One chance is given for the player to recover their lost Souls in the form of a bloodstain, which is placed at or around where they last died. Upon losing all of their health points and dying, players lose their Souls and are teleported back to a bonfire where they last rested, which serves as a checkpoint. One of the core mechanics of the series is that it uses death to teach players how to react in hostile environments, encouraging repetition, learning from past mistakes, and prior experience as a means of overcoming its difficulty.

Souls gained are usually proportional to the difficulty of fighting certain enemies the more difficult an enemy, the more souls the player will gain from defeating it. The player gains souls from gameplay battles which act as both experience points to level up and as currency to buy items. Each class has its own starting equipment and abilities that can be tailored to the player's experience and choices as they progress. Players can choose between classes, including knights, barbarians, thieves, and mages. The protagonist of each Dark Souls game can have a varying gender, appearance, name, and starting class via character creation. Players battle bosses to progress through the story, while interacting with non-playable characters.

The Dark Souls games are played in a third-person perspective, and focus on exploring interconnected environments while fighting enemies with weapons and magic.

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