Talented and passionate mod authors have brought up the quality of nearly all games they touch. This can range from offering outlandish gameplay like Halo’s Cursed mod or finishing a game the way the developers couldn’t as with Knights of the Old Republic 2’s restored content mod.
As with any passionate community, the Dark Souls fanbase has created plenty of amazing mods that enhance the already legendary series. It is thanks to modders that Dark Souls’ non-remastered PC version is even playable. That level of passion is also present for Dark Souls 3. From small visual changes to a game-wide overhaul, here are 10 game-changing mods you need to try for Dark Souls 3.
10 Dark Souls III PvP Watchdog
Sadly, players had to create a form of anti-cheat software to avoid getting Softbanned, but its the unfortunate reality Dark Souls 3 players go through.
If you plan on playing Dark Souls 3 online in any degree, install the Dark Souls 3 PvP Watchog mod. This mod will help protect you against malicious players who will grant you hacked items that can get your account banned. Watchdog won’t impact your typical PvE gameplay and still allows for PvP combat, but it can automatically kick hackers out of your lobby if it detects something amiss. This mod is essential.
9 First Person Cam
Dark Souls 3 can catch you off-guard and become a scary experience based on the location. The First Person Cam mod takes this to the extreme.
As its name implies, First Person Cam switches your character’s perspective from behind their back to their head, resulting in worse spacial awareness and smaller peripheral vision. If you ever wanted Dark Souls 3 to play more like a horror game, nothing can top this mod.
8 Incandescent Reshade - Performance
Visually speaking, Dark Souls 3 is the best looking Dark Souls game From Software have ever released. With that said, something seems off with its presentation.
Mod author Obanon realized that much of the game’s color palette relies on shades of grey, making many of the game’s areas feel washed out. Incandescent Reshade - Performance fixes this issue by bumping the saturation of the game without overdoing it. It’s also one of the few reshades on the Nexus that won’t tank your framerate.
7 Wex Dust
Finding players to invade can be a grueling task with Dark Souls 3’s age. As fewer players stick with common PvP spots, it becomes harder to engage with one of the game’s core systems.
That is where Wex Dust comes in. This mod adds a new item you can purchase from the Shrine Handmaiden. The new item, Wex Dust, acts as a global Red Eye Orb that searches every zone in the game for a player instance to invade.
6 StraySouls
Don’t install StraySouls if you want a balanced experience. StraySouls is an enemy randomizer that changes enemy spawns across the entire game.
It affects overworld enemies by default, but it can also change bosses and NPCs if you desire. You might fight the stone Stray Demon in the High Wall of Lothric, or maybe you’ll fight curse frogs in the Lothric Dungeon. Balance is the least of this mod’s concern. As long as you are okay with that, its hard to beat the experiences this mod provides.
5 Item Randomiser And Auto-Equip (Dark Souls III)
Item Randomizer And Auto-Equip does the same thing StraySouls does but with weapons instead. It also equips these random items automatically—if the player enables it—to ensure a chaotic experience.
Pickups in the Souls series are mostly static to ensure proper difficulty and power scaling. This mod flips that on its head by making the items completely random. You could get a broken straight sword from a tough boss, or you could get the best weapon in the game from slaying a hollow. This mod infuses the fun of roguelites into DS3 to great effect.
4 Champion’s Ashes
Fans of Dark Souls 3 frequently lament the game’s stale PvP meta that is a major step back from the second entry. Regardless of your stance on the matter, the talented modding community has made great strides to mix it up.
Meet Champion’s Ashes, the most comprehensive PvP mod to date. This mod alters nearly every weapon in the game while making mechanical tweaks to keep combat intense. It receives frequent updates and even has a Discord server where the community can plan events and discuss tactics! Anyone who wants to spice up DS3’s multiplayer should give this mod a try.
3 Enable Classic Poise
Not every game-changing mod needs to change every weapon in the game to be effective, however. Enable Classic Poise is a fantastic example of this, implementing the poise mechanics of the first two Dark Souls games into Dark Souls 3.
For those who don’t know, poise in Dark Souls 1 and 2 was a hidden health bar that would cause the player to stagger when it reached zero. This was inexplicably changed in DS3 to only affect hyperarmor frames that are tied to swinging weapons, making the mechanic nearly pointless. With this mod, it works as it did in the original titles and gives heavier armor sets much more viability.
2 DS3 Fog Gate Randomizer
Out of every randomizer mod available for Dark Souls 3, the DS3 Fog Gate Randomizer arguably has the largest impact on gameplay.
When you go through a fog gate, you will be transported to a random location instead of the accompanying boss room or new zone. It makes navigating the world feel more like a complicated maze, allowing for other randomizer mods to truly shine. When combined with item and enemy randomizers, Dark Souls 3 becomes a visceral and unforgiving roguelike.
1 Cinders
What else could it have been? Cinders is what Scholar of the First Sin was to Dark Souls 2. This mod overhauls the entire game with plenty of additions to keep veteran DS3 players engaged while fixing fundamental issues with the main game.
Unlike Champion’s Ashes, Cinders focuses much more on the PvE aspect of Dark Souls 3. Spells have been overhauled, new enemies and returning favorites from Dark Souls 2 have been added, core progression has been revamped to allow for a less linear opening act, and so much more it could be a list on its own. This is a brilliant and well-made mod that every Dark Souls fan needs to try.
NEXT: Dark Souls: 5 Strongest Weapons In The Franchise (& 5 Weakest)
