If your idea of That Friday Feeling is less drinks after work, and more hours spent cursing at your monitor because the bonfire in Blighttown ain't where it's supposed to be, then, gosh, do I have a mod for you. FTRicher's Dark Souls—Prepare to Die Again relocates the base game's enemies, NPCs, bonfires, and more, adding new challenges to the game that's already notoriously challenging.
Inspired by Wulf2K's MSB-Edit-Tool and Meowmaritus' ParamVessel, Prepare to Die Again aims to recapture the excitement of that first trip/nerve-shattering descent into Lordran—where everything was new and unknown and scary. Going one step further than the likes of gumbenzoin's Enemy Placement mod, FTRicher's work in turn gives Miyazaki's nightmarescape the snow globe treatment, while staying lore-friendly along the way.
"This mod does not add enemies to zones where it would not make sense lore-wise," explains the mod's creator. "For example: No Darkwraiths in Anor Londo or Stone Knights in Undead Parish. I even tried to extend the lore as much as I could by adding or changing some NPCs in zones where I thought it would make sense."
Speaking to the latter, without spoiling too much, the mod lets you fight Iron Tarkus in Anor Londo instead of Sen's Fortress, for example. Online multiplayer should work as normal too, notes FTRicher, assuming your buddy also has the mod installed.
Full details of Prepare to Die Again's nips and tucks can be found over here, however the thought of non-warpable bonfire positions being juggled positively terrifies me. We really should update Jack Yarwood's mod-flavoured guide to making The Hard Game even harder.
Dark Souls—Prepare to Die v1.8.1 can be downloaded via Nexus Mods. Here's some footage of an older build, courtesy of YouTube person Betsujin:
The co-creator of Dark Souls' most ambitious mod resurfaces to inform me that Blighttown, source of my nightmares, was cobbled together with '10 bits of wood'
Streamer achieves git gud godhood by beating all mainline Souls games at level 1, back to back, without getting hit—then explodes into tears of relief
