How To Unlock Unlimited Invasions In Dark Souls III

We recently took a look a the first few hours of Dark Souls III, but now we're ready to share a few more huge secrets we found while exploring Lothric and the Undead Settlement during our early look at the game. First, how to unlock permanent invasion through the use of the Red Eye Orb, and a certain praise-the-sun-centric armor and covenant. Here's how to find them (in the preview build, anyway).

When you explore the Firelink Shrine, you'll meet a strange man who hangs out near the King's Throne. The first time you meet him, he'll hand you five Cracked Red Eye Orbs and encourage you to go off and invade other people's worlds. Later on when you come back, he may appear again. Speak to him to receive a lift key, one the mysterious figure tells you is the key to unlocking a true Red Eye Orb for unlimited invasions on your prey. So where exactly, is the lift and corresponding Darkwratih mini-boss? Head to the Tower on the Wall bonfire, and drop down two levels inside the tower to find a locked door.

The lift key will open it, revealing an elevator inside that will take you down to a short hallway and a room strewn with corpses. Inside you'll face off against a Darkwraith mini-boss who hits incredibly hard, but has a manageable health pool – try and get it over with as quickly as possible. When defeated, the Darkwraith drops the real deal Red Eye Orb, which will grant the player the ability to invade other player's games at will! No more farming for cracked orbs like Dark Souls II, here you can get the real item, and fairly early in the game as well.

Here's another huge secret. If you pay the 20,000 souls cost for the Firelink Shrine key (available from the start of the game from the Shrine handmaiden), you'll gain access to a whole new part of the Firelink Shrine. It's easy to miss the new things you can find here and just take the obvious Fire Keeper's Soul on top of the tower, but if you fall down through the cracks onto the roof of Firelink, you'll find something extremely familiar and incredibly cool – It's the crow's nest from the Souls games! And here we can trade all kinds of items for cool things. So what's the coolest thing I found? Well, by dumping the Siegbrau to our friend Snuggly the Crow, we received something awesome – the Armor of the Sun (Solaire's armor). Praise the Sun!

We also received another piece of that armor set and a variety of high-tier titanite from future trade ins. Make friends with Snuggly! There's also an extremely valuable estus shard available by running along the rafters in Firelink from up here.

Players can also find the item to join the Warrrior of Sunlight covenant by searching carefully in the Undead Settlement. You'll find one of those "does not open from this side" doors which is always a sign to check the area carefully for secrets. Above that area, you can drop down through a hole to find the critical item sitting near a pot of hot estus soup. Yum!

For more Dark Souls III footage, you can 40 minutes of early gameplay here.