Soul Farming | Dark Souls Wiki (2024)

In Anor Londo there are 12 silver knights situated in the palace area. When you first get in the palace there is a bonfire on your left through the door. Start here. Exit that room, and go to room across, 1st silver knight (spear), kill 2nd silver knight (sword) at bottom of stairs, past him go through the door to your right for the 3rd and 4th silver knight (spears), go back and run up the stairs, go through left door for 5th silver knight (spear), go back past the stairs and kill 6th (archer), through the door on the right 7th, 8th and 9th (sword wielders) (personally i lure them out one at a time), up the stairs to the top (outside) for 10th and 11th (sword and archer), down the stairs to the right of the stairs where you came up for the12th (sword). Exit that room at the far end and down the stairs to return to the bonfire.

This does seem like more trouble than its worth, but if you take the time to master parrying, you can kill them in one riposte using a lightning spear (mimic drop, Sen's Fortress) at +3, hence the 4 minutes.

Short version of this is clearing 4 Silver Knights near the bonfire - not wasting too much time for running, you don't even need to heal yourself (using bonfire to reset knights often gives enough healing), and it's doable in 90 seconds, full route including getting back to bonfire.

*With the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring, you can easily get ~12k in just a few minutes. With an upgraded Pyromancy Flame and Combustion you could kill everything in 2-3 hits, making it fast and easy. Definitely the best way to farm before end game. There are also some good rare drops like the Silver Knight Shield which at the very least is another 100 souls from Kingseeker Frampt

Also, you can kill the 2 giants and silver knight archer in the hall before Smough and Ornstein, as well as the 2 guarding the doorway to the courtyard were all the gargoyles are. This is especially easy to do with the Hawk ring and a decent bow. These 5 enemies will give 10300 souls, 12360 with the CSSR. A full run through this area will give 27480 souls with the CSSR.

(21,000 in NG+)
Recommended SL: 20-30
Careful farming of the NPCs past the Crest-locked gate in Darkroot Garden is quite good. In the Black Forest, there are 4 NPC's: a mage, a thief who is using the Ring of Fog, which makes players semi-transparent, a cleric, and an axe warrior. From the bonfire, head down the stairs to the area they are in. Run right out into the forest on the left to come upon the mage with a round shield. He casts Soul Arrow and Heavy Soul Arrow. You can use the trees as cover from the Mage's spells. The next enemy might be the thief. Although hard to see, you can hear him/her running at you. Enemy 3 is a mace and shield fellow, looks like a cleric. The last enemy is an armored axe and shield enemy. With the Catarina Armor and a 2 handed greataxe, the enemies stagger from your hits and go down fairly quickly. Mage=2000 souls, Thief=2000 souls, Cleric-type=2000 souls, Axe Soldier=1000 souls. Run to the bonfire up the stairs and repeat. Coaxing visible enemies with arrows seems a lot safer than tanking with low melee prowess.

Recommended SL: Any
De-equip all armor and heavy weapons. When approaching the NPCs in the forest, run straight at the Sorcerer NPC. He will cast Soul Arrow, but his aim is slow and it should go over your shoulder or hit a tree. Run directly to his left and keep going. As you approach the cliff face, the Priest on the right will notice you and begin to approach. Ignore him and continue straight until the Warrior with the Axe sitting on the top of the Cliff stands to pursue you. Immediately turn right and head back into the woods. Keep the glowing flower on your left, and run straight towards the stairs again. You have now gone around the semi-invisible Thief, and he should follow as well. He is very fast, so de-equiping everything for maximum speed is best. As you approach the stairs, run to the right of them and push your character into the corner between the base of the stairs and the ledge of the cliff. As the enemies approach, their AI pathing will lead them up the stairs, and then over the side to get you. They should then glance off your head (no damage) and fall to their doom. Keep your shield up, and face the cliff. If they do land, one blocked swing will force them over. Use the camera to watch for the approaching NPCs. If they get stuck on trees and turn away, leave the corner and run out and circle them again to get their attention before returning. They will always exit the forest area well away from the cliff, thus forcing them to take the stairs as they approach and fall when they reach you.This nets 7000 souls with almost zero risk. Even if you fail, your bloodstain is always within sprinting distance.

Alternately, instead of running back to the stairs, you can keep running along the cliff (towards the direction you'd be coming from if you came from Darkroot Basin). If you follow the cliff to your left, you should eventually be able to tell where there's solid ground under the ledge since you'll start seeing trees again. Drop down to the right of the leftmost tree and walk left around it and you'll end up in a small crevice between the cliff wall and oblivion. Just like with the stairs spot, the chasing NPCs will go flying right off into the void. This is slightly faster but the walk back to the bonfire is longer, so it's better if you have access to Homeward. If you don't have Homeward and you are confident, you can jump off the cliff and pick up your blood stain each time you head out.

There are three additional NPCs in that area, a knight (3000 Souls), a Bandit (5000 Souls) and an archer (5000 Souls + Black Bow of Pharis + Pharis' Hat), all cloaked, that won't respawn.

At the first bonfire in Undead Burg, after the ladder has been lowered, climb the ladder and head up the stairs to the top of the bridge. Take one step onto the bridge, then run back down the stairs to safety. The Hellkite Dragon should incinerate the enemies on the bridge, earning you 555 souls. Return to the bonfire, rest and repeat.

It is possible to accelerate this method by exploiting a quirk of the Hellkite's attack trigger. If the player takes a step onto the bridge to trigger an attack, then immediately runs down the stairs, across the small room, and drops off the side of the stairs to the bonfire quickly enough (less than 25% equip load is essential), the Hellkite gets 'stuck', in a sense, in being triggered to breathe fire; presumably, this is due to the player moving far enough away before the attack is considered to have finished, although the exact nature of the trick is unknown. As a result of the trigger 'sticking', every time the player reaches the top of the ladder, they will be back within the trigger radius for another attack, and so the Hellkite will incinerate the enemies without the player even having to go up to the bridge. The player should simply climb the ladder, start up the stairs, then when the Hellkite roars, wait a moment before dropping off the side of the stairs again to preserve the trigger 'sticking'. This approximately halves the time taken per run, which therefore roughly doubles the efficiency. Note: If the Hellkite doesn't attack as you proceed from the top of the ladder, you didn't complete the 'normal' run down from the bridge quickly enough, and will have to try it again to make the trigger 'stick'. Once it does 'stick', however, it is quite easily maintained.

700-800 Souls +green and large titanite shard drops
SL: 20+
Time: 1 minute or less
Place: Depths at bonfire behind locked door

This method is basically the same method as the farming for green titanite method. The obvious benefit is that you get shard drops along with the soul farming. Basically go to the bonfire behind the locked door in the depths kill the 2 hollows and slimes in the hallway just outside. Rinse and repeat. Works better if you have a strong weapon or spell to dispatch the slimes quickly. Fire works well on the slimes. Have some loose humanity up if you want more drops. Works best before your kill the area boss as your humanity will slowly increase as well.

This method is done in the Depths after you've unlocked the shortcut back to the bonfire. It involves killing the curse frogs, so if you can't one shot them or don't feel comfortable killing them, try something else. From the bonfire, go down the stairs, down the ladder and more stairs to the hallway where the merchant sits. Go kill the 3 large rats, then continue around the corner where the frogs are. The first 2 are solo, then there are 2 frogs together to the left. Continuing on, there is one frog still on the upper level that will patrol towards you. After that, to the right a frog will notice you, but will get hung up on another frog when trying to path to you. You can take these out with a fireball, or drop down and kill them from behind. The other three frogs can then be killed from behind without them attacking. Each frog drops 241 souls, for 2,410 souls for the frogs, plus ~600 from the rats you killed. If you want to farm humanity and/or shards, kill the slimes near the bonfire, and before you head down the ladder, go to the next room where 5 rats are gathered in a corner.

Pyro method:
Pyromancy path in this section is the highest netting soul farming method in the game, just marginally beating the farming of souls method behind the Crest of Artorias sealed doors, in all NG or NG+ playthroughs. Having one of the three spells, cast by appropriately enforced Pyro flame, ensures the maximum soul collection via overkill in shortest possible time. The most efficient run consists of running toward the Phalanx formation, sprint-killing the undead in the way with melee weapon (with both the Ring and Symbol, each undead overkilled yields just over 1000 souls on NG+ and over 500 on NG), equipping the Pyromancy flame if you have not already and starting to cast the Fire Storm spell variant while running up to the Phalanges. The spell's cast duration is aproximately 2 seconds. The first second you are still able to spring, while the other second you are reduced to walking, before finally releasing the spell. Correct timing of the spell's cast so it's thrown right at the moment you are nearest to the first Phalanx ensures maximum efficiency. Ensuring you have maximum Poise so you're not staggered out of the casting is reccomended, but not neccessary. Since the fire pillars rising from the spell are randomised, some luck is required to hit every Phalanx with 17 pillars that are cast by default. Casting the spell twice is usually the norm, though.

With all of the enemies dead and overkilled while wearing the two bonus items, yield from Phalanx enemies alone is at ~11.800 souls at NG, and 20.192 souls in NG+. This, coupled with the Undead you killed at approach and two more you're going to kill when going back, yields at around 23.500 souls in ideal run. Realistically, some fire pillars are likely to miss and you're going to have to deal with a few remaining Phalanx with your primary weapon or re-cast of the spell. If you're not overkilling the last few ones every other run, plus a few added seconds, you are still accumulating at around 21.000 souls average, on a run lasting between 30-45 seconds.

Ideally, if your run lasts 35 seconds, and you collect 23.500 souls per run, in one hour you have time for 102 runs, rounded down to 100 runs for seconds used in animations of sitting and rising from bonfire, you are collecting 2.350.000 souls per one hour. Realistically though, with extra seconds, ocassional Estus, and some non-overkilled enemies will still net you at over 1.5 million souls in one hour.

Miracles method:
Open the shortcut door from the Phalanxes to the bonfire. From the bonfire, run past the dregling, walk right next to the phalanx, and cast Wrath of the Gods. It should kill most of them. Walk next to the remainder and cast it again, then run back to the bonfire and repeat. Once you get used to doing this you can do it in arond ~30 seconds. For builds that have 28+ faith this is the fastest method for gaining souls.
Depending on your rings + endurance, equip the highest amount of poise you can while remaining at fastest speed. Ideally you want enough poise to withstand a hit from the dregling or the phalanx without getting stunned.
The Phalanxes are also weak to poison, so one or two casts of poison will take them all out (2 casts only if the first one's positioning didn't hit all of them). It takes a bit of practice, but start casting right as run halfway past the box. At around of dozen of them for 250 each, that's a good chunk of souls. With the ring for 20% bonus souls, that's 4.2k for casting 1-2 spells. Then, you can either continue on to the big black knight or go back and up the stairs at the beginning. The main thing is to give enough time for the poison to kill all of them. Fighting the black knight is riskier, so at first you may want to play it safe. Die too early and you get nothing for the poison.

*Instead of using Pyromancy or Miracles it's also possible to use the Dragon King Greataxe's special attack, in fact if you held it in two hands and a power attack is used (R2 or RT), it releases a shock wave in a 360 degree radius almost identical to the Wrath of the Gods miracle. Of course you'll have to repair the weapon at the bonfire every time.

This requires Pyromancy: Poison Mist, front gate opened, and annex key. Miracles: Homeward and Force help but are not required. From the bonfire run straight. Kill the Hollow guarding the front gate. Run to the right of the large blocks and directly into the right side of the legion swarm. Cast Poison Mist. This should hit all of them and only occasionally miss 1-2. Immediately run through the annex door and up the stairs. Take the first left and head up the stairs. Kill the pyromancer. On top of this building will be a large hole and 2 crow-headed demons (to start). Just stepping foot on the roof agro's the first crow. Run along the wall up to the other crow and the large hole in the ground. Stand about half way onto the ledge then turn around to see the crow. Shield up and the crow should swing only to fall into the hole and net you 900 souls. Run up stairs and run right back down. 2 more crows will land leaving 3 in total. Coax them down the stairs and make them fall in the hole the same way. Beware of going to the corner of the ledge, their jumping grapple can hit you easily there. In addition if they jump at you simply run to where they jumped from. Occasionally they will leap over the edge and get stuck, but at that point they are harmless and to be ignored. If all goes well you will kill the legion and the 4 crows. Next you can run down the spiral stair cases to fight the knight but this is risky. Usually after the crows the legion is about to die from the poison so returning to bonfire or fighting the knight is up to you.

There is a much better method to farming if you have the patience to wait for someone to summon you. Once you have defeated the boss and understand her techniques you should be ready to fight her repeatedly and win. Simply place your sign near the bonfire and if you are in the proper level range, (I farmed to over 1 million souls at level 75, getting summoned at an average waiting time of 30 seconds to 8 minutes.) you will be set up to start a fast run. Most players have the initial gate opened and then want help with the boss and/or the rest of the level. The thing that's tricky to get people to understand is that you MUST kill King Jeremiah before the boss, otherwise they are screwed. The trouble is your average player doesn't even know about the existence of King Jeremiah the invader. Enticing them is a good idea, and on the PSN this isn't too complicated as the message system recognizes your previous word sequences. I would simply go under "players met" and from there scroll to the top to find the player who had summoned me. Then I would quickly send the message "follow me for 30k souls + the boss." This usually worked :) From there, lead them as quickly as you can (fighting the Undead dragon along the way if you'd like) to the courtyard with all the cages and impaled humans on pikes. Lead them to bottom of the area where the two items are, letting them grab the items if they haven't already, then head back toward the stairs. The Xanthous King Jeremiah will invade at that point. Kill him quickly (using the lightning spear +5 only takes 3 R2 thrusts to do so) and you will have your 30,00 souls.

: I'm not sure if this yields 30k souls for the human player but I'm positive it does for a phantom. From there, lead them to the boss either through the last door (if they have already opened it) or up and under the undead dragon. Getting past the lower half of the Undead dragon is simple. Just do a leaping attack by pushing forward and R2 at the same time. He'll stand up and you can drop down only suffering minimal damage. From there simply lead them past the large knight and to the boss. Also, if you are wearing the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring it will make your farming go quite a bit faster. I have confirmed this technique by going all the way over 1 million souls as a Sunbro and will be going for 10 million souls in NG+. Praise the Sun!

Once you reach new game plus you should have already acquired the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring. This will be necessary to make sure you receive just shy of 20,000 souls for each run. You should also have your pyromancy flame boosted to +15, then ascended, then boosted to maximum of +5. Make sure you have firestorm equipped, along with a strong weapon that will do more than necessarily brutal R2 attacks. I personally used a +5 Chaos Iatio. Start from the bonfire, running right up to the first gate (make sure you have already opened it) and kill the undead with a quick R2 attack. You will gain bonus souls for doing a major hit, probably over 400 points in damage. From there, quickly switch to your pyromancy flame and sprint to the phalanx-type collection of enemies and cast firestorm as close as you can to them. If done perfectly it will kill all of them or close to all of them. Quickly finish off any stragglers for the souls. Now, sprint back to the gate and kill the remaining two undead with a strong R2 attack as well and then right back to the bonfire. Rinse and repeat. The benefit of this type of farming is that it can be done extremely quickly, offline, and in contrast to the above technique you don't have to wait to be summoned. Additionally, the Berike Knight in front of Priscilla's boss room guarantees a Large Titanite Shard drop. Running to the end to farm this enemy adds an easy extra item farm to an already easy run.

(Skeleton Baby Slaughter)
Recommended SL: 50+
Directly before the fog gate that leads to Gravelord Nito there are a few pinwheel servants that give you a few souls, but that's not the enemy you will be farming. In the watery area below most of the pinwheel servants, there are skeleton babies that spawn in packs of 5-10. Each baby gives you 121 souls (145 each with the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring) and they respawn about 1-2 seconds after you have killed them. I suggest farming them around a ramp, because only 1 or 2 of them follow you up the ramp and you'll have time to heal if you get into some trouble). The babies die in 1 hit (They have about 40-50 health each). I personally suggest that you use a weapon with a long reach (such as a spear) because the babies still do a bit of damage, but once you get the hang of it, you won't be hit very often. If you use the Evil Eye ring, you will more than likely out heal their damage, unless you let yourself get hit a lot. The main benefit of this strategy is that you don't have to run back and forth to a bonfire, you can continue farming these babies until the end of time. As an added benefit, the babies also have a chance of dropping humanity.

Souls: 8640 with both Covetous Silver Serpent Ring + Symbol of Avarice (NG+ 17000)
Time: ~ 30 seconds per run, which comes to ~17k souls/min

With Crystal Soul Spear, equip Crown of Dusk and the Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring. Next, from the second bonfire, kill the skeleton beast and the giant skeleton(with Crystal Soul Spear of course). Keep moving forward and you will see 3 skeleton beast, target the first one and move to the right so u can line up 2 of the beast, and use crystal soul spear, it should go through and kill the second one, and use your last one to kill the remaining beast. Since the bonfire is very near you

need to homeward back. The first 2 enemies should net you exactly 4321 souls, and the 3 beast 7779 making exactly 12100 souls. Aprox. 1,452,000 in an hour.