Dark Souls 3 ► Another 15 Hidden Mechanics 

No skeleton ahead, then skeleton ahead. I saw that when playing with a friend, I didn't know it was you Vaati!

For people still wondering about the estus recovery mechanic: There is a hidden counter in the game that goes up every time you kill something. Different enemies increase the counter different amounts. Usually red eye enemies give higher values than normal enemies. NPCs have the highest value in the game. Players have set estus recovery amounts: Killing invaders (as a host or summon) gives you 2 estus. Killing invaders and phantoms (as an invader) gives you 1 estus, unless you kill a blue spirit, which gives you 2 estus. Hope this helped

For all of you going crazy trying to find them. In Dark Souls 3, Lloyd's Tailsmans are called Undead Hunter Charms😉

The great arrow flying at the screen at 0:48 had me dying hahaha

There's also the mechanic with lightning and water, if you throw lightning in water, it spreads through a certain radius of the water

There's this cool new mechanic in the PVP where other players give you cancer from using overpowered weapons

Huge throwback seeing this video again, three years later. Wow.

I survived the Knight Slayer Invasion, the real knight slayer took some serious cheese to beat

Fun fact: you know those rock versions of crystal lizards near the dragon belfry bonfire? If you need space to heal or just recover from their flamethrower special attack, try kicking them. They'll roll backwards and away. It blew my mind the first time I accidentally karate kicked one that had just bowled me over, and it backflipped away.

0:49 it was at this moment Vaati knew, he fucked up

Originally I thought getting a message rated meant getting an extra Estus

You can escape the grab attack of the “hand face” creatures in the profaned capital.

There is roughly a 100% chance that an invading phantom wants to PvP, and a much lower chance that the host wants to. Based on that, one can assume that, on average, invaders are more skilled at PvP than hosts. Presumably, From decided to stack the odds in the host's favor to compensate for that. Sadly, the logic behind the decision is of little solace to the poor invaders who end up trapped in a corner being stunlocked by four guys with estocs.

There's another gesture called "Unmannered Bow," which looks a lot like you're doing a mocking imitation of a gorilla... but as far as I know, no one in the game uses it and there's no way to get it. There's a lot of weapons and stuff in the game right now that is inaccessible without cheating.

What I just realised is that in all dark souls games you move the camera to aim arrows/spells, I always wondered why fireball had bad range

I thought the ring of sacrifice working in that way was common knowledge, I've been using it that way since DS2.

Lord of Cinder, I was wondering if you could do a lore video on Edwad Emberpants, the chosen one! He is such a unique character in the Dark Souls series and I was curious to his backstory and how he became the chosen one. Love the video and thanks for the great content!

Did you know you could summon Tsorig in demon ruins as a white phantom after killing his red phantom, and if you keep him alive long enough through the area, you can have him fight his actual self? Tsorig v. Tsorig

Every time I fire up DS3 I go back to these videos. Thanks for all the work.

0:51 Qu the”To be continued...” meme

8:55 Mimics Making Out. You're Welcome.

Vaati has yet to explain the most hidden mechanic of all... Poise.

7:31 Talks about the Triangle button... Sees Xbox controller layout on screen.

0:50 dat spear. (To be continued music)

Probably known feature at this point, but i found that having a torch out makes the frost debuff go down faster and stamina recovers at normal speed. :)

Vaati's voice is seriously the best.

My favorite DS3 message is "try tongue, but hole"

One mechanic I just found recently while trying to improve parry skills is that of the spell "Great Magic Shield". If you cast it and fail to parry, as long as you get your shield to cross with your enemy weapon, you won't receive any damage. Without the spell you certainly are going to get hurt even If you don't loose your stance. This is very useful to train your parry timing without dying too many times in a row.

Vaati wants Lucky Ted to be a cannon build, doesn't he?

LOOOOOOOOOORRRRREEEEEEEEE

The grapple break effect also works on the creatures in the dreg heap

Subscribed. I'm loving your videos so far. A lot of information to help me with my playthrough. Much appreciated!

Killing a phantom seems to be a guaranteed Flask

Did you know that if you don't drop your shield, the spirit of Pat will hunt you down and yell at you?

7:47 IT'S EDWAD!!!

i just stumbled on your dark souls channel videos and i must say they are awesome

I've recorded in a piece of paper for my entire walkthrough, I've gotten 93 estus returned from me and I've only been able to receive them from human and humanoid typed enemies.

When I first started playing DS I hated it. It was really confusing at first. My friend suggested your videos and here I am today. I watched every single one of your videos. Thank you for investing your time to bring DS lore closer to us

If you gesture in front of the Firekeeper, she responds with another gesture depending the gesture.

I just realized that Vaati showcased part of Edwad's fight against Wolnir around a month before that part went up.

Also worth mentioning: if you die as a phantom with the ring of sacrifice you will break the ring even though you dont lose anything

So NG+ being bad is a hidden mechanic now?

I always wondered about that Ring of Sacrifice thing. Never tried it though, I’m super conservative with those things. The message format thing isn’t really a “hidden” mechanic. It tells you on the bottom of the screen. I’m pretty sure mashing the shoulder buttons also works on the oozes.

I believe the button mashing also works when a sludge enemy falls on you

*Combat tip:* if you hold your shield while running, then pause and still hold your shield up, the next attack you perform (heavy or light, doesn't matter) will be a running attack, not the regular attack. Most duelist know this and use it for mix-ups. Kudos if you already knew this technique! (I learned it from Praise the Sun)

Man even these video are old i still wanna watch every day 😊

"Does this make Sorcery viable in PvP? No. Nothing will." XD too true

The firekeeper actually has blue eyes. Contrary to what people thought about her not having eyes. If you look into her head with the camera you can see behind her eye covers are her eyes. This is weird because firekeepers are "not supposed to have eyes" and also you give her the eyes from the untended graves shrine... Weird...

Don't know if this is very well known or not, but when you wear the cleric outfit when (spoilers) Patches tricks you in the cathedral of the deep, he mentions that fact. Called my female cleric a rotten nun when he lowered the wall.

06:24 OHHH So _THIS_ is why I was constantly getting summoned into worlds with sooo many phantoms in it that would mess me up in the swamp when I was farming for my farron wolf covenant yesterday! Wow. I knew the players that were wrecking me were leet, but this explains it so much more! Even when there was an additional helper on my side, I still got destroyed lol. I also didn’t know about the mashing buttons to escape the stray demon from yeeting me into another dimension two times in a row lol. I actually tried to escape it by mashing some button or shaking my controller (I forget what exactly I tried because I was so stressed out lol, however my instinct was telling me that escape might be possible and idk where I first learned it in the past as much of my memory of previous souls game has faded over time), but obviously I wasn’t doing the _RIGHT_ trick. Oh well, I’m glad I didn’t know exactly how to pull off this trick, because I was laughing my arse off when it happened - it was soooo funny! I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that death for anything. 😁 Many spoilers can suck the fun out of these games on our first playthrough. ;) P.S. I learned soooo much from these videos of yours on mechanics! I was actually about to look up how to leave messages because I didn’t see a messaging soap stone to buy from the handmaiden. Also, I wanted to try to get the Symbol of Avarice from that first mimic that drops the deep battle axe, but I dumbly thought it would respawn after I killed it the first time. Of. The chest was gone when I went back to it to try to farm for it. Dang. I’m so sad I forgot so much souls knowledge with being so rusty for not having played one of the games in 7 years.... Now I have to wait to try for it when I come across a new mimic, whenever that will be. I wish I had it soooo badly when I was farming for those 10 hours straight from enemies for my swordgrass for the wolf covenant. 😢 All I had was a sword with boosted item discovery that I equipped in my offhand (I don’t know if it worked or not though with my two handing my main weapon in my right hand - my character status screen said that my discovery rate was higher so I _ASSUME_ it helped... It sure did take me a _LONG_ arse time though to get all the swordgrass drops I needed, as I was only able to get two off of PvP fights I won in about 12 summons in total (because I kept being summoned into very skilled player’s worlds who were also using the dried finger or had terrible connections with them transporting all over the place every time my weapon _SHOULD_ have made contact - I swear, one leet guy I got summoned into a good 6 times in a row was also estus cancelling 😡). Thanks sooo much for these tips, man!! I learned _A LOT!!!_

I love this guy. Just picked up ds3 and was curious about anything that's changed. No spoilers or anything. He's the best

You didn't know about #9? That was present in DS2.

In the Grand Archives. if you dip your head into the wax the spectral arms won't damage and curse you.

Great video, gladly subbed!

This video is so good arghhhh thanks so much!!

Something that's been happening very often for me now is that I sometimes "trip" the enemies when I roll, most of the times it happens when they are mid swing, I roll out of their attack and instead of finishing said attack, they just stagger, its pretty cool.

5:40 because having double the estus, having their full max health, being able to summon 3 phantoms AND have blue phantoms randomly join to beat the invader, being able to resummon after a phantom dies, and hiding in chameleon until the invader gets bored searching, or having any kind of actual skill to fight and WIN against the invader, isnt enough for a host right? nah, give them seeds too. Thanks From

Estus Flask: I started playing a couple of days ago. It seems that i get estus flasks when fighting enemies i have not fought before but going to the same area too many times seem to stop the enemies from dropping estus flasks.

I think the Estus thing is us raiding there Estus. Great vidya! Also, number 9, that same mechanic was also in DS 2 through the Ring of Life Protection. Saved my ass many times

Sac Rings protecting your bloodstain souls has been a mechanic since at least DS1

I usually get Estus Flasks back from red eyed enemies. I have luck stat 10 (base stat for the Deprived)

7:01 I noticed that the Dogs by the Braille Divine Tome of Carim can grab you, more like a pounce, and you can escape it by mashing the shoulder buttons.

Never recognized the glow thing. Thanks for that!

16: Poise dos not actually exist in the game, despite the game lying to you that is dos. I am really hoping they get off there asses and patch that shit...

my estus would refill every 20 to 35 enemies I've killed. i have 65 luck

cool! thnks for the info vattii!!

No fucking way i literally saw your message yesterday near the bonfire in catacombs haha I was confused as there wasn't a skeleton but just the ball enemy

0:51 - 0:55 Dark Souls 3 gameplay in a nutshell...

If you use hollowslayer great sword on soul of cinder you will do more damage to second stage suggesting he is hollow

Hi Vaatividya, i hope you see this comment as i think i noticed a game mechanic nowhere mentioned and i really like your videos. For pyromancers, to strengthen the fire power obviously there are the two rings but i noticed that when i equipped the white hair talisman in one of the slots, even when not being used, the fire damage increases with quite a few points.

I'm pretty sure mashing reduces squeeze and chomp damage when caught.

VAATI please make a lore series, there are some already being uploaded and none of them are anywhere near the caliber of content you'd put out. we need it!

that giant seed is the ultimate troll. Hiding invader? seed.

The art at the end of your video - is there a wallpaper version of it? I love it

I don’t have stats like everyone else but I definitely noticed a significant increase in the frequency that I would receive a random Estus when I leveled my luck stat throughout the game (up to lvl 30). Also noticed that recent character builds without any increase in the luck stat seem to rarely get them in comparison.

This vid is better with 0.5 speed.

I invaded for pale tongues just to do this, luck 99: I almost always got a estus from red eyes, winged knights, skeletons, and dogs. 80 luck: every second time I killed one of those I go, 50 luck: every fifth time I killed one of the above I got an estus, and lastly 20 luck: it took me about six tries to get even one.

I got the symbol of avarice on my second mimic on my first playthrough... And it really helps for farming things because I want to get everything in this game

You have such a great voice for narration. I would buy pretty much any audiobook if it was in your voice

I know this is rather old for a video, but to comment on the whole "NG+ doesn't scale high" thing....I'm actually really glad for that. Like, I'm all for harder enemies and such when going into NG+'s and such, but when it's just a sheer spike of difficulty it gets pretty ridiculous. It was one of my gripes about Dark Souls 2. In game I had a +10 weapon with which, in regular New Game, I could one hit the tutorial enemies in, and even the beginning enemies with the Forest of Giants. However...upon entering NG+ for the first time it was just sheer spike. It was like walking on open ground then all of a sudden...oops, there's no ground anymore. The enemies I was one shotting were now taking at least 4 hits to kill, and since my weapon can't get any stronger...well, it can only get worse from here. Damage was at least doubled if not tripled whenever I got hit, to the point I was just being one shot...and this was in NG+. Just regular NG+. I could understand if it was like NG+ 5 or NG+7. But NG+? That's a sheer spike that I was not ok with. So I've been putting off going into NG+ on Dark Souls 3 for that very reason. I was afraid of what kinda crazy large spike was waiting for me, and I was putting it off. Hopefully it's still that way and NG+ still isn't too big a leap. Idk, just my ramblings because I'm all for NG+'s to be more difficult, but on a steady curve. Not just hitting the deep end after just an inch of shallows. Especially in a game where your weapon can only get so strong and stats have a cap to the effectiveness they make on weapons. Not to mention while the enemies defenses, health, and damage goes up (sometimes tripling) you remain the same/hit a cap and can't do much else. So I definitely appreciate that Dark Souls 3 difficulty doesn't go from 0-100 from NG to NG+. That 100 should be gradual imo. *Shrugs*

I always wondered why I couldn't make as detailed messages. Huge thanks for that!

The Crystal Sage Sword and Mendicant Staff both have extra attribute buffs for item discovery and souls when they are wielded when enemies die. You don't actually have to kill the enemy with it but you can quickly switch to it before the souls leave the corpse.

The Tree stacks Giant seeds. Meaning you don't need to immediately return to Firelink Shrine after each invasion. I've picked up multiple seeds many times.

There is this cool hidden mechanic where it's impossible to break a great shield's guard

I still think of FP as Flower Points from Super Mario RPG.

It's so good to hear your voice again glad to sell my Dark Souls Trilogy along with some other stuff to make some money for gas and other necessities it feels like so long ago I've gotten watching your videos I popped in Dark Souls 3 right away and couldn't remember how to get the Zweihander Sword, a fav of mine. Anyways typed in Darl Souls 3 and poof was reunited with one of my favorite Dark Souls content creator. At the marathon watch some of your videos I don't know what it is but something about your voice it's just so soothing to my ears. Also thank you for all the many many wonderful tips I very much appreciate that pretty time you guys put into making these videos I'm someone that finds the full series to be as challenging as they claim to be but I absolutely adore them so your videos are a must-have for me. THANK YOU AGAIN!!!

Hah! The Ringed City DLC gave me immediate access to the +3 Favor, Gold Serpent, Silver Serpent, Havel’s, Evil Eye, Chloranthy, Steel Protection, and Wolf Rings on my FIRST playthrough! I love it!

Ive noticed that the lothric knights right before the boreal dancer sometimes drops an extra flask after you kill the last knight but it i think has to be a impressive kill like a assassination (back stab) or a parry and attack back

Are you going to make a video about how poise is 100% turned off and useless? Because it is :/

also, you are correct about the luck. I switched from.having 10 luck to 50 for a bleed build, and I've noticed a lot more Estus recovery

When I was summoned in in the pontiff sullyvan area the enemies carrying the fire staffs continuously gave me extra Estes

the enemy behind the tree on the ledge at 11:12 i believe the estus recovery is on the red eyed harder enemies. not just any mob that has red eyes, but the ones that are the same as other mobs in appearance (aside from the eyes) but they have higher health as well.

I need an update on the questline video. I think I've messed up all of them

the awkward moment when you see 2 bosses you didn't even know existed.

on #15 a co-op partner and I have also noticed that while co-oping they (as the summon) tended to get more flasks from killing enemies, but only that way,in their world we seemed to get them equally

This is cool 🤩 thank you 😊🙏🏻

Here's one that I thought I'd see here, but didn't: If you hold the Y/Triangle button to two-hand a weapon instead of TAPPING it, you'll two-hand your off-hand item instead. So, if you ever want to two-hand your shield (or if you off-hand a dagger) you can!

If you use Arstor's Spear instead of a shield then two-hand your sword, the heal from killing enemies will still activate.

For the grab attacks limit breakers did a thing that if you mash it decreases the damage to your character while increasing the damage to your hands.

I haven't seen anything on this nor have I noticed it was available beforehand in any of the previous games. But you can also use estus while on a ladder