- For the Dark Souls variant, see New Game Plus.
- For the Dark Souls II variant, see New Game Plus (Dark Souls II).
New Game Plus, also New Game+ (NG+), is a gameplay mechanic in Dark Souls III. It is a new adventure presented to the player after having completed the game, characterized for having a higher difficulty level and adding a few new items for them to collect.
Individual playthroughs on one character are commonly referred to as cycles and are identified by how many cycles have been completed. For example "NG" refers to the initial cycle upon starting a new game, "NG+" refers to the second cycle, and "NG+2" refers to the third cycle.
Access[]
Upon defeating the Soul of Cinder and choosing an ending, the player will be offered to enter New Game+. If they decline, they will arrive back at Firelink Shrine and will be free to continue exploring the game as normal. New Game+ can then be entered at any time from Firelink Shrine's bonfire. This process is repeated for each subsequent New Game+ cycle.
Note that immediately entering the next New Game+ cycle will prevent the player from accessing events that only occur after the defeat of the Soul of Cinder, such as Yuria of Londor leaving her armor set and weapon for the player to collect following the Usurpation of Fire ending.
Differences[]
Upon starting New Game+, the game will restart from the beginning with the world, including area progression, story events, and lootable items, fully reset. The player keeps all their non-story based weapons, armor, items, and rings; and retains their soul level, stats, and covenant standings.
Upon entering New Game+, enemies receive a substantial increase to their health and damage output, but also reward more souls upon their defeat. Furthermore, Bosses will drop their specific souls when killed, allowing the player to either transpose the items they did not obtain in their first New Game cycle, or duplicates of items they already obtained. This notably allows a player to transpose the Twin Princes' Greatsword without having another player drop one of the swords during online play.
More powerful versions of certain rings can be found as loot on corpses in New Game+. Further additions may be found on the third cycle, New Game+2. These additional rings continue to appear in every future New Game+ cycle, and as such can be collected in any cycle beyond the one they first appear in. It should be noted that certain rings have even stronger versions in The Ringed City DLC, which can be obtained without the use of New Game+.
The entire New Game+ process repeats each time the player completes a cycle, with each later cycle adding an additional smaller increase to enemy health, damage, and soul rewards. This continues until reaching New Game+6, after which point difficulty will no longer increase, although further game cycles can still be done.
Items lost[]
All key items, except for the Champion's Bones, are lost upon entering New Game+. As Dark Sigils are lost, the player's Hollowing stat will not increase until the sigils are obtained again, though the Hollowing level itself is unaffected by starting New Game+.