Dark Souls 3 Gameplay Speedrun 100 Percent Completion

Getting 100 Percent Anything in Dark Souls 3 Is a Grind, Not a Puzzle

Speedrunning 100 percent completion in Dark Souls 3 means clearing every main boss, every side boss, collecting every emblems from each NPC covenant questline, and obtaining all achievements that the game tracks. The category splits vary depending on the leaderboard you are watching. Some allow skipping optional NPCs. Some demand every ring. The time difference between a "minimalist 100 percent" and a "strict" run can be anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes depending on how many side quests you commit to. The run starts in the tutorial. You skip the first boss unless the category requires a 100% boss kill count, which some strict categories do. From there, the routing is roughly divided into three acts: early game through Irina's quest and Profaned Capital, mid game through the Painted World and Dancer, and late game through the Ashen City and Soul of Cinder. The trick is that most route skips depend on whether you are taking the covenant routes for Warriors of Sunlight, Chaos Servant, or Clan of the Abyss, because those choices lock or unlock specific items. I spent about two years trying to get under four hours on a strict 100 percent category. The moment I figured out that the Lothric Knight Armor drop is actually faster to miss than to collect forced me to rethink my entire pacing. I stopped picking up armor from most minor enemies and focused only on key drops. That decision shaved about twelve minutes off my best run, mostly because it cut down on backtracking between Undead Settlement and Earthen Peak.

One specific problem I ran into was the Rosaria's Bloodletter timing window. The item locks you out of certain covenant options unless you deliberately reset the area or reload a save. I tried every tool-assisted save reset I could find. Eventually I just committed to running the Bloodborne path as a separate segment and reloaded the cathedral ward save once instead of constantly reloading. That saved roughly forty seconds per attempt, which adds up over hundreds of tries.

The Routing Breakdown

Early game routing focuses on clearing the Tutorial, Undead Settlement, and Firelink Shrine area with minimal stops. You skip the Bell Gargoyles fight unless your category requires it. You head straight for Smouldering Lake after the first bonfire, because that path connects directly into the Lower Lothric route. The biggest time sink early on is Irina's questline. If you need her item for covenants, you have to go to Firelink to give her the Eye of a Fire Keeper. That detour costs about three minutes but unlocks the ability to skip several later segments by trading it for the Covenant of the Lost soul, which is mandatory for strict 100 percent. Mid game is where most runs either break or click. You need to acquire all emblems, which means committing to the Warrior of Sunlight covenant before entering the Road of Sacrifices. The Chaos Servant emblem is locked behind a different NPC interaction, and the Abyss emblem comes from a third separate quest. Trying to juggle all three in one run means you must track very carefully which items you already have. Missing one emblem forces a full route rebuild. I once spent six hours in a single attempt figuring out I had accidentally skipped giving Yuria her ring, which locked the clan emblem. I learned to verify the ring trade in my head before leaving the Firelink shrine area. End game routing is fairly linear. You head through the Catacombs, pick up the emblem from the Pontiff Sulyvahn fight if your category requires it, then move into the Soul of Cinder final stretch. The last boss usually takes under thirty seconds at this level of optimization. The real bottleneck is getting through the Ashen City without dying twice, because each death resets certain NPC interactions and can force a reload of the previous area.

Build Choices That Actually Matter

A fast 100 percent run benefits most from a high dexterity build with a fast weapon like the Scythe or the Silver Knights Sword. Magic is viable but requires more careful positioning. Strength builds are generally slower because the animations are heavier and the weapon speed compounds over long fights. I ran a dexterity build with the Scythe and got my first sub three hour attempt at around attempt forty-seven. The Scythe's bleed proc clears smaller groups of enemies quickly and its range lets you avoid most aggro events entirely. The Ring of Blades is an unusual pick. It gives you extra attack power and helps clear trash mobs in Road of Sacrifices and the Demon Ruins without using souls. It also makes the Pontiff fight noticeably faster if you commit to it early. The downside is you lose a ring slot that could be used for something else. In practice, the trade-off saves about fifteen seconds across the whole run, which is worth it for a strict category. One counter-intuitive insight that caught me off guard: going hollow early and staying hollow actually helps your run. Hollowing does not affect covenant items or emblems. It only changes NPC interactions. Since most NPCs you need for emblems are triggered before hollowing becomes relevant, staying hollow lets you bypass several optional NPC checks entirely. I initially thought hollowing would lock me out of the covenant quests. It does not. The game tracks those separately from your humanity state.

Common Pitfalls and What to Avoid

Most beginners waste time in three places: the Dancer of the Boreal Valley fight, the Old Demon King encounter, and the Abyss Watchers sequence. Each of these can be skipped or optimized if you know the route. Dancer has a known clipping trick through the left side of the arena that drops you into a shortcut leading directly to the next bonfire. This trick works consistently across patches but requires precise positioning. You will fail it at least three times before you land it cleanly. Once you can do it in one try, it saves about twenty seconds. The Old Demon King fight is required for 100 percent. The fastest method is to use a fast weapon and focus on the initial aggressive window before the second phase. Most players take over ninety seconds. An optimized attempt takes around forty-five. The key is not to stand still during the fire breath animation. Moving forward instead of backward cuts the phase duration significantly. Abyss Watchers is where runs usually die. The two-phase fight is unforgiving with a strict route. The recommended approach is to use a shield with high stability and wait for the second brother to separate before engaging. If you fight both at once, you will likely die and lose time. I once burned four minutes on a failed attempt because I tried to rush the first phase with a magic build. Switching to a weapons art build fixed the problem instantly.

Tools and Verification

You do not need external tools to run a legitimate 100 percent speedrun. The game tracks achievements and emblems internally. What helps is a frame-perfect split timer. I use a simple online split tracker that I overlay on my gameplay. The splits are based on known benchmarks for each major boss and area transition. Having a visible split time tells you immediately if you are falling behind or ahead of pace. It also makes it easier to identify which section needs work. Recording your run for review is essential. Watching your footage back shows mistakes you did not notice while playing. I found several instances where I was pressing movement inputs a frame too late at key junctions. Correcting those small timing issues added up to another thirty seconds saved across the run.

How Long Until You Reach Sub-Three Hours

If you are starting from scratch, expect around 100 to 200 attempts before you break three hours on a strict run. The first fifty attempts are usually spent learning the route. The next fifty are spent refining individual boss strategies. After that, you are shaving fractions of a second off transitions and optimizing input timing. My own journey from first attempt to sub three hours took approximately one hundred and thirty attempts over two months. The learning curve is steep at first, then flattens out as you internalize the routing. Even experienced runners hit walls. The most common wall is the Pontiff Sulyvahn fight. It requires multiple attempts to perfect even if you have been practicing for weeks. Another wall is the Aetherial Ring acquisition. If you miss the specific drop in the Painted World, you have to restart that section. There is no way to retrieve it later without reloading. This category is demanding and the time investment is real. It rewards patience more than raw skill. If you are not willing to practice the same boss fight thirty times in a row, you will likely stall out. But if you stick with it, the route becomes muscle memory and the final numbers start dropping quickly.