Invading in Dark Souls III can be tough, especially if you have zero experience. It is a 5 years old game now so finding rookie players who are progressing through for the first time is quite hard if there are no sales on the store. Instead, you are more likely to encounter veteran players who know what they're doing and have optimized builds. For that reason, we're gonna get YOU an optimized build!

First of all, co-op play is fairly easy comparing to invasions, as long as you have the correct soul/weapon level you can use pretty much whichever build you want. On invasions however, you want to have some thought put into your weapon selections and infusing elements. I recommend watching some long-time YouTubers (my fav being ChaseTheBro, hi Chase!) who are somewhat educational PvP players and seeing top rated builds on SoulsPlanner. [soulsplanner.com]

Once you decide what build suits you more, hop onto character planner and see what is your go to class, armor, rings etc. If you create an account, you can save them for later. Very useful tool.

After optimizing all your stuff, go to this matchmaking calculator [mpql.net] and see which areas you can invade/co-op on. Optionally, you can take this as your first step and then make a fitting build depending on your favorite area.

Playing online on PC is always risky, there are plenty of hackers out there whose only intention is messing with your game files. They can get you banned by injecting unobtainable weapons (such as +99 Storm Ruler), titanite slabs, gestures or can straight up send you to new game plus and even get you stuck in a loop. Weird people like these are the reason we should use the Blue Sentinel [www.nexusmods.com] mod. This mod will protect you from malicious cheats, flag players who use them, and allow you to kick them from your world. Will even block their steam account for you. It is safe for online use.

Speaking of online mods, there are two other QOL mods to ease your multiplayer experience. These are also safe to use.
Wex Dust: [www.nexusmods.com] Replaces repair powder with a dust that lets you search for an invasion not only in the current location but anywhere in the game. When in multiplayer, it becomes a repair powder again.
Honest Merchant: [www.nexusmods.com] Lets the player get any item in the game by performing certain gestures in front of the corpse near Firelink Tower gate.
IMPORTANT! You must own both DLCs to use Honest Merchant without getting banned. Even then, watch for unobtainable/limited items such as slabs, gestures etc. just in case.

Our list will contain two type of progression with them being new and experienced player levels. Keep in mind those numbers are what YOU want to be on as a summon/invader, not the host. Also, some areas are optional/don't have a certain route to them so they might have weird outcomes.

Guide indicators are listed below:

I didn't mention the arena because META level = arena level as you might imagine. Also, I know there are players on YouTube (Juutas for example) who finish the game in much lower soul levels but those players almost always play offline/unembered so I didn't bother going that low.


Nothing here yet...

Welp, hope it helped some fellow confused ashen ones... Go and point down on them gankers!