Dark Souls 2: Best Mods of 2020 (& How to Install Them) (2024)

The Dark Souls games are all known for their brutal crushing difficulty and Dark Souls 2 is not any different. Players will be forced to fight against all kinds of insanely difficult bosses that want nothing more than to put them in the ground over and over again. Despite how difficult this game really is though there are many players who have exhausted everything that it has to offer.

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For those players, one of the best things that they can do now is install as many mods as physically possible in order to add new content to the game or even just make things run smoother than it did before. Mods are a great way to get something more out of a game that has begun to grow tiresome, and this is especially true for something like Dark Souls 2. This guide shows players the best mods available and how they can download them.

Dark Souls 2: How to Install Mods

Installing mods is actually a pretty simple process even for the uninitiated. The best and easiest way to mod games is to set up a free account with Nexus Mods. This community is full of helpful modders who provide interesting and fun mods for thousands of games. Everything on this site should be 100% safe, but players should still exercise caution when downloading things just in case, and probably shouldn't download anything that isn't highly rated and commented on. From Nexus Mods though players will be able to access and download anything that they wish.

Those who don't want to go through the process of installing each individual mod will probably want to acquire the Vortex Mod Manager from Nexus' website. This Mod Manager can be set up with a bunch of different games and will allow players to download and install mods with just a few quick clicks. This makes the process simple and easy, and disabling non-functioning mods is much easier this way.

Those who don't want to deal with the Mod Manager though can always just install the mods directly. Almost all of them will come with their own instructions on how to add them to the game, but the basic idea is to download the mod and then extract it to wherever the DarkSouls2.exe file is.

Dark Souls 2: Best Mods Available

• GeDoSaTo:Modding in Dark Souls 2 was a very difficult thing to do once upon a time, but GeDoSaTo changed all of that. This mod stands forGeneric DownSampling Tool and it essentially opens the game up further to more in-depth modifications. For this reason, a large portion of the mods available for Dark Souls 2 will require that people download this first in order to allow them to run. For this reason alone it is integral that all modders pick this one up as soon as they possibly can.
• Higher Contrast Bars Hud Mod: This mod doesn't do anything super crazy, but this subtle change can really help players out a lot. By installing this mod it will replace all of the health bars in the game with more much higher contrast health bars. This makes them much easier to see and stops them from being lost in the background like they sometimes can be. Since the bars are more colorful and vibrant they also draw the player's eye more easily as well, which makes it easier to quickly glance at the bar before getting back in the action.
• Augur of Darkness: This mod will almost completely alters the placements of bonfires and items as well as changing the behaviors of many of the game's enemies. There are also some pretty major enhancements to the environment by adding in more objects, enemies, and items into the game world. This is perfect for those who have played Dark Souls 2 many times through, as it will allow them to access some brand new content for the very first time.
• Dark Souls 2 Boss Music Replacement Dark-metal-Music: While this mod is confusingly named it basically just comes down to all of the boss music in the game has been replaced by intense heavy metal. What is even better though is that it isn't just generic metal music, but rather metal covers of each individual boss song in the game. The amount of work and effort that went into this mod is absolutely astounding and sure to excite fans of the metal genre.
• Item Location Randomizer: This mod is perfect for the players who have played through the game a dozen times and know exactly where everything is located. By using this mod though all of those items will be randomized and put in completely new locations. A few of the more important items aren't changed, but players could receive an extremely strong weapon in the first few minutes of the game or receive a worthless drop a powerful boss.
• Ten Character Save File: For those who are tired of starting the game with the same old classes and starting equipment this mod is perfect for them. Each of these ten characters have their own specific stats and starting items that the player would normally not be able to acquire in the beginning of the game. This makes the opening moments much more interesting as players can experiment with items and weapons that they might not get their hands on for many more hours.
• PS4 or PC UI Buttons: One thing that can become a little confusing for those who play Dark Souls 2 is that since it is a straight port all of the UI buttons are based on an Xbox controller. Particularly those who play on mouse and keyboard will probably have no idea what is going on. They are several mods that will replace the UI buttons with either PlayStation or PC buttons instead.
• Kalicolas Enhanced Graphics ENB: Since all of the other games in the Souls franchise are newer or have been remastered recently, Dark Souls 2 is the game that looks and performs the worst at this point. Enhancing the graphics through mods is easy to do and this one will drastically improve things. After it has been activated Dark Souls 2 will look almost as good as the third game or Bloodborne.
• Clean UI: Another issue that many players have with Dark Souls 2 is relatively minor, but can be a pretty big annoyance at times. Whenever messages pop up onscreen to signify invasions or other such things can obscure elements on the screen. This mod actually makes the menu, messages, and other UI elements transparent, so they no long obscure parts of the screen.
• Fleshy Hollows: The Hallowing process is one of the more interesting elements of the Dark Souls games, but Dark Souls 2 was the only one that cut the player's health in half every time that they died. This mod adds a cosmetic effect to this element though by making it to where the character's Hallowing is more gradual. There are now four stages to the look of Hallowing that each corresponds to a certain level of maximum health.

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Dark Souls 2 can be played on PlayStation 4 and PC.