I hardly ever use the pinky. I shift over and use the ring finger while driving with just the index finger. I guess that's a bit awkward, but you don't have to run or crouch that often really. For games that don't have a toggle for those functions (i.e. sneak/unsneak)it can get to be a bit of a pain at times. 

was that in your confused phase of life? 

 

Shambler I haven't done any real looking around but I assume there are mods for Dark Souls that add quicksave, make combat easier etc. Others might know something about this. 

There are at least mods to make it harder. 

Thought I was alone. I push the KB to the left and use cursor keys for movement and nearby keys for common functions. By tactile feel, I can position my hand. Using WASD is useless to me because if my hand drifts off position... I prefer not to have to look at the KB and prefer to operate the controls by feel.

Which is not to say my method is any better than WASD. What I'd like to say is that every PC game should have fully configurable keys and mouse buttons. The lack of keybinding really stole away a bunch of my enjoyment of the game Cradle and in Fear 2, you can't assign the del key to anything and I rely on it for Aim Down Sights. 

I used to use arrow keys too!
I don't anymore.

Wasd was a little annoying at first because, as you say, the hand tends to wander out of position, but I got used to it... 

I'm of the opinion that if you're going to play a console port, use a controller.

That's the story of how I bought xbox gamepad:
I bought and installed steam vesion of Dark Souls, installed mods that my DS fan friend had told me, launched the game, started a new campaign, saw the hints for pad buttons not for keyboard, decided to look at key bindings, pressed esc to open menu, nothing happened, pressed it one more time, nothing happened, pressed random keys on keyboard, started to panic, didn't know how to quit the game, pressed ctrl+shift+esc and terminated the process, went out and bought xbox controller.

I decided to get used to new controller before playing DS, played other games with it. When I got brave enough to try DS once more (with controller this time) the game showed me and error and didn't want to launch. Uninstalled it from my steam library. 

Mouse inverted ofc

Forward - LMB
Backward - RMB
Left - I
Right - P
Run - R-Ctrl
Jump - R-Shift
Crouch - O
Reload - U
Fire - #
Alt Fire or Aim - [
Aim or Alt Fire - ]
Melee or whatever - Left Arrow
Use - Enter or Space
Next weapon - MWheel down
Previous weapon - MWheel up

etc.

95% of games accept this. 4% are fussy about the fire button but can be bound to something nearby. 1% was fucking hopeless for binding anything and that 1% was DS. 

 

Couldn't even get close to it with DS.

I think Alice Madness returns forced me to put fire or alt-fire as something else. And I'm pretty sure there was some underwater action game demo that was a dick about that too. Skyrim was fine of course. 

Lol u scrubs. The Dark Souls installation process is supposed to be challenging. It's designed that way, which is good because it weeds out lame noobs like you. Yes your system will crash many times before you succeed, but it's specifically and expertly crafted to be like that otherwise you'll never understand the many steps and subtle nuances required to master the installation process, which is actually designed to reward the skilled and resourceful, and punish all the little babbies who think they can just click on a "play" button in Steam and launch the game lol. 

As such, I godmoded most of the game.
What a waste of a good game, probably the saddest thing I have read here in a long while. God mode will reduced the game to a museum visit, staring at scenery while drifting through the crowds.

Through great struggle comes great reward
This is what Dark Souls is about, its a journey, a hostile land to explore and most of all its designed to be challenge. If your heart does not race or hands shake with adrenaline then you are playing it wrong.

The story is fantastic! Need NG+ to understand the alternative ending. You got to question NPCs, piece together comments and keep exploring for answers. Its certainly no PDA, pretty logbook or boring NPC dialogues, its a tale you have piece together like a true detective! :P 

And then you realize how the act of you and other people actually playing the game ties in to the story and it's a whole new level of narrative and I get goosebumps. 

Forward - UpArrow
Backward - DownArrow
Left - LeftArrow
Right - RightArrow
Run - Mouse5
Jump - R-CTRL
Crouch - !
Reload - Mouse3
Fire - LMB
Alt Fire or Aim - RMB
Use - Enter
Next weapon - MWheel down
Previous weapon - MWheel up
Lean Left - �
Lean Right - *

Keep in mind, being French, I have an AZERTY keyboard instead of a QWERTY keyboard. 

And then you realize how the act of you and other people actually playing the game ties in to the story and it's a whole new level of narrative and I get goosebumps
OMG YES! The whole connection between everyone playing the game, the messages, the eternal circle of events, are you the beginning or the end!?! its just so perfect! :D 

Necros, there's no official godmode, but on gamecopyworld the trainer named
Dark.Souls_Prepare.To.Die.Edition.v1.0.Plus.22.Trainer-FLiNG
works good, no malware warning either and for once all the cheats actually do something instead of just crashing the game. You just have to make sure you don't have F or numpad keys bound to anything in-game or you'll set it off.

czg I still use your old setup
Forward - LMB
Backward - RMB
Left - ,
Right - .
RShift- Fire

But probably half the games I play I'll also have WASD setup so I can switch. Because holding down LMB for 50 hours will kill my wrist, so whenever not in combat I switch back to using WASD. It probably is the best way to kb because of the amount of keys around it, but despite a few years of practise I'm still better in my old config. I think the earliest PC FPS' must have had this setup, maybe Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, and I've just stuck with that ever since.

Anyway back to DS... fuck so that's why I was never as fast in the second half of the game! I dumped all the heavy armour and just put on light shit. The menu made no mention of any key to drop items, or ever warned me of a limit, so I assumed there was no limit. I probably didn't notice because I used the stone armour for a while, and I probably went over the limit during that little excursion so when I dumped that overweight pos I didn't really notice that I wasn't as fast anymore, or assumed it was the weapon/shield. 

That explains Crouch - ! .

On a QUERTY that wouldn't make sense because it's about as far from the arrow keys as you can get.

I used "Enter" for "use" a lot in the past, but some games are picky about rebinding that particular key, so I switched to numpad 1. It actually seems a bit easier to reach for me. 

It's not about how much you're carrying, you can carry as much crap as you want, but rather just what you've got equipped.
There's an "equip load" in the stats, shown as a fraction of max equip load. 

As such, I godmoded most of the game.
What a waste of a good game, probably the saddest thing I have read here in a long while. God mode will reduced the game to a museum visit, staring at scenery while drifting through the crowds.

Actually, it lets people who don't have that much time to waste actually see the ending to a product they purchased.

To be fair, it's not the game's fault I don't enjoy playing without cheating. I assumed all the hype about the difficulty was just hype and not real so I figured I'd be able to muddle through it, but this game demands way too much effort on my part to actually enjoy. It's just a chore to play and a game should never be a chore.
But now that I know what these games are actually like, I haven't purchased any since then because those games are clearly not for me. 

"Forward - LMB
Backward - RMB
Left - ,
Right - .
RShift- Fire "

What in the actual fuck?! 

What in the actual fuck?!

Sounds like it's optimized for a laptop; using this layout your right hand can do the left/right/fire keys (I bet that '/' is change weapon, jump or something similar) and your left can handle fwd/back on the touchpad. 

The thing is even with godmode there's still plenty to enjoy in dark souls without the high challenge - notably the visual design. It might be less interesting to the gamer that plays for combat and doesn't give a damn about what the game looks like, but everyone here would value the design of a game just as much.

Re keys, seems to make sense for me haha

Forward = LMB
Backward =- RMB
Left = ,
Right = .
RShift = Fire
RCTRL = secondary fire or melee
Enter = use
/ = crouch
alt = run
space = jump
l = reload
m = zoom (n is usually cycle zoom)
[ & ] = cycle weapons
; & ' = end up being additional attack or power keys if needed, depending on game.

All your standard RPG menu keys are already around there (J, I, K, O, P) so I don't have to lift my hand to reach them like WASD would require.

The only disadvantage is having to get to the number keys for selecting weapon, but most modern games rely less on having all weapons available anyway, since consoles don't have that many keys. and the positions of the two damn windows keys are a waste of space. Maybe need a keyboard without those.

ps. glovepie fixes enter being unbindable in some games. 

God mode is for any stupid part of a game that the developers were too stupid to know was stupid. 

To be fair, it's not the game's fault I don't enjoy playing without cheating. I assumed all the hype about the difficulty was just hype and not real so I figured I'd be able to muddle through it, but this game demands way too much effort on my part to actually enjoy. It's just a chore to play and a game should never be a chore.

This is indeed very true, DS is certainly not for everyone. God mode to check the level design is understandable because it is good, though the fear and anxiety of exploring is also part of the DS package. I think DarkSouls has parallels with a MMORG and time spent leveling. If you hate the grind then DarkSouls will be annoying from the first death.