Demon’s Souls players are noticing a lot of changes in update 1.004

Bluepoint fixed the Gold Coin and ‘wrong warp’ glitches

Bluepoint isn’t done patching Demon’s Souls – not when there are still exploits to stamp out.

Update 1.004 isn’t accompanied by official in-depth patch notes, but players have already noticed a bunch of changes and compiled their observations. Here’s a recap from Reddit user LeeShawBrown:

• Activity Cards for warping to Archstones now function correctly.

• Message appraisals now display correctly, the text and numbers no longer overlap.

• Network setting “Invasion Limit” has been removed.

• Network setting “Server Selection” now displays the correct latency(ms). The closest server should now show the lowest ping.

• With “Show Helmet” off in the options, a new crossed out eye icon will show on the helmet in the UI.

• Golden Coin glitch has been fixed.

• Ring of Magical Nature would give a free spell slot by attuning a spell with it equipped, attuning a spell and then removing it. This has been fixed.

• Ring of Longevity would allow rapid health regeneration when quickly equipping and removing it. This has been fixed.

• Damage numbers now seem to be capped to the enemy’s total health.

• Some new DualSense sound effects added for item uses such as consuming warrior/hero souls.

• Players are no longer able to break the standard progression route.

  • As an example; this bug made it possible to load 4-4, then warp to say 5-1 and close the game as soon as 5-1 stops loading. Then, upon opening the game again and killing one’s self, it’d warp to 5-4.

• As originally intended, you can now obtain the Large Sword of Searching from any curved sword, not just from a scimitar.

• When you reload your current area at an archstone, the menu selection will no longer change to the farthest archstone of that world.

  • for example, reloading 5-2 at the 5-2 archstone will no longer set the selection over 5-3 if you’ve progressed that far. It will instead auto select 5-2 to reload your current area quicker.

• In the Old Monk PVP encounter, you no longer have to watch the cutscene every time as an invader.

Elaborating on this list a bit, the Gold Coin trick was used to break Demon’s Souls through a combination of essentially limitless Luck and a particular weapon (the Blueblood Sword) that scaled its damage with that stat. It was entertaining while it lasted, but the glitch’s days were numbered. It was too impactful.

Also, the bullet point about the Large Sword of Searching is a big deal for anyone who didn’t pick the Providential Ring as their gift. Long story short: you can trade that sword with Sparkly the Crow to get the ring, and this change – accepting any Large Sword of Searching – makes the process less finicky.

So far, players have reported mixed results with this update’s networking changes. Some people are struggling to find matches in previously popular locations now that there’s a more granular server selection, but others say they’re finding higher-quality matches with better pings after this update. It also seems as if Bluepoint made a few divisive changes to player invasions and summoning.

I’m not at all surprised to see the Gold Coin or “wrong warp” glitches go away, but I am curious about the co-op and PvP tweaks – I get the sense that Demon’s Souls hasn’t fully settled into place yet.

At the very least, we still need to be able to delete our abandoned characters.