"Play with Friends with No Restrictions" - Seamless Co-Op Comes to Dark Souls II Thanks to This Mod

A new mod for the PC version of Dark Souls II has been released, enabling seamless co-operative play throughout the entire game.

Created by Yui, the mod "allows you to play with friends throughout the entirety of the game with no restrictions," meaning that it's "theoretically possible to play the game from the tutorial up to the final boss completely in one co-op session" with four other players.

The mod obviously changes some of the key mechanics you'd expect to find in a FromSoftware Souls adventure. Death means you'll respawn in the same world at the last bonfire you rested at, rather than having your session ended and your connection to the other players lost.

Defeating bosses doesn't mean players return to their respective games, either, and the fog walls that would normally limit exploration are removed. Events and conversations with NPCs are synchronised, and when one of the players involved rests at a bonfire, the world is reset for all other players. Progression events completed during online play also become permanent in your own game world.

How is this done? Well, Dark Souls II's peer-to-peer connection system has been overhauled using Steam's newer networking API, and voice chat has been reimagined as a proximity-based system. "A streamlined connection system means that co-operators can join the host from anywhere in the world," adds the developer. "So even if you do disconnect, you can very quickly re-join and continue where you left off."

The mod also brings with it some welcome 'quality of life' upgrades, as noted on the mod's page here:

• Allowing the user to set the volume of the title menu
• Fixing the "Disable double clicking" option not working correctly for keyboard and mouse players
• Re-addition of the server timed-exclusive cosmetic items from the original Dark Souls II
• Conversion of the controller deadzone area to a radial deadzone
• Allowing the user to skip the ending credits once the game is complete (normally unskippable in NG, lasts about 9 minutes)
• Option for borderless fullscreen mode

Since this is an unofficial mod, many of you may be wondering whether it could get your account banned. Thankfully, this isn't the case:

"The mod prevents you from connecting the FromSoftware's matchmaking servers, and it uses save files different to the non-modded game. There's no way to get banned using this mod unless you modify it with the intent of connecting to vanilla players.

As this mod introduces new items not found in the base game, it uses a different save file to the normal '.sl2' extension. This means that you cannot access your Seamless Coop save files in the base game, and vice versa. Do not revert mod save files back to vanilla save files, as you will likely get banned."

If you'd like to try it, head over to Nexus Mods.