LogFAQs > #963647999

Level yourself up to 40 before doing stormveil. you can be lame like me and do the ball rolling trick (google it) or try to actually do this normally through exploring catacombs/easy dungeons (the trick being of course there are no actually "easy" dungeons/bosses, which is why I went for the lame route).

Do the boss in the evergaol near the bridge to go south to weeping peninsula; this provides a really good early-mid game weapon and the boss isn't actually that difficult

Make sure you're at med.load and not heavy load for more i-frames in your dodge

The shield counter is pretty good early on especially if you're a melee build. make sure you have a 100% guard shield though. I think you can get one at the roundtable hold but I'm not sure.