After more than two years of development, a demo for the epic new Dark Souls III mod known as Dark Souls: Archthrones has finally been released, causing many Souls fans on PC to rejoice.
The development team is an all-star cast of Souls devotees who had the skills, passion and time needed to essentially make their own entry in the series. They made many modifications including improved graphics, different combat mechanics and more options for players to make adjustments to the UI — but the most exciting part about the mod is the new content. There are five new areas, eighteen new bosses, fully-voiced new NPCs and lore-rich new items.
Having beaten Dark Souls III for the first time just before the Archthrones demo released on March 15th, I downloaded the mod files that night so that I could start playing immediately. Although I’m still only seven hours in, I’m already impressed by what I’ve seen.
As I went through the familiar routine of creating a character, breezing through the tutorial section and facing off with the first big baddie, I appreciated both the faithfulness to the source material and the creativity of the Archthrones development team as they managed to weave together so many different elements not just from Dark Souls III, but from all of the Souls games.
For example, besides Dark Souls III, Archthrones pays homage to other Souls games from the onset by using the font from Demon’s Souls for the title screen.
From that point I nearly killed the new tutorial boss, Demon Vanguard, but ultimately died because I got a little too cocky due to some assumptions I made based on its obvious similarities to Vanguard, the tutorial boss from Demon’s Souls.
Despite my defeat which caused my character to respawn in a new location, I was soon rewarded with an introduction to the Nexus of Embers — a verdant re-imagining of the long-decayed Firelink Shrine from Dark Souls III, with vines growing wildly over everything and many new and familiar faces like Stockpile Thomas from Demon’s Souls and Blacksmith Andre from the original Dark Souls.
As I interacted with NPCs near the bonfire and in the rooms upstairs, one thing I learned was that the events of Archthrones take place long before the end of the Age of Fire, effectively making it an unofficial prequel to Dark Souls III.
In place of the thrones reserved for the Lords of Cinder, the newly dubbed Archthrones serve as access points to distinct areas and, much like the Archstones in Demon’s Souls, they allow for nonlinear progression. Players may now access any area at any time although some areas are much harder than others.
Following a tip from the Archthrones subreddit, I started off by interacting with the coiled sword behind the Archthrone of the Bountiful Queen (the one nearest to the back) which transported me to the first new area: War-Torn Village.
Between the blood red sky, spooky houses and worker hollows skulking about, I could see how the development team had taken many aspects of the area directly from the Undead Settlement and repurposed them to the point that it felt like a completely new area, especially with added touches like floating autumn leaves and eerie choral music to give it a different tone.
As I continued on toward the next bonfire, I encountered new types of enemies such as the Angelic Paladins from whom I looted my go-to armor set, found new items like the Apostle Scythe (associated with the followers of a new NPC named Saint Gertrude) and gained many souls which allowed me to level up and upgrade my weapon several times in anticipation of the first area boss.
In the picture above, I’m flaunting the new Angelic Paladin armor set which is identical to the Lothric Knight armor set in terms of stats, but more aesthetically pleasing. I couldn’t imagine a better fit for my Joan of Arc-inspired strength/faith build.
It wasn’t long until I found the Angelic Siege Golem — a new boss that reminded me slightly of Tower Knight from Demon’s Souls (similarly huge and clad head-to-toe in armor) but it used powerful new Angelic magic attacks that ranged from wide arcs to small homing projectiles which were much harder to evade than Tower Knight’s.
After several failed attempts, I used an ember in the hopes of recruiting a friendly live player online to help me but I couldn’t find any summon signs to do so. That said, while I was not able to invite someone to my world, someone else summoned me to theirs.
My summoner didn’t waste any time going straight to the boss which we were able to beat by focusing on one leg at a time to bring it down. Once lowered, we pummeled its head and repeated the process until we brought it down for good. Having learned the strategy for defeating the Golem, I returned to my world with enough confidence to take it on myself and finally get the special kind of dopamine rush that only defeating a difficult Souls boss can provide.
The remaining area bosses were similarly challenging and full of surprises — Pus-Ridden Beast looked and moved a bit like Cleric Beast from Bloodborne until he went prone and started dealing curse damage during the second phase. The Angel of Gertrude also started simply enough, but turned into a duo boss fight halfway through. Finally, the Omen of the Eclipse had not only two phases, but two full health bars — one for a tank phase and the other for a kaiju phase. However, this just made winning twice as satisfying.
However, I was disappointed to find that once the fog gates cleared, there was often nowhere else to go. For me, gaining access to new places is more of a reward for killing a boss than souls or items, so discovering that many boss encounters result in dead ends was a minor bummer. That said, they’re usually stunning lookout points where I was able to interact with a new NPC.
In terms of performance, I ran into some technical issues that took me out of the experience — in a few instances, literally.
The main tech problems I had were with other players timing out when summoning me, the server going down and the entire program crashing. Thankfully, the development team has been keeping a pulse on what’s happening, as there have already been patches to improve performance, rebalance enemy stats, and more. I trust that most (if not all) of the issues I was having will be worked out before long.
So far, I’ve only logged seven hours in this massive demo so I’ve barely scratched the surface, but I’m excited to check out the other areas, especially Carthus of the Sands (once the domain of High Lord Wolnir) with its sandworms rivaling the fearful size and power of those in Dune.
It’s still unclear what the development team’s timeline is for releasing the full mod or what exactly will be in it (PVP please!) but in the meantime, there are plenty of places to explore, things to discover and challenges to overcome in the demo alone. It’s clear that this ambitious new Dark Souls III mod has the makings of being a stellar unofficial prequel.
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Dark Souls III was developed by From Software and originally published by Bandai Namco for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The demo for Dark Souls: Archthrones, was made by a host of multi-talented people within the Dark Souls community who are all listed in these credits. Dark Souls: Archthrones is exclusive to PC and requires Dark Souls III, and both DLCs. The release date for the full mod is still unknown.
Find out more info about Archthrones here.
— Thom Stone
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