After watching Loud our Last Souls, I had to get back into the game. My last character was only 13 hours in, and I decided to just go and do it again. Only thing is, I feel that my character is rather weak. I finished the Two Dragons, rung the first bell, and defeated the dude by the blacksmith. The whole time doing pretty low damage. Normal enemies take several hits to kill and I can't tell if it is because my character that I made is made for agility or if this is supposed to happen early on. It has been probably a year since I played it so I am pretty rusty on certain things. When I was fighting the guy by the blacksmith, each hit with my weapons were either 17 each or 25 each. That seems low to me.

What weapon are you using? It sounds like you're using either a weak weapon or an unupgraded one.

Although if by "guy by the blacksmith" you meant that giant demon doing low damage to him is pretty normal, since you're not expected to fight him yet.

By that guy do you mean the titanite demon? If do he has pretty strong defense. So it would be normal to do low damage.

Check your stats and weapon info that's the easiest way to tell.

The Titanite Demon by the Blacksmith has rather strong defense and plenty of HP, I wouldn't worry about it taking long to take it down.

What are you planning to go with in terms of weapons and build? It's kinda helpful to figure this out early on, and to stay and farm by the Blacksmith and in Undead Parish, letting you both upgrade your weapon and get combat experience with the knights there.

What are your stats and gear like? It doesn't sound too off if you just started the game. If you're feeling really underpowered it might be worth spending some time grinding UndeadBurg. Or if you just want to early part of the game to be really easy buy some arrows and go get the Drake Sword (just youtube it) and then you can one/two shot most enemies for a few hours.

@jacksukeru: I'm trying to be agile as well as strong, if that makes sense. Pretty much strong enough to use heavy weapons, or fast ones like the Rapier or something which I am using now.

Upgrade your weapon. I used a scimitar or falchion and upgraded it to +10, this worked great for me and my particular playstyle. You might prefer a slower weapon, but upgrade whatever suits you.

The curved swords can later be upgraded using a boss's soul into a really powerful weapon that will last you until the end of the game:

Don't worry about "wasting" the upgrade materials, since you can easily farm them later. Demon Titanite is rather rare though, so use caution when upgrading with these.

Another common trick people do at the early stages:

Buy all of the core items from the Undead Merchant in the Undead Burg, then murder him. He carries a wonderful sword called the Uchigatana, which is an excellent sword early in the game. But be warned, if you are intending to do a lot of PvP, he's the only merchant who sells Lloyd Talismans. But with where you are, you might be far enough along to buy it from Shiva of the East. I can't say for certain if this sword is particularly special, or if people just want to look like Sepheroth.

@chiablo: You can also get an Iaito from Blighttown for free. It takes longer to get it, but I prefer it to the Uchigatana.

@kaos_cracker: Alright, let's see..

If you're going to use heavy weapons that are slow you are going to want to wear heavier armor that has poise (having poise helps in that you can take some damage without your attack animation being interupted, and swinging a heavy, slow weapon takes time so it's easy to get hit while winding up). If you don't want to wear heavy or medium-heavy armor I think going with a faster weapon is better.

Like chiablo said you can get an Uchigatana early and it's pretty good if you're going to put points into Dex. There is also the Balder Side sword, that are (Rare but) dropped by the sword weilding knights in the Parish. It's another good Dex weapon that has a good moveset in that it lets you both slash and stab with it. Enemies like the tree guys in the forest are weak against the stabbing attack and it has good range too.

If you're going to put points into both STR and DEX and want to go a little heavier I really like the Claymore, it can be found guarded by the dragon at the dragon bridge. Like the Balder sword it's "heavy" one handed attack is a stab that has good range, so moveset-wise it's superior to some other greatswords like the Black Knight Sword, because the BKS's "heavy" attacks all have kinda gimmicky, really slow animations.

If this is a little too much to take in feel free to ask more questions.

@jacksukeru: only thing else that I would like to know is what factors in what weapon you could hold. Strength or Dexterity? I been putting points into Stregnth, vitality, and endurance so far.

@kaos_cracker said:

You have to look at the stats, each one has their own requirements. Generally you need a certain amount Strength and Dexterity, but there are some that require Intelligence or Faith. (Those tend to be for magic users obviously.)

If you're going for speed then you'll probably want to focus on Dexterity, as speedy weapons almost always scale better with Dexterity than Strength. If you're not using a strength weapon then you only want enough strength to equip the weapon.

@zeik: Does strength also deal with what kind of shield you can carry too?

@kaos_cracker said:

Yes, shields have a strength requirement, but it's usually not very high unless you like the bigass Greatshields.

@kaos_cracker: If you do want a weapon that scales with Strength and is a little faster there is the Butcher Knife (technically an axe), you can't get it until Blighttown though and you might have to look at the wiki (it's not complicated to get, but you can miss it entirely).

On the weapons stats screen there are two fields with symbols on them, they are Strenght, Dexterity, Intelligence and Faith. One of the fields is called ReqParam, short for "Required Parameters" meaning these are the numbers of the different stats you need to be able to wield the weapon properly. Shields also have this same thing, usually heavier shields require a lot of STR to use.

The other field is BonusParam, or something like that, and they have a letter next to the stats that the weapon benefits from. The higher the letter rank the better the weapon "scales" with that stat, so a weapon with 'B' scaling in strenght and 'E' scaling in Dex obviously gets more of an attack bonus from points put into strenght.

If you don't want to bother putting a lot of points into any of these stats and focus more on health and stamina you can eventually make your weapons into 'fire' or 'lightning' weapons. These weapons are powerful but don't get any extra attack power from your stats so you can just focus on having the ReqParam to wield them.

There's your low damage. The Rapier is all about backstab and parry/riposte. My +10 Rapier does between 30 to 150 damage to most mid-game enemies, but if I parry-riposte, BOOM 700+ damage. Also backstab for about 500. It's awesome against the slow-ass barbarians in Blighttown, but not so cool against the snake-men in Sen's Fortress who seem almost immune to parry... Which is why I'm now rocking the Eagle Shield and Iaito (both found in Blighttown) and kicking their asses! (The Eagle Shield's 78 stability at +10 is an oft-overlooked stat that absolutely saves your bacon in Sen's Fortress.) I just farmed me a Balder Side Sword! (After dying a good half dozen times getting to to the top of Sen's Fortress. F*** that place!)

I absolutely love that Load Our Last Souls made more people play this game again!

I've been using an Uchikatana for a while now and really like it. Although having a good spear to back you up with quick enemies is always recommended.

The Sephiroth katana you're talking about is the Washing Pole. You can also buy lloyd talismans from Marvelous Chester in the DLC.

Thanks for all the feedback guys, going back in with way more help than I did the first time I played this game.