Today’s episode of Dark Souls Dissected reviews the cooldown timers that block instant invasions from happening repeatedly. Some brand new discoveries relating to its Limit Level system, as well as Vagrant cooldowns, are explained as well.
https://www.patreon.com/illusorywall
0:00 Introduction
0:49 Invasion Cooldowns
3:19 Clearing the Cooldown Timers
5:54 Limit Levels
9:22 Invasion Frequency Balancing
14:15 Dark Souls 2
15:19 Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring
17:43 Gravelord Cooldowns
18:59 Why Were Limit Levels Removed?
19:44 Vagrant Cooldowns
24:06 Closing Words
Special thanks to Metal Crow, Europa, FenotheFox, Karl Germ, Algi, Ariane, and HotPocketRemix for various assistance (coding / testing / multiplayer help).
Artist of Dank Furtive Pygmy sadly unknown! Original upload here:
[OC] Was high with my GF playing some Dark Souls and discussing the lore, since I’m a Souls veteran. During the trip we started joking and came to the conclusion that the Dark Soul is the end of a joint that the Pygmy managed to find amidst the ashes, and he passed it to others birthing humanity.
by intrees
21 Comments
Answering a few questions here!
1) From @piatansfair – "Does the timer continues running if I am being summoned to another world? Let's say I was invaded and died. So now my timer of 900s is on (ds1). If someones summons me, while I'm on their world, is my timer running as well? Or it only counts when I'm on my world? Also does it count when I'm hollowed as well?"
The timer is persistent regardless of whose game you're in. If I get invaded, have the cooldown timer start, then get summoned for co-op to help someone else, the timer will be unphased by all of this and continue counting down without pausing through loading screens and while you're a phantom. It also keeps counting just fine while you're hollow.
2) Another from @piatansfair – "So in Dark Souls 1, summoning has no effect whatsoever in the invader timer?"
Correct! The 15 minutes (or higher w/ limit levels) is locked in if you don't do any of the specific things mentioned to clear it. Unlike DS3 / Elden Ring, summoning help in DS1 doesn't immediately open you to invasions and the timer is free to do its own thing. As much as these later titles tried to protect hosts from invasions more overall, this is somewhat counterproductive in that the experience in something like Elden Ring meant that summoning help (especially when the game was brand new), meant being open to practically constant invasions. DS1 doesn't do this, you can summon help without clearing the timer, so that's actually one way that DS1 manages to be a little more forgiving.
This means that for anyone just trying to play with friends in DS1 and is frustrated that they just got killed by an invader, DO NOT WAIT. Go grab your friend's summon sign again ASAP to take advantage of that cooldown.
3) From @RosiYYAP – "Do the vagrant timers affect your ability to send out vagrants, either by dropping items and reloading or dying with 5 humanity? Also does the inverse apply? Does starting a vagrant affect the timers either negatively or positively?"
I mentioned in the video how any Vagrants created while the cooldown is running get held onto in your "outbox", and the game will wait to send it out when then cooldown clears. So Vagrants you create while you can't send any out aren't wasted, they're just "frozen" for a bit. They won't be sent out immediately when the cooldown clears, but when you do the needed action after it clears (dying / reloading / warping / quitting, etc). However, I didn't cover what happens if you receive a Vagrant while the cooldown is running!
If you receive one while the cooldown is running, you do still receive it into your inbox, but you won't actually be able to see or get it. How you normally receive Vagrants is that they wind up in your inbox before they're actually in your game. Once received, you have 5 minutes to reload the game to actually get the Vagrant out of your inbox and into your game, otherwise it just gets sent back out to another player if those 5 minutes run out. This is why you can't go AFK by a Vagrant spawn location all day long and expect to see Vagrants start showing up. You'd want to reload the area every ~4 minutes and 50 seconds to optimize your chances of getting one and not just unwittingly sending one straight back out to another player- something that happens to us behind the scenes all the time without having any idea.
The cooldown just prevents reloading from being able to pull the Vagrant out of your inbox into your game. It stays stuck in your inbox, and the 5 minute "inbox timer" will just continue otherwise as it normally does and you'll pass the Vagrant back out to someone else. None of the actions affect the Vagrant cooldown timer either, it'll just keep counting down and doing its thing.
The more I learn about this stuff, the sadder I get about ER's multiplayer.
Vagrant stuff.
The features of my game on guthub went unnoticed.
I actually own the original game and in my opinion it’s better than remastered
god i hope so bad the elden ring shadowlands have some kind of pseudo covenant invasion mechanic
I always found invasions a very disparate part of these games; it was never something I enjoyed as it completely broke immersiveness. It meant I would usually remain hollow in DS1 to avoid it. I really like messages, and appreciate summons, but hated invasions and invasion bosses like spear of the church
Greatest to ever do it
Something obscure from a favourite game of mine, Fantastic Frontier. Many of the melee weapons in the game feature a special attack where the weapon will usually do something magical or perform a special moveset. In the game there are two greatswords named the Demon Greatsword and the Angel Greatsword, and for a long time it has been known that the special on the Demon Greatsword has 2 hitboxes, one on the initial swing of the sword and another on the magical blast it projects. However, it was thought for a long time that the Angel Greatsword variant's special that sent out a holy smite a distance away from the sword was the only hitbox. Recently though I actually managed to catch a video of an enemy taking two hits during the special attack, and when dissected we realized the downward swing of the angel greatsword also did damage giving it a 2nd hitbox as well. This likely went unknown for 5+ years because of the distance between the holy smite and the blade as well as the strange animation of the sword making it hard to connect the hit, so most players have never even accidentally hit both parts. Thanks to XT for updating the wiki when I made the discovery!
I got invaded a few times in ds3 when I played the game a few years back and knowing I had to engage in multiplayer in some form to trigger it confuses me I do not remember this before a lot of the times I got invaded beyond just popping ember, although this was my favourite experience of invasions, I love teh scrambly nature of pvp this way a ton mroe than any bland arena duel, and fulkly agree about frequency being important, it only happening occasionally made it feel special and fun. (for context also I played ds3 on ps4 soonish after elden ring came out)
I remember it taking a very long time for people to finally figure out how fusions actually worked in Monster Rancher 2. Like, a major part of the game and it wasn't fully figured out for like a decade or something crazy like that.
Man, DS2 invasions really were the best… I miss that PVP so much.
Also: When you're finally at the point where the cooldown is half an hour long, you've been getting invaded consecutively for TWO HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES plus a bunch of grace periods. Ofcourse you're not going to notice that the time inbetween got longer two or three times.
I seriously hate that we can't play these games with our friends without the risk of invasion. Without mods or something. If only they chose a different method to opt in to pvp.
I miss reds no longer invading infinitely upwards in level
Dark Souls' mechanics feel like a complex novel in and of themselves. I think someone should interview the developers responsible for all the obscure mechanics, so we could know even more the thought process behind them. But I feel it would be impossible to do that.
babe wake up
I suspect half of these systems simply werent working properly, so no one noticed. GFWL barely worked, until some guy made a connection mod, and later MP moved to steam.
Butters was the only invader who I felt added to the experience. Everyone else was just wasting my time or forcing me to play the game the way they wanted me to. But Butters? Dude single handedly made Irithyll Dungeon memorable in a good way. He played the role of a mischievous scamp who pointed out one mimic, only to try to convince me another was safe. He would attack now and then when the other enemies did, and back off when he realized I was on to his shenanigans. Sometimes he would follow along harrying me along the way, sometimes he would go away for about five minutes and suddenly jump back in. It was a playful sort of invasion, one in which he was obviously trying to kill me but wanted to make a game of it. It wasn't until the very end of the area when we reached the bridge to the Profaned Capital that we actually fought with any real intensity. My brother and I ended up victorious, and we moved on to the next area to murk the gimmick boss.
Unfortunately, now every time I go through Irithyll Dungeon it just isn't the same. It feels like a large part of the zone is missing, like it lost its soul. I wish Butters would invade me again, but no… it was a chance encounter, never to be had again. Now there are no invaders at all most of the time, and the few there are tend to be the usual riffraff who spam the same "OP" weapon art as everyone else. Thanks to this video I now know it's because I rarely summon anyone so I rarely open myself for invasions in the first place.
Weird… I've been invaded twice in my most recent DS3 playthrough (20 hours), and I've never summoned a player or NPC.
There's probably something at play I missed.
The game Remnant 2 is a soulslike shooter that has a skill point system where you acquire traits through in game actions (each trait has a hidden gameplay requirement to unlock). You then rank up these traits, up to 10, using skill points you gain either by leveling up or by finding a tome of knowledge. The game also rewards you some skill points for free, indicated by an orange pip, but i dont have any idea where these extra points come from, and they seem to shift at random, resulting in your character frequently having a few unspent skill points. Id love to know what the underlying system is.