There’s no denying that Dark Souls is a hard game, and that difficulty can be attributed as much to its oblique, poorly-explained ancillary mechanics as to its punishing combat encounters. Some of the game’s sub-systems are so well hidden that most casual players likely aren’t even aware that they exist, but they do, and they can affect your playthrough in a variety of different ways. Fortunately, one YouTuber has taken it upon himself to create an entire video series that breaks down exactly what Dark Souls’ hidden mechanics are and, more importantly, how they can affect the average player.
The relatively new YouTube series Dark Souls Dissected, which comes courtesy of established YouTuber Illusory Wall, is focused on picking out Dark Souls’ lesser-known mechanics and explaining how they work. For example, in the first episode, Illusory Wall covers the ‘Sin’ stat and how it can affect the game in terms of both PvE (players vs. environment) and PvP (Player vs. Player). As it turns out, there are actually two separate types of Sin, and absolving your character of one type doesn’t necessarily clear them of the other type.
The second episode focuses more on in-game covenants and the ‘Absolution’ stat. Illusory Wall does a great job in breaking down the difference between a “soft betrayal” of a covenant (i.e. choosing to leave the covenant) versus a “hard betrayal” (i.e. attacking a covenant’s NPC representative) and how absolving your sins can fix some (but not all) of the consequences associated with both types of betrayal.
As of this writing, Dark Souls Dissected only has two episodes, but Illusory Wall mentions in the second episode that more are on the way. If you enjoyed learning about the obscure mechanics that drive Dark Souls, you might also get a kick out of the hidden boss rush feature that was ultimately cut from Bloodborne, or all of the cut content still buried in the game files of Dark Souls Remastered.