Imo it’s best to experience this game blind from the start. The discovery just adds so much to it. The only thing I would think is worth looking up are some of the side quest as they are easy to miss and have cool gear and weapons/spells but even then I would try them out before looking it up. Don’t be afraid to try out different things. You can respec at some point like mid game. On a second run through or after you beat the game I would then look up a guide to find everything you might have missed. And also to add on to my point about my side quest, it’s no big deal if you miss them. I have 200+ hours in the game and have not done them all. There is just a ton to explore and find. I feel like a comprehensive guide would take a lot of the fun out of it.

In my experience this is all you need:

1. Level up vigor

2. Have fun with your favorite build

3.Don’t spread stats unless you know what you are doing

4. It’s ok to miss some quests

5. Gather Scooby doo blessings for the DLC

6. Use your consumables!

Fextralife was a great guide, very helpful for me. I also recommend quitting your job and leaving your wife and child. Commit to ER.

Bro I found this WiKi

I am still on my first play through. Just got the game as well. Been playing ds 1 and 3. My experience is to start with something simple. And for me that is a strength build. And when things get too difficult I google on that specific problem. There is a joy in going in blind. And do not trip if an enemy is too difficult. Go somewhere else and come back later. It’s a beautiful game. Maybe the best I have ever tried. Enjoy.

Basically what the other comment has said. imo it's harder than Old Hunters on base ng, assuming you're going in solo melee. Roughly the same in difficulty on max ng+ cycle.

Get the best spirit summons (look these up) and level them up. There are more than a few dragons and deathrite birds that you're better off just summoning and getting it over with.

Unless you're checking a guide you're bound to miss a lot of stuff, especially the character quests. Don't fret too much over them.

1+2: Beat the base game for the best start in it. Around 120-150 would be pretty good.

3: Whatever you like, bring in whatever. You can go back to the base game at any time.

4: Probably.

5: Collect Scadutree Fragments to increase your damage and defenses. This is how you actually get strong enough to take on the DLC. If you do not, no matter what level you are, you're gonna get ground to dust.

Short answer: git gud

Longer (and possibly more helpful) answer:

There aren't necessarily different characters to play. Different starting classes have slightly different stats but you can easily make a samurai a full magic user or an astrologer that only bonks enemies with melee weapons. If you want to make sure you don't waste any levels pick wretch, if you want a balanced starting point with a strong weapon and slightly higher starting level the samurai is a good choice.

As for levels I personally would suggest getting the stats you need to use your desired weapon, then just level vigor until like 40-50 in the mid game and 60 in the late game. For other stats I like having both mind and endurance at at least 20 and then leveling my main damage stat.

The biggest you you get stronger early on is upgrading your vigor and weapons as well as healing flasks. Levels matter for damage but low enhancement levels don't scale a lot with your stats so you should leave damage stat leveling past the required amount for later.

The biggest key to get stronger is explore a lot. Especially the first and second area of the game have a ton of materials for upgrading your healing flasks and some other key pickups.

As for beginner friendly builds, there's a weapon called the bloodhound's fang available in the first region that is very strong and popular among players. I'd mostly go for either heavier weapons to break enemy poise with charged attacks or some status effect like bleed or frost if you want an easy time. Alternatively around the midgame you can get your hands on a weapon called the blasphemous blade which is extremely strong.

If you wish you can also use summons to get additional allies to fight the boss with you making the boss less likely to target you.

For general combat tips I'd say my key tips are to wait for your openings, try to do charged attacks when the opening is long enough to break the poise of the boss and most importantly usually dodgeinto the boss' attack. If you dodge into the attack there's less overlap between the hitbox of the attack and your character's hitbox so it's easier to time your rolls.

Go south to explore Weeping Peninsula first. Many newbies overlook this area but it's specifically designed for early game. 

Overall, going by difficulty and story progression, you would want to take the game in 5 stages. Don't get surprised if you find difficulty spikes when doing them out of order. 

1: Limgrave 

2: Liurnia 

3: Caelid 

4: Altus Plateau 

5: Mountaintops 

As for stats, note that 

• Vigor: HP

• Mind: Energy needed to cast spells and use weapon skills. 

• Endurance: Stamina & Equip load. The latter dictates how heavy your equipped armor/weapons can be.

• Strength: Typically for slow & heavy weapons and shields. 

• Dexterity: Typically for fast and light-weight weapons. Also influences the casting speed of your spells. 

• Intelligence: Typically for magic weapons and sorcery spells. (DPS)

• Faith: Typically for holy, lightning, & fire weapons and incantation spells. (Utility)

• Arcane: For Status effects (Poison, Sleep, frostbite, etc.) Also influences the item drop rate from enemy mobs.

For beginners, prioritize leveling up Vigor & Endurance. These stats will help keep you from dying too much. 

1. Don't worry too much about starting class. It only gives you some starting stats and gear that can be acquired later by any class - there's no limit on what attributes you're allowed to level up. You could start as a samurai and later decide you want to try being a wizard. no limits!
2. Follow the guidance of grace. It will appear as golden lines on the map. They point you to main objectives. The very first one - where you sit down and talk with someone - is very important and should be done first. Afterwards, you can go anywhere and do whatever you want.
3. Try to stay at medium or better equip load. Medium and light loads are better for dodging. You'll understand once you play.
4. If something is out in the open, you CAN run away from it.

Here's the thing: try figuring things out by yourself. When your menu is up you can press a button to get detailed descriptions of what everything is and does. Then look around you, study the enrironment and ask yourself where you should go next and follow your instincts. Forget about weapons, builds and all that stuff for now.

You may butt your head but that's all part of the fun. This game doesn't hand hold you for a reason: because it's rewarding to figure stuff on your own. So why do you want to be spoon fed? Do your work and play as blindly as possible and if it's asking too much of you well, follow people's tips and look up guides and whatnot but I don't think it's the most enjoyable way to play these games.

Lot of other good tips already here. One that I will just add as someone who has never played one of these kind of games before either and now beaten Elden Ring + DLC: Game is fucking hard. It is meant to be hard. The bosses will fuck you up. Do not get frustrated. You will get good, just keep trying. There are bosses that will take you days of playing to beat. If they get to frustrating, take a break, go somewhere else in the game for a bit or even play something else for a little bit. Sometimes when I am really struggling with a boss, I take a break for a bit, come back the next day and smoke them in 1 or 2 tries.

Game is a blast once you accept how hard it is was intentional and part of the fun of the game. Don't let it frustrate you.

I'll give a shot at answering your questions. Just for clarity sake, I have the platinum or whatever and finished the main story a bunch of times. My favorite ending is duskborn(I lean toward the golden order but I like to think my guys were shaken by the death of godwyn and flipped to a more inclusive order), and I think the most effective build is strength faith, best weapon in the game is the big dogs black blade. I have the most fun running around with fist weapons bonking people or as a carian knight using melee spells to cut up or bonk those who lack intelligence. The most DPS non buff heavy build I've put together is a carian slicer/night comet build that truly is insane.

Number one, runes are easy to obtain don't stress about wasted runes you will lose a bunch. Don't sweat level placement you can reset your levels down the road. Weapon upgrades use runes and smithing stones, smithing stones you can get bell bearings for and buy as many of them as you want. the only exception is the dragon smithing stones, hang on to those until you are sure you want to upgrade a weapon to max. up to +24 and +9 though have fun.

Number two, The full map is available at the beginning of the game if you want to just run through and kill everything. The sites of grace act as check points you return to after death and a fast travel network. To get the map you need to pick up map fragments, your first map fragment should be right around the gatefront site of grace. loot everything and you will be fine.

Number three, incantations are great for support or being your main damage dealer. When starting out I would grab catch flame then a little later down the road look for lightning spear and discus of light(this is a bread and butter spell fof golden order enthusiasts, cheap as all get out and surprisingly can lay in the damage.) for random blasting. look for black flame one's as well. Grab a heal or two and if you bump into it pest threads for later in your run.

Number four, they are used to upgrade your weapons see number one.

Number five, ashes of war are skills from DS3. In Elden Ring you can place affinities on these skills that change your weapon scaling and provide split damage types. For a holy focused run the best skill you can get is sacred blade for the early game. I would recommend you go to the gatefront and grab the lordsworn's greatsword and then slap that bad boy on that and go to town.

Number six, don't worry to much about talismans, they give you boosts the best one early game is rads soreseal but I wouldn't worry to much about that up front.

Number seven, you play this game for the gameplay not the side quests they are good and thought provoking but not really "sidequests" as such. No witcher 3 level stuff, it is what it is.

Number eight, read the item descriptions and watch the cinamatics you will be fine. Souls games are open ended so everyone can interpret the story a different way. There is no right way to interpret the story.

Everybody needs help now and again, if you get stuck on something and need a hand don't go nuts check out beyond the fog. If you are an Xbox player and I'm free would be happy to lend you a hand. In closing this was a once in a decade game for me and I hope it will be one for you, I went in blind and enjoyed the heck out of it, the feeling of WTF when I ventured into calid at 3AM is something that was special to me and I am sure millions of others. You don't need a step by step guild, you will miss some things that's okay that's what second playthroughs are for. the new game plus system means you steamroll pretty much everything your first new game plus run, look stuff up then. If an area is spolied for you by a guide it loses some of that special awe you get the first time you explore. Try to have fun and thanks for coming to my ted talk.

1. weapon upgrades will always net you more damage than levelling your damage stats. level vigor first tho.
2. respawn points that you can fast travel to. map is unlocked by picking them up at the markers shown on parts of empty map.
3. incants and melee can be combined with the right weapon infusion. there's a scarab near the first church of marika that gives you faith scaling on your weapon. head somewhat north from there. you'll unlock propper damaging spells later on.
4. get them all. look out for mines on your map. there are a fixed number of pickups that you can only get once, you can farm them from miners, buy them in some shops in limited quantities or find a thingy that lets you buy unlimited.
5. ashes of war are ways to put an L2 attack on your weapon, spirit ashes are pokemon that can help you in fights.
6. talismans are like necklaces and rings in skyrim, they have passive effects. some armor pieces do too.
7. honestly first playthrough blind is the way to go. don't attack them unless they attack you without provocation and exhaust all dialogue.
8. one YT won't cut it. but smoughtown gets it down to 2 videos. 12+ hours each.

When there's an item you know you want for your build. Look up where it is but don't follow a step by step guide to get it. Allow yourself some time to explore and discover it once your near or in the right dungeons etc.

There's a tutorial at the start of the game. That's all you need.

I went into this game blind and I think that's the best way to approach it.

Big recommendations are to 1) exhaust NPC dialog until they're repeating the same phrases over and over, 2) READ THE ITEM DESCRIPTIONS. You'll get quest progression (and lore) from the descriptions, and 3) most sites of grace will have a stream of light emanating from them (visible on your map); this is your way forward.

At some point you may want to watch a YouTube video explaining character stats since they're not intuitive.

bought this game when it first came out, but was too overwhelmed to continue... fast forward years later and now i'm on my first official playthrough! thank you so much for this, it's helped me (and clearly many others) even years later!!

I'll start my first playthrough today and I'm trying to learn and get a lot of tips to be minimally prepared and this guide helped a lot!! Thanks a lot

I've had this game sitting on the shelf for almost 2.years, I've been too scared of it. Here it goes, thanks for the insights good sir!

This post is truly amazing. Even a year later. Found it on google and I’ve been trying to play for a long time but I’ve been stumbling around for like 150 hours hahaha

Even though this is 2 years old at this point, still helpful to me. I tried playing Elden Ring cold and really had trouble and got frustrated, so I quit. My son decided he wanted to try it out yesterday. He's getting the hang of it well, and these tips are going to be really useful to him and to me when I pick it back up again.

Make sure you’re obtaining scadutree fragments so you can level up your scadutree blessing at sites of grace. It increases your damage dealt and decreases your damage taken so it’s essential for keeping up with the increased damage and hp of the dlc enemies.

When you say first boss are you talking about the knight or the obvious big boss with a cutscene (trying to not spoiler)

If it's the knight, you really have to focus on his attacks and decide if you play safe and punish the crossbow or go hard and get rekt from his sword over and over like me.

If it's the other, good luck, he's really hard or medium depending on build and weapon.

Go get the Scadutree fragments. They are the DLC's power progression system, and the bosses are scaled to them. If you can't find any, you can look up a guide online.

Scadutree Fragments are your best friend. Welcome to the best DLC ever mate

I started the DLC this week after creating a new character, which took me 80 hours just to get to it. First impressions are that this is practically Elden Ring II, and has some of the best areas and exploration that from have created.

The DLC has a unique levelling system for both summons and yourself. It's genious as it gives that constant progression feeling even with a high level character, and doesn't spoil the main game if you've not finished it.

Don't try attacking the giant flame golem unless you know what you're doing (I don't).

The first gaol optional mini boss in the start area is an arsehole. My build is a light blue dancer doll/dagger/buckler and he is a bitch for me.

to copy paste a comment I made earlier:

>New player. What do I do?

• level vigor
• behold, dog
• try finger, but hole

joke aside, vigor really is THE most important stat in early game. basically the difficulty slider for the starter areas. ignore damage stats until you have at least 40vigor. level them only to meet minimum requirements for your choosen weapons but not more. it aint worth it unless your weapon is upgraded to at least +12

endurance is the second most important as it impacts your equipment load and through it your dodge rolls. look at your equipment screen for something called equipment load. it should read something like heavy, medium or light load. you NEVER want to be in heavy load (unless you know exactly what you are doing). reason being heavy load severely nerfs your dodges. most new players are recommended to stay in medium as it is a good mix between good dodges and decent armor for protection.

something that will help you not to die so often is getting a shield and practicing blocks and guard counters. parry is tricky and takes alot more practicing is riskier and finicky at best. block enemy attacks and after they landed a hit immediately press heavy attack. youll get an audio cue and your heavy attack turns into a hard hitting guard counter. those can easily break enemy stances providing you an opportunity for a critical hit.

thoroughly explore the starter areas, especially the weeping peninsula as you can find there items to permanently upgrade your healing and mana flasks. keep an eye out for broken down churches.

if you didn't yet teleport at night to the church of elleh (where you meet merchant kale). you might meet someone that can give you a very, very helpful item.

lastly, just have fun. explore and try to figure things out as you go. don't mind not having the perfect build immediately. there is an opportunity to respec not far into the game. by the time you reach thst you probably have an idea what your playstyle gonna be.

good luck.

Level Vigor and collect Golden Seeds and Sacred Tears. Sacred Tears are found in churches and increase the healing of flasks. Golden Seeds are found by Golden trees and drop from some bosses and increase flask quantity. Best to stay in Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula until you boosted your flasks to +4. You can also pick up the Flask of Wondrous Physick in East Limgrave church, which gives customizable buffs (first you only have another heal, but you can find other buffs for it by minor Erdtrees and other places). Those are the most important things. 

This picture is pretty good and has the recommended level for each area as well:

https://preview.redd.it/lingrg884zwe1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=146f69234dca27286401b9c6150987f1446610a7

The main stat you level should be Vigor (you can make more mistakes in fights). All the damage stats don't matter unless you want to use a specific weapon because upgrading weapons leads to a lot more damage than leveling up damage stats.

Don't forget to level up your weapon!

Margit is a good point that will generally test new players. Keep in mind though that technically you can beat the game at level one, so it comes down to perfecting the dodges/parries/etc. You're definitely on the right track!

Elden ring is definitely more open than the other souls games, but a tiny tip for some directions is if when you are resting at a site of grace, look at where the glow trails off to or on the map what direction it goes. It isn't always a guide to the next thing in the game, but it can give you a little more guidance on the direction to go.

Of course there is no shame in googling some info when you are truly stuck and don't know what to do. The beginning is by far the most overwhelming because there is just so much to explore, but the further you go it tends to get a little easier to narrow the path down.

If you are struggling with survivability you can try to level up some, try to find some better armor, upgrade some weapons, or just try to find a different approach.

A big portion of the fights though is just figuring out the moveset, being patient, and be prepared to die a ton. My personal struggle boss on my first run through was the Fire Giant (much later boss). Some people could breeze through him, but for whatever reason I was stuck on him for about a week if not longer. If you find yourself frustrated take a breather and try again later! Once you get it down and you beat the bosses, that feeling is something else.

Don't be afraid to take your time to explore and get lost or accidentally die. You can go to far tougher areas right out of the gate i.e. Caelid. Nothing wrong with checking it out because you can get some good gear if luck falls your way!

You're on the right track! Again, don't be afraid for a little Google search to get you out of a rut on locations, but there is joy in just stumbling upon new things of course. Learn the enemy moveset, figure out how you want to play, and you'll be rocking before long. Elden Ring is a beautiful game and the dlc is great as well as punishing. Im glad you gave it a shot and welcome to the Elden Ring family!

in the church there is an anvil you can use to upgrade weapons. Upgrade materials are dropped from monsters (the soldiers and knights in that area usually drop smithing stones) or found as loot from the environment.

as to where to go, you can call the glowing "tail" that shoots out from some of the graces. Those point to the next lost grace and chain together towards the main boss of the area (there is more than one grace chain so if he travel far enough in one direction you will find a grace tail pointing in a different direction then the one you first encountered).

Best way to start exploring is to just follow the road and pick up lost graces along the way. Small sign posts can be seen on your undrawn map and those places have map fragments that drawn in the area for you. All the major areas can be accessed without killing bosses (though some of the ways are hidden) and you can fill in the map for each area too.

Visit the church of elleh at night to get a niffty ability for your adventures.

beware, there are monsters everywhere and some of them only appear at certains times of day.

There are a million videos to watch on this. go to youtube and search elden ring beginner tips.

elden ring is, by design, extremely huge and confusing. i think a lot of the time you're not meant to know where you're going or why or what's even going on. however, everything in the game is there for a reason, and you're also meant to explore by design. if you see a cool-looking thing in the distance, head over to it. more than likely there'll be something for you there.

people will go on and on and on about which weapon is the best, which ash of war is the best, which skills are the best, and so on and so on. you can pretty much ignore these people. you can beat the entire game with any weapon you want, for as confusing and difficult as it is the game is also extremely accomodating towards different weapons and fighting styles.

i haven't played wukong so idk how it compares to build variety in elden ring, but if you're looking for a decent setup that can carry you through the entire game, you can't go wrong with some classic sword-and-board. a straight sword-type weapon in one hand, and a good shield with 100% physical damage negation in the other. straight swords do moderate damage and swing moderately quickly, and a shield with 100% physical damage negation will block, well, 100% of physical damage, which most enemies in the game use, especially at the point you're at. you may have picked up a lordsworn's straight sword at some point, dropped by some of those red-and-green knight guys you've seen wandering around, and maybe a brass shield from the same. if you have, give those a try and see how they feel in your hands. if you find you're not doing enough damage, you might switch up your weapon to a greatsword or a greataxe type weapon, which swing slower but do more damage and are more likely to knock enemies off their feet. if you feel like you aren't attacking quickly enough, you might switch to a dagger, which attacks very quickly, at the cost of doing comparatively little damage. you'd have to feel it out for yourself though and see what you specifically like. a very popular build is to go pure strength, two-handing the biggest weapon you can find, and spamming jumping heavy attacks on everything that moves. not very elegant but it certainly gets the job done

if you made it to the roundtable hold, it means you've given margit the business. good job! general consensus is that margit is a huge skill check for new players. even souls veterans found him difficult. that one move he has where he winds up his cane over his head for like 37 seconds before smashing it down... people had no idea how to time their dodges lol. defeating him should let you access the castle he was guarding, which, you know, i recommend checking out.

i won't give you any spoilers on where specifically to go. but elden ring is, broadly, a game about moving from south to north, beating bosses along the way. you won't always understand what you're doing or why, but sometimes you just gotta keep on truckin. also try finger but hole

Without spoiling much…

-Level vigor. Its returns are the highest of any stat, and you need it later anyways. You can put off the decision of which attack stat to commit to until vigor is as high as 40 if you want.

-Every ruin, cave, church or dungeon has at least one secret in it. If you haven’t found anything unique, check for a hidden wall or chest.

-There’s a nice peninsula to the south perfect for beginners. Go south until you find a bridge. If you get shot in the face by a ballista, you’ve found it.

-Starting class doesn’t matter much. There’s no such thing as class-exclusive spells or inherent bonuses to being one class over another. They are starting points, nothing more.

-There are no “requirements” to access areas besides killing whatever is in the way. There are no strength checks, dps races, or invisible walls that would prevent you from progressing due to your level. You could finish the entire game as a level 1 if you wanted.

You are supposed to follow the grace trails on your map toward objectives.  These take you on the path to progress the story and game overall.  

However,  when you reach dead ends (such as enemies being too difficult or lacking key items), you are intended to explore.  You can find hidden treasures, dungeons, bosses,  npc's, etc.

It's important to exhaust npc dialogue op. This means you talk to them multiple times until they repeat themselves.  If you don't do this, you'll miss key clues and information necessary to understand where to go or what your objectives are.  

There is a dungeon right at the beginning that requires a stonesword key. Do NOT enter it at the moment.

The rountable hold is your "home", it's where you can buy some weapons and armors, learn some basic spells or miracles, upgrade your weapons etc.

You can only get to it by fast travelling from the map.

Runes are your currency, but you also "buy" levels, so you have to spend it on both items and (mostly) levels.

I would prioritize boosting your vigor and endurance (I keep mixing up stats between the games, but basically I mean boost your HP and Stamina).

Around 40 Vigor is a good point for the first half of the game, but you don't need to go higher than 60.

Stamina however much you feel like you need to do 1-2 attacks and dodge.

I would advise to just roam the map, collect everything you can find and focusing on leveling up for the moment.

Look out for tiny golden trees and abandoned churches, since those have items you need to upgrade both the healing rate and the quantity of your healing potions.

Ashes of War are basically weapon skills, all weapons have a light attack, a heavy attack that you can also charge by holding the heavy attack button, and a weapon skill/ ash of war that you can swap. Each weapon also has running and jumping variants of the light and heavy attacks.

In terms of actual gear, I would recommend that you use a fast 1H weapon with a shield, but using it with lighter armor. You always want to be under 70% carry capacity, preferably under 50%, that way you dodge faster and further.

Shield have different resistances, I would advise using one with 100% physical. Don't really worry about buffs/ consumables/ etc, since they are not really necessary and might just increase the learning curve, for now just focus on the basics of combat.

In terms of defense you can block (not recommended without a shield), or you can dodge. You can hold down the blocking button, but that makes stamina raise very slowly, so only block when necessary.

Most people prefer dodging, because not using a shield allows you to use both hands to hold the weapon, which increases damage, it means you have more weight available to carry bigger weapons or heavier armor, and dodging can also be safer if you learn how to do it.

You can also parry, but it's also an advanced tehnique, so don't worry about it for now.

The same weapon also has different attacks based on whether or not you use it with just one or with both hands.

Don't be afraid to run away from fights on the open map, but don't do it in dungeons, as enemies could chase you and you end up fighting 7 instead of 1 or 2.

Personally, I would recommend using a small hammer type weapon, like the mace, since it's reasonably fast, does good damage, and the damage type it does is very good against certain enemies that will barely take any damage from swords or spears. It has a low range, but since you're going to want to use a shield to avoid getting hit in situations where you're not sure about dodging, it means you can close the gap with the shield up, hit once, block and disengage to let stamina regen.

The biggest damage increase early on will come from upgrading your weapon, which requires you to find smithing stones (you can find many in caves), more so than upgrading strenght or dexterity.