So I just got Dark Souls

[Church185]

Yeah, but considering the thread was made by someone who just picked up the game, I thought it was important to make that distintion pretty clear.
Now I want to go and give that sword a run, I actually have upgraded my to +5 and never bothered to give it a fair chance.

I know, that was a poor effort at trolling on my part. The run down to Nito at low levels is nearly suicidal.

The sword has terrible stat scaling, so later in the game it doesn't do as much damage as other weapons, but it is certainly an option for people who make high VIT and END characters. The +5 Lightning Claymore is probably a better option though since you only need 16 STR to wield it vs. the Gravelord Swords 24 STR. The Claymore is also a faster weapon, but the Gravelord sword is infinitely easier to fully upgrade (stupid slab farming).

 

[TehCookie]

As someone who played the first few mins and went "meh" my advice is take it slow and watch the enemy. Don't try to squeeze in extra hits or you will be punished. I prefer my action games to be DMC or Bayonetta level of pacing, Dark Souls was too slow for me.

 

[Church185]

Dude I beat Quelaag with a Drake Sword which is roughly equivalent to a +5 weapon, give or take a few stat points. Yes it's completely possible to skip the Depths and Blighttown just by not seeing the door.

Large Ember's pretty necessary in a lot of cases, depending on build.

Was this your first playthrough? What level were you roughly? Do you imagine you would have been high enough level without all of the souls gained from killing the two bosses (and countless trash enemies) you skipped to take on Quelaag on your first playthrough? You would have had considerably less health and stamina, making her hits that much more unforgiving.

Once again, I highly doubt a newcomer will break sequence by accident.

To the point about the large ember being necessary. Most upgrade trees don't need you to get to +10.

Upgrade paths that need large ember:
Normal
Boss Weapons
Lightning
Crystal
Raw

Upgrade paths that don't need it:
Divine
Occult
Magic
Enchanted
Fire
Chaos
Dragon Weapons (ex. Drake Sword)
Unique Weapons (ex. Crescent Axe)

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Why would you level 4 stats? If you plan on using sorceries then forge your weapons to scale with your main damaging stat. Magic and Enchanted for INT, Divine and Occult for Faith. This only ever becomes a problem if you insist on having Sunbro Lightning while wielding Havel's Greatshield or Demon's Greataxe. For that might I recommend leveling pyromancy or upgrading a crossbow for ranged attacks.

For a 1st time player, it's a solid template of what to level. You can level 4 main stats just fine as well, it might not be the optimal build but you will have a great number of options available; you will be good with Str or Dex weapons, one kind of magic (and you can still level pyromancy too if you want), and you will be awesome with bows if you choose Dex over Str. IIRC you will get better weapon scaling and damage with Str and Dex as well especially early in the game when you can't even upgrade weapons to scale with Int or Faith.

 

[Casual Shinji]

- The easiest way through the game is to go full knight. Put all your EXP in Health, Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina.
- Buy the Repair Box as soon as possible.
- Practice the eb and flow of the Stamina bar.
- Try and get a feel for the scaling system. It's an easy thing to overlook. All your weapons and armor scale with one or more skills. One might scale greatly with Strength while another will scale with Faith. And certain weapons that seem powerful at first don't scale with anything making them useless in the long run, like the Drake Sword.
- And as someone already said, know your shields.
- Keep an eye on your Sins. If you become a member of a Covenant, certain actions will result in Sins which will make you more attractive to Black Phantoms. You can purchase absolution to absolve them, but the cost will stack with your level, so try not to forget it.
- Don't be affraid to die and loose a large chunk of Souls and Humanity. It's going to happen sooner or later. And if you play this game fearful of what you might lose, you won't gain anything.

 

[Ml33tninja]

I would say going to the skeleton graveyard in the beginning is a good idea. Now before others burning me alive, the reason why is because of the items around. You will more likely get killed doing it and its okay. Once you grab the weapons leave and try them out and you can see the styles, plus and negatives of each, and find what you like.

 

[Denamic]

Indeed. The weight thresholds at which you start rolling slower are 25% and 50% encumbrance. Personally, I stick below 50% if I can help it.

Actually, the first threshold is at 0%. If you have no items that has weight equipped, you roll even faster. Though that's not very useful information because in no circumstance is being completely naked and unarmed a good thing. Personally, I keep under 25% weight.

Having some extra armour is probably best when you're new though, so wearing the maximum amount of armour you can while still being under 50% is probably best when you start out. Mostly so you can take some hits and not lose 50% of your health when you fail to avoid, block, or parry. That being said, whatever build you go for, endurance is the best stat. Level up endurance. I cannot stress that enough. ENDURANCE. Get it to at least 20 ASAP.

 

[The Heik]

I figured I might wait and pick up Dark Souls 2 when it came out instead, but this is currently discounted to £4 on Xbox live.

What tips have you for someone new to it? Aside from drinking lots of water so I don't get dehydrated from all the tears I shed, I mean.

Well there's a lot of basic advice I can give for your first playthrough:

ie
- play around with armor and weapons loadouts to see what you like
- upgrade your weapons (preferably only to level 5 unless you've settled on your preferred playstyle)
- spend your souls ASAP (seriously, don't hoard them. You will regret it)
- try learning to parry (it doesn't work on everything, but if you can pull it off it will help a lot)

But if there's one thing that I cannot stress enough, it's for you to explore and observe everything. Dark Souls, in spite of it's reputation, will rarely throw you a curveball without at least some indication beforehand. So if you enter a new area and nothing immediately attacks you, take a look around to see what doesn't match the rest. If you see a new character or enemy, see what it does and experiment with it's behaviour. If you gain a new weapon or armor, test it out on different enemies to see if it affects each in a different manner.

Above all, this game rewards players who act intelligently. So if you take the time to understand the challenges ahead of you, you can take on anything in this game and never feel like you're getting the short end of the stick. Oh it'll still be one heckuva challenge, but every enemy in this game functions off the same basic rules as you do, so if you can die, so can they. And everything has a weakness.

Enjoy

 

[Zero of Arcadia]

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT play online until you leave the Burg. There are droves of twinked minmaxed gankers just waiting for new players, and nothing you have can beat a laggy Lightning Shotel with a Force Miracle. You may have to give up on early co-op, but at least you won't be driven off before you can get anywhere.

On the game itself, grab a bow. You will never not be happy that you got a bow, having range on targets is a godsend and can lure out single enemies so you can deal with crowds one at a time.

Learn Pyromancy. Most enemies are weak to fire, and Pyromancy is the catchall class of magic for spells that just don't fit anywhere else. Faith and Miracles are also nice. I tried role-playing an atheist once and immediately regretted not having Homeward and Heal.

Become a SunBro. The SunBros get an immensely powerful Lightning spell, which gets more powerful the more you play co-op and help people. So you get to replay old bosses and areas for souls with no risk, and you get to help others doing it, all while earning a spear of lightning. Jolly cooperation indeed :3

One other thing, if an enemy has a tail, cut it off. Any dragonkin with a tail can and will drop you a special weapon if you go Monster Hunter on his tail.

 

[Garrett Horvath]

The simple #1 tip new players should know:

There are 3 paths to explore from the Firelink Shrine (your bonfire after the tutorial). You are only ready for one of these.

 

[EvilRoy]

Geesh this game seems to have a lot to it. I actually just picked it up myself on the steam sale. It seems fun but I'm blown away by the amount of stuff you apparently have to learn to beat it. I swear my accumulated knowledge of Skyrim when I stopped playing didn't come close to the sheer volume you guys seem to be hinting at.

It looks like I'll have plenty of time to read up though, I tried playing keyboard and it just didn't work, and my PS2 controller is a little gammy on the thumbsticks, so I'll have to wait until I get an xbox controller.

Hope you enjoy the game OP, the 20 mins of it that I played through seemed pretty fun, though it was only a tutorial and hampered by wandering-joystick.

 

[Church185]

At the point where you enter Anor Londo, Andrei will be the only blacksmith 90% of newcomers see. And the only methods of ascension will be Divine and Raw/+10, both enabled by the Large Ember.

Incorrect, you only need a +5 weapon to go Raw or Divine.

EDIT: I was wrong about Raw, you do need the Large Ember, but that is a terrible upgrade path. Divine still only requires a +5.

 

[Church185]

For a 1st time player, it's a solid template of what to level. You can level 4 main stats just fine as well, it might not be the optimal build but you will have a great number of options available; you will be good with Str or Dex weapons, one kind of magic (and you can still level pyromancy too if you want), and you will be awesome with bows if you choose Dex over Str. IIRC you will get better weapon scaling and damage with Str and Dex as well especially early in the game when you can't even upgrade weapons to scale with Int or Faith.

You can fight the Moonlight Butterfly as your first boss outside of the Asylum if you have the master key, unlocking the Divine upgrade path at the very beginning of the game. To upgrade your weapons to scale with INT, you can start them on the Magic path from the very first blacksmith available to you in the game, Rickert of Vinheim.

 

[loa]

-Don't level resistance ever, it literally does nothing.
-Try to pick 1 weapon to build your character around e.g. spears, the zweihänder, rapiers, falchion etc. and get the minimum stat requirements to hold that weapon in 1 hand. Put points into endurance/vitality afterwards so you can run around in heavy armor and poise tank hits or go intelligence/faith if you want to cast spells.
-Poise keeps you from flinching, heavy armor gives poise. Stability makes shields consume less stamina when hit, use a shield with high stability.
-Don't ever level a stat above 40, it'll stop scaling. Only put points into attunement if you really need another spell slot.
-Every weapon is viable, it comes down to preference in playstyle.
-You don't actually need to grind for levelups. The game is beatable at level 1.
-Playing a sorcerer doesn't mean you have to use daggers or spells only. A quick weapon enchanted with sorcery is pretty much the highest damaging thing in the game.
-Time your blocking. Your stamina will almost stop refilling if you keep the shield up all the time.
-Everything other than the master key as a gift is a consumable or garbage. There's no reason not to get it.
-There's also no reason not to get pyromancy. It scales with how many souls you spend upgrading your flame (you can do that later with na npc if you can find him) so everyone can use it regardless of stats.
-DON'T MISS THE FIRST BLACKSMITH! He's in undead burg but you can easily run past him if you don't upgrade your weapon and don't use the drake sword, the first boss will murder you.
-The first boss will murder you anyway. Try summoning other players to help.

 

[Zero of Arcadia]

For a 1st time player, it's a solid template of what to level. You can level 4 main stats just fine as well, it might not be the optimal build but you will have a great number of options available; you will be good with Str or Dex weapons, one kind of magic (and you can still level pyromancy too if you want), and you will be awesome with bows if you choose Dex over Str. IIRC you will get better weapon scaling and damage with Str and Dex as well especially early in the game when you can't even upgrade weapons to scale with Int or Faith.

You can fight the Moonlight Butterfly as your first boss outside of the Asylum if you have the master key, unlocking the Divine upgrade path at the very beginning of the game. To upgrade your weapons to scale with INT, you can start them on the Magic path from the very first blacksmith available to you in the game, Rickert of Vinheim.

True, but I wouldn't want to give a first-timer the Master Key. There are better items available for Gifts in the long run, and the Master Key will cause a newbie to get off track and killed by things he has no right to be fighting more often than not.

 

[Church185]

At the point where you enter Anor Londo, Andrei will be the only blacksmith 90% of newcomers see. And the only methods of ascension will be Divine and Raw/+10, both enabled by the Large Ember.

Incorrect, you only need a +5 weapon to go Raw or Divine.

EDIT: I was wrong about Raw, you do need the Large Ember, but that is a terrible upgrade path. Divine still only requires a +5.

...I never said it didn't.

*reads again* "the only methods of ascension will be Divine and Raw/+10, both enabled by the Large Ember"

Ah, the "and" you used there threw me off. I thought you were saying Divine required the Large Ember.

 

[loa]

True, but I wouldn't want to give a first-timer the Master Key. There are better items available for Gifts in the long run, and the Master Key will cause a newbie to get off track and killed by things he has no right to be fighting more often than not.

Those 5 gold pine resins you can only get early on with the master key will make the first bosses a LOT easier/possible at all if you run past the drake sword which is likely.