melentia and destroy the breakable door. The shard is in a chest on the second floor of the bonfire room.

Majula: Obtain the mansion key from Cartographer Cale (located in a cave in the large open area after the first fog gate). Use the key on the mansion in Majula and kill the skeleton in the basement. The shard is on a corpse on the right.

No-Man s Wharf: After ringing the bell to call the ship, continue past and head down to the ground floor. Turn left and the shard will be in a room with behind some poison pots guarded by Varangian Sailors.


The Lost Bastille (Exile Holding Cells bonfire): Head down the ladder after the Heide Knight and hug the left wall after killing the Undead Jailor and 2 dogs. Hug the left wall to find the chest containing the shard.

The Lost Bastille (Tower Apart Bonfire): Fight through the room with the Royal Swordsmen and get the Antiquated Key in the chest in the next area. From the Servants Quarters bonfire (after Ruin Sentinel Boss), head left in the bottom floor of the circular stairs room instead of going up the stairs and drop down from the rooftops. Use the key on the door to your left and break through the boards in the opposite corner. Hug the left wall after dispatching them to find the chest containing the shard.

Harvest Valley (The Mines bonfire): Just before entering Earthen Peak on the bottom floor, there is a small set of stairs leading down to a long hallway filled with poison. The shard is at the end of the hallway. Note: the poison can be drained by using the torch on the windmill axle near the Central Earthen Peak bonfire.


Shaded Woods (Old Akelarre bonfire): In a chest directly across from the bonfire door on the bottom floor. To enter this area you must use a Fragrant Branch of Yore (obtainable in Harvest Valley) on the petrified Rosabeth of Melfia.


Shaded Woods (Shaded Ruins bonfire): Unpetrify the Lion Clan Warrior across the log to the right of the bonfire and kill him. He will drop the Fang key that can be used to open the door at the end of the corrosive pits area to the right of the giant Basilisk. Inside the door is the shard and Weaponsmith Ornifex (Boss Soul Trader).


Brightstone Cove Tseldora (Royal Army Campsite bonfire): Just before the Prowling Magus & Congregation boss fog gate, there is an illusory wall on the left. Head up the staircases and the shard is at the top.


Brightstone Cove Tseldora (Lower Brightstone Cove bonfire): On a corpse through the door directly opposite of the bonfire room.


Drangleic Castle (Central Castle Drangleic bonfire): After activating the golem to start the elevator, head through the large room with the Alonne Knight Captains, Primal Knight, and Royal Guards. The shard will be located in a solitary chest in the room just before completing the loop back down to the bonfire.


Shrine of Amana (Crumbled Ruins bonfire): After killing the ogre hug the right wall instead of entering the hut, and you will find the shard after killing a Lizardman and two Amana Shrine Maidens.


Sublime Bone Dust
Sublime Bone Dust upgrades your Estus Flask to a max of +5, allowing for greater health recovery from each swig. To upgrade your Estus Flask, you must burn the Sublime Bone Dust in the Majula bonfire. If you attempt to burn additional Sublime Bone Dust past +5, you will receive a message stating Cannot burn further items."

Heide s Tower of Flame (Heide s Ruin bonfire): After defeating the first Old Knight, you will see a second with a large hammer just up a set of stairs. Killing him will drop the Sublime Bone Dust and he will not respawn. You can use a bonfire ascetic after defeating the Dragonrider boss to respawn the Old Knight and obtain another Dust.

Huntsman s Copse (Bridge Approach bonfire): Just before the end of the bridge to the Executioner s Chariot boss, jump across the small gap to the right onto a ledge containing a corpse with the Sublime Bone Dust.

Black Gulch: After defeating The Rotten boss, there will be a small cave on your right with a chest containing the Sublime Bone Dust between the boss room and the Primal Bonfire.

Iron Keep: After defeating the Old Iron King, you will find the Bone Dust in a chest before heading down the stairs to the Primal Bonfire.

Sinner s Rise (The Saltfort bonfire): Head down the ladder and down the stairs to the elevator. At the bottom of the elevator take a left and kill the Enhanced Undead. The Sublime Bone Dust will be located up against the wall behind it.



Pharros Contraptions
Throughout the world you will see Pharros Contraptions that look like a stone face on a wall or floor. If you insert a Pharros Lockstone into the contraption, you will trigger an event that can be either a secret or a trap. Here are four contraptions you should make sure to seek out.

Forest of Fallen Giants (Cardinal Tower): Head down the ladder in the back of the ballista room to find a illusory wall contraption that yields a Titanite Slab and the Chloranthy Ring.

The Lost Bastille (Servant s Quarters): In the outdoor area with the well and dogs there will be a room with a raised platform in it. Entering through the windows is the easiest way to get on the platform and you can turn right to find an illusory wall contraption that opens two areas. One of the areas has a Soul Vessel, while the other has a cage elevator and a Wilted Dusk Herb.

Undead Crypt (Undead Ditch): After the shield-wielding Imperious Knights, drop down the hole and head straight ahead and slightly to the left to the wall in front of you (there is no stone baseboard in this region). Press the action button on the wall to open it and there will be an illusory wall contraption in front of you. The wall that it illuminates is directly opposite your current location and there is a Great Lightning Spear inside.

Dragon Shrine (Shrine Entrance): Head up the stairs and kill the Drakekeeper. The illusory wall contraption is located just behind him under the stairs. It opens the wall to the left containing the Staff of Wisdom and the Judgment armor set.


Soul Vessels
Can be used to reallocate stats by giving one to the middle of the old firekeepers in Things Betwixt. (Note: You cannot lower a stat below the original base stat of your class.)

Majula: Obtain the Mansion key from Cale the Cartographer (located in a cave in the large open area after the first fog gate) and defeat the skeleton in the basement. In the back left corner of the basement you will find a chest that contains the soul vessel. If it is not a soul vessel, closing the game and restarting it will allow you to open the chest again.

Using a bonfire ascetic on the Majula bonfire does not grant you another soul vessel.


Majula: Speak with Crestfallen Saulden (sitting next to the obelisk) after bringing 4 NPCs to Majula and he will give you a soul vessel.

The Lost Bastille (Exile Holding Cells bonfire): In the area just before Steady Hand McDuff s workshop (contains 2 dogs and an Undead Jailor) there is a boarded up entrance that you can destroy. Open the door with the Antiquated key, or hit it with a weapon. This will cause the Royal Swordsman on the other side to open the door. Straight ahead will be a building with a raised platform in the back. Once up on the platform, turn left down a passageway and use a Pharros Lockstone to open two secret rooms. The closer room contains a chest with a soul vessel in it.

This soul vessel respawns when you use a bonfire ascetic on the Exile Holding Cells bonfire.
Drangleic Castle (Central Castle Drangleic bonfire): Kill an enemy near the golem up the ladder to bring it back to life and activate the elevator. Ride the elevator up to the top and the soul vessel will be in the middle chest.

You do not have to enter the room with the golem. If you have magic and the binoculars, you can open the gated door and kill the last stone soldier on the left. This will activate the golem and you can head back down the ladder.

Undead Crypt (Undead Crypt Entrance bonfire): Just before the fog gate, if you drop off the edge to the left, you can enter a room containing a chest with the soul vessel and a ladder to get to the next bonfire.

Memory of Orro (Giant Tree on the ramparts in Forest of Fallen Giants): At the start take the right doorway and turn right immediately in the room where Giants are fighting soldiers. You will see a corpse in the corner with the soul vessel.

This soul vessel respawns when you use a bonfire ascetic on The Place Unbeknownst bonfire, but in order to do this you must defeat the Giant Lord boss.




NPC Merchants
As you talk to NPCs and meet certain requirements, some merchants will sell rare and useful items. Here are some to watch out for. Remember that you can resurrect a dead merchant by offering souls at their gravestone.

Maughlin the Armorer: Immediately available in Majula.

Sells Alva set after 16,000 souls and will give you Aurous set if you speak with him having 0 souls in your inventory. Sells Moon Butterfly set after bonfire intensity 3 and Moon Butterfly Hat after intensity 4.

Steady Hand McDuff: Found in a cell in The Lost Bastille accessible by blowing up the wall with a rolling explosive barrel. He will sell and smith items for you once you give him the Dull Ember from the kiln lava area in Iron Keep.

You can move McDuff off the chest he is sitting on by lighting the torch in his cell. There is a Twinkling Titanite in the chest.

Straid of Olaphis: Unpetrify him up the stairs in The Lost Bastille near the bridge to Sinner s Rise.

Sells Great Lightning Spear and Sunlight Blade after finishing the Undead Crypt.

Weaponsmith Ornifex: Unpetrify the Lion Clan Warrior to your right from the Shaded Ruins bonfire and kill him to obtain the Fang Key. Use the key on the door down in the Shaded Ruins corrisive pits to free him and he will move to a room in the bottom of Brightstone Cove Tseldora.

In 2012, Peter "Durante" Thoman wrote the popular mod DSfix for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die on PC, fixing its locked 1024x720 resolution and other issues. In 2013, he released a similar fix for Deadly Premonition. We asked Durante to analyze the PC port of Dark Souls 2 in a series of articles. Here he explains how to wring the most performance from the game

We previously investigated what Dark Souls 2 delivers out of the box, and it certainly has a nice selection of options. However, due to the unique strengths of the PC platform, we can try to go further in order to enhance our visual experience. In this article we will be relying entirely on generic, freely available tools. No hardcore hacks required.
Image Quality & Anti-Aliasing
The in-game anti-aliasing option enables a post-processing solution, more specifically FXAA3 with the high quality profile, as it is commonly provided in many modern games. While its implementation is of much higher quality than the blur available in the first Dark Souls PC port, it still suffers from the drawbacks inherent in such solutions (you can read more details about the various types of aliasing and anti-aliasing here):

No anti-aliasing for sub-pixel structures (objects which have less width or height on screen than the size of a single pixel).
Instability in motion, because the edge blur is generated from individual images and not true scene data.
Slight unintended blurring of pixels which are not on aliased edges.

We have multiple options for improving image quality in the game. Since Dark Souls 2 supports arbitrary resolutions, one option is to use downsampling, either as a replacement for, or in addition to, the in-game anti-aliasing setting. This allows us to achieve an arbitrary level of desired image quality, though with a serious performance hit.



In short, downsampling from 4k resolution and beyond makes most games look their very best, bringing out all possible detail while eliminating artifacts, but it requires a very powerful PC to maintain acceptable performance levels. The screenshot below was taken at the 7680x4320 resolution (16x Full HD !) shown in the image above and downsampled.


Using Nvidia Inspector
However, there is another, even better option for those of you with Nvidia graphics cards. I discovered a compatibility flag which works with Dark Souls 2 and enables the use of any level of SGSSAA (2x, 4x and 8x). In order to perform this tweak, you need to get Nvidia Inspector and set up the Dark Souls 2 profile as shown here:



It may be slightly confusing to select numbers associated with other games such as Diablo 3 and Demigod here, but all it means is that what Dark Souls 2 does in regard to rendering is similar enough to what these games do for that particular hack to work. Here are the specific steps you need to perform for Inspector-based tweaking in Dark Souls 2 (as annotated in the image):

If it is not already there, add darksoulsII.exe to the list of executables associated with this profile, by clicking the icon with the small green + .
Enter 0x0000001F in the Ambient occlusion compatibility field.
Enter 0x004412C1 in the Antialiasing compatibility field.
Select Override any application setting as the Antialiasing Mode , and select your desired level of SGSSAA in both the Antialiasing Setting and Antialiasing Transparency Supersampling fields. Higher levels are higher quality, but also cause a larger performance hit.
If you want to force full anisotropic filtering on all textures in the game, you may do so here.
Set Ambient Occlusion Setting to Quality .

Better Image Quality in Motion
I previously described the drawbacks of the post-processing antialiasing method used in the game, but concepts like temporal stability and sub-pixel structures might appear quite abstract without an example. The following animation shows the difference on some swaying grass, which is an example of a thin structure in motion. To make the distinction more obvious, the image is scaled by a factor of 2 in both dimensions.

Note how the in-game anti-aliasing does not work well in this use case, causing flickering and image instability, while 4xSGSSAA handles the situation perfectly. AMD users need not fret, downsampling from a sufficiently high resolution can achieve similarly good results.






Ambient Occlusion
As you may have noticed in the earlier article, one effect in the game I haven t discussed in depth so far is its integrated ambient occlusion setting. Ambient occlusion is a screen-space post-processing effect which aims to simulate global illumination. The basic idea is that less light reaches places which are behind objects, or inside fissures and gaps, so these locations should be darkened.

The in-game effect is a quite basic implementation, which sometimes gives more of a 2D drop shadow effect than an approximation of how real light would behave. It s still preferable to not having ambient occlusion at all, but modern methods can do much better. Perhaps the best realtime ambient occlusion method currently available is Nvidia s HBAO+. It can be forced in a variety of games using Inspector, and after a long search I found that the compatibility flag 0x0000001F works almost perfectly in the game. Sadly, just almost, as the effect gets applied after UI elements have been rendered, so you get strange shadow effects on the UI. Nvidia should be able to do something about that with an official profile, but whether they will do so remains to be seen.

The picture below compares no ambient occlusion, the in-game method, and HBAO+. Note how HBAO+ gives a much more smooth, natural and detailed lighting effect, without the halos and errors common in simpler AO methods. You can also compare the effects using the full-size screenshots hosted here (HBAO+), here (In-game AO) and here (No AO).



One additional advantage of HBAO+ which is not visible in screenshots is that it is much more stable in motion, and does not flicker around small objects such as hair or grass.

In terms of performance, the in-game method is very lightweight, increasing GPU usage on my GTX 770 by about 4 percentage points in that particular scene (50% to 54%). HBAO+ requires more computation, but is still very efficient given the high quality result. It increases GPU usage to 60% when testing the same scene.
Post-processing with SweetFX
Some Dark Souls fans who were following the pre-release information closely have been disappointed that the final game does not fully capture the visual splendor of some areas which were shown off in the pre-release demo. While post-processing cannot bring back missing light sources, it can help re-capture a more dramatic mood.

One significant change which, in my opinion, negatively impacts the visuals in the final game is the high level of ambient illumination (i.e. areas which are brightly lit even when there are no light sources). Using SweetFX with a custom profile (downloadable here), the ambient light level can be reduced, while the impact of existing light sources is strengthened.

FX off. Click for higher resolution.

FX on. Click for higher resolution.

FX off. Click for higher resolution.

FX on. Click for higher resolution.

FX off. Click for higher resolution.

FX on. Click for higher resolution.

FX off. Click for higher resolution.

FX on. Click for higher resolution.

Note that this tweak will require you to take torches or other light sources into some areas which could previously just barely be navigated without any such aids, and thus serves to make a difficult game even harder. However, I am sure that some fans will see this as an additional incentive. The performance impact of the provided profile is moderate. It increased GPU usage by 8-10% on my system.

One significant drawback of SweetFX injection is that it also affects all the UI elements. SweetFX is a generic tool which simply works on the final image produced by the game, and as such this unintended side-effect is unavoidable. Another slight problem is that the same processing is applied regardless of the area of the game you are currently in, but the profile linked above works well in most areas.
Conclusion
The three PC tweaking staples of downsampling, driver-level improvements and post-processing effect injection allow us to further improve Dark Souls 2 s graphics, adjust them to our liking and take some beautiful screenshots. While the game is thus rendered perfectly pleasing to the eye, it may be possible to go even further. In a third and final article, we will investigate the possibilities for and likelihood of more in-depth and game-specific modding of Dark Souls 2 in the future.

Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition was a bad port of a brilliant game. Dark Souls 2, on the other hand, is a well-made PC port (even super-modder Durante thinks so). But just hearing that isn't enough: how much better does it look on PC than on consoles?

To find out, we made this video of side-by-side comparisons between the Xbox 360 version and the PC version running at 1080p, with all settings set to max, on the Large Pixel Collider. Let the footage be the judge which do you think looks better?



We have a lot more to say about Dark Souls 2 in the week before its release. We've already given you tips on staying alive longer, shown you a few of my stupidest deaths, and asked Peter "Durante" Thoman to talk about its engine. Stay tuned for more on Dark Souls 2, leading up to our review on Friday, April 25.

In 2012, Peter "Durante" Thoman wrote the popular mod DSfix for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die on PC, fixing its locked 1024x720 resolution and other issues. In 2013, he released a similar fix for Deadly Premonition. We asked Durante to analyze the PC port of Dark Souls 2 in a series of articles.

After an initial outing on PC which was barely serviceable rendering at 1024x720, locked at 30 FPS with unusable mouse controls From Software and Namco Bandai have a lot to prove with this sequel. For Dark Souls 2, PC was reportedly considered a major target platform from the start. In this article, I'll first investigate the technical quality of the port compared to Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition and the console versions of Dark Souls 2. Then I'll have a closer look at the options included in the game and analyze their impact.

A Good Port
Dark Souls 2 on PC is a massively improved effort compared to its predecessor. It renders at any resolution a given system supports, its framerate varies smoothly up to 60 FPS, it performs well even on modest systems more on that topic later and it comes with a wealth of graphical options. The following table summarizes most of the improvements:



The most egregious oversights in the first port resolution and framerate are completely solved. Even less pronounced issues like surround sound problems and faulty keyboard/mouse controls are fixed. Small touches make it obvious that the game was truly developed with PC in mind: for example, the EULA which shows up when you first start the game can be scrolled with the mouse wheel.

A common fear among gamers was that From would make good on their promise of 1920x1080 but stop there instead of supporting truly arbitrary rendering resolutions. Something similar happened recently with the otherwise excellent port of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Dark Souls 2 has no such limit.
Assessing the Assets
One big question has loomed over the PC port of Dark Souls 2: how different will it be from the console versions? Would the improvements be restricted to resolution and framerate, or would there be changes to the game s textures and models?



In the image above, the game data file archives (*.bdt) for the PC version of the game are shown. Note that their total size is ~10.7 GB. On the other hand, the following table shows the size of the data files for the PS3 version of the game this was determined by inspecting a disc dump of the PS3 data:



Note that the total size in this case is ~5.7 GB, and that the files with the Hq prefix in the PC version have no equivalent in the PS3 version.

Previously, PC gamers were sometimes disappointed when, after large downloads, a given size discrepancy compared to console versions was entirely down to higher-quality movie files or additional localization data. This is not the case for Dark Souls 2: there is only one separate pre-rendered movie, and it is actually smaller in the PC version (likely due to better compression). The localization and font data only takes up around 30 MB in total, and is in fact the same on PC and PS3. In short, everything indicates that the 5 GB difference is caused by higher quality asset data, and a preliminary analysis of the content of these archive files confirms this assumption.

In addition to these main game asset files, the PC version includes a sfx9999hqres.ffxbnd file in the sfx_hq folder, which appears to store higher-resolution assets for special effects (such as torch light or particles). It is also about twice as large as the standard sfx9999res.ffxbnd file, which is the same on both PC and consoles.
Performance
Before jumping into the options, a quick word on performance. I originally intended to provide measurements and graphs here, but Dark Souls 2 generally performs so well on my system that there s no need. With all in-game settings maximized and rendering at 2560x1440, I never noticed a single drop below 60 FPS on my PC (equipped with a Core i7 920 CPU and Geforce GTX770 GPU). In fact, the GPU was generally below 60% loaded in order to maintain that framerate. Even medium-range systems should easily maintain a solid framerate, particularly at the more common 1920x1080 resolution.

Another relevant aspect of game performance which is independent of framerates is the length of loading times, which is particularly relevant for Dark Souls 2 in light of their distracting duration in the console versions. The PC version, with maximized settings, consistently loads in 3-4 seconds from my traditional 7200 RPM HDD, and presumably installing the game to an SSD could further lower these times.


Opting for More
Dark Souls 2 comes with a nice selection of options, and most of them are straightforward. Texture quality sets the resolution of textures, Anisotropic filtering sets their filtering quality at oblique angles, while Antialiasing , Motion blur , Camera motion blur , Depth of field and SSAO toggle their respective setting on and off. Some settings, however, merit a closer look.
Shadow Quality
This option has three settings: low, medium and high. They adjust the quality of dynamic shadows. Low produces blocky, poorly filtered shadows, while medium and high incrementally improve both the shadow map resolution and filtering. As far as I can tell, the console setting is either low or medium , or perhaps a combination with the resolution of low and filtering of medium . The image below illustrates the settings, but it cannot convey the full extent of the difference in motion the lower resolution shadow is more prone to blotchiness and instability between frames.

Click for full resolution image.
Depth of Field
The depth of field effect in Dark Souls 2 is not particularly unusual, but it is very well-implemented and beautiful without being overstated. It is also quite efficient performance-wise, so I suggest keeping it on. Unlike initial versions of Dark Souls 1 with my resolution fix, the effect scales up very nicely to high rendering resolutions.

Click for full resolution image.
Motion Blur
Dark Souls 2 gives us the option of individually toggling camera motion blur and object motion blur. The former is caused by quick camera movement, while the latter applies to objects or characters moving quickly. Separating the two into individual options is very welcome, as some people dislike camera motion blur, but no one should miss this excellent object motion blur implementation. The screenshot below illustrates the object motion blur effect in battle.

Click for full resolution image.
Water Surface Quality
This accurately named option adjusts the rendering quality of water surfaces. Low appears to completely disable reflections, while high adds dynamic highlights on top of the static reflections enabled by medium.

Click for full resolution image.
Effects Quality
This setting appears to control the quality of a variety of alpha-blended effects (such as torch flames), but further investigation will be required to find out what it adjusts exactly at each level. One very fitting new feature in Dark Souls 2 compared to its predecessor are so-called god rays, a dynamic effect which approximates light shafts from bright light sources:

Click for full resolution image.
Texture Quality
Here we can see the likely cause of the (almost) doubled size of the PC version compared to the console versions. While texture quality is already decent at the default medium settings, it is truly excellent at high, with most textures even holding up well when playing at 2560x1440 not something you can say for many games. The following screenshot compares at the more common 1080p resolution, but if you look at it in full size and compare the details in the moss on the tree trunk you can still easily see the step up in quality (sorry for the slight misalignment of camera and models, you have to exit and re-enter the game to change texture settings).

Click for expanded, full resolution image.
Model Quality
I could not, at least in my current preliminary investigation, determine what this setting does. It could be related to model quality in multiplayer, since this is something that I could not test yet, or it may only influence a select few models, none of which I saw in my short period of evaluating the setting.

So far, I checked the player character model, a variety of early-game NPCs, level geometry in the starting levels and a few enemy models. Of course, one option is that the setting is quite simply broken at the moment. A small indication supporting this idea is that changing the model quality setting does not require exiting and re-entering the game, while any changes to e.g. texture quality prompt the player to do so.
Antialiasing and Ambient Occlusion
The former of these settings enables the game s built-in post-processing anti-aliasing, which appears to be the high quality version of FXAA3. The latter turns the ambient occlusion effect on or off. Both of these settings, and some higher-quality alternatives, will be discussed in more detail in our upcoming Dark Souls 2 tweak guide.
Conclusion
With Dark Souls 2, From Software and Namco Bandai deliver a PC version of their game which not only fulfills all the standard expectations in terms of resolution and framerate support, but also adds additional options beyond that. Crucially, they have included high-resolution texture assets which generally fit even the expectations of gamers who play beyond 1080p.

One might also claim that, even if they never acknowledged the modding of their first port, they did certainly learn from it. Whether it is large changes like the inclusion of ambient occlusion, higher resolution textures and good mouse controls, or smaller but equally useful additions such as the ability to turn off the UI or skip the introduction logos, there is a lot in Dark Souls 2 at launch which modders only added to the PC port of the first game over time.

While it is not quite the (almost generational) leap which was initially shown in previews, Dark Souls 2 on PC is a better experience and a more beautiful game than even a fully modded Dark Souls 1, and it also performs well on a wide range of hardware. It adds effects which greatly enhance the visual impact of some scenes, such as dynamic godrays, improves the resolution of environment textures, greatly improves shadow resolution and filtering, and maintains the highly detailed equipment models, textures and ambient specular reflections which were a hallmark of the original Dark Souls graphics.

Of course, we wouldn t be PC gamers if we were not always looking to get even more out of our games. In future articles we will look at some tweaks using generic tools in order to further improve Dark Souls 2 s graphics, and later on investigate its technology in more depth to determine what else might be possible with game-specific modifications.

Come back soon for more from Durante. In the meantime, have some Dark Souls 2 4K screenshots.

Dark Souls 2 is a gorgeous game. Except when it's an ugly game. It's a little weird that way some environments are absolutely breathtaking, while others stand out with dated, blocky geometry. This gallery mostly reflects the former, capturing some of Dark Souls II's most breathtaking vistas and immaculate art direction. There are no bosses or secrets in sight, but if you don't want to see some of the environments before discovering them for yourself, come back after you've set foot in Drangleic.

The theme of this gallery is "stoic." Or perhaps "pensive." Or "ooh, pretty lighting." Now feast your eyes on 40 screenshots captured at 3840x2160.


Make sure to click each image to view it at full resolution.

Praise the sun! Dark Souls 2 is finally coming to PC on April 25, and PC Gamer has everything you need to get ready. Every day between now and next Friday, we're giving you the best tips to survive, video of our favorite deaths, impressions on the game's new graphics and control settings, and in-depth technical analysis from Durante, the modder who fixed Dark Souls on PC. Two weeks of Dark Souls, all leading up to our review on April 25.

Check this hub daily as we fill in everything you need to know about Dark Souls 2 on PC.

Here are Dark Souls 2's graphics and control options
Dark Souls 2 launch trailer
27 of our favorite deaths in Dark Souls
Dark Souls 2 beginners guide: how to stay alive (longer)
Dark Souls 2 4k screenshots
Dark Souls 2 PC port: mod god Durante's verdict

Death is inevitable in Dark Souls 2. It certainly keeps happening to us we've been playing the PC version of From Software's newest game in preparation for our review on April 25 and we've died again and again. Instead of weeping in agony or throwing our PCs out in frustration, we made a video of some of our favorite deaths.

These 27 fatalities were captured with all of Dark Souls 2's video settings set to max, playing with both a controller and the game's mouse and keyboard settings. It's a small taste of the amount of failure and triumph you can expect in the game, and it's the first piece of our two weeks of coverage leading up to the game's release. Keep an eye out for more on Dark Souls 2 as we race headlong, and recklessly, into Friday's release date.