I recently heard it was a brutal experience and have been thinking of trying it as a challenge.
Here is a list of the changes that were made in one of the balancing updates: https://pastebin.com/HxMjdaBx
Some of the notable changes were:
- Upgrade scaling buffed 5-20%
- Overall increase in souls gained (~2-2.5 times more)
- Damage reduced on some mobs?
- HP lowered on some mobs?
- Reduced acquisition range on normal enemies.
- Supposedly reduced poise on some enemies.
- Bosses drop Humanity and Homeward Bones
- Ghosts and Skeletons give souls now.
- Twinkling Titanite drop rate improved.
- Pyromancers in Catacombs drop Skull Lanterns.
- Darkwraiths in New Londo drop Dark Hand.
- Male Undead Merchant: Also sells bottomless box
- Female Undead Merchant: Sells Arrows / Crossbolts
- Andrei: Sells Arrows / Crossbolts
- Domnhal of Xena: Sells Arrows / Crossbolts, Master Key (5000)
- Giant Blacksmith: Sells Arrows / Crossbolts, Small Titanite Shards, Large Tit Shards, Twinkling (8000 per, inf amount), Green Shards, Repair box, upgrade boxes
- Vamos: Arrows / Crossbolts, Small Tit, Large tit, Repair box / upgrade boxes
- Inglwood: Sells Transient Curses
Don’t forget the dark grain ring having the weight limit reduced for the flips!
How is it different from the patched version?
Updated the post with the change log I was able to find, seems like they were translated so may not be 100% accurate
The biggest change that I remember was done to the bomb throwing giant in Sen’s Fortress. In 1.00, he used to predict where you’re going before throwing the bomb and it would really make the first few attempts to go through be extremely annoying and difficult. I loved it.
I’ve got a 1.0 version ready to go for the next time I feel the itch to play Dark Souls, but haven’t given it a try yet. I’ve even gone so far as to build a character for when I decide to.
A few other changes - infused weapons like fire and lightning did much more damage, famously, the Ring Shield’s attack was based on your weapon in the other hand, and could do BONKERS damage, DWGR activated at 50% load instead of 25, so flipping havel moms was a thing, and aggro range for most enemies was toned waaay down. Also, boss drops that are automatically put in your inventory like the Leo Ring were actual drops that were missable. It was a crazy time.
Back when your weapon scaling didn’t determine who you were capable of invading, the Undead Burg was full of invaders that beat the game at level 10 with maxed-out weapons.
…I miss those days.
Didn’t 1.0 in Japan allow curse to stack multiple times, reducing your max health more?
Super late to this but yeah it stacked up to 1/16th of max health iirc
