The first thing you need to do as an invader is to throw this item away. While it offers a far more balanced and fair PvP experience in the vast majority of cases, that's not what invaders are looking for. They strive to cause grief and suffering on players who don't have the good sense to play in offline mode or throw themselves off a cliff after every boss fight victory.

In the same vein, you should avoid the arena provided by the DLC too, if available to you. Killing people on an equal playing field, where both parties agreed beforehand to begin PvP combat, is simply not as much fun as ganking unprepared players trying to enjoy DS3's rich story content and challenging PvE gameplay.

Many new invaders struggle to come up with a perfect ganking build. Obviously, not just any PvE build will do, as to get full enjoyment out of invading you need to use as much cheese as possible, to ensure maximum salt from the victim enemy player.

Not to worry, there are many resources available online to give you the perfect stats, weapons, items and combos to take all semblence of skill out of the equation. Simply follow the instructions and win a statistical majority of your battles, just as Miyazaki intended.

Struggling to find a easy target worthy opponent? Try a lower level bracket. Don't worry about leaving your items behind. Simply drop them to a friendly phantom, switch characters, and have your friend phantom drop them back again. Now you can invade players who are much worse than you, many attempting to learn the game for the first time, and smear them into the ground with the power of your ultra meta cheese build. I mean, this is a game about difficult challenges, so adding an additional, unfair and unrequested challenge to the equation is practically a community service.

Now that your meta build griefing character is ready to go, all that's left to do is find an unsuspecting victim opponent. Choosing your spot carefully is very important. You want to make sure that you invade people at the worst possible time. Invading in an area with a long, difficult run between bonfires is highly recommended, as are areas with one particularly challenging enemy/area. The 2 NPC Watchdogs of Farron are perfect examples, as it turns a 1v1 into a 3v1.

Now that you have invaded, it's time to find your target. Simply run through the area until you find an area with enemies along the critical path. Wait there for your target to show up. If at all possble, ambush them while they are already engaged with enemy NPCs. After all, this game was crafted to test a players skills, so adding difficultly unrequested is simply going to make the player better at the game! They should be thanking you!

If the fight starts going poorly for you, don't panic. Remember, while estus is not allowed by a code of ethics that everyone, even new players instinctually understands, many invaded players will estus to avoid death during your sudden and non-consensual engagement, the cowards.

Your best choice is to immediately run off behind enemies. Don't worry. By default, they will not attack you. They will, however, attack the enemy player. This buys you all the time you need to set up your next ambush. Or you could simply wait for an opening while they are engaged by the enemy NPCs.

It's your worst nightmare. You invade someone, expecting a nice, unfair ganking duel, only to find that they have summoned friendly phantoms! The nerve of some people, who want to play the game with their friends by summoning them for entire areas. Don't they know that there is only one way to enjoy this game, and that's by playing solo and embered the entire time? I mean, it's not like one of the main reason people become embered (and therefore invadable) is because they want to summon friendly phantoms for help/fun.

You run off behind enemy NPCs to safety, only to find them turning on you! The host must have used a Seed of the Tree of Giants, to level the playing field and prevent you from cheesing them by hiding behind enemies until you have a chance to strike. And, the final nail in the coffin, the enemy players are all using armor and weapons that you don't like them using. Honestly, how is a invader supposed to get by, when players don't follow arbitrary and asinine rules regarding conduct of gameplay elements they neither asked for nor wanted to participate in.

Just in case this wasn't blindingly obvious from the start, this is sarcasm. It's a satire of the recent guides blaming invadees for not following a code of conduct that is not known about or agreed to by many players.

If you invade someone else's world, you have zero right to demand they play the game a certain way. You're an uninvited guest that has elected to make the game harder for the player. You can't also demand they make things easier for you.

Don't get me wrong, invasions have a place in this game. If you invade me, and are honorable enough to fight me fairly, I'll play by your rules. I'll forgo my estus and fight one on one. But you should not expect everyone to be as honor bound as I am, and you certainly cannot start insulting them over it. It's their game, and they can play it how they want to. And if you drink, or hide behind enemies, or any of that cheesy nonsense, you can bet I'll cheese you right back

If you want fair fights, the Red Sign Soapstone is there for a reason. Or use the Arena. Or, if you must invade, sign up for Aldritch's Faithful or the Watchdogs of Farron. These are designated invasion areas, which means you are free to invade to your heart's content there, and us PvE players will just have to push through.

Finally, I just want to make it clear that I'm not defending gank squads where an entire 4 man team of phantoms waits around for an invader to kill. They're abusing the system just as much as the offenders there, so they can all get screwed IMO.

Hope you enjoyed reading.