Dark Souls – Make a Fire Washing Pole +10 (and other +10 Fire Weapons)

(Here is the playlist for making a Fire Washing Pole +10).

Dark Souls allows for different types of damage.  You can choose from fire, lightning, magic, divine or physical damage.  Magic, divine and physical damage scale with an appropriate stat (INT, FAI, STR/DEX respectively).  So, a magical build with high intelligence will do more damage with an enchanted weapon than any other type of build.  These types of weapons, which I will call “scaleable” for simplicity, build up slowly over the course of the game as the related STAT is increased.  In essence magic and divine weapons need to be upgraded twice: first the weapon itself must be upgraded directly; second, the related stat must be raised to further increase the bonus to the damage rating.

Fire and lightning damage (“non-scaleable” damage), however, do not offer stat bonuses.  Even better, the damage rating of these types of weapons is quite large.  A +5 Enchanted sword requires very high intelligence to match the damage rating of a fully ascended fire or lightning sword.  A high level character will do the same amount of non-scaleable damage as a lowly build.  Astute Dark Souls players will take advantage of the high damage output of these weapons, whose only requirement is the ability to wield them.

Dark Souls allows you to make fire weapons much earlier in the game than lightning weapons.  Fire weapons are also slightly more powerful than their lightning cousins.  Other than Chaos Witch Quelaag and 2 optional bosses, all other bosses in the game can be tackled with a fire weapon.  Because fully ascending a weapon is a painfully slow and torturous process, it is very important to get the most value out of your ascended weapon.  Making a fire weapon should be your first priority in the game (but which one to ascend is up to you!).

My favorite weapon happens to be the Washing Pole.  This is a heavy, expensive, difficult to obtain and somewhat underpowered weapon.  But it more than makes up for these weaknesses, by offering the augmented range of a spear and the superior move set of the Uchigatana.  If you don’t know which weapon to ascend, here is a post with my recommendations.

The process for ascending a weapon to Fire +10 is described below:

– Get weapon

– Level up to meet weapon stat requirements

– Obtain enough souls to buy 9 titanite shards (7,200)

– Obtain enough souls to upgrade weapon to +5 (1,000 to 4,000 depending on the weapon)

– Visit Andre of Astora to upgrade weapon to +5

– Farm 10 green titanite shards from leeches in Blighttown

– Find Vamos in the Catacombs and ascend weapon to Fire

– Defeat Chaos Witch Quelaag (to open Ceaseless Discharge)

– Defeat Ceaseless Discharge (to open way to Large Flame Ember)

– Get the Large Flame Ember

– Get 2 Red Titanite Chunks from the Great Hollow

– Return to Northern Undead Asylum and kill the Black Knights for 2 Red Titanite Chunks

– Give Large Flame Ember to Vamos and upgrade weapon to Fire +8

– Defeat Smough and Ornstein (with your Fire weapon of course)

– Obtain the Lordvessel and place it in the altar

– Get 30 humanity

– Join Chaos Servant covenant and offer 30 humanity to unlock shortcut to Lost Izalith

– Unlock door in Demon Ruins leading to Lost Izalith

– Farm 5 Red Titanite Chunks from Chaos Eaters

– Find the Red Titanite Slab in the Lost Izalith swamp

– Upgrade weapon to Fire +10

– Take a break because you have done a lot!

Follow the link at the beginning of this post for the how-to video.  Feel free to comment on my method.  I hope this post and video help you during your travels through Dark Souls.