In Demon's Souls, the player's actions affect the world around them, but not in the typical way. As players commit "good" deeds, their World Tendency will shift towards white, while performing what would typically be considered "bad" deeds shifts it towards black. There are a number of reasons why players would want to manipulate this feature to their benefit.
In the case of Pure Black World Tendency (PBWT), enemies in the area become stronger and sometimes even greater in number. The player's health and power is also lowered, but in return they will get more souls from defeated foes. This is the only way to really tweak the difficulty in Demon's Souls.
Aside from this, certain events will only occur if the player's World Tendency is pure black, so players wanting to get certain items, complete specific questlines, and more will need to learn how to manipulate World Tendency. Thankfully, shifting a world to black is much easier than shifting it to white, and there's an easy way to go about it.
The primary way of lowering World Tendency is to die in Body Form. If a player dies while in this form, their World Tendency shifts towards black by -30%, meaning it only takes four deaths to go Pure Black from neutral. More commonly, players will be sitting at Pure White World Tendency and wanting to drop to PBWT after completing all the events, meaning this will take several more deaths but is still doable. For this method to work, players will either need to revive with a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes, the help of the Resurrection Miracle, or by using the game's online features.
Outside of dying, players can also lower their World Tendency in other ways. Killing named NPCs tends to have a drastic effect on World Tendency, lowering it significantly (sometimes up to -90%), so this is a quick way to get to Pure Black. Obviously, this method comes with the drawback of losing access to whatever questline or service that NPC might have offered, but that may not matter to players. These are typically the only two methods to lower World Tendency, but some Archstones will have other options as well.
Players should be wary when lowering their World Tendency, as it is much more difficult to get back up to Pure White World Tendency (the primary method of raising World Tendency is beating Demon's Souls' difficult bosses) than it is to fall down into Pure Black. While there are many benefits to playing the game like this, there are just as many drawbacks, so players should think carefully before making this decision.
Demon's Souls is available now on PS5.
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