Recently, we looked at one fan’s efforts to recreate a highly detailed (and surprisingly kid-friendly) version of Dark Souls’ Firelink Shrine in Lego Worlds, proving that the series doesn’t have to be all about doom and gloom. However, if you’re the sort of Dark Souls fan who just can’t get enough of said doom and gloom, might we interest you in a new fan mod that takes the gloom portion of that equation to quite a literal level?
The Pure Darkness mod from Nexus Mods user notaprofi aims to take the extreme darkness of Dark Souls’ Tomb of Giants location and layer it over the entire game world, severely hampering the player’s visibility in the process. For those who don’t know, the Tomb of Giants is an infamous late-game Dark Souls location which, along with hostile skeleton giants and other horrors, forces the player to wander about in near-total darkness, ensuring that a fall into a bottomless pit is always one minor misstep away.
With Pure Darkness installed, the entire game world is given the Tomb of Giants perpetual darkness effect, making the lantern item a virtual necessity. The darkness even applies to boss encounters, though notaprofi promises that the bosses are still beatable despite the added challenge the darkness brings. Since the presence of the darkness forces players to rely more heavily on their ingrained knowledge of level layouts and item locations, notaprofi doesn’t recommend the Pure Darkness mod for a new player, unless they’re very good about keeping their frustration in check that is.
Currently, the Pure Darkness mod is only compatible with the original Prepare to Die version of Dark Souls on PC (it works with DSFix as well), though notaprofi says they are working on a finalized version of the mod which should work with the recently launched Dark Souls Remastered as well. Speaking of Dark Souls Remastered, if the worry that your low-end PC might not be able to run it is keeping you from giving the remaster a try, it turns out that worry may very well be for naught.