How Pathfinding in Dark Souls works

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:37]In one of my recent videos, I've shown a lot of weird pathfinding bugs, and since then I've learned how to investigate what actually happens under the hood. I will go through several examples in detail, but first, let me lay out the basics of how pathfinding works.

[00:00:53]Pay close attention to the path these enemies take. It's a large open field, but instead of just running straight towards me, they seem to run away first, especially the third one in the back. It will soon make sense why the pathfinding is so weird here.

[00:01:10]Now they do chase me, but turn to the side instead of following me directly.

[00:01:16]There is a very easy explanation for that.

[00:01:20]By using the debug menu, I can visualize the navigation meshes, but that's kind of ugly unless I turn off the map drawing. Now you can clearly see the triangles that are used to calculate the path. Let's ignore the pink ones for now and focus on the very basics. With the debug menu, I can also visualize the actual path that's calculated to get from point A to point B. I started over there and set it as the goal, then I sprint here and set it as the beginning.

[00:01:49]It calculated a path that sends me to the left to zigzag through the trees.

[00:01:54]That path wants me to go from center of a triangle to the center of an adjacent triangle, but if I'm close enough it also skips some and lets me run straight ahead.

[00:02:03]This time I will try it again while crossing the pink boundary. Now I'm getting a weird path that resembles one the enemies took. It wants me to go left first instead of just sending me directly to the goal. The debug menu calls the pink triangles outlet meshes, but I will just call them boundaries or priority meshes instead.

[00:02:24]The map is split up into segments of connected triangles that are divided by those pink triangles. If an enemy wants to cross from one area to the next, they first need to get to the closest outlet mesh first, which is why they sometimes run in the other direction first.

[00:02:44]A lot of chunky behavior can be explained by enemies needing to cross those boundaries and getting confused.

[00:02:51]The Gang Forest contains great examples of a lot of chunk. Look, there's a boundary here that makes him run left and right and up and down instead of just following me directly. Look at the bandit in the back. He seems to have no idea how to cope with it. He runs left and right and left and right, but doesn't even get any closer to me.

[00:03:12]Now, let us apply what we've learned to the chunky pathfinding of this Taurus demon. Can you guess what the issue is here? He runs away from me instead of just walking a few feet to get to me.

[00:03:23]Yeah, as you guessed it, one issue is again one of those priority fields, but there's also a new kind of chunk here.

[00:03:31]The navigation mesh is not fully connected. There are holes that the enemies aren't considering to be valid paths.

[00:03:38]So, even a distance of just a few feet across that hole means that the enemy has to run a huge circle to get to the player.

[00:03:56]>> Oftentimes the holes do have a purpose.

[00:03:59]They are used to guide enemies around obstacles. Like it's impossible for an enemy to get caught behind this tree as the pathfinding will look for a path to go around it as it is cut out. There is another fallen tree close by where the developers forgot to do this. So enemies will just keep on running into it instead of looking for a path to get around this obstacle.

[00:04:25]Most of the trees in this area are cut out as well, but if they missed two trees that are close together, enemies can easily get stuck behind them.

[00:04:33]The same is obviously also true if they don't handle other obstructions correctly. Enemies do not see the game world like we do. They only know the direction they are supposed to be running to.

[00:05:09]If enemies have to jump down somewhere, this is handled by the blue triangles.

[00:05:14]He could have just followed me, but as there is no path down, he went even further up first. Enemies use the blue triangles to find a way to get down from higher up, but those paths are lacking direction, so enemies can also get stuck if they try to walk up.

[00:05:31]This can look pretty funny if they end up running into nothing in the hope that they magically fly up that path.

[00:05:42]If I visualize the pathfinding, we can see Here this blue triangle really makes them think that they are supposed to just jump up here somehow. It's a fun oversight that this isn't a directed graph.

[00:06:00]There is yet another type of navigation mesh that I want to address, but this time I'm not exactly sure if it even works correctly.

[00:06:08]If enemies are walking close to cliffs, they are at a high risk of falling down and constantly do so.

[00:06:16]The path here is made up of green triangles that are called cliff or next to hole. They are only very rarely used, but I'm not noticing any difference to the regular yellow triangles. Maybe the distance before it lets me run straight ahead is a bit shorter, but it's not preventing them from falling down as much as it probably should. Yeah, those were all the basics, so let us now look at some specific examples of classic FromSoftware Enemies that run down cliffs like these two here are easy to explain as that's the point where the pathfinding starts to allow them to run straight towards me. It's a cliff, but it didn't use the green cliff triangles right next to it. And the triangles they used are also massive. Enemies can be pretty far away and will still get sent straight down the hole.

[00:07:07]If they do start from this triangle here, they will look for a safe path around the hole. This could have been improved in my opinion. Like by using smaller triangles and placing more green triangles around the cliff, they might be looking for a safe path more often.

[00:07:25]These hollows just jump down the hole as if they haven't noticed that the floor collapsed. Well, I'm not going to blame them for that mistake as the navigation mesh doesn't look like it has been updated, but interestingly, the pathfinding does try to account for it, but fails as some points are still floating in mid-air.

[00:07:52]>> [music] >> Similar issue happens with this door as the path isn't trying hard enough to get around it.

[00:08:03]>> [music] >> And other times, the pathfinding fails to realize which triangle is actually the closest to me and has enemies run away for no reason.

[00:08:18]I know at least four spots in Firelink Shrine alone where this happens.

[00:08:23]But it's not limited to just that area.

[00:08:26]It can happen pretty much everywhere where they didn't handle the verticality correctly.

[00:08:44]Before analyzing this area, I assumed the same problem occurs here with the pathfinding falsely assuming that I'm on top of the bridge. But in this case, it's actually one of those pink priority fields that is to blame. The pathfinding algorithm sends me to the closest pink triangle first, which happens to not be the one close to where I started, but up on the stairs. So, it sends me all around instead of just straight ahead.

[00:09:23]Him jumping down the cliff is not really a pathfinding issue. The path wants him to look towards the cliff first, and he just happens to jump once I'm in range without first checking if I'm also in the correct direction.

[00:09:39]>> [groaning] >> A pretty well-known example of enemies jumping down cliffs is at these stairs set in the game forest, which is easy to explain as there's no pathfinding down here, so they just run up the stairs and jump down from the blue triangle.

[00:10:06]But sometimes they keep on running into the stairs for no reason.

[00:10:11]It looks pretty funny if I visualize that as they want to start from the pink triangle all the way up there. That's such a great pathfinding.

[00:10:46]This is yet another case of the pathfinding falsely assuming that I'm somehow down there, but fans of my channel will know that this isn't even the funniest case of weird pathfinding in this area, and thanks to the navigation visualization, I finally got an answer to one of my biggest mysteries.

[00:11:19]I always wondered why this enemy drops down to run away from me instead of just walking a few feet closer to get to me.

[00:11:26]He drops down here perfectly and then runs all the way back to the beginning of the area. This was always the weirdest path I saw an enemy take.

[00:11:36]And once he climbs up the ladder to get to the beginning, he starts to walk through the traps backwards.

[00:11:44]And he's surprisingly good at doing this. But once he's at a point further away from me, he starts sprinting back to me.

[00:11:52]All of this is a very weird interaction, which once again has a very easy explanation.

[00:11:58]It's once again one of those pesky pink triangles.

[00:12:03]Instead of just taking the short path to get to me, he first gets sent to the pink triangle as it's closer if you ignore the elevation differences. And then the pathfinding actually manages to discover a path that takes him all the way through Sen's Fortress. It's not the best path as it wants me to climb up that ladder only to immediately slide it back down again. It's also interesting that the pathfinding wants me to take the elevator up, but only the left one.

[00:12:32]It doesn't care which one is at the bottom.

[00:12:35]And now after running all the way through Sen's Fortress, I finally reach the goal.

[00:12:51]Now that I've explained a few forms of common chunk, I would like to circle back to the clip from the very beginning of the video.

[00:13:05]This one was pretty lazily created as there are many holes without any navigation meshes. So, you could be pretty close to the enemy, but they first have to get to the closest triangle, which can send them off in the wrong direction.

[00:13:19]The most severe issues causes the hole between the swamp and this hill. They are only connected by one small pink strip, so just moving a little bit to the side can have enemies running a huge circle to get back to you.

[00:13:34]From what I can tell, the pathfinding works the same in the other Souls games, but Dark Souls 1 was the only one where I managed to visualize the actual paths, so I focused on this game.

[00:13:45]Let me know if there are any other pathfinding issues that I could try to clarify in a follow-up video. I'm not sure if I will make one though, as this video should cover all the common forms of change.

[00:13:56]I hope you enjoyed this video and learned a thing or two. Goodbye.