12 Best Dark Souls 3 Mods You Can Try Today: Praise the Sun

When one thinks of Dark Souls III, it is most often as the idea of fun of the video gamer equivalent of a masochist.

Now, while the base game itself is an award-winning, multiple-hour adventure that sees you battling through the harsh environments and multiple twisted and violent antagonists to piece together a barely explained story (brilliantly explained in the game’s official wiki), we have a way that can make this years-old game as fresh as it was at launch.

Mods, yes. The support for this game since launch has been incredible, so let’s take a look at the best Dark Souls 3 mods you can use.

How To Start Modding Dark Souls 3

There are not a lot of steps involved in starting to mod your copy of Dark Souls III. So let’s get started.

First of all, you need to find the folder where you have your copy of the game stored.

Next, go on to Nexus Mods and find and download the DS3 Mod Engine, which will help you activate/deactivate and manage your mods from a simple console. 

After that, create a new folder inside the main folder where your game is stored, and name it ‘Mod’, or whatever will help you distinguish it from regular game folders. Copy the files called ‘dinput.dll’ and ‘modengine.ini’ files into the folder you created and paste them in there.

Well, then you get a mod of your choice. So let’s hit up that list, shall we?

Dark Souls 3 Mods List

1. Embrace the Darkness Reshade

What other way to begin a mod list than to look at one that raises the graphic level beyond the base game?

Embrace the Darkness is one of the best Dark Souls 3 graphic mods that one could ask for.

Avoiding bastardizing what makes the game unique, ETD aims to balance and enhance the atmosphere of the game while still maintaining the core charm of the entire experience. 

Additionally, unlike other graphic mods that just aim to send your hardware to the limit at the cost of a glorified texture refresh, ETD is incredible in its stability and performance, adding post-processing and depth of field effects at little cost. 

Be sure to check this one out at the earliest.

2. Incandescent Re-Shade 2.0

For the longest time, primarily before BloodBorne was a thing, Dark Souls was the benchmark for an eerie and foreboding atmosphere.

FromSoftware really wears their horror inspiration on their sleeve, and it shows with the low natural lighting and the consistent dark corridors that the game puts us in.

What IR 2.0 does for DS3 though, is that it elevates the lighting to previously unknown levels with just the right amount of tweaking.

If you feel that the natural atmosphere of the game just doesn’t do it for you anymore, Incandescent Re-Shade is the DS3 mod for you.

3. Hunter’s Combat Mod

Speaking of BloodBorne, one of the coolest aspects of the PS4 exclusive from FromSoftware was getting to play as a Hunter. 

The ability to dual-wield different types of weapons was one of the best things about that game, and the Hunter’s Combat Mod brings it right over to DS3 with flair and authenticity.

Among abilities such as the heavy, gory attacks and the firearm parry move, four classic weapons from BloodBorne make an appearance here, including the Threaded Cane, the Saw Cleaver, the Rakuyo, and Ludwig’s Holy Blade. 

More than that, it allows you the freedom to create an entire moveset that most enemies in the game will not be able to counter.

4. Wex Dust Mod

Christ, how long have we wanted a mod that doesn’t have us traveling halfway through a map just to get to a place so that we can invade another player’s mod? 

If you’re lost, there is a feature in DS3 that allowed players to invade other players’ instances when they traveled to (or were in) the same location that the player being invaded was in. 

This was a painful chore, and thankfully there’s a fix for it now.

And that is the Wex Dust Mod. What this amazing little fix does is allow you to invade other players regardless of what their location is. 

We can’t even begin to imagine the carnage you are going to cause to those that other Undead, armed with this information.

5. StraySouls

Oh, you just have to be a grade-A masochist for what we are about to tell you about. If there is one thing all FromSoftware games are famous for, it is having enemies twice or thrice the size of the player, on average. 

This is just one of the things that make the Souls genre so interesting.

But this, this takes it to a whole other level. StraySouls allows you to completely randomize the usually definitive locations of all enemies in the game, making it so that you might encounter multiple of the game’s strongest enemies all at once. 

There is an unfair challenge and simple torture, and then there is StraySouls. At your own risk, this one.

6. Cinders

Widely considered to be the best mod released for Dark Souls 3 as yet, Cinders takes the quality of all existing mods for the game and cranks the quality and delivery up to 11. 

Cinders is more than just a mod. It can be considered another version of Dark Souls III because it brings a host of changes to the base game.

This includes basic ones such as leveling up and item management at the bonfires themselves, do unlimited re-specs of their character, have a clearer idea of status effects and the like, and walk at the usual pace of the character even when inside swamps. 

7. Item Randomizer

This one is for the fans of the roguelike/rogue-lite genre, who appreciate and hunger for a new experience and love unpredictability. 

And this mod does exactly what it says on the label; randomizes your base items and auto-equips whatever it feels like giving you.

This provides for a greater challenge than carefully selecting a set of mods and items to help you along your journey. 

This one is a must-have if you really want that Risk of Rain style experience.

8. First Person Camera Mod

Exactly what it says on the box. The First-Person Camera mod for DS3 turns your classic third-person point of view into the first-person point of view. That’s pretty much all it does.

This is another one for the true punishment and challenge to hungry players out there, or else why would you voluntarily give up a superior field of view, weapon, and magic attack coordination that you have built up throughout your playthrough and more?

Also timing your dodges is an all-new kind of hellish experience. Have fun with this one.

9. Comfort mod

The Comfort mod for Dark Souls 3 is for people who are new to the franchise, and essentially, the genre. Dark Souls has a very intricate and detailed inventory and stat management system in which you need to keep track of all things in your possession at all times. It is, after all, one of the best RPGs of all time.

And if you are a novice at the game’s systems or think that all of that is too much work, then the Comfort mod is the perfect fit.

This offering by modder ss7877 provides a drastic change to two of the key early game items that the game gives you: The Life Ring and the Coveted Silver Serpent Ring. 

Armed with the updated stat points, buffs to HP, FP, the amount of souls you can acquire, your overall stamina, and health regeneration, this mod negates some of the frustration that the base game has.

This makes for an easier, more relaxed run-through of the game, where you can focus on piecing together the brilliant story.

10. Draw Distance Increased – Ultimate

Dark Souls 3 is a beautiful game in its own right, but sometimes one needs to take a step back and appreciate the amazing art design that the game has. 

Games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and The Witcher 3 provide this by way of a magnificent draw distance, which is sorely lacking in FromSoftware’s penultimate Souls title.

What this mod does is allow you to take in the great sights that the game has to offer.

Increasing the draw distance and the amount of detail at a said distance not only helps with the random texture pop-in when you zoom into the horizon but also helps you realize just how good the hauntingly beautiful lands of Lothric can look.

11. Color Clarity

Although advertised as just an option for a mod that we will discuss down below, we believe Color Clarity deserves a fair mention of itself in this list.

The art design and color palette of Dark Souls 3 is, shall we say, interesting. The muted color palette does make the world look a bit more daunting and lifeless, as is the intention, we feel that it also sacrifices the visual appeal that the environment design is just dying to get.

Fortunately for us, Color Clarity fixes the generally warmer, much washed-out tone of the game into a much more vibrant, realistic colorscape. 

The world now does not look like an ashy, hazy dream, but the popping colors make the visuals and animations shine all that much more. 

12. Vulgar Message Replacement Mods

Dark Souls can be soul-crushing, disheartening, and extremely demotivating all at the same time. Such is the challenge of the game that it built an entire genre around this style of game design.

And as such, there are very limited ways to have some classic, below-the-belt dark humor-laden fun in there. Well, the answer is a couple of mods, actually.

Both the Vulgar Bonfire Message Replacement Mod and the Vulgar Death Message Replacement do one thing, and it is absolutely fantastic. After all, who wouldn’t like your sad, pathetic “You Are Dead” failstate to instead be the singular, enigmatic “F**K”?

We know we would.

Will There Be a Dark Souls 4?

Well, not as long as the director of the game, Hidetaka Miyazaki is concerned. 

Dark Souls 3 canonically is the ending of that series of games, Miyazaki-san is a firm believer of moving on from superhit titles and franchises and keeping things fresh, so it will not come as a surprise if the studio does not in fact develop another title centered around the kingdom of Lothric.

That being said, FromSoftware has a history of continually churning out quality video games that are worth every penny spent on them, including Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and the much-hyped upcoming Elden Ring.

The magicians in Miyazaki-san’s team sure know how to make a game with a legacy that few franchises in history can match, and the shining beacon of hope that the Dark Souls franchise proves that AAA games can still have unmatched swagger, charm, polish, and challenge.

Few games still will allow this willful bastardization of what they spent years creating, and we probably should be thankful towards the people that can take it even after spending their money, blood, sweat, and tears to make it what it is today.

FYI