Return to Drangleic is a community driven event encouraging players to return to the world of Dark Souls 2. Despite a lot of controversy at its release, the game has an incredibly loyal and passionate fanbase within the Souls community, so every year players return to the troubled middle child of the Souls series.
Year after year since 2017, these fans of Dark Souls 2 flock back to the misty lands of Drangleic. Despite releasing in 2013, there are a huge number of players who cannot get enough of jolly cooperation in the Souls series’ second installment, as getting help from other players when fighting the series’ colossal bosses is an incredibly common desire. However, matchmaking online is often very difficult with older games that have waning player bases, so Return to Drangleic is a perfect solution to this. The event serves as a mass gathering of players in game, helping simulate the of multiplayer opportunities available at launch.
The event began in late February of 2017. Hardcore Dark Souls 2 fans always wanted more players to join back in, but the main spur of the festivities seem to come from this Return to Drangleic reddit post. The post was penned by popular Soulsborne YouTuber IllusoryWall, who specialize in finding hidden creatures, items and even plotlines tucked away into unused game code. This is unsurprisingly popular with the Souls fanbase, perhaps due to the huge number of hidden secrets in Dark Souls 2.
In this case, IllusoryWall found a huge, impassioned fanbase for a much-maligned game, so the first Return to Drangleic proved immensely popular. Since this first event, the game’s concurrent player counts jumps around February, bringing a whole host of new and seasoned players back to its world every year.
Although February 2017 marked one of the first properly organized Return to Drangleic events, Dark Souls 2 fans gathered together in game even before that. Before the 2017 event officially set the start date as a consistent late February, the event still occurred, but at wildly different times. In 2016, the community decided to go back to the game in October, and in different months beforehand. There is so much to explore in Dark Souls 2, so it is no surprise that the game’s players wanted to preserve a consistent playing community. Especially with the release of Bloodborne in 2015, it seemed like the direction of FromSoftware’s games were shifting in another direction. Bloodborne’s differences from the Souls games were so distinct that some people moved back to Dark Souls 2‘s more familiar mechanics.
Every Souls game has rock-hard difficulty, awe-inspiring bosses, and an incredible atmosphere. However, Dark Souls 2 sits out as a very distinct game in the series. From the beginning, it suffered many unfavorable comparisons to the first game. A lot of players felt that the game’s encounters and mechanics were worse than its predecessor. As such, the game boasts a much smaller player base than other entries in the series, so it is perhaps surprising that it has its own “Return to Drangleic” event. However, Dark Souls 2 offers something in far greater quantities than the other Souls games. None of the other titles come close to matching the sweeping array of weapons, equipment and general character options in Dark Souls 2.
Due to this incredible breadth of character options, the game suits a quick return period very well. Players who return to Drangleic have a wealth of options at their disposal. In particular, the power stance function is unique to Dark Souls 2 in the FromSoftware series. This mechanic allows for an advanced dual-wielding system, letting Dark Souls 2 class builds vary from a pyromancer-cleric to a fully-fledged fisticuff fighter. Return to Drangleic is meant as a two-week trip into the game’s misty lands, so it gives players a fun excuse to try out any zany character they might have in mind. As the event is so short-lived, it does not really matter if the character build is suboptimal, as long as it is fun.
Another aspect that also makes people return to Dark Souls 2 might be the difficulty it is often criticized for, as the event massively boosts multiplayer opportunities. Rolling through the bosses of Dark Souls 2 with a group of 4 bizarre player characters is uniquely satisfying. Difficult crowd bosses in particular become much more dynamic, while running with a huge group does not have to decrease the difficulty too much, however. One of Dark Souls 2‘s best items is the Bonfire Ascetic, which activates in a bonfire and transforms the area around it. When burned, the Ascetic changes the area up until the next bonfire into its New Game Plus equivalent. Every time a player uses this item consecutively, it simulates a further New Game Plus cycle.
When a game has such layered difficulty mechanics, players can customize their experience of the best areas in Dark Souls 2 to a huge degree. This makes fun boss fights like the Pursuer infinitely replayable if one so desire. In fact, if some wants to speed-run Dark Souls 2 during Return to Drangleic, the Bonfire Ascetic is essential. With this effect, players can race to the end of the game by fighting a boss over and over. The boss in question eventually gives players enough souls to buy their way into endgame content.
If a player wants to join in the 2021 Return to Drangleic, they are able to up until March 11th. This is not a hard deadline, and plenty of gamers will undoubtedly carry on playing the game after this date. IllusoryWall’s reddit post, mentioned above, gives details on everything one needs to do, but players should not use the Name-Engraved ring this year. This item helped with connecting players in previous years, but for current matchmaking purposes, it does not work like that. The community also recommends using the Scholar of the First Sin edition of the game to ensure better matchmaking. If anyone wants to return to an incredible Souls game and perhaps give it a chance it missed at launch, Return to Drangleic might just be the perfect solution.
Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin is available on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
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