Talk:Dark Souls II/@comment-25950924-20150320052119/@comment-4511886-20150322081621

I'd say it's actually negative. You can run past, or just kill, a lot of enemies fairly easily which often means that them despawning will only happen if you're farming.

If you don't want to use Ascetics, you can enter the Covenant of Champions. It will give enemies more defence and damage, but they won't despawn and you don't need to bother with NG+ exclusive enemies. You can leave the covenant, to return it back to normal, when you're done farming.