FromSoftware’s seminal action-RPG Dark Souls now has seamless co-op, courtesy of the modder behind similar co-op overhauls for Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3.
Modder Yui initially made headlines through their work on Elden Ring, stripping away some of its co-operative faff found in Elden Ring so players could adventure and battle bosses together seamlessly. A similar mode arrived for Dark Souls 3 earlier this year, and now it’s the turn of ageing but still undeniably brilliant Dark Souls, which also now has seamless co-op some 14 years after its original release.
Dark Souls’ Seamless Co-op mod is available right now on NexusMods and works very much like Yui’s earlier mods, starting with a special custom item used to summon up to six players into a game. Once in a multiplayer session – which utilises an overhauled peer-to-peer connection system, using Steam’s newer networking API – participants will note some major differences to how the base game works.
If a players dies, for instance, they’ll spawn at the last bonfire they visited rather than being booted from the session, and clearing areas or defeating bosses won’t disband play either. Additionally, when one player rests at a bonfire, the world will reset for everyone; NPC dialogue and events are synchronised fro all players; all fog walls and barriers designed to restrict multiplayer zones are removed, and game progression made during a multiplayer session will also progress the game in your own world.
Yui has also implemented configurable multiplayer difficulty scaling for all enemies, and says that while using the seamless co-op mod makes Dark Souls “significantly easier”, the mod’s default scaling settings should be enjoyable while ‘somewhat preserving the game’s challenge. Notably, players can’t immediately spawn back into a boss fight on death – they’ll instead be turned into a spectator until either everyone in the party is defeated or a player rests at a bonfire.
Dark Souls’ seamless co-op mod – which also supports Invasions – is available to download right now on NexusMods, although its alpha status means it’s “very likely” to contain bugs. And given it doesn’t utilise FromSoftware’s servers, Yui says there’s no chance of a ban using the mod. It even creates a different save file to keep things separate in case you want to play the vanilla game at the same time – although Yui warns that attempting to revert a mod saved file to a vanilla save will likely result in a ban.
Yui’s Dark Souls mod comes ahead of FromSoftware’s multiplayer focused Nightreign, in which up to three players can work together to defeat new and familiar challenges from Elden Ring and other From games – including The Nameless King from Dark Souls 3. Nightreign launches for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on 30th May. And Switch 2’s also getting its own bit of FromSoftware multiplayer in the form of its recently revealed The Duskbloods.