How to Survive in ‘Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City’

The last adventure in the Dark Souls series is finally here, bringing a whole new set of epic boss encounters, beautiful weapons to collect, additional secret lore, and plenty of fantastic enemies who want nothing more than to pound you into the ground with extreme prejudice. As you might expect, The Ringed City is the most challenging piece of content available within Dark Souls 3 designed for players who have reached level 100 plus and completed the base game or Ashes of Ariandel beforehand.

This time around the standard encounters with enemies throughout the DLC are relatively straightforward, opting to go for a more challenging set of boss encounters and compelling NPC questlines which bring back some of the best moments of the Dark Souls series. Surviving long enough to make it to the end is no easy task however, so here’s a few tricks we learned while playing to help you through the journey.

Bring Fire Resistant Equipment

One of the biggest themes present throughout The Ringed City DLC is fire, namely the concept of the Age of Fire vs. the Age of Dark, a theme which has been at the forefront of the Dark Souls series since the original game. Whether you enjoy running around with some fire resistant gear on or not, it’s a good idea to bring a few pieces with very high fire resistance values due to the number of enemies you’ll encounter who wield powerful weapons, shields, and spells that spit ridiculous amounts of fire. While easy to dodge, these attacks can tear through you quickly if you aren’t very high level or using the Dragon Crest Shield.

Don’t Hurt NPCs

As we’ve touched on before, NPCs are one of the biggest allies you have in the Dark Souls universe. These dubious-looking humans, creatures, beings, or demons are always around to help you locate rare items and send you on one of many unmarked quests in Dark Souls, as well as providing information about the game’s story you won’t be able to find elsewhere in the game. In The Ringed City, you’re going to learn a lot about the Dark Soul and the people who were eternally lost trying to protect it from those seeking to bring about the Age of Dark. You’ll also have a chance to obtain some great weaponry, armor, and items too, so don’t forget to talk to everyone you find and complete their dialogue before killing them to see if they drop anything good.

Halflight, Spear of the Church

Halflight, Spear of the Church, is easily one of the most interesting boss encounters available in the downloadable expansions for Dark Souls 3. The baddie is a throwback to one of the most notorious bosses of Demon’s Souls: the Old Monk. Like the Old Monk encounter, Halflight summons another player into the room to serve as the boss. Naturally, this can be extremely frustrating considering that many Dark Souls players prefer to avoid PvP combat throughout their entire playthrough, which is why we’re here to tell you that you can simply switch the game to offline mode to complete this encounter by fighting NPCs instead. Remember to prevent the boss from healing via miracles and you should be good to go. But if you’re trying to complete it online? Best of luck to you!

How to Defeat Darkeater Midir

Dark Souls 3 and the rest of the games in the Dark Souls series are known for their extremely challenging boss encounters, which require you to continuously die until you learn their moves and slowly whittle their heath down to zero. While the new bosses available in The Ringed City are certainly some of the toughest Dark Souls 3 has thrown at players yet, the Darkeater Midir boss encounter is something special which takes a ton of patience to complete. Once you’ve defeated him above the Shared Grave area forcing him to fall into the chasm, you’ll find him tucked away behind an illusionary wall accessible from the elevator near the Ringed City Inner Wall bonfire.

Midir is easily the most difficult boss encounter in Dark Souls 3 because of his heavy defenses and attacks which cover a massive area of the battlefield. To defeat him the second and final time, you’ll have equip a high damage value weapon (over 500 AR) and stick underneath him for the entire fight to avoid his fire and dark attacks. While it may seem better to hide underneath his head however, you should instead stick to his tail to avoid the fire he’ll drop to cover the ground underneath him. Just be careful of the tail swipe and the dark attack he’ll drop at 50 percent health.