Poll of the Day > Defeated the first boss in Dark Souls (Remastered). Any tips?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Demon's Souls for PS5 has me hyped up so I decided to buy the Dark Souls series for PS4.

While I wait for my copies, I installed the PC version that I got for cheap years ago.

And I just beat the first boss! It took me like 8 tries but it was satisfying! I'm hooked! I'm going to stop here though. I just wanted to get a little taste.

Anyways, any beginner tips? Please no heavy spoilers or anything. Just basic information that will help out a newbie.

p.s. I really hate dodging left/right! It's sooooo slow and end up getting hit anyways. I mostly used the back dodge when fighting the first boss.

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Look up what each attribute does and how poise/equip load work. Not spoiling yourself about enemies and items is one thing, but you should understand what your stats do and the game does a poor job of explaining them.

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What do you mean by first boss?

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Get naked, get used to that roll, then, slowly add more equipment until your roll changes, then, go back.
Always fast roll all the time.

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the easiest way to win in a souls game is not fight the boss. avoid them for like a 2, 5, even 10 minutes and just watch them the first time you see them. avoid every move and stay far away/do not even try to take advantage of what seem to be big openings. Once youve see all the moves that it uses and have used yer brain to decide how best to avoid that move and what tell it has to see when its coming, no boss can touch you.

do note, thats simply beginner advice. the best strategies on the bosses in many of the games turn out to be rampaging them down as quickly as possible and not playing tippy toes like you would when you were learning the boss the first time.

Definitely look up what each stat does and probably also how imbuing works... and poise... and humanity... and maybe also what messing with the bonfires does. Do it even if you're doing a sort of blind run. It's really useful to know. Beyond that, you may not have realized it but your weight value affects your ability to roll/dodge. If your roll seems particularly garbage, it may be due to your weight %.

Accept that you're going to have to practice quite a bit at the game in order to truly get it down. Also you should know that while most parts of DS depend on you developing your skill level/knowledge of the game, there ARE parts which are really not a matter of skill, such as the Bed of Chaos boss fight. In those instances, just keep trying (yeah, it sucks) but parts like that are not numerous so you don't have to sweat it much.

If you haven't yet, I do recommend outright practicing doing backstabs/ripostes.

There are lots of little missable things in the game if you don't do things just right, but the game can get away with that because it's meant to be played over and over again. However, if you don't want to miss a lot, I would consider consulting a guide. If you want your first run to be blind, that's fine, but if you're interested in seeing everything the game has, consider consulting a guide on NG+ at least; that will help you with the obscure character quest/item requirements.

Spears pair well with shields, but a lot of people find fighting with shields boring. Experiment with different weapons/styles to see which ones you like. Most are viable in some way, either against AI or players.
Halberd/BK Halberd, Claymore/Zweihander, Estoc, Longsword/Broadsword/Silver Knight Straight Sword, Shotel, Pickax, Large Club... these are all great weapons and some of them can be acquired very easily.
As for shields, you can get a lot of mileage out of circumstantial shields such as Spider/Grass Crest/Sanctus/Bloodshield, and for blocking, there's Heater/Crest/Havel's which are all popular, but you can run most shields with success.
You might find this reddit topic useful for reference:
https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/p9eng/armor_with_special_effects/

Alluring Skull can be very useful for manipulating AI. You can use it to get stupid enemies to run into fires, for example. Bows in general should also not be overlooked- they can be really good in certain areas.

Never forget to check for traps. Make sure the chests you open look right before you open them, for example. If they don't, you may want to chuck a Lloyd's Talisman at them. Some traps can and will kill enemies if you're careful.

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Pro-tip: Don't die. Works about 30% of the time.

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If you want the game to be a bit easier, use a shield with 100% block and be patient in exploration.

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Try playing without ever using a shield, and never summon anything. It's how I played all of em and I had the most fun that way. Magic or pyro can usually make things much easier as well, get your vitality/health up asap, and make sure you can fast roll (it's based on weight percentage). Medium roll I think was under 75% though (weight capacity) and is still quite good, you just wanna make sure you gon't go over that to a slow roll as it blows.

Sadly, and this holds true for like almost all souls like games, hitting enemies from behind and rolling behind them when they attack is pretty much the best tactic for well, almost every freaking fight lol.

Also, this is true more and more as you go further in the series, you can basically rush to a boss fight from a previous bonefire without fighting anything, this lets you fight the boss over and over again (which can be hard to do solo with no shield usage in some cases).

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