[Dark Souls II] New Game+ Deathless/Bonfireless Run 

I was replaying Dark Souls 2, since I played SOTFS first a few years back and was only missing the achievements in the original DS2 to fully complete the whole series, and decided to see how hard it was to get the rings for deathless/bonfireless if you just did it on NG+. Though I failed a few runs and almost died a few times on this successful one, I don't think it's too bad -- ~1-2hrs farming for soul items after thorough ng playthrough, 2.5hrs of failed attempts due to just not using enough consumable resources and dying stupidly, then won with this 1.5hr run. Note that the only reason I need to drop down the well is to get a fragrant branch of yore, if this was SOTFS I could just buy one from the merchant instead and make this route even shorter. Personally, I preferred SOTFS since there's just entire areas that feel empty on this version.
When NG+ is on the table, it's very feasible to enter the run with:
1. Enough soul items to instantly pop them at the beginning of NG+ and reach 2+ million soul memory to open Shrine of Winter without fighting any bosses before then. This is enabled by farming the Giant Lord and the other memories of giants on NG as preparation, as burning one bonfire ascetic will reset all 3 and yield 130,050 stored souls per instance. Personally, I only required 7 runs of this to hit the required amount if I used all my boss souls, as I had completed all the DLCs and looted thoroughly. This is not an obscure strat, searching for the rings and NG+ led me to many videos or posts talking about this.
2. Sorcery/other magic -- normally, you cant use this at all in a bonfireless run on NG since you can't sit to attune spells, but if you just attune them in NG then you keep your loadout in NG+. This is very powerful, especially if you use the Crown of the Old Iron King for 20% of all your casts every 2 minutes, or just have enough consumables from your first playthrough to refill on command.
3. Effectively infinite repairs and heals. Even if you didn't have healing or repair spells from 2), the amount of consumables I had left over from never using them on NG meant I was never low on healing, and you can buy more infinitely (at least from Drangleic Castle and on). I didn't use a single repair powder, as I had the sorcery to keep my stuff topped off, but even without that I'd have had plenty.
Of these, 1 is the most impactful, as you effectively skip the entire first half of the game. While you may have effectively infinite healing, you can still get burst to death with NG+ damage numbers, and since Giant Lord was farmed to bonfire level 8 he can easily one shot most builds (though his moveset is simple). Bonfireless is not a big deal if you're playing NG+ deathless anyways, there's very minimal backtracking and you don't need the healing or repairs.
My character is called "driftee" since that's my friend's steam name and I thought it'd be funny to name myself his name if we ever cooped (we didn't).
Dark Souls 2 is on Steam here:
store.steampowered.com/app/23...
Let me know in the comments of any cool games I should check out, or what you thought of this game!
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Chapter Timestamps:
0:00 Start of run, to Majula
2:00 Getting a Fragrant Branch of Yore from the Gutter
6:00 Popping 2 million souls
10:33 Shaded Woods to Shrine of Winter
14:00 Drangleic Castle
17:38 Twin Dragonriders
19:22 Drangleic Part 2
24:34 Looking Glass Knight
27:25 Shrine of Amana
35:15 Demon of Song
38:08 Undead Crypt
45:00 Velstadt, the Royal Aegis
46:35 Majula to Aldia's Keep
50:10 Aldia's Keep
52:00 Guardian Dragon
53:25 Dragon Aerie
55:58 Dragon Shrine
57:57 Majula to Forest of Giants
1:02:30 The Last Giant
1:05:10 Memory of Jeigh and Giant Lord
1:09:11 Majula to Drangleic
1:20:50 Throne Watcher and Throne Defender
1:24:20 Nashandra
1:25:28 Rings

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