Yep, Dark Souls III can be cleared without walking

And here’s the ill-advised challenge run to prove it

Class is in session, and today we’re going to learn how to complete Dark Souls III without walking — no, seriously, check the syllabus! The midterm is going to be brutal.

“Spicy guides” creator ymfah has been entertaining Souls fans with novelty challenge runs and hilarious(ly effective) beginner guides. These videos often take a seemingly “stupid” or “pointless” concept and figure out the smartest way to pull it off, then present the findings in an expertly edited package. The music choices get me every dang time.

I’ve been wanting to highlight this creator for a while now, and this recent no-walking Dark Souls III run is a good entry point. If your initial reaction is “what the hell even?,” same!

As with all of ymfah’s best videos, there are so many considerations that go into the run — so many chances for the set-in-stone criteria to be derailed by a baffling quirk.

Per the self-inflicted rules established at the outset, the left analog stick (aka movement, aka “walking”) is off-limits — but hopping around like a total madman with the quickstep ability (from the Bandit’s Knife) is allowed, and orienting the character with enemy lock-ons is a-okay. This specific Thief setup actually works! It’s possible to move through the world without walking, in a traditional sense, and where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Ladders have never been scarier

But further into Dark Souls III, there’s an unexpected setback: a too-tall ladder on the way to Farron Keep. The drop is long enough to be lethal, and the fall damage is too much to bear even with a sneaky mitigation spell that should work. The solution? A well-timed quit-out, mid-fall, only to resume the game suddenly standing safely at the bottom.

Wild problems deserve even wilder solutions, and that’s the joy of these absurd runs. This is just one early example. And with the high-effort way in which it’s all presented, it feels like a crafted story is playing out — you don’t have to know Souls to have fun, but if you do, you’ll appreciate it even more. I always laugh, and I always learn something new.

As one YouTube commenter summed it up, “I always love the moment when the run goes from ‘This is impossible’ to ‘This is better than my actual builds.'”