Master Key | Dark Souls Wiki

I don't recommend picking the master keys on your first playthrough.

I'm only writing this because I've lived in Blighttown for awhile now. Terrible neighbors. I found the door at the end (actually the beginning), and realized I needed to backtrack. 8(
After many hours playing through other areas and generally wandering around, I finally found my way to the depths, reached the gaping dragon (which was suspiciously easy, but maybe it's just that way), and discovered the door back to my old neighborhood.
The game feeds you keys to areas like a Metroid game and if you get them in the right order you're less likely to get "lost" between zones.

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Unless you are doing some speedrun and intent to skip some locations never visiting them at all you can also use Master Key for early collecting doing suicide runs.

After you arrive at Firelink Shrine don't use any humanity and dump all your souls to VIT or END. Then equip only your shield to right hand and hold it with both hands (better blocking and you can also ram with it to get mob out of the way). Otherwise be completely naked to get best movement speed. Put Estus Flask and Darksign oh intems bar. Then simply run and roll grabbing any item you can. If you die or use darksign you will not loose anything. Without killing any mob or boss or using any cheat or exploit you can sweep:
- entire Firelink Shrine [no Master Key required]
- entire Catacombs [no Master Key required] (don't forget about humanity from Patches for bridge sabotage)
- upper (not sunken) part of New Londo [no Master Key required]
- entire Undead Parish
- most of Undead Burg (upper and lower, but to get all items you will need to grab the keys from Undead Parish and Undead Merchant)
- entire Valley of the Drakes
- most of Blighttown (you can't get Power Within without killing giant jelly-bacteria)
- entire Great Hollow
- entire Ash Lake
- entire Darkroot Basin
- most of Darkroot Forest (you must kill fake tree to get Wolf Ring and buy Crest of Artorias to get Hornet Ring - no need to fight Sif)

After this whole run you will have nice load of weapons, armors, shields, rings, spells, humanity items and many, many soul items. Now you can use humanity to start with ~10 (better protection and drop rate) and soul items for early shopping (Undead Merchant, Petrus, Ricket, Andre and even Shiva if you want more running).

Now you can start casually playing game like nothing happened.

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Not taking the Master Key still lets you skip most of Blighttown. After beating the Taurus Demon and reaching the Undead Parish you can get to the Valley of the Drakes through the Darkroot Basin. Still allows for early pickups in those areas. Master Key lets you skip Taurus Demon and the Drake from spawning on the bridge in Undead Burg. Basically skipping the Undead Burg area. Plus also getting to those areas is faster. If that matters to you then yes its beneficial as a starting gift.

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My favorite item in the game. It's genuinely very satisfying and even a little funny just breaking any sense of progression the game has. Wanna fight Ceaseless Discharge Early? Fine! Wanna skip 90% of blighttown? Great! Want Havel to bonk you on the head early? Go right ahead!

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Regardless of what else it does or doesn't do, getting to skip most of Blighttown makes this key 100% worth taking as your starting gift.

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This key is carried over to NG+, so don't forget to buy it from Domhnall before fighting Gwyn

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I'm at NG+ now, so I bought one, after hearing people say it completely breaks the game, and I just realised how little it can actually do, someone said they ended up in blighttown because of it, but I can't open the depths door, sure it's mildly handy, but not game breaking

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for something called the "master key" it only opens 6 doors in the whole game. and is useless for the other 95% of the game. the wiki says its worth having but i do not think so if all it does is open 6 doors that i could have just found the keys to my self the hard way

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master key, master gift

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Master+Key for ds is77787745

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In all playthroughs I've ever done and also in my main game which is actually in NG+4 I never choose the master key, cause I do want to play the game "the way it was meant to". Sounds strange, but thats just the way I feel about it xD

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If you get two can you drop one for someone else? Or is there absolutely no possible point to having more than one?

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Does this break? if so how many uses does it have

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If you become a Thief and choose this gift, can you give the other one to another player?

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Oops took twin humanties oh well if I can handle new game plus i can handle no master key

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If I buy it from Domhnall, do I get to keep it in NG+?

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With New Game Plus - Do you get to pick a Gift again? Or is it the same every time with that one character?

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Best starting gift, because you don't have to go through the entirety of blighttown.

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best starting gift by far

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If I killed *****halla and I'm not a thief how can I get the master key

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