Dark Souls 2 Dissected #6 - Multiplayer Time Limits

In this episode of Dark Souls II Dissected, we're doing a deep dive into the hidden multiplayer timer system. Unlike other Souls games, you only have a limited amount of time when you're a guest in a host's world, but the exact numbers involved have never been closely examined before.
The shorter duration of time allowed by the Small White Sign Soapstone is explored and considered as a feature that would've been nice to have in Elden Ring as well.
/ illusorywall
0:00 Introduction
0:46 Co-op Time Limits & Overview
4:28 Co-op Time Modifiers
7:07 Review of Enemy Values
14:20 Area Modifiers & Map Speculation
17:59 Boss Fights
19:02 PvP Time Limits
24:52 Inconsistent Timer Rate?
26:00 Closing Words
In the video I forgot to credit Meowmaritus for creating the area list seen in the video:
gist.github.com/Meowmaritus/8...
Doc with all enemy co-op timer subtraction values:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
Dark Souls 2 Design Works interview translated by Peter Barnard:
www.barnardtranslations.com/p...
OnlyAfro - Silver Knight Shenanigans:
• Silver Knight Shenanigans
In addition to participating in a bunch of multiplayer for this video, FenoTheFox also provided some footage from his perspective:
/ fenothefox

[@lukeyui]

Something you might find quite interesting is that, for mirror knight summons. When you place a red sign in and around that boss room it doesn't actually place a red sign immediately. It has a 50% chance to place a Mirror Knight sign for 30 seconds, and then it returns to a true red summon sign. It might explain why some people have had so much difficulty getting summoned as a Mirror Knight squire, since there's no way of the player actually knowing whether they placed a Mirror Knight sign or not, and if they did at what point it reverted back to a normal red sign. Also in terms of the arena timer, there is a host countdown as well which can expire but it's just in a different memory address to the phantom timer.

[@illusorywall]

I was wondering about the specifics of that! I started to get pretty good at pairing with a specific friend using the RSS to get summoned in as a mirror squire, placing it roughly 5 seconds before the host enters the boss fight (good to know it's actually a 30 second window). You can potentially get summoned into the fight later on, but that involves a lot of waiting around so the host quitting out to return to the fog gate is better. Since if it does work at the start of the boss fight, you'll know almost immediately. But I wondered why it still felt like a crapshoot, the 50% chance thing makes perfect sense now. Weird about the host timer! I'm pretty sure some of our tests included the host getting a victory and the summon getting a stalemate even when we ran out the time naturally and didn't modify it. Maybe there was just enough of a desync for the summon to get their timer a little bit ahead? We did have a few where the host got a disconnect instead of a victory, perhaps that was their timer running out properly?

[@lukeyui]

@@illusorywall It is a bit strange, I have absolutely no idea why they did the 50% chance thing since it makes an obscure mechanic just seem broken unfortunately. I'm happy to send you the relevant param entries and information, as I always intended to add Mirror Knight invasion searches to the scope of wex dust for the Blue Acolyte mod. In terms of the timer, it's possible I was just reading the other players timer perhaps? I trust your testing more than my own so I apologise if I got that one wrong!

[@Glori4n]

Thank you for the amazing Elden Ring mod, the game has become unplayable to me and a million others without your work!

[@bobsmith93]

@@Glori4n which mod is it?

[@GamesDiddley]

Hi, I’ve been invading mirror knight in circumstances where I can see the host entering the boss and the animation of MK summoning a squire and I’m still able to invade that host even though I have had my sign down for a number of minutes.

[@9flashfreeze]

The main use i had for small soap stone was iron keep. I would leave my sign down as i played through that first stretch before smelter and a successful summon would respawn me back in my own world with all my flasks restored which was useful for dealing with the one thousand alonne knights

[@EggBastion]

You knows it!

[@joshuakim5240]

Back in the day, i put a small soap stone at the Hyde bonfire since all i had to do was kill 2 of the stone knights (easy with a hammer) for a successful session and a silky stone payout. Farmed a bunch of those stones and traded them to the crows for a ton of chunks and elemental stones early...then proceeded to use the cracked red orbs from the reward pool to be a menace.

[@thaias9654]

I just used it to regain humanity. Had 60 human effigies by the end of my first playthrough without buying any.

[@ExtremeMan10]

I did it more like warning if I get invaded. Anytime you put down soapstone (red or white), it will tell you "the summon sign has disappeared" and you had 5-10 seconds to prepare for invader.

[@adrianime5838]

When I used to play I literally laid the small soap stone all throughout the entire game for the same reason you stated. I was in a hundred peoples world for like 5 minutes at a time.

[@irradiatedMatt]

Here is a neat little detail that isn't exactly timer related, but has to do with the pvp arenas and I have never seen anybody else mention. Since the host of the arena is the first person who queues up to join a match, all belongings in the arena go to them after the fight takes place. This means that any items that are dropped on the ground appear back in the hosts world after the match is complete. Where this gets interesting is that some of you might know that items can't appear on the ground in arenas even though the game allows you to drop them, but instead they just get placed back in the hosts world near the arena statues. What this is mainly useful for is trading items from high soul memory to low soul memory since the arenas have no matchmaking, and in the case they actually do and it prioritizes near soul memories, not enough people play so you can consistently match with friends to pull this off.

[@illusorywall]

Woah, that's really cool! I knew about the persistence of dropped items for hosts, but didn't think through what that could mean for the arenas. I had no idea about that. Regarding matching high and low SM in the arenas, having testing that back in the day when the game was only a couple months old, vs kinda recently for the Soul Memory video, that seems to be getting a lot easier as the population dwindles. I couldn't match high and low in the Brotherhood of Blood arenas back in the day on PS3, but it was easy on PC in the softbanned server. I did, however, pretty easily manage to pair 0 SM and max SM in the Blue Sentinel arenas way back on PS3 though! So if anyone wanted to try it, I'd highly recommend that arena instead.

[@irradiatedMatt]

@@illusorywall Truth be told, we always did our testing/trading at Blue Sentinel arenas since it was always incredibly dead there, only annoyance with it requiring the token of fidelity to initiate the "fight." I just assumed it worked the same for Brotherhood of Blood arenas.

[@theycallmeJacko]

I don't know if pvp arenas are different between vanilla and sotfs, but I remember testing in Vanilla back in 2015, that the player with the most points in the covenant gets to choose the arena, not the first one to pray at a statue. If you try this out, you'll see that you'll never see someone with a lesser aura (you know, the different auras you get when you rank through the covenants) in an arena you did not pray at.

[@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat]

So sort of an easier way than matching by passwords in ds1 and getting them to then give that to your lower character

[@LORDOFDORKNESS42]

I used to have a lot of fun hiding from invaders with the Chameleon spell in DS2. A lot of invaders had no clue what was going on, and just ran around like headless chickens until the timer went out!

[@Youtube-Censorship-Police]

dito! and i liked to test their memory by slightly changing my location as soon as they walked past me and left the room😅

[@skendig214]

I would do the curl up gesture, which makes you scrunch up into a ball,and hide in the corner. People would run all over the place it was quite amusing.

[@ItsZorroDood]

The early Persuer also awards his full amount of souls, instead only a fraction when you would have killed him in his boss arena.

[@bobsmith93]

How the hell did I not notice this

[@jamierodel5420]

Wow that mention of Shrine of Amana initially being an early game location or tutorial explains SO much about the way it's laid out so linearly and the aesthetic matching so well. I wonder if the door led to Majula? I would slay a man to get the initial vision for Dark Souls 2, with the Gutter restored and the Shrine of Amana being early game (without the bullet hell, ideally).

[@illusorywall]

Yeah the very linear layout has me suspicious. I also thought about how they both have a hut with an NPC inside near the start. It could just be a coincidence, but given some of the vaguely-similar elements, that feels like something else that could've carried over to the real tutorial after heavy reinterpretation.

[@raven75257]

DS2 the way it was supposed to be would be so damn good. It was supposed to be what Elden Ring was supposed to be, a massive open world game. Except, you know, actually good

[@maxdrags3115]

​@raven75257 You are seriously dumb if you think that Elden Ring has a good open world. And Dark Souls 2 does not need to be truly open to be good, what stupid logic.

[@RelaxingNostalgia]

​@@raven75257average redditor & genshin player opinion:

[@matheusnicaretta]

Bless the ds2 dissected, my favorite of the dissected series

[@monsieurdorgat6864]

Aw hell ye! DS2 is still my overall favorite Souls game. There were a lot of very subtle design decisions that made its multiplayer so good compared to previous games, and a lot of them aren't really understood by the community. Most people who've played it just know that DS2 had a comparatively wholesome and fun community compared to the others. I'd say that a big part of that was because of how its multiplayer meshed so constantly and seamlessly with its normal game progression. You didn't have "team invader" and "team invaded" like you do in other games - everyone was just always involved and it kept the game a lot less toxic.

[@Lilybun]

@@monsieurdorgat6864 ds2 was the only souls game where i saw friendly hackers more than once

[@kostazarikos3383]

Naw it's the worst 😆

[@illusorywall]

Thanks, glad you've been enjoying it! While DS2 isn't my favorite Souls game it's still a fascinating one to talk/think about and I really enjoy making these videos.

[@monsieurdorgat6864]

@@Lilybun Remember invader honor? In DS2, most invaders legit bowed before fighting. Crazy!

[@LordRadai]

The Blue Sentinel timer question is interesting. Guess I can try looking into that now that I'm starting to have a bit of server networking functions reversed. EDIT: I can confirm you that every possible method of obtaining reskin weapons are safe and cannot cause a softban to happen.

[@eddyhg8098]

Holy shit sei italiano, tanta roba i tuoi tools

[@LordRadai]

@@eddyhg8098 sono stato tradito dall'accento vero?

[@apanst]

Me and my friend pondered on a concept like this during our Elden Ring playthrough and i totally forgot about the shade thing. they really should consider adding this. Dodging the arbitrarily decided zonewide lockout boss is just annoying as all hell

[@illusorywall]

Yeah it really would be nice to have in Elden Ring! The other half of the 'making explorative co-op more friendly' equation would be reworking how areas in the overworld are zoned, though that would probably be a lot more involved.

[@Noobie2k7]

@@illusorywall Personally since Elden Ring is open world i'd have all zoning for PvP and co-op removed completely. Have all co-op on a timer system and just have like 10 min and 1 hour options. There's no need to have zone lockout bosses at all in a game where backtracking and repeating areas is so common and even required at times. While they're at it i'd also allow Torrent to be used by everyone at all times, by hosts, phantoms and invaders in PvP and co-op. Well, so long as it's somewhere Torrent can be summoned already obviously. Though I'd also love for Elden Ring to have Diablo style co-op. Where you join into someone's world but it's still also your world, so you can still just go off and do your own thing completely independently from each other but you're just able to interact if you want too, just running into other actual players from time to time.

[@Thezanlynxer]

@ijustwannatalkaboutgamesModders have literally implemented exactly what they're talking about, lol. The seamless co-op mod lets everyone in the game go anywhere on the map, use Torrent, and the host can even die without making everyone respawn. Each player can also individually pick up items in the world and keep quest progress.

[@sonicfan2651]

@I Just Wanna Talk About Games That already exists and is made by modders. If you're gonna be an armchair general and proclaim that people are ignorant and entitled, at least do a Google search before you decide to shit out of your mouth on to a public forum

[@Tacticaviator7]

@I Just Wanna Talk About Games I don't know what you're on about dude... what the guy was talking about could be achievied by mods for sure, that wouldn't make it a new brand game. Then you also just blunt yourself anyways.

[@xevinsjaegernaut1414]

Its also worth noting that in DS2 you get the small soapstone a decent bit earlier than the proper sign so for that level these are to this day pretty popular.

[@illusorywall]

12:30 minor correction - I said the Pursuer here didn't get a unique variant, but that's not exactly right. The boss in FoFG is enemy ID 318010, the early encounter version is 318011. To put it more accurately, they copy/pasted the 0 second value from the main boss to the other, not utilizing the parameter for that variant correctly. Going by the area modifier system and how 120 seconds seems to be its "default" value for non-boss encounters, I'd expect him to be worth ~80 seconds there. But also, since it does take the place of a boss, it should arguably be much higher still.

[@TimeKitt]

I think that Pursuer counts as a boss win still, always sends me home.

[@illusorywall]

@@TimeKitt It shouldn't! I mean the main boss version will since bosses don't use timers at all and just force sessions to end, but the early encounter allows you to keep co-oping afterwards, and it gives full soul rewards instead of splitting them like the normal boss fight does. A few things "go wrong" with how its early encounter isn't treated like a proper boss fight.

[@Lilybun]

The best part about the consensual pvp timeout was that you knew you were kicking ass if you timed out of a fight club (granted you would often have to hug warmth and watch others fight even when you were winning)

[@illusorywall]

Ah, yes, I fondly remember this. From all of those fight clubs I definitely didn't suck in and totally kicked ass. (joking, but that would be a pretty badass thing to experience 🙂)

[@sunbleachedangel]

HONEY, WAKE UP, NEW ILLUSORY WALL VIDEO DROPPED!

[@fulltimeslackerii8229]

bot?

[@fulltimeslackerii8229]

bot?

[@sunbleachedangel]

@@fulltimeslackerii8229 no

[@T1Slam]

Chill out, he's not mrBeast. Or Jake Paul. Or Logan Paul.

[@Annathroy]

Its sad that you copy pasted so many other comments man

[@MikeHesk742]

17:35 oh man I love the "Forest of Anthropomorphic Beast-Men", it's almost as good as "Torture Place". Seriously can we get a mod that changes all the text to these extremely literal translations?

[@Hurtdeer]

i've... played this game countless times, finished the sunken city many times, followed through on reruns with a guide for things i've missed, and, somehow, this video, is the first time i've ever seen the Pagan Tree. what the heck

[@illusorywall]

Ooh, that's a tricky find! And it has weird mechanics involved too, almost like another Ant Queen type character. In Shulva, in that sort of upper-most area with all the moving platforms, you have to find a platform-mechanism that's hidden behind some poison-statues in the distance. You have to used ranged attacks to break the statues, the mechanism is well-hidden behind them.

[@Hurtdeer]

@@illusorywall explains a lot, since i've never played ranged and I suppose considering bows would ever be an exploration tool just somewhat eluded me. Still. I really like that there's a second weird inexplicable non-hostile creature out there with an extremely niche, but helpful, utlity to it. I wish that's something the games did more, particularly in Elden Ring. Coming across... things... in the world that are very much alive and monstrous, but not concerned with either communicating with or ending you, just gives the world that little extra depth

[@bluegem8582]

​@@Hurtdeer i will say, with it, whips are your friend (well, a specific move)

[@Veemo590]

i first saw it from ymfah video very neat little tree

[@TheCrewExpendable]

@@Veemo590 Almost feels like a feature included just to help facilitate crazy challenge runs!

[@primusofcatarina4910]

The timers make actually a lot of sense. It's balanced around the size of an area and the distance between bonfires. The small white soap stone is designed to help you with one part of an area, so they didn't want someone to get from the bonfire to the boss in one go. Areas with a short distance between bonfire and boss like Iron keep have enemies that drain a lot of time while those with a long walk like forest of fallen giants and shrine of Amana have a low multiplier. The custom time values were probably for places that lead back to a bonfire in order to drain the last of someone's time to avoid the awkward moments like a host waiting at a bonfire until the time runs out and he can sit down again. The chariot in the castle and the enemies afterwards drain a lot of time because they assumed that it's a prime location for a small soap stone but ends shortly after with a shortcut back to the last bonfire. The headless guy in the shaded woods is another enemy that appears right before a shortcut back to a bonfire.

[@Felicificity]

Another great thing about the Small White Soapstone was the miniature game loop of the Smooth and Silky Stones. Getting a tradeable item for use at the crow nest made it appealing for bite sized online sessions that helped you make progress on building your single-player file. Useful items, weird trinkets, and upgrade materials were all nice to stockpile. Whereas the normal sign had a loop more directly associated with the online, by rewarding you with Effigies. Those had a function for single-player too, but they were less useful for experienced players who didn’t die often.

[@SirAlienGuy]

It's a shame a lot of DS2's really interesting mechanics were never touched on again. They were really going somewhere with the bonfire ascetics and NG+ changes, and even if it sort of boiled down to extra enemies, I would've loved to see it expanded on in Elden Ring.

[@antont4974]

The 8-bit remix of Majula is super cool, brings a distinct feel to the series! And footage in general is super good

[@ArcRay20]

kind of wished Elden RIng did have post-boss summoning because its a fucking open world game. thats such a bizarre thing to limit.

[@lunnefisk4344]

The small soapstone is a godsend in Eleum Loyce! You need it to co-op after Aava is dead, and I always run through with a friend to get all of the Loyce Knights

[@illusorywall]

Right on! I didn't even think of that context but that's a good one.

[@TheLloydLightning]

Just respawn aava via ascetic. That's way more chill in my opinion

[@Ailun__]

17:35 killed me, that translation is great. The lion warriors do got a banging armor set tho 😳

[@alexanderhenriquez9354]

Haven't watched the video yet, but this thing about time limits seems especially relevant to me because I had a reaaaaally long invasion in Elden ring yesterday. I invaded a host and two phantoms in the windmill village section and because they were playing passively and I didn't mindlessly go into the middle of all of them, we had a really long battle of attrition exchanging pot shots that lasted a while, so much so that one of the phantoms left and the host and the other phantom went back to explore somewhere else. And I stayed for a while, jusr seeing the Dancing ladies until i decided to leave. It was super surreal that the game even allowed me to just stay in their world. I hear a lot of people struggle with 2 min disconnects but I definetely can say that thats not an intended timer because I spent like 30 minutes in there. Would be curious to see something like that come back. Maybe not in the game as a whole, but maybe specific area of short invasions for a lore reason?

[@randomdeliveryguy]

2 min disconnects are (were? idk if they fixed it) a bug that was covered by Amir on youtube. You can check it out.

[@MichaelSmith-py6mg]

Playing through this at launch I did notice this mechanic for the small soapstone, but always assumed it was based on the souls earned from kills in the hosts world instead of flat time values. Fascinating work as always

[@caiooa]

This video looks almost like a bestiary, showing closeup of a lot of different enemies. I loved it haha.

[@bleck182]

Would you consider doing a video on the map layout for Dark Souls 2 and possibly including information on what we know the original plan for Dark Souls 2 map layout was. 'How The Gutter Got Gutted' is one of my favourite videos and I'd love to know more about the original intent for this game. I understand this may be a hard video to make, but thank you anyway for making this kind of content!

[@illusorywall]

Oh, definitely. I do plan on returning to DS2 map stuff eventually!

[@sirexilon49]

Could you please do a video on Gravelording next? I'm dying to know what the hell is up with that.

[@TwigsGames]

I believe he has one or two, though i could be mistaken

[@illusorywall]

Early on I thought this was going to be very early in my Dark Souls Dissected series, but for whatever reason it's been getting pushed back repeatedly. HOWEVER, I swear it will happen soon. There might be another DS1 video about something else before it, but that's the next main/ "major" DS1 video for sure.

[@thewolfofthestars1847]

The Gravelording video is quickly becoming the illusory wall version of Limit Breaker's Miracle Build video lmao

[@Torque_Mk1]

@@illusorywall Where's the gravelording video young man?

[@ghoulbuster1]

@@illusorywall Please do! I'm very interested. Dark Soul has a lot of weird mechanics.

[@KestalDoern]

Seeing all those gestures from DS2 makes me want to pay for ER's DLC which contains just that - gestures. I really miss "No way". :( Anyway, DS2 is still such a beatiful game, even after playing ER. Watching this video made me realize what an absolutely fantastic lightning it has!

[@uwu_smeg]

wait, DLC gestures? really?

[@zeldrow1]

For the Dragon Sign, I think the reason that the timer is longer then a Red Soapstone sign is that the Dragon Eye Invader can still use Estus Flasks, so the fight was thought to be on a more 'even' ground; therefore the fights would take more time as both opponents can heal without having spells to aid in that regard.

[@Yin_yue_]

You and Zullie are absolute blessings to this community. I love the informational deep-dives you two provide on various topics, and I think the amount of love for this franchise it has to take to continue digging into things like this long after the games' mainstream lifetimes speaks for itself. Thank you for yet another cool video, and thank you to everyone who helps you with them. c:

[@illusorywall]

Thank you so much, glad you're enjoying these videos! I'm endlessly fascinated by the weird minutiae of these games mechanics and it's fun doing these sorts of deep dives.

[@Haroldkastlekid]

I'm a hardcore Blue Sentinel, and when I had ring slots, I'd use the blue seal for extra souls from PVP. If another invader comes, you only get credit for the first one and are sent off. However, since so few people use the blue seal, i was summoned immediately after.

[@renoma111]

We learned that acid actually has a use in pve,and Now that name-engraved ring increases phantom's timer. Wonder if one can find more with experimenting.

[@bigfatbucko012]

USE THIS AS A [CALM] DISCUSSION OF THE GOOD AND BAD OF DS2? I will deposit that DS2’s aesthetic is very unique. I have played it once in the past and rn in life I am going the series again with my gf as well as a couple other folks and they have alll told me that 2 is mysterious, whimsical. One said it even reminds them of Ocarina Of Time in some places. I mostly agree with this stuff. DS2 may have its hiccups but the absolute coolness usually makes up for me

[@vithorsa]

.

[@es_jacque]

As someone who's seen many edited playthroughs of DS2, but not played it, (thus missing out on seeing the whole roster of enemies) I was amazed with the creativity of the designs in this video. Specifically the Suspicious Shadows, Stone Soldiers, Grave Wardens, Torturers, Undead Jailers, Claw Hollows, Artificial Undead, and Mounted Overseers.

[@soarel325]

DS2’s aesthetic is unique precisely because of how indistinct and generic it is compared to the other games. A lot of the enemy designs and areas feel like they could be in any other fantasy game with nothing really distinctive about them the way that there is with the other Souls games. There’s none of that twisted dark fantasy feel present at all, you’d never see a boring design like DS2’s ogres in the other souls games

[@comeridewithmeAE]

I absolutely love DS2, there is something about it that just works for me, it really gives off the feeling that you are a stranger in Drangleic and that Drangleic is in its own separate world from DS1 and DS3, which felt more unified. I do need to say that I have only played scholar of the first sin, and that I would love to play vanilla if anyone knows how to get that version.

[@MuffinMous]

@@soarel325 you say this as if some of the enemy designs like the giants with a hole for a face aren't some of the most unique enemy designs in the entire series, I definitely agree there's more generic stuff but there's definitely a few great unique designs.

[@Gametendo360]

Love the tiny joke edits like when Feno fell vs. the dragon rider boss. It’s a good way to add humor without interrupting the pacing of the video

[@CobaltWaltz]

The Small White Soapstone is so wonderful. Pop into another world, help someone for a moment, get an appropriate reward. It doesn't take long enough to interrupt what you're doing, and it feels so nice.

[@LycorisOni]

I just want to thank you for talking about my favorite souls game and keeping it interesting for those to reminisce about who truly enjoyed this game.

[@shybandit521]

For the area modifiers it's interesting to think how the modifiers might also be related to how long From wants friends to be in that area. Maybe in Amana they wanted you to be able to rely on keeping your pals around for a while despite using low tier soap, while they wanted you to reach the limit in a reasonable time in the forest to teach you that the time limit exists?

[@chrismanuel9768]

Or more likely they forgot, because Amana was meant to be an early area so they set it with looser limits and then never changed it.

[@shybandit521]

@@chrismanuel9768 it probably wouldn't have been hard to change so they probably left it how it was intentionally

[@Felicificity]

I would love an ER mini-dissected, discussing its approach to boss-centered co-op. Most key to me is understanding what the “area boss” for the open world zones are. For instance, several times on our blind co-op playthrough, my co-op partner and I got locked out of summoning in some areas where bosses were still alive. We would kill Tibia, Tree Sentinel, Mad Pumpkin Head, etc but suddenly would be unable to summon anywhere in Limgrave. Even though Agheel was still alive. As a pair of players who really enjoyed exploring together and just being able to summon each other at will to host invaders or run around with no specific goal, it was deeply frustrating and forced us to avoid fighting most open world bosses until the very end of the game. Which in turn locked me out of a lot of cool weapons, armors, and NPC Questlines (like Millicent’s). Another example was Altus Plateau. The giant wall splits the Plateau into two zones. We found out we locked out the right half of the whole Plateau when we killed Tree Sentinel, and we were afraid of killing any of the bosses on the left half of the area (Lansseax, Godskin, etc) because we had no idea what would count as the area boss. I did some of my own testing but gave up because of how time consuming it was, since it required reloading cloud saves constantly to resurrect bosses. But it seems that some bosses don’t count as “area bosses”, including most nighttime exclusive bosses and other situational encounters. I assume the logic is that the boss needs to be ever-present so there’s always an accessible end goal for a co-op party to complete and end their session. However, there are exceptions like Agheel, who didn’t count as a boss that could “host” for Limgrave. I don’t know if maybe there’s another complication, like Agheel needs to have landed to count as an active boss, etc. But suffice it to say, forcing a boss to be alive to host online sessions, and not being clear/transparent as what counts as the “boss” of each open world area, led to a lot of sadness and frustration on a blind co-op run. We inadvertently locked ourselves out of hundred-mile swathes of coop-able area, and limited which places we could experience invasions in. Would love some more rigorous testing to figure this system out. I’m sure a list of Area Bosses on the Wiki would go a long way to future-proofing Elden Ring co-op for years to come.

[@illusorywall]

There's very much a reason I glossed over the "other half" of what hampers explorative co-op in Elden Ring (not even entertaining the idea of persistent co-op without any boundaries at this stage). It's not just having an item that doesn't need a boss alive, but the zoning of areas in the overworld is a whole can of worms for all of the reasons you just mentioned. I think nailing that all down would be a fun project for some point in the future!

[@Water-vk1vs]

Favorite thing about how you edit these videos is the hidden wall sound effect during transitions between sections, keep up the great work!

[@illusorywall]

Thanks so much!

[@davidburnett5049]

Small Soap was a great mechanic. Being able to play with your friend is cool. It's one of the main flaws of dark souls, that they limit it so much.

[@trap631]

you just keep surprising us! always learning something new everyday about souls games thanks for the content and all the work ytou make

[@Mattznick]

There's so much content on this channel for ds2 and i love it. It really is the one game in the series with lots of interesting mechanics

[@Bluecho4]

It is interesting to view the short timer, not as short-changing the host of summoned help, but rather as a courtesy to summoned players so they can "grind" faster. If the player wants to get their Humanity back quickly, they need only get summoned with the small soapstone and kill a bunch of tough enemies.

[@wahwahwah6690]

I have absolutely no clue why watching these videos is so pleasant, I always watch your vids as soon as I see them.

[@fortidogi8620]

I don't know why, but my first thought when watching the seconds list was 'you could use this as point buy for some kind of DS2 enemy-army wargame.'

[@meekaboo_]

I was JUST talking about this and the small soapstone with my friend today, what are the odds lmao! I will never tire of the seemingly endless oddities of DS2 :)

[@Grandmaster-Kush]

DS2 at its player peak was my favourite game in all of Froms lineup, DS1 and DS2 are special to me.

[@deldarel]

When I played DS2, I actually never used online. This implementation looks so fun though. I wish the small white soap stone would return in some way some time

[@28Pluto]

Thanks for all the continued hard work and elucidation!!

[@DaybreakerRein]

Always a good day when a new Illusory Wall video drops! Pretty interesting stuff about how Multiplayer works in DaS2. Never really gave it much thought considering I'd die or the host would die in most cases xD Also I'm glad you did that petition, and it would've been great to see From acknowledge it but hey, we tried and that is what is important!

[@formerlymax]

Yay! Another DS Vid! Happy new year everyone!!

[@gaigeriel]

I really really love the random obscure mechanics in the souls series and Ds2 is full of them. Invading the Looking Glass Knight is very cool

[@just.another.guy.2343]

right on time for my lunch break, what a treat; I hope you had a merry xmas, and a have a happy new year man, cant wait to see what you cover next

[@SynthLove]

Ds2 was me and my friends favorite coop game. We used the engraved ring all the time for the time increase. But have always had a lot of questions. Thank you !

[@MapMonkey96]

FINALLY YOU POST AGAIN, THANK YOU

[@ArchonZach]

A Dark Souls 2 Dissected video?! This the best late Christmas present I've ever gotten. I did love hiding from invaders in dark souls 2

[@illusorywall]

Merry belated Christmas!

[@zephyrpp]

Love me some DS2 Dissected! I don’t partake in online play, but all of these videos are great. Part of it is probably seeing fresh DS2 content, for the nostalgia.

[@billbene8280]

This was fantastic as always! Please tell Feno to upload more I miss the guy!

[@six1292]

New illusory wall video AND it's dark souls 2? Happy birthday to me! Because it is!

[@meekaboo_]

I swear I had heard about the multiplier on the timer before, I'm racking my brain trying to remember where I had heard it though. Though it definitely wasn't common knowledge in any circles I was a part of, a friend of mine mentioned they'd also heard of it for whatever that's worth. Maybe some old youtube comments or a forum post? Doesn't matter now, but it makes me a little sad with how DS2 seems to have a lot of its intricacies and quirks forgotten. Really makes me happy seeing these archival and knowledge-spreading vids, there's so much weird stuff and you've brought so much back that I would've even forgotten myself, lol.

[@illusorywall]

It's certainly possible! LordRadai already knew about it. And though I chalked that up to his extensive efforts of poking around into the game, he also thought it was something generally known. But I made an effort to find any kind of notes or discussion about it and only found that fextralife comment. Pretty weird stuff!

[@cksupreme]

I always thought of the small white soapstone as sort of signing on a mercenary that fights mainly for material reward as opposed for cooperation. It was a pretty great mechanic, and made playing through with friends actually worthwhile- though I guess this was removed in Elden Ring since now phantoms too could loot dead enemies.

[@brandonbaka1375]

Out of all your dissection videos. The Dark Souls 2 stuff is the Crème de la crème

[@hoggo3789]

Its refreshing to keep getting DS2 content here and there

[@aCeruleanStateMusic]

Thanks for the new video!

[@vibrations999]

Literally make my day whenever you upload and better yet it's my birthday

[@k8rTots_]

Absolutely adore learning about obscure mechanics in these games. Thanks for making my work day much less boring

[@illusorywall]

thank you! glad you enjoy it!

[@maskedsonja5722]

I don't do PvP/Coop but even I found this stuff fascinating about timers and related-thanks for posting! Always looking forward to your next video, and (when you get to it) the next Demon Souls comparison video. I don't have a PS5 so pretty much only way I;ll get to see this play out is through vids :) Keep up the fantastic work!

[@JoeBerg38]

This blew my mind, the mechanics on reducing time for coop when killing enemies beautifully explains how hard it is to gauge how long an NPC summon will accompany you.

[@demetter7936]

You know its gonna be a good day when illusory wall uploads.

[@MossOwnsYouYT]

Aha! One of the two Dissected vids between me and the next Demon's Souls vid! I love seeing DS2 getting attention and love. As a latecomer to most of these games I never had a chance to get into coop really until Dark Souls 3 so this is cool information I would never have known about. Some of their online features are Fromsoft's more interesting systems to me.

[@Tyler-hr1cs]

I know you mentioned it so casually but I’ve never heard of or seen the pagan tree before! I love watching your videos and finding out something new that wasn’t even the main point of the video haha 10:35

[@ds2enjoyer879]

Very very interesting! to be honest the effort and care that the developers put into this game amazes me to this days, cool video.

[@corncobjohnsonreal]

Thanks for uploading on this day

[@CollinMac96]

Welcome back, it’s been a while ☺️

[@tomg5516]

Love your videos! Please make more.

[@justzodiax3261]

Hell yes! I love seeing you upload. Please keep making Dissected videos of the whole souls-roster. Maybe even Bloodborne someday

[@ferriswill4929]

My initial reaction to the low value per enemy in Amana was that it’s due to the size/tediousness of the area. I figured they were accounting for more time spent out of combat; I love the evidence for the area chronology switch up though, new favorite KZbin channel :P

[@tatertot4224]

I'm so happy for a new Dark Souls 2 Dissected!!!

[@Capta1nAsh]

i love the small white stone. Getting a lot of early upgrade material and infusion stones was nice

[@aicantdance]

yay another illusory wall video 🎉❤

[@brianjones7837]

Love this channel

[@giorno4859]

500 hours in this game and i've never even noticed this existed lol

[@samuelbirdwell3167]

Great work

[@Echenster]

This channel is like the nerdier version of limit breakers and I love it. Illusionary wall must be the adopted son of Old Man

[@xieotv2386]

Was waiting for a vid on this

[@GameDevYal]

I'm intrigued by that Shrine of Amana basilisk idle animation. The big eyes on top of their heads have never been their real eyes, they have smaller eyes close to the mouth that are almost impossible to spot during normal gameplay and the big eyes are just a pattern to scare off predators or something. There's no benefit to moving them around since they CAN'T SEE ANYTHING WITH THEM. Did... did nobody tell the animators??

[@illusorywall]

Doubly weird since DS2 added the sand-crawling Basilisks that don't have the large false eyes. Really cool anatomical detail, recognizing that they have smaller eyes they actually see with, and that the big ones can't be inflated if they're crawling through the ground. Why the ones underwater seem to be "looking around" with the false eyes is definitely really weird.

[@eclipserepeater2466]

I'd assume that the reason they look like eyes is to intimidate predators, same as butterflies with eye patterns on their wings. So waving the fake eyes around wildly seems like it would help with that!

[@dumbcter]

There's a fun detail with basilisks' eyes in ER as well. You know how some enemies randomly get glowing eyes and drop extra runes on death? (It's 5 times the usual amount iirc) Should a basilisk get this effect, their real eyes would glow, not the fake ones.

[@ladyabaxa]

They could be a lure - movement that catches the eye and prompts a hunting response or just curiosity. Sitting in the water like that with only those fake eyes sticking out would be a good way to draw in birds.

[@Consumstra]

I never realized the name graved ring increased the length of summon

[@NieOrginalny]

I really like the small soapstone, when playing recently I'd often leave one of them out while doing a level, and basically get a free refill of healing/humanity/spells halfway through. Smooth and Silky stone is cool too, and it is a better reward then Token of Fidelity or Sunlight Medal if you're not interested in respective factions for those.

[@anaselfellah6243]

Dude, great content

[@dummjokke207]

Ds2 is my favorite souls game and I love learning more about it

[@NonisLuck]

Great video 👍

[@ZombieTeube]

Thank you for your videos ! I was waiting to go to sleep to watch it in bed, always such a high quality and very interesting, love watching them, can't wait to see more DS2 ^-^

[@illusorywall]

thanks, glad you enjoy them!

[@rundylaw6212]

19:47, this would crack me up so much in DS1. DS3 I remember laying down underwater or doing the Patches emote in a bush and the same thing happening. The best though is moving around a room chameleoned as a box like Solid Snake and sometimes people won't even realize their surroundings changing. I had so much fun evading invaders in my co-op runs with friends.

[@noravanguard3993]

Sweet a new dissected

[@benevolentworldexploder5395]

I really liked small sign soap stones. When the Agape Ring was added to the game I absolutely loved them for farming stones to heal with in my self imposed low sm playthroughs.

[@VomitmasteR]

I swear i read about the name engraved ring increasing the timer, somewhere, before, but i never knew about the enemy timer subtraction. Explains all the short sessions as a shade with my friends haha. Also thought the invasion timer was 30 mins for the longest time... anyways. Keep being you man, awesome video!

[@illusorywall]

It's entirely possible it was written about somewhere and I simply missed it. LordRadai was also a bit taken aback that he was seemingly one of the very few people to know about it. But I really did check all the wikis and read a bunch of forum discussions (mostly reddit and gamefaqs) and couldn't find anything besides that one fextralife comment. Weird stuff!

[@dominiksmiech8634]

thank you for this material, before that I didn't know why killing opponents reduces my time during co-op

[@piatansfair]

One thing that I've done over and over again with my friend in our DS2 playthroughs: we would summon each other alternately with the small white soapstone in difficult areas to replenish estus flasks and health... So little by little we were advancing and always with full health and estus! Also in areas where the regular stone is not allowed! We always loved this mechanic

[@tatertot4224]

God it is endlessly interesting learning what happened to ds2 in development

[@coldhardjayard5424]

22:20 about the blue covenant, I'm not sure if it works the same way for ds2, but in ds3, a blue is seemingly tied to a specific invader. There can be a full house of invaders and then if the blue kills the right one they go home instantly. I think it finds the invader from the moment the pvp session info gets loaded which is around the time the invasion message pops up before you actually go into the loading screen to go into their world. It might pick an invader at random