10 Insane Dark Souls Shortcuts You Totally Missed

For offline play, covenants in Dark Souls mostly don't make any difference at all. If you're not invading or being invaded, there's not really much point in bothering to swear your allegiance to anyone, from Lordran all the way to the Ringed City.

Then again, the handful of offline uses certain covenants do have prove very beneficial indeed. Making offerings to covenant leaders sometimes grants you exclusive items, or, in the case of the Chaos Servant covenant, a very handy shortcut.

If you offer 30 humanities to the Fair Lady to ease her suffering, a sliding door at the bottom of the Demon Ruins is able to be opened from the front, allowing early access into the forsaken city of Lost Izalith. How anyone could know this without consulting the Wiki is a question for the ages.

This shortcut is also the easiest way to spare Solaire of Astora from his sad fate of going hollow, enabling him to be summoned for the final boss fight against Lord Gwyn.