Streamer flawlessly beats Dark Souls boss blindfolded on a piano

Dark Souls may have the most dedicated and incorrigible fandom of any video game, and its fans love to achieve the seemingly impossible.

From data miners to lore scholars to let’s players, the sheer amount of content that gets created for a series that effectively ended four years ago is astounding. The fact that competition is so fierce within the Dark Souls space forces players to get quite creative in terms of what they do in the game.

Twitch streamer FryderykG, who specializes in no-hit runs for Dark Souls 1, took this to a whole new level.

Dark Souls is already considered to be notoriously difficult, but FryderykG takes on the immense challenge of beating the game via “no-hit” runs, where the player isn’t struck by an enemy, at any point, ever. Not only that, but FryderykG sets himself apart from other personalities by doing this on a keyboard instead of with a traditional video game controller. In a recent stream, he upped the ante even further by beating one of the game’s tougher bosses while blindfolded.

Against Artorias the Abysswalker, FryderykG scored a quick and clean win over the boss. Working a standard no-armor halberd build with an extra helping of Gold Pine Resin, he rushed Artorias down and blew him up without getting touched. 

FryderykG’s a very skilled Dark Souls player, but he couldn’t hide his elation over pulling off this feat. He was clearly hyped up over the victory and celebrated the occasion by consuming Artorias’ soul on the spot.

Though he hasn’t been doing everything blindfolded has completed a no-hit Dark Souls 1 run on his piano. In March, he succeeded in dethroning Gwyn and inherited the First Flame.

Is Dark Souls really that hard?

Though Dark Souls has a reputation for being difficult, it’s not actually that hard. Though difficulty will inherently vary from person to person, it doesn’t require pinpoint precision, doesn’t have high demands when it comes to execution, and doesn’t require precise timing. Much of the difficulty of Dark Souls stems from the fact that it simply gives players basically no direction in terms of how to approach the game. It’s very easy to level stats in less than ideal way, or to get lost in its sometimes labyrinthian levels. 

But ultimately, Dark Souls’ difficulty is akin to classic platformers like Super Mario Bros (or maybe it’s more difficult sequel, Super Mario Bros 2). It’s not that the game is radically difficult, it’s just a question of whether the player is willing to run into a level 10 or 20 times to figure out where all the enemies are and how to best engage them.