One of the particularities of Demon's Souls is the possibility to make your alignment — or tendency — tend towards good or evil — white or black — by your actions. It has many effects, and it combines in a very unintuitive way with the world tendency system, but the two are separate.
Your character tendency has notable effects on the difficulty of the game, as well as on certain quests or characters that can be unlocked when you have the appropriate color.
Note that the endings of the game have nothing to do with your character's tendency.
You can check the character tendency in the game menu. You can also see your character tendency via the eye in the upper left corner of the screen.
Character Tendency Effects
Black Tendency
- Reduces maximum health in Soul Form.
- Increases the damage you deal as a Black Phantom (invader).
- Unlocks the Mephistopheles questline if Yurt is freed and killed (pure black).
White tendency
- Increases damage in Soul Form.
- Increases damage as a Blue Phantom in co-op.
- Allows you to obtain the Friend's Ring by speaking to the Monumental in the Nexus (pure white).
How to change your character tendency
It's quite straightforward — unlike world tendency. Doing good actions will make you tend towards white, while doing bad actions will make you tend towards black.
White
- Kill Black Phantoms (invading players or AI) who appear in a world with a pure black tendency.
- Help other players kill Black Phantoms and bosses — although the latter hasn't been confirmed — as a Blue Phantom.
Black
- Invade other players as a Black Phantom and kill them.
- Kill harmless NPCs. Be careful not to kill useful NPCs like Blacksmith Ed, Yuria or Saint Urban before the time is right, as this can seriously complicate your progress.
- Here are some NPCs you can kill without getting stuck: Dregling Merchant, Filthy Woman, Once Royal Mistress, Graverobber Blige, Ostrava of Boletaria, Biorr of the Twin Fangs (after the Penetrator).
- Kill the Blue Phantom NPCs in the Nexus.
Weapons modified by tendency
There are 3 weapons whose damage is modified by your tendency: Demonbrandt, Soulbrandt, and the result of their fusion, Northern Regalia. The latter in particular inflicts the most damage when you have an extreme tendency.
Original content by Robin "Raiden" Bouquet.
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