Introduction
This guide explains how to effectively farm Embers by yourself. Note that you can farm Embers while playing offline. Like most consumable items, Embers can be traded between players. Before you start farming, ask on the forum to see whether anyone would trade you a bunch of Embers. If for some reason people don't respond to your request or no one is available to trade with you, consider farming Embers from enemies in the game.
For those who enjoy the multiplayer aspect of DS3, consider farming Embers by being a sunbro. Check the forum for help requests, use a password, and be summoned as a sunbro to help others fight bosses. You can even be summoned as a sunbro while you are in un-embered form and helping the host to defeat a boss would restore your embered form. Don't just place your white/gold sign willy-nilly in front of boss arenas, hoping for someone to summon you for jolly co-operation. That is very dangerous, unless you know how to protect yourself against cheaters while playing online. A similar comment applies to invasion. If you want to invade another player for Embers, ensure you know how to protect yourself from cheaters. If you want to play online while farming Embers, e.g. being summoned as a sunbro or invade another player, refer to these for how to protect yourself:
- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2010851768
- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1383615497
- https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls3/mods/723
- https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls3/mods/516/
Below, I will discuss how to farm Embers from enemies in the game. For the impatient, note that the Black Knights at Untended Graves are the best source of Embers. Refer to the following guide for how to obtain equipments necessary for farming or ask on the forum for farming gears.
https://quacksouls.github.io/ds3-farm-gears/
After you have defeated a number of bosses and have levelled up, revisit areas you have cleared to farm for Embers. Enemies should now pose little to no problem for you. To effectively farm for Embers, equip these items: Gold Serpent Ring(+0,+1,+2,+3), Symbol of Avarice, and Crystal Sage's Rapier. Also ensure you have as high Luck as you can get. If you want or are able to, reallocate your stats with Rosaria and dump enough points into Vitality so you are able to wear the Symbol of Avarice and an armour set having decent damage absorption. Make sure you have enough Vigor so the HP drain of the Symbol of Avarice doesn't kill you in approximately 20 seconds, for example. Equip a weapon, and have enough stats to wield it, so you are able to kill an enemy in a few hits, preferably to 1-shot most enemies along a farming route. Experiment with Souls Planner
and reallocate your stats with Rosaria to see which distribution of your stats works best for you. Consider equipping the Ring of Favor+3 and/or Havel's Ring+3 to boost your Vitality and enable you to wear a heavier armour set. Both rings are found in the Ringed City even in NG+0. In any NG cycle, you have at most 5 chances to reallocate your stats. If you want, use the infinite reallocate glitch. As of 2020, the Rosaria glitch still works on PC and PS4:
Dark Souls 3- Infinite Respec Glitch
Dark Souls 3 - Infinite Build Glitch - Make As Many As You Want!
I now describe how I gathered data for the discussion in the rest of this guide. After killing an enemy, e.g. Lothric Knight, I wrote down whether or not it dropped an Ember. If I obtained an Ember from the kill, I would know how many of those enemies I had killed one after the other to get one Ember. If I didn't get an Ember, I would move on to the next same type of enemy. For example, the 4 Lothric Knights outside of Dancer's arena are good sources of Embers very early in the game. To farm them for Embers, I would kill them over and over again, while ignoring all other types of nearby enemies.