Dark Souls stands as a series that has captivated an entire gaming player base over the last decade and established developer FromSoftware as a respected industry creative powerhouse. The series has garnered critical and sales acclaim thanks to the quality experience their dark fantasy world established.
Dark Souls is known for both its combat and level design, which many consider to be some of the best in all of gaming. As a trilogy, it is home to dozens of enemies and bosses worth taking on as a challenge, but some of them should be avoided at all costs in order to maintain one's own sanity and self-confidence.
8 Mimic
Should Mimics be avoided by anyone making their way through Dark Souls? The real answer depends on if the item one gets for defeating them aids the individual player. These giant lanky sentient creatures are meant to lure in players who hope to be rewarded with a new thing.
Once revealed the player has to deal with the Mimic's length and speed in combat, and as the series progresses the moveset becomes wild. By Dark Souls 3 the Mimics use flying spin kicks and sweeps that make them feel less like an enemy in a Dark Souls game and more like a martial arts master from a game like Street Fighter or Tekken.
7 Drakekeepers
Something that veterans of FromSoftware titles find solace in is the idea that any enemy in any of their games often has similar limitations to what the player character is burdened with. In Dark Souls 2 the developers thought the idea of giant knights with never-ending stamina would be a delightful addition.
Referred to as Drakekeepers, these mammoth warriors offer very little "in" to the player, a term used to describe a window of time in which a player can unleash a counter-attack. Just when players find a strategy to overcome the neverending strikes, Dark Souls 2 will present an area where a pair of them spawn.
6 Deep Accursed
If FromSoftware makes an enemy optional in their games it's likely for one of several reasons. Oftentimes it's attached to an NPC quest or additional content, but sometimes it's because they know the thing they made is difficult and don't want it to ruin the playthrough of every single player.
Dark Souls 3 introduces giant werewolf spiders called the Deep Accursed. There are two of them in the entire game, both optional, and they like to hang from tall ceilings waiting to pounce on the unexpected. If their giant size and crazy fast movement speed weren't enough, they come jampacked with the ability to spray curse-inducing mist.
5 Sword Master
A lesson Dark Souls 3 really hammers over the head of players early on is that just because one can go to a certain area or encounter certain enemies, doesn't mean that they should necessarily fight those things or try progressing in said area. Just outside of the Firelink Shrine, left of facing its entrance from the outside, players will find an enemy wielding an uchigatana that's simply named Sword Master.
This guy not only blocks incoming attacks and switches stances, but he's also prone to unleashing a deadly combination of incoming attacks that slice through the unprepared or unskilled. Those looking to get better with Dark Souls 3's combat can use him as a training dummy of sorts, but victory won't come easy.
4 Skeleton Wheel
Avoiding enemies in video games is often associated with difficulty, but Skeleton Wheels offer their own reasons. These skeleton/wooden wheel hybrids are not worth dealing with considering the headache they cause. Thanks to the way they move they can catch the player in a way where it stuns and locks them in place, and as a result, they are forced to eat a bunch of damage.
FromSoftware often has them spawn in packs and in tight corridors. Fighting them isn't too tough considering their attacks are readable and telegraphed, but it's the way that they interact with the world around them and player animations that offer a truly annoying experience that can turn players off from Dark Souls completely.
3 Silver Knight
The sad reality of Silver Knights is that more often than not players aren't given an option of avoiding them. Among the various versions of the armored nuisances are the arched variants found on the rooftops of Anor Londo who rain pain down on anyone looking to cross their path.
The arrows they fire are more like giant metal spears, and less like the feathered wooden ones used by normal archers. Patience and resolve are key to overcoming every form of these silent walking killing machines. There's nothing more Dark Souls than using all of one's healing in order to take down a couple of Silver Knights, only to run into another pair in the following room or area.
2 Basilisk
Dark Souls veterans all remember the first time they came across a Basilisk and didn't understand just how terrifying the weird collection of sewer frogs was. They dispense this fog that accumulates a curse on the player if they come in contact with it. Once the curse bar fills up completely the player turns into stone and dies, as if these frog-like beasts were carrying out the will of Medusa.
Fighting a Basilisk on its own is still pretty risky, but the issue is that they're rarely by themselves and are most often in a pack of 4-5 of them. Add in a confined sewer tunnel as their spawn location and players are left with a situation that should be avoided at all costs.
1 Pus Of Man
FromSoftware can't help itself from tricking its player base into a false sense of security. Players who take down the game's first boss, Iudex Gundyr, might find his parasitic second form both odd and challenging. Designers don't do things by accident and this was FromSoftware's way of foreshadowing an upcoming enemy reveal. As it turns out there are a select group of villagers who appear at first glance like low-level annoyances, but upon approach will morph and explode into things referred to as Pus of Man.
Like Iudex Gundyr, it presents itself as a parasitic growth that makes its host much more powerful in combat and also provides a larger health pool to draw from. They are not a fun time, but if a player has enough fire bombs laying around they can make use of them from a distance in order to knock down a significant amount of health from these infected monstrosities.