Dark Souls 3 Soul Farming: Tips and Top Locations from a Battle-Hardened Veteran - 33rd Square (2024)

After 800+ grueling yet glorious hours in Dark Souls 3 across 12 NG+ cycles, I‘ve mastered the intricacies of efficient soul farming.

Follow my proven tips in this comprehensive PvE soul farming guide, forged by a lore fanatic turned battle-hardened veteran through endless blood, sweat, and tears.

Whether just starting out or pursuing max character level 802, you‘ll discover how to systematically extract over 100,000 souls per hour. Now let‘s light those bonfires and get grinding!

Crunching The Numbers: Optimizing Your Soul Gathering Setup

Before revealing specific locations, first ensure your character is configured to accumulate souls at maximum efficiency:

Covetous Silver Serpent Ring (+3): This brilliant trinket boosts enemy soul absorption by 35% in NG+2 cycles, making it an auto-include for soul farming.

Crystal Sage‘s Rapier: Wield this wizardly weapon in your off-hand to gain an additional 50% soul boost from defeated foes.

Mendicant‘s Staff: Before landing the killing blow on enemies, quickly swap to this staff for yet another 20% increase to soul yield.

The Math:

• Each item individually provides:

  • CSR Ring: 35% boost
  • Rapier: 50% increase
  • Mendicant Staff: 20% gain

• So in total with full setup, your soul income gets amplified by 105%

While demanding some inventory toggling, properly gearing your character more than doubles incoming souls from hostile forces. Now let‘s examine prime locations to leverage this advantage.

Archdragon Peak: 110,000 Souls Every 5 Minutes

After unlocking this secret zone, repeatedly backstabbing the Man Serpent Summoner and his manifested cronies generates over 5,280 souls per kill.

Here‘s the game plan:

• Initiate from behind and riposte enemies the moment they spawn using a Chaos Dagger
• Exercise restraint between kills as the extended riposte animation leaves you vulnerable
• Clear out the surrounding man-serpents first; then focus efforts on the summoner

Now accounting for the 105% soul boost from equipment and assuming 5 seconds per kill…

• 5,280 base souls x 2.05 bonus = 10,824 souls per backstab
• That‘s ~660,000 souls per minute
• Or projection of 110,000 souls every 5 minutes

So by cheese-backstabbing ad infinitum at max soul gathering capacity–you‘ll bank over 10 million souls per hour with decent consistency.

A gravely dangerous yet rewarding soul grind!

Sewers Under Irithyll Castle: 850,000 Souls Per Hour

While more monotonous, the spider-filled sewers of Irithyll provide astronomical soul income through mass genocidetica and clever homeward bone usage.

Let‘s break it down:

• Each arachnid creature grants ~100 souls
• I average 100 kills every 4 minutes on an optimized run
• That calculates to 8,250 souls per 4 minute circuit

Now accounting for gear:

• 8,250 x 2.05 soul boost = 16,912 souls
• Projection: 850,000 souls per hour

So by repeatedly weed-whacking spiders in mechanical fashion, expect around 850k souls hourly.

The key nuance is exploiting Homeward Bones to minimize downtime between runs. So master the layout, equip decent poison resist gear, and start exterminating!

Lothric Castle Roof: Titanite Shards Galore

While extremely challenging, eliminating the trio of Winged Knights guarding Lothric Castle‘s rooftop provides a bounty of souls.

• Each beefy winged knight grants ~20,000 souls
• Total per 3 knight run amounts to 60,000 souls

Now here‘s a detailed table on discovery boosting items and how they affect rare Titanite Shard drop rates from the imposing sentinels:

||Drop Rate|Discovery |
|-|:-:|:-:|
|Covetous Gold Serpent Ring|2.5%|+50|
|Crystal Sage‘s Rapier| 2.5%|+50|
|Symbol of Avarice|2.5%|+100|
|Rusted Gold Coin|2.5%|+100|
|Sage‘s Rapier + Symbol|5%|+150|
|Full Discovery Setup |10%|+400|

So at max item discovery potential, you stand a 1 in 10 chance to collect Titanite Chunks or potentially Slabs from each knight.

That means slaying all three can yield the coveted Titanite Slab once every 30 minutes. And with enough Gold Rusted Coins in stock, your weapon ascends to +10 in no time.

A treacherous yet profitable grind for the patient!

Road of Sacrifices: Easy 4,000 Souls Per 2 Minutes

Finally, the Road of Sacrifices offers an excellent starting point to accumulate some early game souls and covenant items.

The key advantage is letting the Darkwraiths engage hostiles while you strategically sweep in from behind to claim soul rewards.

• Backstabbing frenzied axe hollows during Darkwraith fights yields ~2,000 souls
• Adds up to ~4,000 souls every 2 minutes

Moreover, certain enemies have a modest chance to drop Wolf‘s Blood Swordgrass. So not only efficient soul income, but smooth covenant progression!

Additionally, placing summon signs near the Abyss Watchers arena helps net extra souls while granting embers upon victory. Useful particularly when struggling against this formidable early game boss.

So there you have it–prime areas catered to different soul levels to carry you from High Wall of Lothric noob to max level lord! The path demands great skill and perseverance, but stay the course to become Elden Lord.

If you seek more Dark Souls 3 intel or jolly cooperation, add me on Steam @ArtoriasAbysswalker or join my Discord community.

May the flames guide thee Ashen One! \`[T] /

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