Despite the fact that the Dark Souls series is an inherently tough series to conquer, that hasn’t stopped its dedicated player community from accomplishing some truly amazing feats, from finishing an entire speedrun without taking a single hit, to finding a way to make enemies into playable avatars. However, a recent video from YouTuber ZombieOfun shows what may be the most impressive feat of all: felling Dark Souls’ final boss with a single well-timed blow.
Before we delve into how exactly ZombieOfun was able to accomplish such an impressive feat, we’ll let you watch it for yourself first. Note that, since this is the final boss of Dark Souls we’re talking about, minor spoilers do apply so consider yourself warned if you’re planning on finishing the game yourself.
Wow. ZombieOfun makes what is perhaps one of the most challenging and intense fights in the entirety of Dark Souls look like an effortless cakewalk. So how did they do it? Well, first off, as you can see if you watch the video closely, ZombieOfun doesn’t just walk in and smack Gwyn with that big axe (the Demon’s Greataxe if anyone is curious) they’re holding. Instead, they wait until Gwyn strikes and then quickly parry his attack. As any avid Dark Souls player knows, successfully parrying an enemy attack with a shield (a maneuver which itself isn’t easy, especially against boss enemies) allows the player to execute a “riposte,” a sort of counter-attack that, as the video shows, can inflict *a lot* of damage.
However, as they explained in this Reddit post, that’s far from the only thing ZombieOfun did to prepare for their one-hit KO. They also had the following items equipped, each of which played a crucial part in giving ZombieOfun the extra oomph they needed:
- Power Within, a magic spell which significantly ups damage dealt and stamina regeneration by draining the player’s health
- The Red Tearstone Ring, an item that boosts damage output when the player is below 20 percent of their total life
- The Dragon Torso Stone, an item that boosts the player’s strength stat
- The Hornet Ring, an item that boosts the damage a player deals with ripostes
- Gold Pine Resin, a consumable item that temporarily allows a player’s weapon to deal bonus lightning damage
All this combined with the aforementioned Demon’s Greataxe allowed ZombieOfun’s riposte attacks to pack one heck of a punch, so much so that not even the Lord of Cinder himself could take more than a single well-timed hit. In the comments of their YouTube video, ZombieOfun promises they’ll be releasing similar videos in the future, maybe they can find a way to one-shot Dark Souls 3’s pesky Nameless King?