Introduction
Ah, Dark Souls 2. I love this game, but at the same time I remained confused by much of the data. I started researching information to understand how a character functions better, and in the process I decided to start writing a guide to help others understand all the data present across the sites I researched. That is what I hope to present here: a compendium of data that anyone can scroll through when looking to understand their character.
Before I begin, I also want to say that none of the data present here is my own. I shamelessly took it all to make this guide. You can check the bibliography for all websites/people I took from.
Another note is that I am missing some data. In every section at the bottom, I have a list of things that I still need data for. Any help would be appreciated.
Your Character: Rolling, Agility, and Item Use Speed
Alright, here we go. There’s a lot to cover, and while character mechanics aren’t the most confusing, they do overlap a lot, so I may explain things a little out of order. Let’s start with Rolling, Agility, and Item Use Speed, because they all overlap the most.
— Rolling —
There are three roll types for your character, but there is something you need to know first. Roll speed, weight thresholds/roll distance, and invincibility frames are all overlapping mechanics. I will try to be concise, but bear with me here:
First up, roll speed. All rolls, as long as they are equal to or under 70% weight, take exactly 25 frames, or a little under half a second at 60 Frames Per Second.
Second to the bat, Weight Thresholds and roll distance. Weight threshold determines both what roll animation (type) you get, and the distance you go. The three roll animations are as follows:
Fast Rolling – Under 70% weight. 25 frames to complete.
Fat Rolling – Between 70% and 120% weight. Equipping above 100% weight means no sprinting, and you can barely walk.
(As a quick sidenote, I was unable to find concise data that stated whether or not rolling above 70% lowered invincibility frames at all, or how many frames it takes to complete. I may come back and test it later.)
Not Rolling, I’m Too Heavy – Above 120% weight
Roll distance is directly correlated to different weight thresholds.
Below 10%: Full distance.
At 10%: 95% distance.
At 30%: 90% distance.
At 50%: 80% distance.
At 70%: 65% distance.
At 120%: 60% distance.
For a visual comparison, I direct you here:
If the embed doesn’t work for you:
https://youtu.be/FP-FPz53t_0
Now this all seems very interesting, but what about invincibility frames? For this, we need to talk about Agility.
— Agility —
What is Agility? It’s actually pretty simple: it directly affects invincibility frames (I-frames) in rolls and item use speed. To what degree?
For rolling, its complicated. This data only covers the fast roll, as I wasn’t able to find data on the fat roll.
At 85 Agility: 5 I-frames
At 86: 8 I-frames
At 88: 9 I-frames
At 92: 10 I-frames
At 96: 11 I-frames
At 99: 12 I-frames
At 105: 13 I-frames
At 111: 14 I-frames
At 114: 15 I-frames
At 116: 16 I-frames
Backsteps are also affected:
At 85 Agility: 3 I-frames
At 87: 5 I-frames
At 91: 6 I-frames
At 100: 7 I-frames
At 108: 8 I-frames
At 113: 9 I-frames
In another sour twist, I don’t know the overall frames of a backstep, so this data is kinda useless without that.
This means that getting a high agility is pretty important. For reference, at 99 agility, half your roll is invincible. At 116, almost two-thirds.
You can obtain more agility by leveling ADP, or Adaptability. Attunement also grant agility, but at 1/3 the rate of ADP. This is probably to help spellcasters as spells in this game have very high intelligence/faith requirements compared to DS1/DS3.
Also: ROLL DISTANCE DOES NOT AFFECT I-FRAMES. Not even slightly. Just stay below 70% weight and you are golden.
For item use speed, agility has 3 ranks.
At 90 and below, drinking an Estus takes 68 frames, or about 2.27 second.
At 95, it takes 63 frames, or 2.1 seconds.
Lastly, at 100+ agility, it takes 58 frames, or 1.93 seconds.
The only items that have an increased use speed are:
Estus
All lifegems
Divine Blessings
What does this really mean? About a third of a second. That may not sound like much of a difference, but…
— Drinking Estus —
While in the animation for drinking an Estus, you take double damage! This means that that third of a second may be the difference between half your remaining health and all your remaining health.
— Takeaways —
Agility is important, as it modifies how many I-frames you have. Personally, I recommend 100 agility, as that gives not only the fastest Estus use but also makes half your roll invincible.
Weight Thresholds are not so important in terms of dodging. It does affect stamina recovery speed, however, which I will discuss next.
— Stuff That Needs More Data —
Fat Rolling. I don’t know anything! Frame data especially.
Speed of a backstep. How many frames to complete? Is it modified by weight?
Item Use Speed. I only know the Estus use rate, but nothing else.
Your Character: Weight Load and Stamina
Phew, finally free of the frame data.
— Weight Thresholds and Stamina Recovery —
Well, here we are again. No more frame data though. Instead, let’s take a look at stamina recovery. For reference, base stamina recovery is at around ~52.6 stamina/second.
10. weight threshold: 3.5% slower stamina recovery
20%: 5.0% slower stamina recovery
30%: 10% slower recovery
40%: 17.5% slower recovery
50%: 30% slower recovery
60%: 40% slower recovery
70%: 55% slower recovery
80%: 65% slower recovery
90%: 80% slower recovery
100%: 100% slower recovery
110%: 125% slower recovery
120%: 150% slower recovery
An easier way to look at it:
10%: ~51.6 Stamina per second
20%: ~49.9 Stamina per second
30%: ~47.6 Stamina per second
40%: ~44.7 Stamina per second
50%: ~42.1 Stamina per second
60%: ~36.8 Stamina per second
70%: ~34.1 Stamina per second
80%: ~31.6 Stamina per second
90%: ~29.1 Stamina per second
100%: ~26.3 Stamina per second
110%: ~23.6 Stamina per second
120%: ~21.1 Stamina per second
This is painful.
Another Note: I don’t know if stamina rate increasing items affect the base rate (52) or the after-weight rate. My guess is the after-weight rate.
Well, I guess staying at a lower equip load means you regen stamina faster. It seems to drain the fastest in the beginning, although there is a significant leap at 60%.
— Weight and Walking/Sprinting —
You are only affected when you are at over 100% burden. I am unsure exactly how much slower, but there appear to be two thresholds:
Between 100% and 120% weight loads you walk and sprint slower.
And at over 120% weight load you cannot roll or sprint, and you can barely walk.
— Negative Stamina —
Yes, you can have below 0 stamina. How do I get it? Simple. Swing a weapon or cast a spell (“spell” as in any sorcery, miracle, hex, or pyromancy) that would take more than the remaining stamina to swing/use normally.
When you do this, damage is reduced for that swing/use. By how much? The exact amount is unknown, but there are two thresholds: -5 stamina and -15 stamina.
If I swing a weapon that takes 20 stamina at 15, it would deal less damage as it is at -5 stamina.
If I swing that same weapon at 5 stamina, it would deal even less damage as it is at -15 stamina.
This negative damage penalty is applied to both weapons attacks and spells, but not consumables as consumables do not cost stamina.
I could not find the data, but I don’t think it affects buffing or healing spells, only damaging spells.
— Consumables —
Fun fact: you continue recovering stamina at your normal rate while using consumables. This includes anything and everything, from throwing knives to Estus to lifegems to even buff items.
— Stuff that Needs More Data —
I need to know if stamina rate increasing items affect the base rate of 52.6/second or the after-weight rate. I am unsure if this even matters mathematically but I refuse to check. On principle.
Negative Stamina. I need both the damage reduction penalty, to know whether it affects buffs/healing spells.
Your Character: Level-Up Stats and What They Affect
I’ve already come this far, may as well be thorough.
I will cover each stat and what it directly increases (that being the main use of the stat), and in a different section I will go into derived stats and what those in turn affect.
I will also put the thresholds and caps for stat gains. The soft cap is where the best gains end, and the hard cap where the second best end.
— Level-Up Increases —
Whenever you put a point in a stat, up until 20 in that stat you gain 2 health per invested point. From 20 to 50 in a stat, you gain only 1 health per point.
From 50+ in a stat, you gain none.
The only stat excluded from this is Vigor, which raises your health by far more.
— Vigor —
Vigor directly increases your health. That is all.
The soft cap for vigor is at 20 points, and the hard cap at 50.
From 0-20, you gain 30 health per point.
From 21-50, you gain 20 health per point.
From 50+, you gain 5 health per point.
All characters have 500 base health, plus vigor and level-ups.
— Endurance —
Endurance increases stamina. If this stat is lower than your Adaptability stat, it will also affect poise to a small degree.
The soft cap for endurance is 20.
From 0-20, you gain 2 stamina per point.
From 20+, you gain 1 stamina per point.
All characters start with 80 stamina, plus endurance bonuses.
For poise:
From 0-30, you gain 0.3 poise per point.
From 31-50, you gain 0.2 per point.
From 50+, you gain 0.1 per point.
Note that poise only increases off of the lower of the two stats endurance and adaptability.
— Vitality —
Vitality mainly increases your maximum equipment load. It also slightly increases poison resistance and physical defense.
The soft cap for vitality is at 29. The hard cap is at 49.
From 0-29, you gain 1.5 equip load per point.
From 30-49, you gain 1.0 equip load per point.
From 50-70, you gain 0.5 equip load per point.
From 71+, you gain 0.5 equip load per 2 points.
All characters start with 38.5 equip load, plus vitality bonuses.
— Attunement —
Attunement has two main uses: Increasing Spell Slots and Maximum Casts. It also raises casting speed, curse resistance, and agility (at 1/3 the rate of adaptability until 110 points).
You gain a new spell slot (total) at each of these points:
At 10 points (1)
At 13 points (2)
At 16 points (3)
At 20 points (4)
At 25 points (5)
At 30 points (6)
At 40 points (7)
At 50 points (8)
At 60 points (9)
At 75 points (10)
For a total of 10 available spell slots at 75 points.
For Maximum Casts, it depends on how many casts the spell originally has, but typically the scaling will give 1.5-3 times the casts by 99, with the majority of gain at 40 attunement and above. The higher the initial cast, the less overall you will receive.
3. casts will become 40.
2. casts will become 30.
1. casts will become 30.
1. casts will become 15.
8 casts will become 15.
4 casts will become 8.
3 casts will become 6.
2 casts will become 5.
1 cast will become 3.
5. is regarded as the soft cap for spell casts.
— Strength —
Strength increases both attack for strength-scaling weapons, and physical defense. It also allows you to meet certain stat requirements for equipment.
The exact scaling of strength depends on your weapon. A higher letter (E, D, C, B, A, S being the order) means that the damage will increase more for each point of strength. However, this is a generalization; scaling will be covered in another section.
Strength also allows you to powerstance weapons, also known as dual-wielding. Powerstancing will be covered in another section.
Lastly, when two-handing a weapon, your strength is multiplied by 1.5 for both damage and meeting stat requirements.
The soft cap for strength seems to be 40 points.
— Dexterity —
Dexterity raises attack for dexterity-scaling weapons, and physical defense. It also increases poison bonuses and bleed bonuses.
Like strength, scaling depends on the letter grade of your weapon.
Lastly, Dexterity also affects powerstancing requirements.
The soft cap for dexterity seems to be 40 points.
— Adaptability —
Adaptability increases many derived stats, which will be discussed in the next section. Its main use is to raise agility and poise. It also raises your poison bonus, poison resistance, bleed resistance, petrify resistance, and curse resistance. If this stat is lower than your Endurance stat, it will raise poise.
For poise:
From 0-30, you gain 0.3 poise per point.
From 31-50, you gain 0.2 per point.
From 50+, you gain 0.1 per point.
Note that poise only increases off of the lower of the two stats endurance and adaptability.
— Intelligence —
Intelligence raises your magic, fire, and dark bonuses. It also raises your magic, fire, and dark defense. It also raises casting speed, and allows you to meet the stat requirements of certain spells; usually sorceries and hexes.
The soft cap for intelligence seems to be 40 points.
— Faith —
Faith raises your fire, lightning, dark, and bleed bonuses. It also raises your fire, lightning, dark, and bleed resistances. It also raises casting speed, and allows you to meet the stat requirements of certain spells; usually miracles and hexes.
The soft cap for faith seems to be 40 points.
Your Character: Derived Defense Stats
— Health —
At 0 stats, a character has 500 health.
Increasing Vigor and other stats will raise this.
— Stamina —
At 0 stats, a character has 80 stamina.
Increasing Endurance raises this.
— Equipment Load —
At 0 stats, a character has 38.5 equipment load.
Increasing Vitality raises this.
I’ve already discussed what weight thresholds do in the first two segments.
— Physical Defense —
Ah, here we go. Some useful data!
First off, this derived stat increases for every 4 points invested across these four stats: Endurance, Vitality, Strength, and Dexterity,
This stat has varying increases across levels, but has the most scaling between 84 and 160.
For every point that this stat has, physical damage is reduced by about 0.2. This includes all types of physical damage, and it does not matter whether the incoming damage is blunt, thrust, or slash.
That isn’t a percentage, by the way. The attack could deal 100 damage or 500 damage, and no matter which 1 point of physical defense would reduce it by 0.2 damage. Kinda pathetic, huh?
— Magic Defense —
For every point of magic defense, damage taken from magic-based attacks is reduced by 0.1% per point. Yay, percentages! This means that if you have 1000 magic defense, you are immune to magic. Wow, ain’t that something! However, you cannot actually reach 1000 magic defense; it is capped at 890. Oh well, 89% reduction will have to do. However…
An important point about magic defense is that your magic defense has 100, or 10% reduction, added to it. If you have a displayed defense of 890, you actually have 990. Meaning that 99% is the actual maximum that you can have. Much better!
Magic defense scales off of Intelligence, and can be added to with armor and spells.
It scales best until 20 intelligence, which would be 140 points or 14% reduction. You only gain 1 point from then onwards for each point of Intelligence.
— Elemental Defense Stats —
All forms of elemental defense work the same way as magic defense, both granting 0.1% reduction for each point in it, and adding 100, or 10% reduction. They also have the same maximum of 890 + 100, for a total of 990 or 99% reduction. The only difference is scaling.
— Fire Defense —
Fire defense scales off of total combined Intelligence and Faith. The soft cap is a combined total of 40 points which grants 140 points, whereafter it requires 2 stat points to raise fire defense by 1.
— Lightning Defense —
Lightning defense scale off of Faith. The soft cap is 20, which grants 140 points in lightning defense. Thereafter, you get 1 point of lightning defense per point of faith.
— Dark Defense —
Dark defense scales from the lower of Intelligence or Faith, meaning you have to raise both stats in order to raise this. At 20 points in the lower stat, you have 140 points of dark defense. Thereafter, you gain 1 point per point in the lower stat.
— Poison Resistance —
Poison resistance doesn’t actually reduce the amount of damage taken from poison, but rather is a barrier that the “poison damage” that a weapon does must overcome. Huh? you say. Here’s an example:
I have 400 poison resist. A weapon attack deals 150 points of poison damage. Therefore, two hits would deal 300 poison damage, and I would not be poisoned. But, a third hit would push it to 450, higher than 400, and so I would be poisoned.
It is worth noting that poison resistance is also toxic resistance in this game, and that poison deals a whopping 1,050-1,100 damage regardless of level across a mere 20 seconds, and toxic deals 1,485 across 20 seconds. So this stat is actually somewhat important. Or just carry a couple poison curing items.
Poison resistance scales with Vitality and Adaptability, though I am unsure of the exact amounts. With 99 in both stats, you have 200 resistance.
— Bleed Resistance —
Bleed resistance works the same as poison resist: a barrier which the opposing damage must overcome. Once it goes over, you will take 200 points of unresistable damage, and your max stamina will cap to 75% for 5 to 10 seconds. Less scary than poison in my opinion, although large amounts of bleed damage can overcome the barrier in few attacks, particularly on swift weapons. Than again, you can say the same about poison.
Bleed resistance scales with Faith and Adaptability, though I don’t know the exact amounts. With both stats at 99, you have 200 resistance.
— Curse Resistance —
Curse resistance works the same as the other resistances. Curse itself lowers your max health by 5%, equal to one death. It does nothing when you are reduced to half health. Cannot be dealt in PvP, and all co-op phantoms are immune regardless. Not scary at all, unlike in DS1.
Curse Resistance scales with Attunement and Adaptability, though I don’t know the exact amounts. At 99 in both stats, you have 200 resistance.
— Petrify Resistance —
Petrify resistance is the same as the other resistances. Petrify instantly kills you, and lowers max health by 20%, equal to 4 deaths. Pretty scary, but only a few enemies can actually petrify you, and it cannot be dealt in PvP.
Petrify Resistance scales with Adaptability and Vigor. I don’t know the max amount, but following the logic thus far at 99 in both stats you would have 200 resistance.
— Agility —
This stat increases rolling I-Frames and healing item use speed. See the first section for details.
— Poise —
I already covered poise scaling in the previous section, and that is added to whatever poise is granted by armor.
In DS2, all weapons deal a certain amount of poise damage when they connect. The assumption would be that if you have more poise than that damage, you would not stagger. That is kind of correct, but you need to have significantly more poise than the poise damage you would take. For example, to resist a 10 poise damage weapon you would need 36 poise in order to resist a single one-handed r1 attack. Here is the exact amounts:
3. poise: 1H R1 from 10 Poise Dmg Weapons
44. 1H R2 from 10 Poise Dmg Weapons
46. 1H R1 from 15 Poise Dmg Weapons
57. 1H R2 from 15 Poise Dmg Weapons
61. 1H R1 from 20 Poise Dmg Weapons
76. 1H R1 from 25 Poise Dmg Weapons; 1H R2 from 20 Poise Dmg Weapons
91. 1H R1 from 30 Poise Dmg Weapons
94. 1H R2 from 25 Poise Dmg Weapons
95. 2H R1 from 10 Poise Dmg Weapons
122. 2H R1 from 15 Poise Dmg Weapons
163. 2H R1 from 20 Poise Dmg Weapons
203. 2H R1 from 25 Poise Dmg Weapons
In addition, poise only regains at a rate of 0.56 per second. If I take a second hit of the same type that just barely didn’t break my poise, I would stagger. However, on a stagger you instantly regain all poise, and
If you manage to take a hit and not stagger, one of two things happen depending on your action.
If you are attacking, you continue to swing/cast without fail.
If you are not, you are put into a state where move speed is temporarily reduced. You can still perform any other action.
Certain weapons are also granted “hyper poise”, where while in an attack animation you take only half the usual amount of poise damage from enemy attacks. All Ultra Greatswords, Greataxes, and Great Hammers have hyper poise. Most halberds have hyper poise for most of their attacks. No other weapon types do.
Now, what about the stagger? Well, its pretty slight to be honest, around a quarter second. You can still dodge through most great weapon attacks as the follow ups tend to be slow due to the weapon type.
— Stuff that Needs More Data —
I need to know the scaling that poison resistance. bleed resistance, curse resistance, and petrify resistance get from their parent stats.
I need to know the exact length of stagger time when poise is broken.
Your Character: Armor and Casting Speed
You may have noticed that the derived defense stats directly reduce damage taken. Well, how does this function compared to armor? Isn’t armor supposed to lower damage taken too?
— Armor for Elemental Defense —
For elemental defense, it is directly added to the respective Defense stat, meaning that for every point granted by armor, you get 0.1% reduction. Wow, that’s actually super worthwhile. Unfortunate that physical defense doesn’t work that way, huh?
— Armor for Physical Defense —
Except guess what? It does! For every point of physical defense granted by armor, you get 0.2 damage of reduction! Not a percentage, but exactly 0.2 points!
At least, all evidence I found pointed me that way. That means for every 100 points of physical armor, you are granted 20 points of damage reduction. Considering that one of the best sets, Havel’s Set, is around 1000 points of physical defense, that means that you can only reduce damage by about 200 points per hit. However, you will always take at least 1 point of damage. So, against enemies that deal low amounts of damage, you will take very little overall. Against enemies that deal high amounts, you will take slightly less.
— So What Does it All Mean? —
Fashion Souls First!
Or stack elemental defense if you want good reduction. Just keep in mind most damage you will take will be physical damage, so its up to you.
Late game, large amount of physical defense matters much less due to taking higher damage from enemies, whereas large amounts of elemental defense will remain relevant due to the possibility of near-immunity.
You may want to wear heavier armor for the poise benefit, however.
— Casting Speed —
I didn’t find a good place to put it in derived attack stats, and it would have been confusing there so here it is.
Writing this was really confusing, so I am going to put it this way: The actual time it takes to cast a spell is “CT” or Casting Time, whereas the stat itself is “CS”, or Casting Speed.
Up until 115 casting speed:
Casting speed is increased by 2 for every 4 combined points in Faith and Intelligence.
Casting speed is increased by 2 for every 2 points in Attunement.
Between 115 and 126 casting speed:
Casting speed is increased by 1 for every 4 combined points in Faith and Intelligence.
Casting speed is increased by 1 for every 2 points in Attunement
126. casting speed requires:
Casting speed is increased by 1 for every 8 combined points in Faith and Intelligence
Casting speed is increased by 1 for every 4 points in Attunement
There doesn’t appear to be solid data on how casting speed actually affects CT. Theories range from a linear decrease, to a parabolic decrease, to being determined by the catalyst itself and then modified by casting speed, and even being determined by the spell cast.
However, it seems reasonable to say that 200 overall casting speed reduces the speed by about half, and 300 by about two-thirds.
— Stuff that Needs More Data —
I need to know exactly how much faster cast speed makes, well, a spell cast. Ironic.
Your Character: Scaling and Derived Attack Stats
Alright, gotten through the defense. Now what about offense?
— Weapon Scaling —
So, the brief of it is that each letter grade a weapon has in the associated stat, the more that the derived attack stat will add.
The letter grades from worst to best: E, D, C, B, A, S
However, the letter grades ARE ONLY A GUIDELINE. Two different weapons with A scaling will add different bonus damage! The reason for this is that every weapon in this game has different scaling. However, there is a benefit to this, as scaling become waaaaay simpler to explain when looking at the exact weapons.
Alright, so here’s how it works. I have a +0 dagger. It has 15% strength and 45% dexterity scaling.
Therefore, I take 15% of my Physical Attack: Strength stat and add it to the dagger’s physical attack.
I also take 45% of my Physical Attack: Dexterity and add it to the dagger’s physical attack.
That’s right: Scaling is determined by the weapon, and adds a percentage of your derived attack stat to the associated weapon.
If you are interested in knowing the exact percentages each weapon has (at +0), I direct you here.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16VTSt4YkfppS1YZuK8kYj0WS_Mo4vuNxnGHf2StmQic/edit#gid=2117584104
One piece of good news is that each letter grade has a minimum scaling, meaning that you are always granted at least that minimum in a weapon when you see the letter grade. However, it can be higher.
I will put these minimum scalings in the associated derived stat.
Also: When infusions are present, Magic, Lightning, Fire and Dark scaling use different tables, and the letter grade of any damage type can lower or raise, affecting the minimum bonus gotten.
— Attack Types —
Just like with defense, each attack stat soft caps at 140 points in the derived stat; however, unlike defense which tends to cap at 20 in a stat, attack stats tend to cap at 40.
— Physical Attack/Bonus: Strength —
This stat scales with strength, and reaches a soft cap at 40 points of it.
The minimum scaling is as follows:
S: at least 100% of physical attack: strength
A: at least 80%
B: at least 55%
C: at least 35%
D: at least 20%
E: at least 1%
— Physical Attack/Bonus: Dexterity —
This stat scales with dexterity, and reaches a soft cap at 40 points of it.
The minimum scaling is as follows:
S: at least 60% of physical attack: dexterity
A: at least 45%
B: at least 35%
C: at least 25%
D: at least 15%
E: at least 1%
— Magic, Dark, Lightning, and Fire Attack/Bonus —
These stats I am putting together due to their infusion scalings, which are easier to understand as the minimum scalings are the same for each of these.
Magic attack scales with intelligence, and reaches a soft cap at 40 points of it.
Lightning attack scales with faith, and reaches a soft cap at 40 points of it.
Dark attack scales with the lower of intelligence or faith, and reaches a soft cap at 30 points.
Fire attack scales with both intelligence and faith, and reaches a soft cap at 60 combined points.
If a catalyst or weapon has no infusion, and has base lightning, magic, or dark damage, the scaling is identical to physical attack: strength scaling.
S: at least 100% of the associated damage stat (magic, lightning, or dark)
A: at least 80%
B: at least 55%
C: at least 35%
D: at least 20%
E: at least 1%
If the catalyst or weapon is infused with the same type of element as the base element (e.g. a magic infusion on a magic damage staff), it uses this table:
S: at least 115%
A: at least 92%
B: at least 63.5%
C: at least 40.5%
D: at least 15%
E: at least 1%
If the catalyst or weapon is infused with a different type of element as the base element (e.g. a dark infusion on a magic damage staff), it uses this table:
S: at least 85%
A: at least 68%
B: at least 46.5%
C: at least 25%
D: at least 10%
E: at least 1%
— Poison Attack/Bonus —
I already explained somewhat how poison buildup works, but I will explain again here. When you hit something with poison damage, it does not deal poison damage, but rather adds to a counter. When that counter overcomes the opponent’s poison defense, they are affected by the poison debuff, which deals a static 1,100 damage across 20 seconds.
Example: I am hit with 150 poison damage. I have 400 defense. I am not poisoned, but…
I am hit twice more, for a total of 450 poison damage. This overcomes my defense and I am poisoned.
Poison attack scales at a rate of 3 per point of Dexterity, and Adaptability at a rate of 1 per point. At 140 combined points, the soft cap is reached.
There is a poison scaling, but unfortunately I do not know the minimums.
— Bleed Attack/Bonus —
Like poison, this stat affects buildup and does not deal direct damage. When the opponent’s barrier is overcome, 200 points of unresistable damage are dealt and max stamina is capped at 75% for 5-10 seconds.
Bleed attack scales at a rate of 3 per point of Dexterity, and Faith at a rate of 1 per point. At 140 combined points, the soft cap is reached.
There is also bleed scaling, but I also don’t know the minimums.
— Stuff that Needs More Data —
I need to know the scaling for poison and bleed attack.
Your Character: Misc. Mechanics
Just some loose data.
— Sin —
Everytime you kill an NPC, you gain 1 point of sin.
Whenever you invade and kill a host, you gain 1 point of sin.
If you reach 10 points of sin, the Blue Sentinels faction can invade you as Arbiter spirits, and you get the “Sinner” level in the Player Info section.
If you can reach a lofty 100 points of sin, you get the “Wretch” title. In addition, you can now hollow all the way to 5% of health instead of being capped at 50%. Lowering your health more does not increase the damage of weapons that scale with hollowing. Furthermore, once you reach this level, you have it permanently, and no action can remove it. Lucky!
— Soul Memory —
Fun Fact: this game does not allow invasions to scale with level. Instead, they scale with soul memory.
Soul memory is how many souls you have earned across your playthrough. Souls come from any enemy killed, so normal progression, boss kills, and farming all affect this.
That sounds terrible, but I believe the intention was to reduce the “dark bead” problem DS1 had by making it more difficult to enter high soul memory character worlds, and therefore a character would have to be intentionally kept at a low level throughout progression. If you aren’t familiar with DS1 invasion mechanics, there were tiers of invasion built around level, but anyone from a lower tier could enter a similarly leveled tier. Therefore, a low level character could ignore leveling and acquire overpowered gear (dark bead being the most famous) for their level and invade other low level characters, essentially ganking newbies.
Soul memory keeps the same tier structure, but changes it to work off of total souls earned. This would mean that staying at a low level for PvP would be a bad idea, as you would be underpowered in stats compared to those that you invade.
Whether you agree with this design decision is up to you.
— Powerstancing —
Many weapons in this game can be powerstanced, or dual-wielded. The exact weapons that can be dual-wielded together are quite complicated, but you can find a list here:
https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Power+Stance
You can almost always powerstance while wielding two of the exact same weapon provided you meet the requirements to.
In order to powerstance, you need to have 1.5 times the dexterity and strength requirements to one-hand each weapon.
Example: I want to dual wield 2 Grand Lances. Each Grand Lance has a requirement of 22 strength and 18 dexterity. In order to dual wield them, I would need:
1.5*22 = 33 strength; and
1.5*18 = 27 dexterity.
— Luck/Item Discovery —
Luck is a hidden stat in this game, and affects enemy drop rates.
Despite that seeming fairly straightforward, it really isn’t. You see, whenever you kill an enemy a random number is generated between 0 and 10,000. All items have the same drop rate, just because. If the random number generated is higher than your item discovery, you get nothing. Each enemy has a different base chance to drop one of their possible items.
Every item takes up a “slice” of the total equal to his formula:
(enemy base chance for an item + added item discovery from items) * number of drops
That part in parentheses is the “slice” that each item gets. That would mean if I had 50 item discovery and the enemy has 150 base chance for an item for a total of 200, and there were 10 drops:
Item 1 has 0-200
Item 2 has 200-400
Item 3 has 400-600
… etc.
And the total would be 2000.
So, item discovery directly increases the total slice that each item has of the total 10,000 possible integers. If the random number rolled is within that item range, you get that item.
Example: Using the same enemy and item discovery above, I rolled 398. Therefore, I get Item 2 as it is within that range.
Here’s a good quote from Fextralife about luck:
“Actually, this is controlled by a demon within the game’s code; said demon will read your mind when you are about to farm (getting unexpected item drops don’t count since you are not interested or thinking about it) and it will erase a desired item from the drop list.”
– Anonymous
Conclusions on Data
— Defense —
Defense is affected by the associated parent stats. For magic and elemental defense, every point in the derived defense stat reduces damage taken of that type by 0.1%. All armor that grants magic or elemental defense adds their bonus directly to the derived stat, granting 0.1% of reduction per point. Furthermore, all magic and elemental defense cannot be raised above 890 + 100. All characters have 100 “hidden” defense added to all visible magic and elemental defense.
This means that any character can reach a maximum of 99% reduction in magic and elemental defense.
Example: An enemy shoots a soul arrow that deals 300 magic damage. I have 500 magic defense. 500*0.1% = 50%. I take 300*0.5 = 150 damage.
Physical defense works exactly the same way, and so does the armor. The only difference is that it provides flat defense, reducing damage by exactly 0.2 damage per point in the associated derived defense stat. There is no cap for physical defense, but you cannot take less than 1 damage from a attack.
Example: I am hit by a greatsword that deals 300 slash damage. I have 500 physical defense. 500*0.2 = 100. I take 300 – 100 = 200 damage.
All magic and elemental defense soft cap at 20 in the associated parent stats, which you can find in the Derived Defense Stats section. At 20 points, you have 140 points in the associated defense stat, or 14% of damage reduction.
Physical defense scales off of 4 stats, and has wildly changing scaling. It is hard to say exactly what a soft cap is as a result, but you lose all scaling for a short while upon reaching a combined 200 points across those 4 stats, so I will say it is there. A combined 200 points in the 4 parent stats will provide 160 points of physical defense, or 32 points of reduction.
— Offense —
All damage dealt by a weapon is determined by two things: the scaling of the weapon, and the derived attack stat that affects it. Scaling is a percentage of your derived attack stat.
Example: I have 100 magic attack. I am holding a catalyst that has 50% magic scaling. I add 100*0.5 = 50 magic damage to the weapon.
This sounds simple in theory, but every weapon in the game has different scaling which is not shown in-game. Instead, you are shown a letter grade. Typically, the better the letter grade (ranging from E to S), the more damage you will deal with that weapon. However, because every weapon has different scaling, even if 2 weapons have the same letter grade, they can do different damage. Therefore, there is no easy way to tell what the in-game scaling is, and only generalizations can be used.
— In Conclusion —
Thank you for reading this guide. I hope that by the end of it, you understand a little more about how your character functions, even if some of the data is incomplete. Please feel free to drop any additional data in the comments, and I will try to add it later.
Bibliography and Credit
All credit for agility, roll distance, and weight thresholds data goes to the fine folks who edited these pages:
http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/rolling
https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Equipment+Load#EquipLoadEffects
https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Agility
(And by extension the guy who wrote most of what got put on them):
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/25lnny/agility_and_iframe_correlation_data/
For Stamina Regen:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/24igwy/stamina_recovery_and_you/
http://acuteanthrax.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-big-bad-guide-to-stamina-recovery.html
For Negative Stamina:
http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/stamina
For Stats Definitions and Caps:
https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Stats
For Derived Defense Stats:
http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/stats
For Scaling and Derived Attack Stats:
http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/scaling
For Sin:
http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/sin
For Item Discovery:
https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Item+Discovery
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