Last time I introduced the rules of doing a Luck Knight run of Dark Souls 3, rules that will basically require me to pour half of my levels directly into my luck score instead of something more obviously useful like strength.

That means it’s time to get things started with character creation. We choose the thief class, grab a fire stone for our starting gift and then it’s time to customize our appearance.

Since my Dark Souls 2 hero was a man I figure I might as well go with a woman this time. I then spend roughly ten seconds on customizing her appearance because, let’s be honest, she’s going to spend her entire career wearing so many layers of Dark Souls style unisex armor that it won’t really matter whether she’s a nice looking brunette or some sort of radioactive green mutant. (For the curious she’s a blond with red eyes. Because why not?)

On the other hand her name deserves a little more thought. I eventually go with “Fault” since I figure I’m going to be spending a lot of time staring at the game over screen and saying to myself “Yup, that was my Fault”.

With that out of the way the game finally begins with Fault waking up in a graveyard filled with handy tutorial messages, weak enemies and a nifty tutorial boss.

At this point I get my first taste of how much “fun” this run is going to be when the tutorial boss effortlessly flattens me half a dozen times in a row.

Gimp is a great open source tool for photo editing. Admittedly not so great for freehand illustration.

For comparison I killed this same boss on my first try during my first non-gimmick run.

And my weird build restrictions haven’t kicked in yet! I’m not losing because I’m being silly. The thief class just has an innately rocky start due to their low starting level, weak equipment and a focus on range and backstabbing in a world where bosses usually can’t be backstabbed or fought at range.

I’ve always wished I could draw but I’ve never quite had the discipline to put in the daily practice required to learn the skill. This is a real shame because the ability to produce half-decent character art would be a really valuable skill for a hobbyist game developer like me.

So I’ve hit on a plan. Why don’t I illustrate my most recent Dark Souls 3 playthrough and post it on the Internet? Illustrating a game means I won’t run out of ideas of what to sketch and posting it online should help shame me into actually keeping up a regular schedule.

But why should you care? Because this isn’t just any Dark Souls playthrough, it’s a gimmick run! I’ve created a build I call the “Luck Knight” that focuses on pumping it’s luck super high instead of spending points on stats that actually help with killing monsters.

The rules of the Luck Knight build are as follows:

• Starting class: Thief
• Luck must always be the highest stat
• Vitality, Vigor and Endurance can be raised no higher than half of luck
• All other stats are capped at one third of luck

That means that if my luck is 30 then my vitality can be no higher than 15 and my strength is stuck at 10.

It also means that if I want to use something like a katana with an 16 dexterity stat requirement I will have to first boost my luck to 48.

So basically I’m going to be stuck with the thief class’s starting stats for a very long time.

At least I got the right number of limbs. It’s a start, right?