I just purchased this game from Amazon and am really excited about it. But I know there is a lot of shit involved with this game that I will not understand. I guarantee you I need help. So, that said, what should I do when I get the game to ease the difficulty a bit until I can adapt? Just for clarification, I usually play fantasy games like this as a tank-class. I usually have really high defense, a strong melee attack, and rely on outlasting my enemies. Would this work for this game? Should I do something different from the get-go?

If that is the style of play you want to invest in, you'll just want to dump your early points into Vitality and Strength, and endurance. Pyromancer is generally the easiest class to start as, given it's early access to fairly powerful magic (and most enemies weakness to fire). If you really have no interest in magic, the Bandit class will give you the best starting stats for a melee heavy character.

My best advice for early game is to level up when you can and exhaust your souls so that you can go on suicide runs for items and not worry about losing anything (you don't lose any inventory items when you die). There is a very early area with skeletons that will most certainly beyond your competency at that point, but running through it and grabbing the items can give you access to a few good early weapons (and one giant sword that is good for a melee heavy class). Pay attention to the stat requirements for the weapons you want to use, that can help guide your experience points allocation.

Also, search every nook and cranny of levels, and don't be afraid to break all the barrels and boxes to uncover hidden areas. When looking at sheilds, make sure you look at the damage reduction %. Once you find one that is at 100, melee attacks wont be whittling away your health while you are blocking.

Keep note of your equip burden. If your equipped armor and weapons exceed more than half of your possible load, then you will slow down significantly (running and dodging). The stamina stat increases that burden limit.

If you don't go the pyromancy route, you will still eventually have access to the equipment needed to cast pyromancy spells. Once you have the option to buy those spells, a specific one to pick up is Iron Flesh, which decreases your damage taken dramatically for like 30 seconds, but slows you down to a crawl. It can be really useful for boss fights when playing a melee heavy character.

Oh and one final note, if you do go with pyromancy and you want to level in that direction, spend your points on new spells and upgrading your pyromancy flame. There are no skill points that you can increase (like intellegence does for magician classes) that make it stronger.

I'd recommend staying away from the Wiki as much as possible too. The mystery that this game creates is one of the best things about it! Good luck!

@bushpusherr:

Cool. Thanks for the tips.

Try to resist the urge to use a guide for anything other than learning the mechanics of certain systems.

Don't rob yourself of discovery.

tanking does not work like in other RPG's.

you can gain as many levels as you want and wear whatever armor you want, if you try to tank like other RPG's you will die FAST. it does not work.

I beat the game at sl1 several months ago......to make the game easier at any level, it's important to upgrade your weapons. You can try the vitality/elemental weapons route. Just put points into vitality and endurance and make elemental weapons that don't scale with stats. Extra vitality gives room for error.

Be sure that an enemy is hostile before attacking them. Some NPCs look like enemies, but are actually friendly and will give you really useful stuff. If you're unsure if someone is hostile, keep your guard up and let them make the first move. It's way better to die from a hostile character than permanently lose access to whatever item/skill that a friendly one offers.

Spend your souls often. You will die and you will lose souls all the time, so unless you're saving up for something specific, spend them on leveling up and upgrading your weapons as much as possible.

About shields:

There are 3 types, small shields, standard shields and greatshields. The smaller a shield is the easier it is to counter with, the bigger one is the heavier attacks it will be able to deflect. If you want a melee focused character then a greatshield is probably recommended. When choosing shields you should look at the % damage reduction from various sources such as physical & magic, but also at its Stability. Higher Stability means less stamina is consumed when an attack is blocked. Stability is also the only significant thing that increases when you upgrade a shield (the other being the physical attack damage of the shield, but you shouldn't be using a shield to attack with in the first place).

About heavy armor:

Heavy armor does indeed reduce the amount of damage you take, but its main advantage is that taking damage will not as easily interupt your attacks, this is very useful when wielding slower, heavier weapons. The stat that determines how much damage you can take before being interupted is called "poise". If a piece of armor is not metal or heavy-looking, it usually does not have any poise at all.

Ok...

To be honest, I'd say trying to go the Tank route is certainly possible, in fact it's what a lot of players wind up doing in this game. But don't think you're ever going to be able to just soak up damage or anything like that. I'm on NG+++ and past SL200, wearing the best armor in the game, with a life bar 5 times bigger than I started with, and even now I can get caught out by the most basic of enemies. In the early going, you'll want to beef up Vitality, Endurance, and Strength. Might be worth choosing a class like Knight or Bandit since they start with the sort of stats you'll want to build. However if you want the first couple of hours of the game to go more easily, Pyromancer is the way to go, most enemies and bosses are weak to fire, and the advantage of Pyromancy is that you don't need to waste points on Intelligence or Faith to power it up.

But if you want to stick to the Tank idea, which is the smart way to play this game really, then yeah go for it and I'd recommend you build up Endurance as quickly as you can. Stamina means everything in this game, it lets you equip better gear, keeps you from being encumbered in heavy armor, and allows you to take more hits. A lot of the good weapons in the game have Strength requirements so you'll need to level that up too. This means that, maybe for the first few hours, you'll want to just stick with light armor and a simple sword, this'll allow you to move around quickly and get in enough damage to take out the early enemies. Then, once you're a few hours in and your stats are decent and you've got some good heavy gear, stick that on and start focussing on tanking.

I know I keep talking about levelling, but another key rule of Dark Souls is to not focus on levelling too much. It kinda doesn't have as much impact as it does in a traditional RPG, and costs a lot of souls. The best way to beef up your character is with upgrades. The stat bonuses you can add to your weapons make a world of difference. Save any titanite you find, and use it wisely on weapons you know you're going to stick with. Weapons can literally go from being 4 or 5 hit kills to 1 hit kills with good upgrading.

Ignore Dexterity and Resistance, you won't need either for your build. I know how tempting Resistance will sound, since it is basically boosting your defence, but trust me, it really is a waste of souls, and your defence goes up with every level regardless.

Now just a bunch of tips:

People always say 'Don't be afraid to die'. I say the opposite. BE afraid to die. If you make yourself scared of death, it'll give you a better sense of self-preservation and you won't take as many risks. You will totally die a bunch, but if you're smart about it, and cautious enough, I got through a recent run with only a dozen deaths.

Pay attention in boss fights: On my first go, I always treated my first attempt at a boss as a learning experience. Often, I wouldn't even try to attack, I'd simply survive as long as I could and observe the boss, figure out patterns, movements, because every boss in the game, despite their strikingly terrifying appearances, are simply carrying out a set routine of moves and actions. If you figure that routine out, the fights become simple.

Explore: There is so much loot, so much valuable loot, to be found in this game if you just take the time to stray from the path every now and then. There are useful items everywhere, constantly keep your eyes open.

Learn from other people's mistakes: The bloodstains and messages on the ground, left by your fellow adventurers will (mostly) be pretty useful, so it's always worth checking them out, especially in new areas as they will often point out hidden traps or enemies that you might not have noticed, they'll save your life quite a few times if you give them a chance. They'll also help you find hidden items and areas, I've discovered quite a lot of useful gear thanks to the messages left by others.

Consider your options: There is no one set path through Dark Souls. Once you finish the tutorial area, you are free, make no mistake, this is an open world game, it's simply that some areas of that world are a lot more dangerous than others. If you're finding one area too tough, there'll always be at least one other place nearby you could try. It's definitely in your best interests to get in the habit of fully exploring your options instead of tiring yourself out hacking away at an area you might not quite be suited to.

Mix it up: There are an awful lot of ways to play Dark Souls, it's not just your usual case of ranged, melee, or magic. Everything has sub-categories, there are the different magic specialities like pyromancy and miracles, tons of melee weapons with different styles, heavy weapons, light weapons, dual-wielding. You can choose to hold a wand in one hand and an axe in the other if you like, I certainly wouldn't recommend it, but the option is there, along with a lot of other options, so what I would recommend, especially if you're just getting started, is to really take the time to try out all the different systems in the game. Your inventory will quickly fill up with a wide variety of weapons, they behave very differently, and its worth giving them all a try, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Just have fun, mate. Don't stress too much overall the little things on your first playthrough. Save that for NG+.

Good choice, btw. The game really is amazing.

Thanks for the help guys.

Prepare your body.

Seriously, get some carbs and stay hydrated.

I haven't been playing too long myself. My advice would be don't get discouraged. It is a tough game. Not impossibly difficult, but not easy to play. If you are feeling frustrated, for encouragement it helps to watch someone who is good at playing the game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg1esmZgaes&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=SPEB5522A2EDDE3BC5

I know its probably hard at this point with the game being out for so long, but most of the charm for me is finding out things by yourself, consequence of your actions are a big focus of this game, for example in my first playthrough I accidentally struck a merchant - couldn't access him for the rest of the game cause he was aggro'd. consequences.

That said some choices can REALLY screw you over.

Here are the only things you need to know when starting out.
 

• Shoot the dragon's tail, here is the weapon that will get you through the entire early game.
  
• First farming spot at dragon bridge using the bonfire underneath, make sure you knock the ladder down.
• Always be blocking, don't get cocky and try to counter until you have your timing down. It isn't worth losing humanity and potential souls and it isn't necessary  to do any fancy shit initially.
• Don't fucking run, you fucking check your corners and you fucking always make sure you are completely clear before doing any inventory management.
• Read messages, leave messages, never ever trust a message unless it is a warning. You can never be too cautious, only too fool hardy.
  

Just a quick update. I'm about an hour into the game. I got passed the tutorial and am at that starting area. I went the pyromancer route. I've been adjusting pretty well so far though I'm having a hard time wanting to use my souls. I have about 4K and don't want to make a mistake and use them on something stupid. But, other then that, I think I'm doing fine. The game, in a lot of ways, reminds me of King's Field 1 and 2 on the first Playstation (another From Software game). It's weird because I've been using the same techniques from those games with this game. I'm exploring everything, I'm always thinking about my stamina, and I never initiate combat rather I attack after dodging or blocking an enemy's attack. It's still really early but I like what I've played.

an important tip, there's a LOT of those soul items. Use them ONLY to push yourself up to the next level when you're already most of the way there.

This way, if you're not carrying "most of the way to the next level" you can declare that the amount of souls you're carrying is worthless, then you can play without worrying about death.

Saving up your soul items for a while and then using them all at once is a terrible idea. The soul items are your goddamn SAVIOR in getting rid of the hot potato that is carrying too many souls.

All that said, souls and level is worthless and equipment is much more important.

To be honest, the only way I've enjoyed these games is with a guide. Maybe I'm part of the minority though...