Tips to Help You Get Started
1) Accept that you’re going to die. It’s an inevitability. I have hundreds of hours in From Soft games and I still die quite often due to careless mistakes or bad judgment. Every death is a chance for you to learn and become a better player.
2) Don’t button mash. Every action in combat should be deliberate and planned out. Watch your enemies carefully and look for good opportunities to punish.
3) Never let your stamina bar fully deplete. Always leave a small amount of stamina for an emergency dodge.
4) Don’t get greedy and over commit. It’s tempting to just go all in when you see the boss’s health bar nearly depleted, but don’t. There’s no worse feeling than being so close to victory only to lose because of a careless mistake.
5) Remember to just have fun. Try different kinds of weapons. Explore the world. Most importantly, don’t feel like you have to commit to whatever build / setup is prescribed as best for newcomers.
6) Don’t Rush. Advance carefully and don’t neglect leveling and raising stats. These simple tips can turn extremely hard fights into relatively easy ones.
7) Don’t try to fight strong enemies/minibosses early.
8) In PVE ranged magic makes game much easier than melee weapons.
9) Heavy armors are usually suck, try to use light or medium armors. Speed are better than defense in souls games.
10) Don’t let enemies to gang up on you, fighting multiple enemies at once is a sure way to die, because souls games combat system are mostly balanced for one on one fights.
11) Don’t panic and start pushing buttons to hope to win anything. You won’t. If you lose, you lose. Learn from it, be better next time. The game’s main obstacle is your own brain because you will need to learn the enemy’s moves. Get used to it, get used to the attack and dodge timings, win.
12) The game will not hold your hands in any way. Once you are out of the starting area, you’re on your own. All you have is a guiding light ray at each checkpoint and that’s it. The rest is up to you.
13) Keep experimenting arround with weapons and armor. Each weapon usually has a different feeling based on its attack speed and style. Some might work better with your style, some might not.
Please be aware of your surroundings, the soulsborne games are known for throwing bait and hooks at you. Also, try to explore areas, you might find something useful!
And last but not least: Read the description of each item! Some may have hints, while others may have lore, either way it helps!
Each attack should be deliberate, you should never be mashing your attack button, you don’t want to get locked in animations. Fast, well-timed dodge rolls are often a great option. You get “invulnerability frames” during parts of the roll, where you are completely immune to damage, and can dodge roll through danger.
Don’t let your stamina deplete to 0, if you can help it. Put stats where they count. Weapon scaling is super important, usually. Hit select/back when in menus to get explanations for things.