Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash is Dark Souls, re-imagined and massively expanded. It's my vision of what Dark Souls might have been if FromSoftware had been given an additional six months to develop content for the game.
Put another way: this is an enormous fan-made overhaul of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on PC. And I do mean enormous. (It'll be released for Dark Souls: Remastered later in 2019.)
UPDATE: The original version had a small debug option inadvertently left on in one area of the game. It won't break your experience, but if you downloaded the installer before 10:30am ET (the time of this edit), please download and install it again (v1.01).
Get it here: https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls/mods/1524
Experience a new adventure in Lordran. Your journey will be familiar in some ways, and very unfamiliar in others. Expect to encounter:
- New game progression
- Forget what you know about exploring Lordran. New world-changing events, key items, and unexpected pathways await you.
- New bosses and enemies
- Triumph in new boss battles, most of which are designed to promote novel gameplay rather than sheer increased difficulty. Encounter new enemies on your journey – including enemies restored from cut content – and watch many old bosses and enemies behave in new ways.
- New NPCs and storylines
- Meet new characters with brand new questlines, which will intersect in numerous unpredictable ways as your journey continues. Even the stories of familiar characters may take unexpected turns.
- New weapons, items, and mechanics
- Discover new weapons with brand new abilities, many of which will require keen insights and careful consideration to master. Most existing equipment will not be exactly the way you remember.
- Expanded lore
- Learn more about Lordran's past from new item descriptions and gameplay events. (All new content is written to build upon the lore of the original game, rather than conflict with it.)
- New secrets
- Don't expect to come anywhere close to unveiling all of the game's hidden content in one or two play-throughs.
Daughters of Ash has approximately twice as much content as the original game, much of which cannot be seen in a single play-through due to the complex interactions between storylines. It contains no new game assets (e.g. character models, map assets, dialogue recordings, visual effects) but accomplishes a great deal through modifying the game's event scripts, placement data, and entity logic. It was created with more than one thousand hours of work throughout 2017 and 2018 by one very masochistic programmer (hello!) with the wonderful tools and loving support of the Dark Souls modding community. See the screenshots for examples of sights you might encounter in the first ten minutes.
This is a monumentally large and complex mod. As such, it is likely to still contain some bugs – despite my hundreds of hours of play-testing – as players will inevitably get themselves into situations that I couldn't possibly foresee. You can submit these bugs to me through Nexus, or through the website (see below). I've set up a form on this website for you to easily communicate the nature and details of bugs. There are hopefully no bugs left that will break your game. It also contains no support for multiplayer (including co-op), and I strongly recommend that you play offline to avoid invasions. Being invaded by a player without the mod installed will lead to broken gameplay – and sadly, coding and testing the required network behavior for co-op on all of the new content (particularly bosses) wasn't possible for me. You're welcome to try co-op with someone who also has the mod installed, but things will likely not work out (and you should definitely play by yourself first). Aside from the Orange and White Sign Soapstones, all items have had their online functionality removed.
Download Daughters of Ash from the Nexus link above, double click it, and navigate to your copy of DARKSOULS.exe. This is usually found in Steam/steamapps/common/Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition/DATA. The installer will chastise you if you haven't already unpacked your game's files with the UnpackDarkSoulsForModding tool, which is very easy to use and essential for modding the game. My installer will also give you DSfix if you don't already have it, and will make backups of your existing pre-mod game files for you to easily restore. The mod is, as you've probably guessed, completely incompatible with almost any other Dark Souls mod (including randomizers), so please start with a fresh install of the game. And one final warning for the curious: inspecting the mod's files too closely will spoil some of the content, so play the game first.
Read more about the project at daughtersofash.com, where I'll intermittently post some behind-the-scenes stories and show off beautiful art made for the game by James Liswed. The website is unfinished, but you can submit bug reports there as well. Otherwise, you can reach me here or on Discord as 'Grimrukh'. Particular shout-outs to the Dark Souls modding community go to HotPocketRemix, Meowmaritus, Wulf2k, and loosepolygon, who all developed tools that were critical for my work.
I hope you enjoy it.
