Recently, a hack has spread like wildfire throughout Dark Souls III multiplayer. This malicious exploit allows hackers to manipulate your save file flags. With it, these pathetic losers can send you to New Game+ by force, among other things. If you are a host getting invaded by a @#$&^!* using the hack, they will send you to the next New Game+ cycle. When this happens, you'll lose any progress you had on your current cycle. While this sucks, it won't brick your save file and you can make it to where you were before.

If you aren't the host, and instead are invading or getting summoned by one of the sweaty neckbeards using the hack, your situation is far more unfortunate. The scumbags will send you to the beginning of your current New Game cycle with a broken save, snickering to themselves as they lick the cheeto dust off their fingers. You can progress through the Cemetary of Ash as normal, but you'll be unable to leave Firelink Shrine. This will also break some progression flags in your save and prevent you from warping to High Wall of Lothric. The hack can potentially manipulate your save file in other ways too. The lengths these filthy lowlives will go to just to ruin someone else's experience frankly amazes me.

The easiest way to protect yourself from the hack is to play your game offline, but I find that it's also the least fun. If you don't give a damn about Co-op or PVP though, it's the best solution. The option to prevent the game from going online can be found in the game settings. Set it to start offline, then restart your game so the changes are in effect.

Blue Sentinel is an anti-cheat mod made by Luke Yui, one of the developers of PVP Watchdog. For those unaware, PVP Watchdog was a popular third-party anti-cheat for the game based on its Dark Souls 1 namesake. Blue Sentinel is the successor to PVP Watchdog, and the best anti-cheat available. It won't only protect you from the NG+ hack, but 99.9% (0.1% for plausible deniablity) of known hacks as well. It'll also make save backups for you automatically. As someone who plays frequently and enjoys the multiplayer aspect of the game, Blue Sentinel is an unrivaled solution.

Links to the mod:

• Nexus Mods Page[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• GitHub Page[github.com]

If you're skeptical about using a mod to protect yourself, I completely understand. If you still want to play online without a mod, the best thing to do is make frequent save backups.

To back up your save:

• Navigate to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\DarkSoulsIII
  
• Make a copy of the folder.
  
• Store it somewhere safe, or even in a cloud storage service like OneDrive or Dropbox.

To restore a backup save once you've been hacked:

• Navigate to wherever your backup is.
  
• Make a copy of it.
  
• Navigate to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming
  
• Delete the "DarkSoulsIII" folder.
  
• Replace it with your backup.