Dark Souls 3 Convergence Mod Explained

Dark Souls 3 is now over half a decade old. FromSoftware's 2016 classic, while not as beloved as the first game or as controversial as the second, gave a fitting send-off to a trilogy that redefined action RPGs, environmental storytelling, and the notion of difficulty in the modern era of games. Dark Souls 3 does not just tie up loose ends from the previous Souls games, it implodes the entire Souls cosmology into one story. This popularity of the franchise also led to a vibrant and still active modding community.

Dark Souls 3: The Convergence is an overhaul mod for the third Souls game that focuses on magic. The three basic magic schools of become separate classes, including geomancy, cryomancy, divine sorcery, warlockry, and many more. Not only are spells completely different, but the mod reimagines enemy layouts, abilities, NPCs, boss positions, and many other essential parts of the game.

FromSoftware is no stranger to mods radically overhauling the structure and form of its games. Daughters of Ash sits at over 200,000 downloads between the original Dark Souls and its remaster on Nexus Mods. Similarly, Cinders for Dark Souls 3, like The Convergence, seeks to reimagine the game with new classes and magic. There is even a mod in development for Dark Souls 2 that completely changes how the lighting system works, restoring it its appearance during various E3 presentations before the game's release.

Dark Souls games are incredibly replayable: the build variety, difficulty curve, and branching NPC quests make each run feel different. Of course, for gamers with hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the series, even further variety is widely sought. This desire is obvious in the many randomizer mods of the Souls games that each boast considerable downloads. The Convergence joins the likes of the Cinders mod in overhauling the most recent Dark Souls game, which incorporate the two award-winning DLCs in their changes.

As has been mentioned above, The Convergence is a radical overhaul mod that focuses on spellcraft. Magic has always sat strangely within the Souls series, and while it can still feel epic, it has nowhere near the diversity of play offered by melee builds. The mod breaks pyromancy, miracles, and sorceries into distinct subclasses of magic. It goes even further than just that, however, providing each new type of magic with its own starting class, bringing the number of starting classes up to 30, a huge increase from the base game. There are also classes like the Druid and Necromancer that rely on raising and summoning allies, which massively shifts the rhythm and speed of combat. Alchemical crafting, weapon mastery, and weapon alteration are all new changes brought by the mod.

Boss and enemy placement is also different, a fact that the mod shows off almost immediately. Some Souls fans might worry that adding new magic and abilities would make player characters much more powerful - and they would be right. The new classes are immediately more powerful than the base game, but so are the enemies. Even in the tutorial area, enemies use fiery attacks, and a much more aggressive beast enemy from the late game of Dark Souls 3 replaces the Iudex Gundyr boss fight. In general, enemy placements make the game much more deadly, and serve as delightful surprises for veteran Souls players.