Killed by another player?
I play Dark Souls on the XBox 360 and enjoy the online features like giving advice or seeing the ghosts of other players to avoid their mistakes.
But yesterday I heard a strange sound, like some kind of announcement sound and then there was another player in my world. I didn't agree to it or something. I was in the undead church and this other player just ran towards me. He buffed himself or something like that. I could clearly see that it was not an NPC because sometimes he ran towards me, then waited a bit, turned around, ran around me. Then he just killed me with one blow of his sword.
He was all in flames and his sword was on flames, too. I know that there is no kind of NPC like this in the undead church so this must have been another player.
Is it normal that other players can enter my world and kill me? Can I avoid PvP in Dark Souls?
Yes, PVP is totally normal in Dark Souls.
What happened - you got invaded.
You can only get invaded if:
You are in human form (non-hollow)
The section boss is still alive
You are online
So - If you don't want to get invaded by human players, stay hollow or go offline.
There are NPC invaders. These will invade even if you are offline (you still need to be in human form, though). They appear in the following locations:
- Depths - Kirk, knight of Throns
- Blighttown - Mildred the Maneater
- Painted - Xanthous King
- Tomb of the Giants - Paladin Leeroy
- Demon Ruins - Kirk (again)
- Lost Izalith - Kirk (AGAIN)
- Oolacile Townshipt - Marvellous Chester
You can go on the Dark Souls Wiki to get more information. Basically you can Invade other people's world from certain location in the world. You can do it by using a Cracked Red Eye Orb and only when you are human.
To avoid being invaded you have 2 solutions :
- Remain in hollow form
- Play offline
Other players entering your world and killing you (or you killing them) is by design. It happens when a player uses one of several items to invade another players world.
You can avoid it by disconnecting from the network, or (less practically) staying in one of the areas that do not allow multiplayer activity. These are:
- Undead Asylum
- Valley of Drakes
- Great Hollow
- Ash Lake