One-Stop Guide to Essential Mods

A guide to various mods that, in my opinion, should be in the game by default. They are the most important and essential to improving the game experience.

Introduction

Thinking about buying Dark Souls Remastered, but already own Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (probably from one of the many sales before it got delisted?) Then don't buy Remastered! While it has a few advantages over Prepare to Die, the original version of the game can be modded to have even more features.

The main advantage of Prepare to Die edition is that it preserves the original game's lighting and textures. The game was painstakingly designed by From Software to have certain atmospheric lighting in every part of the game, and the Remaster ignores this completely, resulting in overly bright areas - one may as well call it "Bright Souls".

In addition, the Remaster ruins the textures of the armor sets in the game by making them low resolution. The reflectiveness of metal all over the game is reduced to barely anything.

Interested in continuing to use Prepare to Die instead? Read on for more information about modding the game to work properly!

Remaster Pros and Cons

There are some things that the Remaster still unequivocally does better than PTDE, even including modding. You may still be interested in the Remaster if you want to have one of these by default.

• Jumping not broken - Playing at 60 fps in PTDE is practically essential, but it ruins jump distance. You will need to toggle 30 FPS with "Backspace" before making some tricky jumps. The Remaster retains the original jump distance at 60 FPS.
  
• Online works - Matchmaking is much more functional and there are people playing online in the Remaster. (As of September 2022, this is a moot point since the online mode has been shut down).
  
• Resizable UI - While you can change UI size in PTDE using DSFIX, this breaks boss health bars and status ailment timer bars.
  
• Catacombs Extra Bonfire - The game adds an extra warp bonfire in Catacombs. (However, it is now much more easy to get trapped there if you hit it before a certain point in the game).

These, however, are the cons to using the Remaster that may make one want to still play PTDE.

• Better graphics - The Remaster improves barely anything about the graphics, while downgrading lighting, textures, and most effects, with the exception of some forms of magic/some weapons. In some of the worst cases, the changes break the developer's intent, like making hidden items obvious.
  
• Summoning limit increased/Earlier Dried Finger - Yes, this is actually a CON despite being advertised as a pro. It allows for bigger gank squads for invaders, making invasion much tougher and breaking the developers' intent.
  
• Weapon level matchmaking - Despite being added with good intentions, it pretty much guarantees that at a low level you will be invaded by twinks with max level Pyromancy flames, because magic is unaffected by these limits. Which is even worse than having max level weapons??
  
• No extra save slots/durability meters/etc. - These are features added with mods that cannot be added to Remaster.

DSFix

Necessity: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Durante's DSFix deals with the game's lack of graphical options. Even though Dark Souls appears to support HD resolutions, the default rendering resolution is stuck at 1024x720 due to the rushed nature of the port. This means it will be stretched out on the majority of all players' screens. DSFix allows you to customize the rendering resolution to your screen size and also make it run at 60 FPS.

DSFix also allows modding via texture replacement, which is the basis of all the other mods.

It can be installed by going to Dark Souls > Properties > Local Files > Browse local files in the Steam library and dragging and dropping the files to the Data folder and editing dsfix.ini. The mods would be dragged and dropped into the subfolder "tex_override" in the "dsfix" folder.

Download:
http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/19/?

It is recommended to turn 60 FPS on due to the mod listed directly below, which fixes most glitches caused. I also recommend setting skip intro logos to 1, in order to skip the time consuming logos at the start.

Finally, I don't recommend changing the size of the UI, since it will break the boss health bars, but that's always an option if you don't mind it.

Dark Souls Overhaul

Necessity: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This mod adds many features from Dark Souls Remastered into the original Dark Souls, and more. This includes bug fixes and QOL features, such as a 60 FPS fix for sitting at bonfires and sliding down ladders. It even adds omni-directional rolling while locked, which can be turned off for the "true" experience, but I suggest leaving it on since it has no adverse impact on the game or enemy behavior, and is something that (IMO) Dark Souls Remastered should have added.

Download:
https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/1474

Dark Souls PvP Watchdog

Note: This has been removed since it doesn't protect from cheaters any more.

The only real way to prevent cheating now is to periodically backup your save file. To do it manually, copy the file in your Documents folder under NBGI\DarkSouls.

Dark Souls Connectivity Mod

Necessity: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This mod greatly increases your chances of successfully connecting in co-op or PvP. While still not as reliable as the Remaster, it will work a lot better than the default and allows you to directly connect to friends' nodes.

http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/1047/?

DSIC

Necessity: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (if you use keyboard+mouse)

The default mouse controls for Dark Souls are abysmal by default. While it is recommended to use a controller, if you absolutely must use a mouse, then you should download Dark Souls Input Customizer. This is also useful for anyone who wants to have more control of rebinding.

http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/1273/?

High-Res Fonts

Necessity: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This mod replaces the low-res original fonts with high resolution versions. Since there is a lot of reading in the game, this is a very handy mod.

http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/21/?

HD Player Messages and Signs

Necessity: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Soapstone signs are everywhere in the game, but their default texture is kind of ugly. However, note that this mod is not canon, and in particular, summon sign designs do not match their actual counterparts.

http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/389/?
http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/394/?

Revamped Stat Buff Icons

Necessity: ⭐⭐⭐

The normal buff icons in Dark Souls don't really match each other, and some are a bit garish. This mod replaces them with the icons from the stat screen, which are a little easier on the eyes and 100% lore friendly!

http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/8/?

Flora Overhaul

Necessity: ⭐⭐⭐

Fixes the game's blurry tree textures into something more high resolution.

http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/56/?

Improved Normal Arrows

Necessity: ⭐⭐⭐

Fixes the default, unrealistic arrows and makes them look realistic.

www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/197/

Andre's Cranial Ember

Necessity: ⭐⭐

This mod makes people's faces look less derpy. It's not incredibly necessary since the lack of lip sync makes them look unrealistic anyway, and most characters are helmeted/hooded, but if you like staying human a lot and showing your face you may want this.

http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/23/?

[badmojo46]

Um @eternal tilt maybe you missed it but this is the author's opinion. There is no blatant disinformation being spread because this is just an opinion piece. Calm down bro.

[eternal tilt]

The comparison is heavily biased and unreasonable, the only real reasons you would go with PTDE is
1. You prefer the graphics and it's so important to you that you will forego the improvements that DSR made (better performance, actually functional 60 fps, functional and alive multiplayer, etc.)
2. You are looking to play with specific mods, such as the randomizer or that one with halo guns. But a lot of the bigger ones have been ported to DSR (Age of Sunlight, Daughters of Ash and other overhauls)

I definitely don't judge playing PTDE, but I do judge spreading blatant disinformation and your heavily opinionated takes in the comparison that is supposed to be a helpful evaluation of the two editions.

[eternal tilt]

Good mod guide, but the other stuff written here is wild and made me laugh. Somehow, far superior performance of DSR is not listed as a pro, and the cons are absolutely made up. Graphical preference is up to personal opinion, but DSR has objectively "better" graphics because of newer techniques and technologies, but that shouldn't be neither a con or a pro at all.
Dried finger being available earlier being a con is insane too, you don't have to interact with the item, therefore if you don't want to use it, its location won't affect you at all. On the other hand, if you want to get into some agressive multiplayer, you now have the option to do so from the get-go. Having more options is a con?
Weapon LVL matchmaking being a con is interesting too, if PTDE doesn't have it at all, then you can get twinked on with anything. Restricting twinks is a con apparently.
The last point is just as absurd, those features aren't built-in for PTDE, so nothing changes when coming to DSR.

[Lt. Requis (Kodi)]

That worked, thanks!

[SkyDaddy]

kodi, i had the top left corner issue as well, turns out you are supposed to turn off in game AA. AA will be set by the file thats placed in data. so try that, turning off ingame aa. fixed my issue

[Lt. Requis (Kodi)]

I'm having an issue where my screen is only displaying in the top left corner, despite menus being full resolution. Is anyone aware of this, and are there any potential fixes?

[Mr. Kaizer]

The version of DSCM is not up-to-date. Wulf2k made a video in January 2024 about a fork [github.com] of his original mod. He also goes over how to install it.

[Elias Venutir]

Just put the majority of these mods in, and when getting to the first area with a lot of fog...god it's almost unbearable to look at. Not entirely sure what happened there...

[Danny Dark Soul]

Another reason to play the original PTDE is healing in invasions. In PTDE, invaders don't have Estus, and friendly phantoms are healed by the host using his own Estus Flask. The remaster just gave every phantom his own Estus, making invasions take longer.

Anyways, thanks for linking all the mods.

[Valde Gravis]

DSCM isn't working for me. My friend is online and can connect to others, but I don't have any luck. I tried verifying game caches twice but that didn't work. DSCM doesn't crash and I can see who's online. But for some reason it won't let me connect with them.

[Friend Name] [Steam-64 ID] [O : Y ]

[My Name] [Steam-64 ID] [O : [b] N [/b] ]

I checked the logs and it came up with this:
-----------------------------------------------
WRN: Status can not be acquired because connection has not been created
WRN: I can not get an input stream because a connection has not been created
------------------------------------------------
WRN: Can not accept because no connection has been created
------------------------------------------------

What am I doing wrong?