The Dark Souls franchise draws a special sort of fanbase to it. There are dedicated fanbases that love to comb through every inch of every game, and then there are Dark Souls' most faithful. These are players who won't only discover every secret a Dark Souls game has to offer, but will bend and break the game beyond all expectations in the process. The latest example comes from Twitch streamer DontRachQuit, who defeated Dark Souls' infamous Ornstein and Smough bosses just by rolling.
DontRachQuit took on Ornstein and Smough in such a limited and challenging way with intention. Normally, rolling in Dark Souls doesn't do much of anything in terms of offense. There's a possibility of tricking an enemy off of a cliff, but no way of genuinely killing a skeleton, let alone a boss. That's why DontRach Quit used a mod to ensure she started Dark Souls with an armor set named Armor of Thorns, a set that when equipped can do between 10 and 50 damage to enemies being rolled into.
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Just putting on the armor doesn't make the fight easy, though. DontRachQuit ultimately spent around six hours attempting the fight, rolling into Ornstein and Smough in that order. The successful attempt alone took over forty minutes of rolling, with DontRachQuit ultimately coming out the victor. The hardest part wasn't so much rolling into Ornstein and Smough to damage them, but managing to avoid their attacks and survive.
It can't be understated how challenging the Ornstein and Smough boss fight is even without defeating them through thorns damage. The pair are easily within the range of the Souls franchise's most difficult bosses. Smough can easily one-shot a player with his powerful attacks, while Ornstein is extremely fast and frustrating. It's not like the pair's attacks are intelligently coordinated, either. There are combinations of attacks from the pair that are simply not planned to be completely avoidable.
"I did it, I beat them! I beat them! It was so hard," DontRachQuit said after finishing the boss fight. Shortly thereafter, her wireless Xbox controller's batteries died. If the boss fight has taken just five minutes longer or if she'd died earlier and had to do even one more run, her victorious effort would have been all for naught.
DontRachQuit's rolling Dark Souls run is just the latest challenge she's put to herself for the entertainment of her viewers. Other examples of challenges she's done include a one-handed Dark Souls 2 run, playing two copies of Dark Souls at once, and plenty more beyond that, too.
Dark Souls is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.