Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Demons Souls - Boss Order Analysis

As a huge fan of Demons Souls, I love seeing people fall in love with the game like I did years ago. That's why I enjoy watching blind LPs on Youtube, and checking the message boards on Gamefaqs and Reddit. One thing I've always wondered, though, is how my first playthrough compared to everybody else? What order do people normally beat the bosses in?

Demons Souls makes it possible to answer that question thanks to its trophy list - there's exactly one trophy for every boss. With the timestamps, it's possible to go back and check exactly what your boss order was. My plan was then to use PSN Profiles to gather data, but I didn't see a way to find what I was looking for. So I decided to use True Trophies, which has a smaller user base but better statistics. If you click on a trophy there, you can see every single person who's won it. That's what I needed.

I used the False King Allant trophy, figuring that it's probably the last boss trophy most people earned (there's no trophy solely for beating the game, since you don't get one for the evil ending). From there, it was just a slightly tedious task of entering every person's boss order who had won that trophy. Of the 1,205 people I checked, I ended up being able to use 1,164 for this analysis - the others either didn't beat all the bosses, lacked timestamps for some of them, or had something screwy.

I should also note that True Trophies' user base is much more hardcore than the average player. 25.7% of players there have platinumed the game, versus 10.7% on PSN Profiles and 2.4% overall (checked on PS4). However, the trophies do measure only the first time through the game, so hopefully it didn't have a huge effect on the stats. Of course, like PSN Profiles, people whose profiles are on True Trophies may not have actually signed up for the site themselves. Also, it's possible that some people may have played the European or Japanese versions first, since they have separate trophy lists. I only used the US list.


The Average Order




Average Trophy %
1-1 Phalanx 1.00 61.8
1-2 Tower Knight 3.00 44.9
2-1 Armor Spider 3.10 42.4
2-2 Flamelurker 5.73 33.7
4-1 Adjudicator 5.86 34.5
3-1 Fool's Idol 6.34 34.2
2-3 Dragon God 7.75 31.6
5-1 Leechmonger 8.87 31.0
4-2 Old Hero 9.76 27.2
3-2 Maneater 10.10 27.2
1-3 Penetrator 10.46 28.8
4-3 Storm King 11.50 26.5
3-3 Old Monk 11.85 26.2
5-2 Dirty Colossus 12.30 25.6
5-3 Maiden Astraea 13.78 25.1
1-4 False King 14.60 22.8

On the right, you'll find the trophy percentage (from the PS4, so that means everyone). Next to it is the average position of the sixteen bosses from the 1,164 people I looked at. Other than Flamelurker being two spots higher, they match up exactly the same. So, I really didn't need to do all this work to figure out what the average order was. However, I have a lot of other interesting info to share below.

One thing that stands out is how each world 5 (Valley of Defilement) boss is the last one beaten for its group (x-1, x-2, x-3). People seem to be affected by the layout of the worlds in Nexus; most people will end up doing the earlier worlds first even if you can do them in any order. Maybe they should've had all the archstones on ground level, with their positions randomized or something.

I think that this order sheds some light on boss difficulty as well. Flamelurker is considered to be a very hard boss, and if most people are beating him 4th, it's easy to understand how he got that reputation. The opposite is true for the Dirty Colossus - he should be tougher for the spot that most people are fighting him.


After Phalanx

Who do most people kill second?


Tower Knight 66.7% 776
Armor Spider 25.3% 294
Fool's Idol 2.1% 25
Adjudicator 5.0% 58
Leechmonger 0.9% 11

Exactly two-thirds of players continued straight past him, further into world 1 to kill the Tower Knight. I was surprised to check my own trophy list and see that I did the same thing. I always go for 4-1 first these days.

If you didn't kill the Tower Knight second, you probably killed the Armor Spider instead. If you killed one of the other three, then your playthrough was pretty unique.


First Archdemon

Which of the archdemons did most people kill first?


Dragon God 73.6% 857
Old Monk 7.5% 87
Storm King 14.0% 163
Maiden Astraea 4.9% 57

It is very, very common for players to immediately clear out the entire second world before moving on to any of the last three. It's also very common to do this, in general, for any of the worlds, as you'll see next.


Clearing an Entire World in Order

Beating all three of the bosses in a row:


World 2 31.0% 361
World 3 28.2% 328
World 4 27.0% 314
World 5 40.8% 475

It's most common for world 5, where lots of people tended to leave the entire thing until last or near last.


Final Boss

Who was the last boss killed?


False King 69.4% 808
Dragon God 1.0% 12
Old Monk 5.9% 69
Storm King 3.4% 40
Maiden Astraea 20.2% 235

I'm surprised that over 30% didn't finish with the False King, and also that so many ended with Astraea instead. It's pretty unusual to end with any of the other three.


Most Common Back-to-Back Kills



Boss 1 Boss 2

1 Dirty Colossus Maiden Astraea 82.6% 961
2 Old Hero Storm King 75.3% 876
3 Maneater Old Monk 74.2% 864
4 Flamelurker Dragon God 67.3% 783
5 Phalanx Tower Knight 66.7% 776
6 Tower Knight Armor Spider 57.8% 673
7 Leechmonger Dirty Colossus 45.6% 531
8 Armor Spider Flamelurker 43.3% 504
9 Penetrator False King 36.7% 427
10 Dragon God Penetrator 35.1% 408

What this means is that 82.6% of people who beat the Dirty Colossus, then beat Maiden Astraea next. The top are the final two fights of worlds 2-5. I guess a lot of people enter the fog and immediately see a boss fight, so why not finish it right away? Tower Knight to Armor Spider and Dragon God to Penetrator are the only pairings from different worlds.


Least Common Back-to-Back Kills

There were seven pairings that were never seen:


Boss 1 Boss 2
Tower Knight Old Monk
Armor Spider Old Monk
Armor Spider Storm King
Armor Spider Maiden Astraea
Flamelurker Maiden Astraea
Adjudicator Maiden Astraea
Dirty Colossus Armor Spider

Everything else that was possible was seen at least once.


The Next Boss

Here's the full list of which bosses were beaten next after defeating one. To read this: For example, directly after beating the False King, 5 people beat 2-1, 11 people beat 2-2, 17 people beat 2-3, and so on. When looking at a column, it tells you which boss was beaten directly before (i.e. 46 people who beat 1-3 had just beaten 1-2).



1-1 1-2 1-3 1-4 2-1 2-2 2-3 3-1 3-2 3-3 4-1 4-2 4-3 5-1 5-2 5-3 (done)
1-1 Phalanx
776

294

25

58

11


1-2 Tower Knight

46
673 122 10 87 6 0 134 10 1 70 4 1
1-3 Penetrator


427 13 23 23 128 125 52 77 111 32 82 54 17
1-4 False King



5 11 17 39 51 30 25 41 19 44 56 18 808
2-1 Armor Spider
129 3 4
504
255 4 0 188 16 0 57 4 0
2-2 Flamelurker
18 8 1

783 115 71 4 70 25 3 50 16 0
2-3 Dragon God
17 408 24


170 92 44 119 90 34 82 57 15 12
3-1 Fool's Idol
61 46 13 34 112 57
396
259 48 12 108 15 3
3-2 Maneater
1 26 14 2 9 26

864 34 105 13 36 28 6
3-3 Old Monk
7 158 138 4 19 29


108 159 96 172 158 47 69
4-1 Adjudicator
56 38 11 78 156 39 124 45 10
389
211 7 0
4-2 Old Hero
2 26 12 6 20 21 17 46 23

876 32 76 7
4-3 Storm King
9 131 139 19 33 37 99 139 62


209 158 89 40
5-1 Leechmonger
66 47 23 30 124 43 61 83 16 67 65 8
531

5-2 Dirty Colossus
1 26 15 0 4 58 8 25 20 2 18 26

961
5-3 Maiden Astraea
21 201 343 6 27 21 36 81 39 23 87 44


235


Most Common Boss Orders

Here's the top five most common boss orders taken through the game:

#1 - 29 times (2.49% of players)

1-1
1-2
2-1
2-2
2-3
1-3
3-1
3-2
3-3
4-1
4-2
4-3
5-1
5-2
5-3
1-4

This beats the Tower Knight, clears out world 2, takes out the Penetrator at the first opportunity, then clears the final three worlds in order before facing off with the False King.


#2 - 18 times (1.55%)

1-1
1-2
2-1
2-2
2-3
3-1
3-2
3-3
4-1
4-2
4-3
5-1
5-2
5-3
1-3
1-4

This differs from the first only by doing the Penetrator second to last, rather than when his stage opens.


#3, tied - 10 times (0.86%)

1-1
1-2
2-1
2-2
2-3
1-3
1-4
3-1
3-2
3-3
4-1
4-2
4-3
5-1
5-2
5-3

This is what I like to call the "stupid order." You just start on the left, and complete every world as soon as you can, ending with Maiden Astraea. Kind of similar to the first two, but this one kills the False King as soon as possible, which couldn't have been easy.


#3, tied - 10 times (0.86%)

1-1
2-1
3-1
4-1
5-1
1-2
2-2
3-2
4-2
5-2
2-3
1-3
3-3
4-3
5-3
1-4

This is the "recommended order." Most of the time, people will suggest to new players that they beat the first level of every world first, the second levels next, and so on.


#5 - 8 times (0.69%)

1-1
2-1
4-1
4-2
4-3
3-1
1-2
5-1
2-2
2-3
3-2
3-3
5-2
5-3
1-3
1-4

I have no explanation for this one. They all seemed to beat the game more recently (not in the early days of its release). So maybe going to 4-1 for the crescent falchion, they then decided to complete that world before moving on. It's the only order in the top five not to beat the Dragon God as the first archdemon.

All other orders were seen six times or fewer. Most players had a completely unique order, including my own.


Speadsheet Link

Here's the full list of player orders I used for this post:

Google Spreadsheet link

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