As the final DLC of Dark Souls, Ichin packed an enormous amount of content into it.
First, the map itself was far bigger than Ashes of Ariandel—large enough for players to spend six or seven hours thoroughly exploring it.
Besides that, the number of bosses increased significantly.
In addition to the originally planned black dragon boss, Ichin added two more wyvern bosses—one fire-based and one poison-based. Defeating them rewarded players with two unique curved swords and two new spells.
He also stuffed tons of interesting weapons and armor into various corners of the map.
Some had both power and style, others had only power but looked hideous, and a few were pure joke weapons—not very strong, but extremely annoying to fight against.
Like the Great Door Shield.
At the office, Ichin and Eriri were testing the new online mode.
They connected inside the Ringed City's special PvP arena.
Then, under the eyes of many spectators, Ichin used the Great Door Shield to pin Eriri's mage build into a corner and slowly grind her to death—she never had the slightest chance to resist.
When her character died and returned to her world, Eriri tossed her controller aside, grabbed her head, and screamed:
"WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE!!?"
Ichin set his controller down with a bright smile.
"Isn't it hilarious? Players were already using shields in PvP; I just… strengthened that playstyle a little."
"A LITTLE!? This is pure torture!!"
Watching Eriri flailing around, Ichin shrugged.
"Not my fault you used a mage build. With your poise, two hits and you're done. Even if I changed weapons, the result would've been the same."
That shut Eriri up instantly.
She had only wanted to test the new, cool, and powerful spells added in the DLC.
But before she could even cast a single one, Ichin flattened her with two giant door panels.
Ichin opened his equipment page.
"Your strategy was the issue. You've seen all the weapon data yourself. The Great Door Shield isn't even that tanky, and I wasn't wearing other gear. All you needed to do was kite me and use fast-casting spells."
"What's the point now!? I just wanted to test the Ancient Moonlight spell! You can't 'kite' when you're trying to fire that!"
"Ancient Moonlight, huh…"
Ichin glanced at her setup and said, "If you want to play that build, don't go full caster. Bring a fast straight sword. Stagger your opponent with it, then follow up with Ancient Moonlight."
"Oh! You can play it like that!?"
Eriri's eyes lit up.
"Come on, one more match!"
"You want to use the strategy I just told you against me?" Ichin laughed. "No thanks. Go fight someone else. I still need to test the other online features."
After saying that, he left Eriri to find another opponent and returned to the dev team.
But Eriri didn't get discouraged—if Ichin wouldn't fight her, there were plenty of other people.
So she immediately went after Kuroneko.
And then Kuroneko's huge greatsword-wielding character pounded her into the ground repeatedly until she was practically flattened.
Different opponent, same ending.
After the final round of testing and bug-fixing, Dark Souls DLC2 — The Ringed City — finally launched on December 22nd, right before Christmas.
With DLC2 released, it meant Dark Souls would no longer receive any major content updates—only occasional balance patches.
But that wasn't an issue.
Even after more than half a year since release, the backend data still showed tons of secrets players hadn't discovered.
For example, a certain hidden whip.
Stat-wise it was ordinary, its weapon art being a leaping overhead strike—one of the few air-attack weapons in the game.
But when used on any humanoid enemy, the hit would make them scream—NPC invaders, players, anyone. The scream was uncontrollable.
That was pure dev-team mischief.
Originally they wanted all whips to do this, but Ichin felt that was a bit too insane, so he limited it to one hidden weapon.
Right now it was still sitting behind a hidden door in Farron Keep. No one had found it.
Another absurd hidden weapon was the "chicken-leg" weapon.
It was ridiculous for two reasons:
1. Its appearance was a giant purple right hand forming a fist—with the middle finger raised. A universal international gesture. It looked suspiciously like Thanos's hand, so the weapon's name was "Right Hand of the Nameless Strong One."
2. Its weapon art was a forehead flick—an incredibly strong poise-breaking and knockback attack. Small humanoid enemies would literally go flying.
This weapon also hadn't been found yet, hidden somewhere in the Boreal Valley.
Besides those, there were many other special weapons and armor sets tucked into secret rooms.
Ichin had no intention of giving players hints.
Letting them discover things on their own was the fun part—and many players had already begun scouring the game for undiscovered items. It was only a matter of time before everything was found.
The moment the DLC launched, players excitedly jumped into the game and followed the prompt into the new Ringed City area.
The enemy strength there was equivalent to late-game NG1 difficulty.
Using an NG1 clear file made it just right—challenging, especially with the new enemy types that hit quite hard.
This time, Ichin didn't rush to watch streams.
Instead, he played Isaac while monitoring backend data, waiting for the notification that the first boss had been defeated.
He waited… and waited… and waited.
Only after three whole hours did the backend finally update.
"…Did I accidentally make the Demon Prince too hard?"
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