Dark Souls 3: Ranking the Burial Gifts

Yesterday we ranked the starting classes of Dark Souls 3, and today we're ranking the burial gifts. These are the items you can choose to start the game with, and today we're going through the trash to find the treasure. We're basing this list on how useful the item is in the overall game versus how quickly it can be obtained later on. We begin...

9. Cracked Red Eye Orb x4

This item allows you to invade another player's world once so you can duel that player, either kill them or help them, and get some embers. This item is the WORST starting item for a number of reasons. First, the very start of the game is no time to be going PvP. Second, this item can be obtained literally fifteen minutes after starting the game if you find the right NPC. And thirdly, you can get the infinite-use Red Eye Orb after completing a VERY easy quest! You have ZERO reason to pick this item.

8. Young White Branch

The purpose of this item is to help you blend in to the environment for a limited amount of time. A second purpose, which the game won't tell you about, is that it allows you to pass through a certain area of the Undead Settlement without befriending the giant who's throwing arrows. That's nice and all, but it's nigh useless; the road to befriending the giant isn't particularly dangerous (except for newbies) and blending in to the environment isn't important in the early game, when most enemies are slow and telegraph their attacks. Give this item a skip.

7. Black Firebomb x5

Bombs are cool and all, but they're at their best when thrown at enemies near barrels of gunpowder. Other than that, this item is not more useful than a regular Firebomb which you can pick up literally at the tutorial area. Plus, these can be bought for cheap at around the fifth-sixth area of the game, so you can skip this item.

6. Hidden Blessing

Are you a mage? If yes, this item's pretty good as an extra Ashen Estus that's guaranteed to fill up your FP meter. If not, this item is next to useless to you. However, considering you only get around 5 per playthrough tops, or 8 with the DLC, then this makes it a safer pick. That said, it's too much of a niche pick.

5. Rusted Gold Coin x7

For all intents and purposes, this consumable doubles your chance of enemies dropping items. That's very nice, especially considering that the High Wall of Lothric has Lothric Knights which drop the BEST armor of the early game AND one of the best spears AND best straight swords in the game, PERIOD! But it's still not a guarantee, so that knocks the item down on this list.

4. Sovereingless Soul

This item gives you 2000 free souls for you to trade for a level up. In layman's terms, that means this item grants you one extra level at the start of the game. Very nice for newbies, but rather useless for pros who already know they can get 2000 souls doing a simple run between the first two bonfires at Lothric High Wall. Still, no denying this is a good starting item.

3. Divine Blessing

This bad boy completely heals your Health AND cures you of any bad status effect AND removes the buildup of all other negative status effects! Holy shit, YES PLEASE! Too bad you only get 5 per playthrough!

2. Fire Gem

OK, I need to eplain something. At the early part of the game (High Wall to around Carthus) many enemies are weak to Fire. They get stunned by it, suffer extra damage, etc. A weapon infused with this bad boy pretty much makes the early game a cakewalk. It's easier to count the number of enemies that are STRONG against Fire than WEAK to it. And until you get the Farron Coal, Fire is the best infusion available to the player, natch. Only the fact that Fire infusion loses effectiveness later on keeps this jewel from reaching number 1.

1. Life Ring

An 8% increase in Health sounds small and worthless, but if we do the math we find one of the best rings in the game. At 27 Vigor your HP is 1000. With this ring, it's 1080. To get 1080 Health without the ring, you'll need to increase your Vigor up to 31; that's four levels. The levels you spent on that Vigor could have been spent on something else, like Strength or Dexterity. All in all, this is the BEST burial gift; it's useful all game long, and every class benefits from it.