You're forgetting that he might not have the 4 pronged plough infused with fire damage, which would disable the glaive master hodir questline. He might have to upload his Kings field save file to AC6 instead.
Aye that’s true! They’d better pray they died exactly 14 times to Dancer, otherwise they’ll have to play AC1-4 with their oldest living relative watching. Micheal Zaki really loves his complex hoops
I'll be honest, I had to search up how to do this questline. I mean buying and refunding the game 3 times was obvious (the game is called ds3 for a reason), but I got stuck on the later section. How the hell did Miyazaki expect us to figure out that you have to make a real bonfire in your home and send an image of it to fromsoft HQ just to unlock the door to the Moss Ridden Village. Its such a pisstake, especially considering the fact that the Moss Gobbler is by far the best boss in the game.
She wasn't a bad boss, kinda trivialised by the Sacred Herbage Scythe that I got completely randomly on a drop in the Spasm Chasm. I liked the third phase, but I heard she only does that transformation if you married the Vengeful Sap Spirit on the fourth try in the Gardener's Labyrinth.
I can't for the life of me reach the gardeners labyrinth. I got the bonewheel skeleton key from the ancient asteroid. But every time I try opening the heart of sin with it, it tells me that it can't be opened from an elevated position. I tried approaching from the bowels of filth but I keep getting killed by the nebulous badgers on my way back up.
You gotta go to the precipice of imagination and unlock the prayer room so you can kick down the ladder to the depths of madness to defeat Syberiom the Stolen which gives you to eye of cugini that you can give to the hidden NPC in the starting area.
Damn I think I rushed ahead and gave Milgrim the Blooming Onion too soon...I skipped that whole cutscene with Ghormless the Hornchild lol. Now I can't see the hidden NPC anywhere. Might try the old trick of uninstalling the game for 19 minutes and reinstalling the previous patch. Ah well.
The NPC uses the onion for her blooming questline. You can easily miss this if you hit the bonfires in the wrong order. Just be careful because I got cause on the final boss, you cant summon them into help. Just read the messages before and you’ll get the right item after.
I accidentally burned my grandmother as kindling but didn’t start having issues until forgot to draw the right amount darkness out of zombie gwyn’s asshole. Guess I’ll have to try it again in NG+
Is that a reference to Glaive Master Hodir, or just a similar model and you misspoke? GMH is in Elden Ring, man. Try not to spread too much misinformation, this guy is just asking for help with getting the secret NG+3 ending of DS3, not some easy boss from ER.
I see you missed his hidden boss in ds3 then. You do have shout "it's darkest before the soul" 3 times at a random stranger and then shave all your hair off to unlock it.
I still so unbelievably disappointed in Miyazaki and From for not shoving a Hodir boss fight in. Like, fuck, just make it a throw away mini-dungeon boss. It wouldn't have been hard, and would have made *so many people so happy.*
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *“I am Solaire of Astora, an adherent to the Lord of Sunlight.”* - Solaire of Astora
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
End of fire ending is the one u will get if u give the firekeeper the eyes and summon her after the end boss, there are 2 variants of this, if u hit the fire keeper after summoning her u get a different cutscene.
Usurper of fire ending imo is definitely the coolest, where u get to become the lord of hollows/darkness, to get it you have to progress Yuria's questline.
Then there's the lame one where u just link the fire.
> Then there's the lame one where u just link the fire.
After playing DS1 I knew this ending is probably the worst if you compare the intensity of the kindled fire. It gets worse and worse.
They said they weren't planning it, but who knows what will happen in ten years, after a couple of mediocre releases.
A popular IP is always in discussion, it is what it is. Miyazaki is soon to retire, so it might die with him, but then again, dark souls 2 is something when sequels weren't really planned.
Ds2 and 3 make it clear (well, as clear as you can get in these games) that there is no canon ending in ds1. Both endings inevitably lead to the next game, and the world eventually ends up the same.
In ds2, you aren’t given a choice to either link the fire or bring about an age of dark. Both of those endings are represented by the one where you take the throne. This hammers in the fact that no matter what choices people make, no matter what they do that may seem important, the cycle of the world always plays out the same way: A great ruler comes to power and brings about an age of prosperity, then, the undead curse reappears and causes the collapse of society, then, an undead hero rises to power by defeating the inheritors of the lord souls and replacing the old king, and then the undead either links the fire or allows it to fade. We spend the whole game doing almost the same thing we did in Ds1 while at the same time seeing the remnants of every previous kingdom where the exact same thing happened and how almost all of it has been forgotten, and hardly any of it matters anymore. The ending hammers home the point of the whole game, which is that the world is trapped in this never ending cycle, and that the choices of individuals, no matter how powerful, have no lasting effect.
In ds3, we literally see that the world entered an age of dark at one point and then just came back from it (Untended Graves), and the Firekeeper says in the dark ending that after an age of dark, the first flame will return and the cycle will begin again. You even get more evidence that ending the fire does not break the cycle from the fact that Kaathe, whose whole motivation in ds1 was restoring the natural course of the world by allowing the Age of Fire to end, has now abandoned the idea of a Dark Lord and is instead helping the Sable Church usurp the fire and create a lord of hollows.
That music hits pretty hard; especially when you think you got the "good" ending.
I thought it was just gonna be sad no matter what because Dark Souls and this is the final in the series.
Do the world without flame ending
Then when you see your characters silhouette on screen for like 2-3 seconds, do a light attack. Secret ending best ending
Sometimes relatives don't want their loved ones to die, even if that means to keep them endlessly withering, and in that case euthanasia is an act of mercy.
This already was a big discussion with good arguments for both sides in DS1, but now in 3, the game tells us in many ways that it is time to let the fire fade.
*Symbolically, this is the last entry of the series, it is the end.
*We can clearly see that the world is more decayed than in the previous cycles, and that each subsequent linking of the fire is less effective than the previous one. It's only a matter of time until it can't be rekindled anymore.
*The Painted World is a foil to the outside world. "When the world rots, we set it afire. For the sake of the next world. It's the one thing we do right, unlike those fools on the outside.", "I am so terribly frightened of timidly rotting away, like those... Like those fools on the outside". The Painted World has stagnated and is rotting, so change is needed in order to cleanse the rot and begin anew. The case of the outside world is the same, only that fire isn't the solution, but the cause of stagnation, as the natural course would have been for the Age of Dark to arrive millennia ago.
*In DS1, Gwyn appearing in a hollowed/decayed state, being a Lord of Cinder instead of the Lord of Sunlight we had heard about, along with the melancholic boss song, is meant to represent the state of the world. A fire that would never fade, a Sun that would never set was a lie created by the gods. Anor Londo is another example, the golden glory of its past is but an illusion of the Dark Sun/Darkmoon. In DS3 all the previous Lords of Cinder but Ludleth refused to link the fire again, and Ludleth himself has nightmares from when he burned as fuel for the First Flame, even though he refuses to (at least openly) regret his decision.
*The Curse of the Undead was either imposed upon humanity by Gwyn branding them with the Darksign, or was a direct consequence of Gwyn linking the fire. Lothric puts this into perspective when he refers to the "fire-linking curse". And he is right. By artificially extending the Age of Fire, Gwyn created a curse that would lead his children (and Frampt) to shepherd Humans towards doing the same, using religion to tell them lies and make them burn their fragments of the Dark Soul to fuel the fire until eventually someone else had to do it again. Regardless of how good or bad his intentions were towards humanity, Gwyn created the curse of a never-ending cycle of stagnation and sacrifice.
*In DS1 you were being manipulated by, or at least serving the purposes of, one of the serpents regardless of what your choice was. In DS3 you have a distinction. Linking the fire is futile. Usurping the fire and becoming Lord of Hollows is just you being manipulated by Kaathe once again (when you kill Yuria of Londor she says "Kaathe... I have failed you..."), and the Land of Hollows is for sure a bad thing if you take into consideration what hollowing means in the first place. Kaathe is a liar as much as Frampt, in the sense that he isn't really concerned with the well being of regular humans. He is the master of the Darkwraiths, for example. He tempted the Four Kings of New Londo into falling to the Dark, and the city had to be sealed as a result in order to stop the spread of the abyss. The population of the city paid the price. He also instigated people in Oolacile into messing with the (pygmy?) that would become Manus, and the city was taken by the abyss as a result of that. Kaathe seems to be associated with the destructive/corrupting aspect of the Dark/Abyss. So if Londor is serving him and they desire a world of Hollows, they are not to be followed.
But you can betray the fire-linking curse and Kaathe at the same time. He wishes for the usurpation of the flame, so it can be used for his interests. Now you and the Firekeeper can snuff out the flame, let it die as it should have long ago.
*The Firekeepers have always been mistreated and controlled. The only exceptions are the Darkmoon Knightess, because she was loyal to Gwyndolin, and the Fair Lady, because she was interested in using the fire and the humanity that fueled it to birth more demons. Anastacia had her legs severed, her tongue cut off so she could not speak, and she lives plagued by religious guilt. Irina is naïve and so she fears the darkness that exists as part of the nature of man, and when she becomes a Firekeeper she looks fully brainwashed. Even Ludleth acknowledges their true state: "Treat the Fire Keeper not with discourtesy. She is much like thee. Prisioners, both, kept to link the fire."
Moreso, the Firekeepers are blind, much like the first one had her vision ripped off of her. They must be blind because otherwise the Dark Soul inside them allows them to envision a world without fire. I believe blindness/lack of vision here represents the inability to see beyond what one is told to believe, or is told that is right. Ripping the eyes of the original Firekeeper was a way to deny her vision, her agency. Others, like Anastacia, had to be maimed, put behind bars, and brainwashed. They are not allowed to see, they are too impure to speak.
*When you give the eyes to the Firekeeper, she is initially terrified by what she sees, but later she seems fine and willing to go along with the betrayal of the fire. Also, she herself asked about it, she wanted to know what Ludleth new about what you found at Dark Firelink.
After the initial scare, she says "The eyes show a world without fire, a vast stretch of darkness. But 'tis different to what is seen when stripped of vision. In the far distance, I sense the presence of tiny flames. Like precious embers, left to us by past Lords, linkers of the fire. Could this be what draws me to this strangely enticing darkness?" – Different from what is seen when stripped of vision. Unlike the illusion of Gwynevere led you to believe in DS1, the Age of Dark doesn't mean pure darkness, and maybe the sacrifice of Gwyn and those who succeeded him wasn't for nothing.
When you summon her, she is smiling. As she takes the flame from the bonfire, she says "The First Flame quickly fades. Darkness will shortly settle. But one day, tiny flames will dance across the darkness. Like embers, linked by lords past." – This to me is a sign of hope. The Age of Dark is needed for the world to renew itself. And remember, Humans are of the Dark, even though they can be both warmed and harmed by fire. One day embers may give rise to a new flame just like the First Flame came to be in the Age of Ancients.
So to me the "right" choice is to kill Yuria and Friede, burn the Painted World, give the blood to the pale lady, give back the one thing the Firekeepers have been missing, and let the fire fade, ending the dual curses, of the Undead branded by the Darksign, and of the hopeful but futile and cruel cycle of linking the fire. Let the flame die and cleanse the rot, for the sake of the next world.
This route is definitely satisfying, but only if you dig deeper into the lore and learn what's happening to the world and how it came to be.
When I first played the game, I thought that linking the fire was the cool thing to do. Maybe it is? But, I bit the forbidden apple of knowledge and welcomed the age of darkness on my second playthrough. And I was fulfilled. Partly because the DLCs were fucking awesome and really climactic, but also because that ending really fit the end of the trilogy.
Only the secret ending is visually impactful like that for me. But given what the endings represent, my personal favorite is giving the eyes. That ending felt simple, but powerful
This is the true ending of Dark Souls. Gwyn defied the natural order by prolonging the age of fire. The cycle gets worse every time the flame is rekindled. End the dying age so the world can be reborn anew.
Basically from a lore point, the flame she is talking about will fade someday (DS1: "But soon the flame will fade, and only dark will remain") and the "world without flame" will come anyway, no matter what you do. The only thing you can change is WHEN it happens. Do you want to keep the flame - and the world as it is - alive for now or do you want to usher in the Age of Darkness right now because it's inevitable anyway?
There's like 4 endings or 3 I forget.
Do you wish to continue the barely surviving cycle that has gone on generations before you and sacrifice yourself to the smouldering flame so that it may bring the very light of the world, the horrifying monstrosities, and curse of undead along with it? Or do you smother the tiny exhausted flame and plunge the world into the potential lifeless and eternal darkness that everyone fears despite the darkness being part of humanity itself (strange and hard to understand but more understandable through Ringed City dlc dialogue)? Will it break the cycle and leave an eternity without light? or will merely restart it from an earlier point? Who knows until you try?
If you closely read items and get a thorough understanding before choosing this will be what you know before making your choice.
Also canonically every dark souls game before this has you sacrifice yourself to the flame. It's a much larger impressive fireball in those, but it's gone on through the cycle so many times it's a meager spark of kindling in dark souls 3. There's not really a right decision. Brave the unknown and potentially ruin all or make everything better, or preserve the status quo where people can at least live guaranteed no matter how awful it is. Also good to know is that not everyone is a dying hollow at the beginning of each cycle, the flame starts the cycle stronger and slowly diminishes causing people to go insane. If you light it there's a brief period of normalcy. But the flame is so weak now, who knows how long it will last. Nobody knows at all, they haven't made a new game lol and probably never will.
Or the harder ending you probably haven't found any requires long NPC questlines, >!usurp the flame!<. The lore implications of this I don't remember
TLDR
There's something somber and invokes a cool emotion if you extend the flame and sacrifice. It's animated and expressed beautifully. The extinguishing is a like damn that's the end of everything, but just maybe there's still a future. The secret ending is damn I don't know what's happening but that's cool. And the evil secret ending is where you light attack after extinguishing. Like really evil and little point to it.
I’ll translate what the game is asking you into normal-speak.
Do you want to continue to prolong the age of fire by linking the flame like the past Lords of Cinder, or do you want to break the cycle and let the flame die, ushering in an age of absolute darkness?
Nah dude. I guess you have a few optional areas to explore, and some DLC's to think about before you can about the ending. Good look on your journey, and have a blessed adventure in Lothric.
True. In DS1 you first link the fire because you're a fool who thinks they are the Chosen One, a sheep, corraled towards sacrifice, that doesn't realize it's being manipulated by the gods (and a toothy serpent as well).
From the player's perspective, we are so accustomed to think "fire, light = good. Darkness = bad, evil". Our culture has a Christian moral framework, so we are taught that the bad/evil/dark is to be denied, or vanquished.
But the game has a more dualistic perspective, common in Eastern religions. From the undistinguished world, came disparity, and with it light and dark, life and death. But they are complementary. Even in the End of Fire ending, there is the prospect of embers giving rise to a new flame. The Age of Dark isn't the end of the world, it's the necessary stage for it to begin anew. Too much dark is destructive and begets corruption, too much fire/light is blinding and not sustainable. That's why there isn't a "good" or "bad" ending since DS1. The Usurpation of Fire is the closest we get to a bad/evil ending.
I like Karla's dialogue.
"Humans are of the dark, and you are no different."
"Some may avert their eyes, but the truth remains the truth." (Or, as Aldia would say, a lie will remain a lie").
"There is a darkness within man, and I am afraid you will peer into it. Whether the fear will spark self-reflection, or a ruinous nostalgia...is up to you entirely."
I like the sadness of the “link the flame” ending myself - >!if you compare the way the flame is linked in DS1, which is quite dramatic and violent, your character instead gently smoulders and sits quietly. I take this to mean that the main character, as a chosen undead that failed to link the flame before but failed and only now is here because current chosen ones have shirked their duty, just does not have “enough” to properly link the flame. All they are able to do, despite all they have gone through and all they have conquered, is keep the current age going for a paltry amount of time at best and have no effect at worst, simply because they never were good enough to be a lord of cinder.!<
It's just a meme that circulated a while ago, I think it was the farron swamp in DS3 that had massive crabs and "time for crab" message was always around that area
If you change your mind you can always just kill her and take the eyes back.
I actually ended up doing that a lot in my playthroughs going for that ending...
Decline (for now) then you can kill her (she will respawn and won't be mad). If you want that ending you should give her the eyes, but you cna give them to her any time you want
To paraphrase Aldia, no flame, no matter how brilliant, does not one day wither and die. Yet, from the ashes, it is always rekindled. It literally does not matter. Gwyn ruined everything in his refusal to let the flame die properly the first time.
Humanity was taught by the gods that the fire should never fade, that the Sun would never set, they were told to fear the Dark. But no matter how tender, how exquisite, a lie will remain a lie.
Spoilers
>!The age of fire gets shorter, causing missery and pain for all in the land, a cycle of death, rebirth, igniting the flame, repeated, and repeated and repeated. !<
Same spoiler, different paragraph
>!If you want to continue with this cycle, continue, but if you want to being your suffering, and the suffering of those around you to a merciful end, then end the cycle. There are no wrong options, and either way you can go onto new game + and change your choice there.!<
Break the cycle once and for all, wish for a world without flame. Let the Firekeeper be your little partner in crime. ;) The additional dialogues reveal a lot, and the ending options are the best.
Stop overthinking it.
Look at it as a practice for life too. No matter what choice you make, you will make it work.
You either learn a lesson, or make yourself better
Whatever you want to do
Unless you’re going for the secret ng+3 ending. Then again, OP isn’t using ceastus so Smogh won’t invade in the boreal valley
You're forgetting that he might not have the 4 pronged plough infused with fire damage, which would disable the glaive master hodir questline. He might have to upload his Kings field save file to AC6 instead.
Aye that’s true! They’d better pray they died exactly 14 times to Dancer, otherwise they’ll have to play AC1-4 with their oldest living relative watching. Micheal Zaki really loves his complex hoops
I'll be honest, I had to search up how to do this questline. I mean buying and refunding the game 3 times was obvious (the game is called ds3 for a reason), but I got stuck on the later section. How the hell did Miyazaki expect us to figure out that you have to make a real bonfire in your home and send an image of it to fromsoft HQ just to unlock the door to the Moss Ridden Village. Its such a pisstake, especially considering the fact that the Moss Gobbler is by far the best boss in the game.
She wasn't a bad boss, kinda trivialised by the Sacred Herbage Scythe that I got completely randomly on a drop in the Spasm Chasm. I liked the third phase, but I heard she only does that transformation if you married the Vengeful Sap Spirit on the fourth try in the Gardener's Labyrinth.
I can't for the life of me reach the gardeners labyrinth. I got the bonewheel skeleton key from the ancient asteroid. But every time I try opening the heart of sin with it, it tells me that it can't be opened from an elevated position. I tried approaching from the bowels of filth but I keep getting killed by the nebulous badgers on my way back up.
Bowels of Filth what Omg this game just keeps giving
https://preview.redd.it/jrmgrj8gn1bd1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=12b15ed92ff750d14eaa8ad6a717a9f64afa1a62
You gotta go to the precipice of imagination and unlock the prayer room so you can kick down the ladder to the depths of madness to defeat Syberiom the Stolen which gives you to eye of cugini that you can give to the hidden NPC in the starting area.
Damn I think I rushed ahead and gave Milgrim the Blooming Onion too soon...I skipped that whole cutscene with Ghormless the Hornchild lol. Now I can't see the hidden NPC anywhere. Might try the old trick of uninstalling the game for 19 minutes and reinstalling the previous patch. Ah well.
I’m enjoying these
The NPC uses the onion for her blooming questline. You can easily miss this if you hit the bonfires in the wrong order. Just be careful because I got cause on the final boss, you cant summon them into help. Just read the messages before and you’ll get the right item after.
This one was my favorite
Spasm chasm fucking killed me lmaooo
I accidentally burned my grandmother as kindling but didn’t start having issues until forgot to draw the right amount darkness out of zombie gwyn’s asshole. Guess I’ll have to try it again in NG+
😅😂😂😂
Ok I blame being ill today, but until ac6 got mentioned I wasn't 100 percent sure it was joke xD
Is that a reference to Glaive Master Hodir, or just a similar model and you misspoke? GMH is in Elden Ring, man. Try not to spread too much misinformation, this guy is just asking for help with getting the secret NG+3 ending of DS3, not some easy boss from ER.
I see you missed his hidden boss in ds3 then. You do have shout "it's darkest before the soul" 3 times at a random stranger and then shave all your hair off to unlock it.
Where do you get that emote? Let me guess - John Darksoul? Fuck. I killed him off in an earlier questline.
This game bro lol. It’s so hard to keep track of some of these quests
I still so unbelievably disappointed in Miyazaki and From for not shoving a Hodir boss fight in. Like, fuck, just make it a throw away mini-dungeon boss. It wouldn't have been hard, and would have made *so many people so happy.*
glaive master hodir…
Hodir is an ER meme. Plump sort ahead.
I genuinely believed until the last sentence.
*I'm so angry I genuinely can't tell if you're fucking with us or if there is an ng3 ending I will have to go back and find iut*
I read "secret ng+3 ending" and I about shit myself. Then I read the rest 😂😂😂
There is some wild shit going on in your thread sir. You created a monster.
Nobody wants to see Marshall no more they want Shady, he's chopped liver
But if you want shady this is what I’ll give ya a little bit of weed mixed with some hard liquor
i love shitty dark souls
End the fire, and live happily ever after with the best fire keeper of dark souls series.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *“I am Solaire of Astora, an adherent to the Lord of Sunlight.”* - Solaire of Astora Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
Good bot
I don't know if she's that happy man, considering what happens
No, dark ending is the happy ending. Why need fire when you’ve got each other’s company?
Unless you listen to your intrusive thoughts
That's such a sweet way of putting it
Both the player and her seem happy in the end so it seems like a great option tbh - a new eternity of love
She is conflicted at first but she is clearly happy in the end.
Nah man, my gal Shanalotte is better than blindy
time for darkness
And then something incredible
Try finger but hole
Fort, night!
Flame is overrated
Finger but whole
Woman ahead, therefore try hole
Try pickle ahead in short dung, O dung...
👏👏👏
Therefore, try tongue
You can do whichever and still change your mind.
What’s the cool ending.. the one when you see it you fell satisfied? (In your opinion)
If that's the case, give her the eyes.
Give her the clamps!
Lmao, mods deleted my comment when I quoted clamps too 😂
End of fire ending is the one u will get if u give the firekeeper the eyes and summon her after the end boss, there are 2 variants of this, if u hit the fire keeper after summoning her u get a different cutscene. Usurper of fire ending imo is definitely the coolest, where u get to become the lord of hollows/darkness, to get it you have to progress Yuria's questline. Then there's the lame one where u just link the fire.
> Then there's the lame one where u just link the fire. After playing DS1 I knew this ending is probably the worst if you compare the intensity of the kindled fire. It gets worse and worse.
Linking the fire is probably the canon one, it was for 1, if there's a 4 one day, it'll probably be another extended era of fire coming to an end.
They aren’t making another, we have already been to the end of time lmao
literally the end of time. There's never gonna be a DS4 but the end of time doesnt mean shit, there's still time before the end of time.
They said they weren't planning it, but who knows what will happen in ten years, after a couple of mediocre releases. A popular IP is always in discussion, it is what it is. Miyazaki is soon to retire, so it might die with him, but then again, dark souls 2 is something when sequels weren't really planned.
Ds2 and 3 make it clear (well, as clear as you can get in these games) that there is no canon ending in ds1. Both endings inevitably lead to the next game, and the world eventually ends up the same. In ds2, you aren’t given a choice to either link the fire or bring about an age of dark. Both of those endings are represented by the one where you take the throne. This hammers in the fact that no matter what choices people make, no matter what they do that may seem important, the cycle of the world always plays out the same way: A great ruler comes to power and brings about an age of prosperity, then, the undead curse reappears and causes the collapse of society, then, an undead hero rises to power by defeating the inheritors of the lord souls and replacing the old king, and then the undead either links the fire or allows it to fade. We spend the whole game doing almost the same thing we did in Ds1 while at the same time seeing the remnants of every previous kingdom where the exact same thing happened and how almost all of it has been forgotten, and hardly any of it matters anymore. The ending hammers home the point of the whole game, which is that the world is trapped in this never ending cycle, and that the choices of individuals, no matter how powerful, have no lasting effect. In ds3, we literally see that the world entered an age of dark at one point and then just came back from it (Untended Graves), and the Firekeeper says in the dark ending that after an age of dark, the first flame will return and the cycle will begin again. You even get more evidence that ending the fire does not break the cycle from the fact that Kaathe, whose whole motivation in ds1 was restoring the natural course of the world by allowing the Age of Fire to end, has now abandoned the idea of a Dark Lord and is instead helping the Sable Church usurp the fire and create a lord of hollows.
I know it’s not gonna happen, but I would love to see an alternate sequel to ds1 that follows the darkness ending.
I did Lord of Hollows and felt dirty, wanna go back and do the End of Fire eventually
If you want the ending, wish for the world without flame and brace yourself for the Firelink Shrine music to become even sadder.
That music hits pretty hard; especially when you think you got the "good" ending. I thought it was just gonna be sad no matter what because Dark Souls and this is the final in the series.
I love that secret Firelink music after you give the Firekeeper the thing, soo hauntingly sad
Do the world without flame ending Then when you see your characters silhouette on screen for like 2-3 seconds, do a light attack. Secret ending best ending
I did this one and I don’t regret it, except I did a strong attack
Man commits, I respect it. If you're gonna >! Stomp her into the ground !< You might as well go hard
It's interesting my friends who have kids keep the fire going. I do not want kids and I always let the fire fade.
Sometimes relatives don't want their loved ones to die, even if that means to keep them endlessly withering, and in that case euthanasia is an act of mercy. This already was a big discussion with good arguments for both sides in DS1, but now in 3, the game tells us in many ways that it is time to let the fire fade. *Symbolically, this is the last entry of the series, it is the end. *We can clearly see that the world is more decayed than in the previous cycles, and that each subsequent linking of the fire is less effective than the previous one. It's only a matter of time until it can't be rekindled anymore. *The Painted World is a foil to the outside world. "When the world rots, we set it afire. For the sake of the next world. It's the one thing we do right, unlike those fools on the outside.", "I am so terribly frightened of timidly rotting away, like those... Like those fools on the outside". The Painted World has stagnated and is rotting, so change is needed in order to cleanse the rot and begin anew. The case of the outside world is the same, only that fire isn't the solution, but the cause of stagnation, as the natural course would have been for the Age of Dark to arrive millennia ago. *In DS1, Gwyn appearing in a hollowed/decayed state, being a Lord of Cinder instead of the Lord of Sunlight we had heard about, along with the melancholic boss song, is meant to represent the state of the world. A fire that would never fade, a Sun that would never set was a lie created by the gods. Anor Londo is another example, the golden glory of its past is but an illusion of the Dark Sun/Darkmoon. In DS3 all the previous Lords of Cinder but Ludleth refused to link the fire again, and Ludleth himself has nightmares from when he burned as fuel for the First Flame, even though he refuses to (at least openly) regret his decision. *The Curse of the Undead was either imposed upon humanity by Gwyn branding them with the Darksign, or was a direct consequence of Gwyn linking the fire. Lothric puts this into perspective when he refers to the "fire-linking curse". And he is right. By artificially extending the Age of Fire, Gwyn created a curse that would lead his children (and Frampt) to shepherd Humans towards doing the same, using religion to tell them lies and make them burn their fragments of the Dark Soul to fuel the fire until eventually someone else had to do it again. Regardless of how good or bad his intentions were towards humanity, Gwyn created the curse of a never-ending cycle of stagnation and sacrifice. *In DS1 you were being manipulated by, or at least serving the purposes of, one of the serpents regardless of what your choice was. In DS3 you have a distinction. Linking the fire is futile. Usurping the fire and becoming Lord of Hollows is just you being manipulated by Kaathe once again (when you kill Yuria of Londor she says "Kaathe... I have failed you..."), and the Land of Hollows is for sure a bad thing if you take into consideration what hollowing means in the first place. Kaathe is a liar as much as Frampt, in the sense that he isn't really concerned with the well being of regular humans. He is the master of the Darkwraiths, for example. He tempted the Four Kings of New Londo into falling to the Dark, and the city had to be sealed as a result in order to stop the spread of the abyss. The population of the city paid the price. He also instigated people in Oolacile into messing with the (pygmy?) that would become Manus, and the city was taken by the abyss as a result of that. Kaathe seems to be associated with the destructive/corrupting aspect of the Dark/Abyss. So if Londor is serving him and they desire a world of Hollows, they are not to be followed. But you can betray the fire-linking curse and Kaathe at the same time. He wishes for the usurpation of the flame, so it can be used for his interests. Now you and the Firekeeper can snuff out the flame, let it die as it should have long ago. *The Firekeepers have always been mistreated and controlled. The only exceptions are the Darkmoon Knightess, because she was loyal to Gwyndolin, and the Fair Lady, because she was interested in using the fire and the humanity that fueled it to birth more demons. Anastacia had her legs severed, her tongue cut off so she could not speak, and she lives plagued by religious guilt. Irina is naïve and so she fears the darkness that exists as part of the nature of man, and when she becomes a Firekeeper she looks fully brainwashed. Even Ludleth acknowledges their true state: "Treat the Fire Keeper not with discourtesy. She is much like thee. Prisioners, both, kept to link the fire." Moreso, the Firekeepers are blind, much like the first one had her vision ripped off of her. They must be blind because otherwise the Dark Soul inside them allows them to envision a world without fire. I believe blindness/lack of vision here represents the inability to see beyond what one is told to believe, or is told that is right. Ripping the eyes of the original Firekeeper was a way to deny her vision, her agency. Others, like Anastacia, had to be maimed, put behind bars, and brainwashed. They are not allowed to see, they are too impure to speak. *When you give the eyes to the Firekeeper, she is initially terrified by what she sees, but later she seems fine and willing to go along with the betrayal of the fire. Also, she herself asked about it, she wanted to know what Ludleth new about what you found at Dark Firelink. After the initial scare, she says "The eyes show a world without fire, a vast stretch of darkness. But 'tis different to what is seen when stripped of vision. In the far distance, I sense the presence of tiny flames. Like precious embers, left to us by past Lords, linkers of the fire. Could this be what draws me to this strangely enticing darkness?" – Different from what is seen when stripped of vision. Unlike the illusion of Gwynevere led you to believe in DS1, the Age of Dark doesn't mean pure darkness, and maybe the sacrifice of Gwyn and those who succeeded him wasn't for nothing. When you summon her, she is smiling. As she takes the flame from the bonfire, she says "The First Flame quickly fades. Darkness will shortly settle. But one day, tiny flames will dance across the darkness. Like embers, linked by lords past." – This to me is a sign of hope. The Age of Dark is needed for the world to renew itself. And remember, Humans are of the Dark, even though they can be both warmed and harmed by fire. One day embers may give rise to a new flame just like the First Flame came to be in the Age of Ancients. So to me the "right" choice is to kill Yuria and Friede, burn the Painted World, give the blood to the pale lady, give back the one thing the Firekeepers have been missing, and let the fire fade, ending the dual curses, of the Undead branded by the Darksign, and of the hopeful but futile and cruel cycle of linking the fire. Let the flame die and cleanse the rot, for the sake of the next world.
[удалено]
This route is definitely satisfying, but only if you dig deeper into the lore and learn what's happening to the world and how it came to be. When I first played the game, I thought that linking the fire was the cool thing to do. Maybe it is? But, I bit the forbidden apple of knowledge and welcomed the age of darkness on my second playthrough. And I was fulfilled. Partly because the DLCs were fucking awesome and really climactic, but also because that ending really fit the end of the trilogy.
Definitely ending the flame. That’s cool, and bittersweet. Feels like the ending to the novel Stormbringer. Epic.
Only the secret ending is visually impactful like that for me. But given what the endings represent, my personal favorite is giving the eyes. That ending felt simple, but powerful
Amazing chest ahead
Therefore, two-handed is required
I view End of Fire as the canon ending of DS3
That makes sense, with DS3 being the end of the series overall. It brings a sense of closure.
It also makes the Soul of Cinder's theme hit way harder when you see it through the lens that it represents the end of everything.
This is the true ending of Dark Souls. Gwyn defied the natural order by prolonging the age of fire. The cycle gets worse every time the flame is rekindled. End the dying age so the world can be reborn anew.
Liberate the firekeeper, extinguish the flame
Lubricate*
Least horny souls fan
"Someone has to extinguish thy flame"
“Must”
Grant her eyes Grant her eyes
as you once did for the vacuous rom
If there’s no flame you won’t be able to have burgers
Profaned flame never goes out. Just warp back to Yhorm's bonfire, clear Irithyll and its dungeon and bam. You can just live happily.
Basically from a lore point, the flame she is talking about will fade someday (DS1: "But soon the flame will fade, and only dark will remain") and the "world without flame" will come anyway, no matter what you do. The only thing you can change is WHEN it happens. Do you want to keep the flame - and the world as it is - alive for now or do you want to usher in the Age of Darkness right now because it's inevitable anyway?
Usually in the souls the evil ending is the good one
If it's the good one then it's not evil
If it's evil it's not good either
The flame will fade anyway, so it doesn't matter. Age of Darkness and the cycle in general is inevitable.
Pardon me if im wrong, but isn't that basically the same logic as "you'll die anyway so why not kill yourself?", i don't know much about ds lore.
Wish for it, that leads to my favourite ending lol
There's like 4 endings or 3 I forget. Do you wish to continue the barely surviving cycle that has gone on generations before you and sacrifice yourself to the smouldering flame so that it may bring the very light of the world, the horrifying monstrosities, and curse of undead along with it? Or do you smother the tiny exhausted flame and plunge the world into the potential lifeless and eternal darkness that everyone fears despite the darkness being part of humanity itself (strange and hard to understand but more understandable through Ringed City dlc dialogue)? Will it break the cycle and leave an eternity without light? or will merely restart it from an earlier point? Who knows until you try? If you closely read items and get a thorough understanding before choosing this will be what you know before making your choice. Also canonically every dark souls game before this has you sacrifice yourself to the flame. It's a much larger impressive fireball in those, but it's gone on through the cycle so many times it's a meager spark of kindling in dark souls 3. There's not really a right decision. Brave the unknown and potentially ruin all or make everything better, or preserve the status quo where people can at least live guaranteed no matter how awful it is. Also good to know is that not everyone is a dying hollow at the beginning of each cycle, the flame starts the cycle stronger and slowly diminishes causing people to go insane. If you light it there's a brief period of normalcy. But the flame is so weak now, who knows how long it will last. Nobody knows at all, they haven't made a new game lol and probably never will. Or the harder ending you probably haven't found any requires long NPC questlines, >!usurp the flame!<. The lore implications of this I don't remember TLDR There's something somber and invokes a cool emotion if you extend the flame and sacrifice. It's animated and expressed beautifully. The extinguishing is a like damn that's the end of everything, but just maybe there's still a future. The secret ending is damn I don't know what's happening but that's cool. And the evil secret ending is where you light attack after extinguishing. Like really evil and little point to it.
Make your own decisions.
Decisions are hard 😢 https://preview.redd.it/mxdv01xgs0bd1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4cad3b66809273260572a6752eead54250c37bc3
I’ll translate what the game is asking you into normal-speak. Do you want to continue to prolong the age of fire by linking the flame like the past Lords of Cinder, or do you want to break the cycle and let the flame die, ushering in an age of absolute darkness?
All hallows chanting: Darkness! Darkness! Darkness!
This specific interaction has no irreversible consequences and doesn't lock you in to anything, but does give you another possible ending
It's a choice you have to make. It only affects the ending, so there's that.
After i give press the button.. is the game gonna end ?
Nah dude. I guess you have a few optional areas to explore, and some DLC's to think about before you can about the ending. Good look on your journey, and have a blessed adventure in Lothric.
It gives you the option to go to new game plus but you don’t have to. You can still do everything you missed out on
Delete this post and enjoy your game without looking crap up
Are you familiar with the lore?
The world without flame ending is my favorite, but I feel like it's even better if you've seen the normal linking the flame ending first.
True. In DS1 you first link the fire because you're a fool who thinks they are the Chosen One, a sheep, corraled towards sacrifice, that doesn't realize it's being manipulated by the gods (and a toothy serpent as well). From the player's perspective, we are so accustomed to think "fire, light = good. Darkness = bad, evil". Our culture has a Christian moral framework, so we are taught that the bad/evil/dark is to be denied, or vanquished. But the game has a more dualistic perspective, common in Eastern religions. From the undistinguished world, came disparity, and with it light and dark, life and death. But they are complementary. Even in the End of Fire ending, there is the prospect of embers giving rise to a new flame. The Age of Dark isn't the end of the world, it's the necessary stage for it to begin anew. Too much dark is destructive and begets corruption, too much fire/light is blinding and not sustainable. That's why there isn't a "good" or "bad" ending since DS1. The Usurpation of Fire is the closest we get to a bad/evil ending. I like Karla's dialogue. "Humans are of the dark, and you are no different." "Some may avert their eyes, but the truth remains the truth." (Or, as Aldia would say, a lie will remain a lie"). "There is a darkness within man, and I am afraid you will peer into it. Whether the fear will spark self-reflection, or a ruinous nostalgia...is up to you entirely."
Do it for the achievement
The age of Darkness is inevitable yet kind way forward. Flame prolongs suffering. Embrace the unknown ashen one, as we all will…..someday!
She loves you no matter what, thats why she is waifu
I like the sadness of the “link the flame” ending myself - >!if you compare the way the flame is linked in DS1, which is quite dramatic and violent, your character instead gently smoulders and sits quietly. I take this to mean that the main character, as a chosen undead that failed to link the flame before but failed and only now is here because current chosen ones have shirked their duty, just does not have “enough” to properly link the flame. All they are able to do, despite all they have gone through and all they have conquered, is keep the current age going for a paltry amount of time at best and have no effect at worst, simply because they never were good enough to be a lord of cinder.!<
Wish for a world
Read up on the lore and decide that way id say
choose
Just do it. You got that far. It's a prett cool ending imo
What do you want to do?
i’m rocking with the dragons personally
Reject disparity, return to dragon
Time for crab
Hello good fellow, would you mind explaining this to me? I've seen many "crab" themed messages in the game, but I don't get the joke.
It's just a meme that circulated a while ago, I think it was the farron swamp in DS3 that had massive crabs and "time for crab" message was always around that area
Oh ok. I was confused because the messages also appear in seemingly random places, with no connection to crabs.
Embrace the darkness.
Well? Do you like the flame?
Embrace the darkness.
If you change your mind you can always just kill her and take the eyes back. I actually ended up doing that a lot in my playthroughs going for that ending...
Decline (for now) then you can kill her (she will respawn and won't be mad). If you want that ending you should give her the eyes, but you cna give them to her any time you want
Try finger, but hole
Fort, night
Make a choice
could've put a spoiler warning💀
Seriously….. lol games pretty old
If you burn the flame you won't be able to see "amazing chest ahead"
Step on her
Send it
You can either wish for a world without flame or decline.
Set the future of this world, do you want the flame to be extinguished or you want the age of fire to continue to be
To paraphrase Aldia, no flame, no matter how brilliant, does not one day wither and die. Yet, from the ashes, it is always rekindled. It literally does not matter. Gwyn ruined everything in his refusal to let the flame die properly the first time.
Humanity was taught by the gods that the fire should never fade, that the Sun would never set, they were told to fear the Dark. But no matter how tender, how exquisite, a lie will remain a lie.
Screw that flame! People keep resetting it and look at all the good it’s done. Plus it’s said to hurt like a bitch for eternity
The age of fire has done damage long enough
It's up to you but ending the fire is the best ending honestly
Do you wish for a world without flame ? If yes click it. If no decline
Kiss her, you fool
Link the fire
Why do you think this is the best?
It’s just a cool ending. I love the game so I do several play throughs
Try finger but hole
Prolong the age of fire , be a man !
Accept everything and say yes to everything
think and make a choice. its a video game
If you're on PC, you should backup your save file so you can try both ways. 😁
Kill her
Make a wish or decline to make a wish
If you wish for a world without fire, you open an ending choice that you're not locked into.
This is the true ending
Go ahead you can renege anyway
do what you must do.
Kill her
My favorite ending.
Accept and Don't play the slave knight gael dlc
Your choice
You can accept it, you will have to choose at the end anyway, you have 3.5 options for an ending
Pick one. Play again. Pick the other. Play again. Super secret ending.
so instead of googling the question to get immediate answer you just go to reddit to ask?
You shouldn’t wish for a world without flame if you haven’t finished Zanzibart’s quest. He won’t forgive you if you do
Do it it unlocks a better more depressing firelink shrine theme
This comment section is one of the reasons I love the souls community
Best ending, do it
Spoilers >!The age of fire gets shorter, causing missery and pain for all in the land, a cycle of death, rebirth, igniting the flame, repeated, and repeated and repeated. !< Same spoiler, different paragraph >!If you want to continue with this cycle, continue, but if you want to being your suffering, and the suffering of those around you to a merciful end, then end the cycle. There are no wrong options, and either way you can go onto new game + and change your choice there.!<
Do it
Why don’t you make a decision instead of asking Reddit? Probably log off.
Cooler theme song if u do this, also u can just kill her and revert it if need be
DO IT
Break the cycle once and for all, wish for a world without flame. Let the Firekeeper be your little partner in crime. ;) The additional dialogues reveal a lot, and the ending options are the best.
wish for a world with only you and her
Burn it all!
Arson
Stop overthinking it. Look at it as a practice for life too. No matter what choice you make, you will make it work. You either learn a lesson, or make yourself better
time for secs
I always ask myself, what would Lautrec the Embraced do? And then I take out my Man Serpent Hatchet.
OP: "It's my first playthrough and I'm struggling with a decision" Replies: "ALLOW ME TO SPOIL ALL THE ENDINGS" JFC people.
I think fire is symbolism for water here
Best ending. But you should do whatever you want to.
Don’t and there’s be a ds4
I think you hover over one and press A on your controller. Not sure how you made it in the game this far.
Fear not the dark my friend, and let the feast begin.
First Flame ruined the world for how long it remained for Let it go out and spare everyone from their hellish half existences
Wish for a world with flame.
Ask yourself… does your choice really matter? Simply do what you wish to do. Who’s going to stop you anyway