When facing a melee enemy, stepping back at the right moment can allow you to evade an attack, so you can attempt to carefully time a forward-step-and-attack followed by a backward step (and repeat). In general, how you move and position yourself can be important. Enemies may even get temporarily "stuck" near corners and doors, allowing you to safely attack them (even with a melee weapon) while they can't quite seem to reach you. Yes, that's more of a "cheesy" exploit, but the early game is so difficult that I don't mind occasionally having an advantage like that.

Other than that, choosing the right item or spell at the right time can also obviously be important. Other details are covered by other responders.

Arena is a flawed gem. I love its overall world and atmosphere, but yeah, I can't deny the gameplay isn't always super fun. Nonetheless, I hope you continue to enjoy its good points (and its funny jank) for as long as you wish! 😄 For some of us, it continues to hold a special place in our hearts.

Different types of swings have different hit chances and damage modifiers.

• Diagonal slash is -5% to hit, +2 damage.

• Horizontal - 0 modifiers.

• Vertical -10% to hit, +4 damage.

• Thrust - +10% to hit, -4 damage.

I recommend the player's guide for tons of details on the game's mechanics which aren't explained in game.

You didn't hear it from me but creating a spell with the effect of reflecting 100% of magic not only makes you immune to magic attacks but also kills enemies from their own magic attacks (unless they are resistant to their own element like hell hounds are resistant to fire). Also it's actually pretty cheap

im playing as a barbarian btw

Side swings have neutral hit chance and damage.

Thrusts have better hit chance, but less damage.

Chops have better damage, but less damage.

The only real strategies behind combat is using different items at the right time. Popping a health potion when low on health, fire resistance when you see a hell hound and so on. There isn't much to combat, though you could in theory get creative with combat if you have enough magic items for decent combos, though magic only gets really strong in later levels, so for the first 14 levels you want to get used to swinging that axe before using rings of invisibility and amulets of fire ball.

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.

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.

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

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.

Bosses leading up to the harder ones were all 1 shot for me. If you're underleveled, don't use summons, have no scadutree fragments and a shit build you will have trouble with SotE.

As someone who doesn't use Spirit Ashes or Cooperators...
Yes...
Fromsoft made the game more difficult, not more challenging.

So far, most Soulsborne Bosses and also some Elden Ring Bosses were very challenging. But when i die to them, i can easily point the finger at myself and can identify the mistake, which only motivates to become better. And once you beat them, the Satisfaction is addictive.

Most of the SOTE Bosses are just... obnoxious. Long Combos with little openings, AOE Attacks, unreasonable high Damage, no time for recovery as they read inputs to punish you, the Camera beeing all over the Place... It's doable, sure, but it's not very fun or engaging. Apart from some Bosses (shoutout to a certain Carian maid) every boss so far left me with "God thanks that BS is over" instead of the sweet satisfaction which made me fall in Love with the Soulsborne Series...

As much as I love Bloodborne, it just sent Fromsoft down a very slippery slope. There's nothing wrong with them making faster games, the problem is with them making you fight Bloodborne or Sekiro level enemies when youre character is arguably slower than in DS3 and having to dodge a dozen times so you can attack once, maybe twice.

There's many things they could've done to improve this like increasing the distance you roll, adding back the rally mechanic from BB (without having to beat a endgame boss and it significantly decreasing the effectiveness of your crimson flask) adding a deflection mechanic like Sekiro (the new crack tear is a band-aid, not a fix) instead of a dodge roll they could have a more swift and agile side-step like from BB (the ashes of war are again, a band-aid) increase the i-frames or just simply make your character faster.

Instead the devs just choose to hardly adapt the mechanics at all from DS3 to Elden Ring's faster, higher octane enemies and the elitist masochistic fanboys have deluded themselves in the thinking that it's all perfectly fair and honest and that hard = good and that anyone who has dissenting opinions just have a "skill issue"

The only thing I don't like is that I just can't read the movesets. They're just unreadable sometimes. The dancing lion just keep throwing shit at you over and over. Mohg is a great example of a good boss fight. 

Combat is pretty simple. You auto target lock an enemy by holding left trigger. While targeting, you can jump to the side over and over to go around in circles around the enemy. Or you can jump backwards to backflip away from them. If you do any of these jumps at the same time as the enemy attacking, you’ll get a flurry rush, which is a slow motion flurry of counter attacks. It’s very effective. Similarly, if you press B (I think) while blocking with a shield, it does a shield bash, or parry. If you do this with perfect timing while an enemy is attacking, it knock them backs and stuns them. You can block most attacks that way, including big attacks from big enemies, but the timing is pretty tight. Flurry rushes are a little easier. But even if you don’t get a perfect flurry rush, I just want to emphasize the strategy of jumping around in circles around an enemy while target locked. Even if you don’t get a perfect flurry rush, it’s still a very effective way to dodge attacks and get behind an enemy.

There are a few basic combat movements you can perform in the game that you learn about early on.

FLURRY RUSHES:
WHAT: Dodge an attack from an enemy's weapon at the perfect moment. This will trigger time to slow down, allowing you to hit the enemy multiple times without risking getting hit yourself.
HOW: Pull out your shield and target the enemy with ZL > do either a backflip or a sidejump (depending on the movement of the enemy's weapon) by pressing back/sideways on the joystick and hitting the jump button.

PERFECT PARRY:
WHAT: Parry an enemy's weapon with your shield to stun them, or in the case of Guardians: to reflect their beams back at them to damage them.
HOW: Lock on to a nearby enemy by pressing the ZL button > press A right as the enemy's weapon is about to connect to the shield.

CHARGED ATTACK:
WHAT: Use stamina to build up the power of your weapon, then release it to deal damage to enemies.
HOW: Hold the attack button then release it as you get the cue that it's charged up.

SNEAK STRIKE:
WHAT: Sneak up behind an enemy and attack it while it's asleep or unaware of your presence, then do a stealth attack to perform a crit attack that deals 8x the damage.
HOW: Crouch by pressing down on left stick > sneak up behind an enemy > wait for the "Sneakstrike" prompt to show up > hit the attack button.

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WEAPON TYPE BASICS:
Aside from the bow, the 3 main weapon types you're gonna come across in the game are one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, and spears. Two-handed weapons are slower than one-handed ones so you won't be able to get as many hits in as quickly, and it will also leave you vulnerable to enemy attacks more often. You can get more hits in in a shorter time with the spears, but they also generally have lower attack power in general. There are also boomerangs that you can throw at enemies and also catch them again as it comes back at you afterwards.

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There's a lot more to discover about the combat system and the enemies in this game, but I'll just leave the basics here for now.

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USEFUL LINKS:

• Combat Tips And Tricks
• Croton's Stats of the Wild series (useful info about weapons, enemies, loot, cooking, etc)

When up against a guardian, hold up your shield and wait for the firing sound before parrying. It might take you a while to get it, but once you do they won't be as scary.

Bokoblins are fairly easy enemies, Moblins are tanks and heavy hitters but can't really do anything when you're close, lizalfos are fast and can come in different elements.

Stal enemies (bone) spawn only at night and will only die from a hit to the head.

Mini bosses are scattered across the map (hinoxes, talus, and lynels). They only spawn in specific places, so you can mark them on a map if you'd like.

All enemies respawn after blood moons, so if you have a travel quest through an enemy camp, kill them directly after a blood moon to have the most time to get through.

• Perfect dodging and parrying
• Polearm weapons like spears are the fastest, but deal the least amount of damage. Two-handed weapons like claymores are the slowest, but deal the most amount of damage (on the other hand, you can get the most out of them with spin attacks). One-handed weapons like broadswords break even.
• Sneakstrikes deal 8 times the normal damage—use them when you can. In fact, a fun fact I learned is that when you quickly get in front of an enemy after performing a sneakstrike, it’ll immediately turn around without noticing you, giving you an opening to do it again—you can basically perform chain sneakstrikes XD
• On that note, there are ways beyond direct combat to defeating enemies. Aside from Lizalfos, standard enemies can’t swim—knock them in a body of water if you have the chance. Since you have an endless supply of remote bombs, you can just blitz an enemy camp with them repeatedly until nobody’s left standing. During rain/near water, electric attacks can deal AOE damage (conversely, bomb arrows are ineffective in rainy weather). During storms, if an enemy is wielding a metal weapon, just stand back and wait for the lightning strike.

Duck, dodge, dive, run, duck and dodge.

Edit: added run

No problem, happy to help if I can! :)

And I can't recommend the videos by Croton enough. They're simple and to the point, while also digging deep into how the various parts and elements of the game actually work. Actually, Croton's a great creator overall and has some great stuff on his channel.

1. Make sure you’re targeting your enemy with ZL and using your jump button to hop around to dodge. Practice this on a tree or some random item in the game.

2. The more you progress, the more the game will give you items that will help you better defend.

3. Don’t approach a guardian until you are ready. This sounds like it won’t be until closer to the end of the game for you.

4. Do as many shrines as you possibly can. Remember, you are able to run from combat and you don’t always have to fight.

5. Since it sounds like you’re in the early game, always keep your health FULL. If you’re full, most of the time, you cannot get one-shotted. Enemies can bring you down to a quarter of a heart. Refill your hearts all the way. It’ll do you well to get good at cooking food.

6. Always upgrade your clothing at the great fairies. There’s one in Kakariko village, one in the Gerudo desert, one in Akkala, and one somewhat near Rito village. You’d do well to find all of these fairies.

7. Practice practice practice. You will die. You will mess up. Failure is the greatest teacher. You have to die to learn.

If you find the game tough in the beginning, go very strictly after the quests on your map. The first 5-10 hours of quests take you fairly directly around all the toughest enemies and start you out easily. Once you get off The Great Plateau and get the "Seek Out Impa" quest, there is a combat training shrine to help you out near the first village of the game, Kakariko Village.

Remember - you can always run from an enemy if they are too tough.

There are some shrines that make you practice it, but the game is very reliant on you learning the dodge timing and parrying.

Sometimes it's better to be more aggressive so you can knock enemies down.

I like to use bombs or things in the environment to help speed up encounters or at least spread out enemies so I can fight less at once.

Getting a set of armor and upgrading it a couple times really helps with being a little more durable.

Practice. Use the environment. 

Honestly you just have to practice. There isn't really consequences to dying so theres no harm in just trying stuff out.

If you're concerned try stuff on the red bokoblins, they're the easiest

Seconding this strategy. I put lots into dex/int at first, more than I needed for the weapons and spells I used, and really struggled. Then I read about vigor. At first it seems bad because from 10 to 20 it only increases hp by a few each point, but then it ramps up more hp per vigor peaking from 30 to 40.

I very highly suggest getting minimum stats for the weapon/abilities/armor load you want and everything into vigor ASAP. 40 vigor makes the game infinitely easier than 20.

Also be sure to keep your load at medium, heavy rolling is terrible.

Leveling Vigor is important, you should have around 40 when you reach the last part of the game.

Level Dex/Str/Fth/Int/Arc only for weapon requirements early, get your damage from weapon upgrades. You can find upgrade mats in dungeons / tunnels around the map, there are plenty of em. Dump your remaining points in Vigor and endurance.

Cheers. Happy to help.

Also someone below me mentioned the importance of strengthening weapons at the blacksmith. I agree completely.

Weapon enhancing is the single best way to get the most out of them.

Start leveling in a balanced method.

Get vigor, endurance, and mind up to about 20 early on, then slowly level them up to 30-40 in late game.

Besides that, go with whatever type of build you want to do.

BTW, a quality build is equal amounts strength and dexterity. Also have lots of vigor. Usually the tip is to level vigor first. If you need a few more levels of strength of dexterity to use a new weapon fine, but your damage increase come mostly from weapon upgrades (using smithing stones) not leveling up strength or dexterity (not really anyway). So focus on vigor and endurance at first.

A quality build for your first run, The reason you would do this is so that when you come across a new weapon, you can likely meet the requirements to use it, whatever it is. And if you find you like how the weapon feels to use (has a nice ash of war, feels intuitive to use, varying enough combos), then if you do another playthrough later (or respec later) you can make a build completely based on that weapon.

My Advice would be:

While there are certainly extra powerful weapons, its perfectly possible to beat the game naked with a club and not take a single hit, not something your gonna do obviously, but the idea is, "if someone else can pull it off, my random build probably wont do so bad."

Also Strengthening a weapon at a blacksmith is far more powerful than leveling yourself, don't expect a non-strengthened weapon to do well, even with 99 Strength/Dexterity

You do you.

I suggested leveling vigor, mind, and endurance because it ensures that you can have a varied playstyle and you're not locked into a certain type of weapon/armor setup

As soon as you enter Limgrave (starting area after tutorial), there is a giant gold guy on a horse. Do not engage lol.

Come back later for him.

For real though, I didn't know what was going on for like the first 30 hours I played.

Now I spend my time cooping end game bosses.

This is the greatest game ever made.

Under the 'multiplayer' section, you'll see a bunch of different items. If you use:

Furcalling Finger Remedy - You'll see signs of other real life players whom you can summon for help to bring into your world

Tarnished Furled Finger - You drop your sign and someone else can summon you into their world to help

Small golden effigy - Automatically places your summon sign at summoning pools (so anyone can approach a summoning pool and see your sign without you having to drop it manually)

Duelist Furled Finger - Drops your sign to fight someone else in PVP.

Bloody Finger/Rescusant Finger - Both are the same. You invade someone else's world who has cooperative help in their world. So you are jumping in to fight the Host, while dealing with other players trying to kill you. Regular enemies don't bother you, so you can lure the host into danger.

Blue cypher ring - You can be summoned as a hunter (to help a Host who is being invaded)

White cypher ring let's you automatically summon a hunter for help if you get invaded.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

Also forgot to mention, you can only see other signs of players if they are within 20 levels or so of yourself.

If you use a password, you can summon anyone, but damage output will be scaled down to match the Host.

You’re going to die. A lot. Don’t get discouraged. Learn the bad guys’ move sets. Find your defense style (jumping, rolling, blocking, parrying) that works for you.

Sometimes the best move is to run past enemies, especially near the churches. Most the time there is a site of grace inside (like a checkpoint) - go inside and hit it before engaging enemies. Have fun & good luck!

"Prepare to die" isn't a warning, it's a strategy. Making suicide runs to grab specific items can help tremendously.

Gravity kills, use rainbow stones if concerned. Buy a lamp. Follow lights of grace.

Also don’t forget to upgrade your weapons with smithing stones that you find and buy from vendors

level health, upgrade weapons, explore, and most importantly have fun.

Almost all of your issues can be solved by either exploring more of the world, learning the boss’ moves, and/or adding more points to Vigor.

Early game, crit fishing seems to be king for Longsword, while area denial seems to be Spears best trait if you bought the Steam Spear from the Panda Vendor.

If you aren't clicking I suggest trying another weapon since you can refund skills for free. I've changed my build multiple times before settling on Magic.

Im still at the beginning, but I've been aggressive, and when my stamina runs out, I use a skill.

Combat will speed up once you get more stamina and Mighty points. Enemies also get a lot faster the further you get into the game.

Face each enemy one by one, use your shield often, and every boss is less like a duel and more like a riddle; It's less about whittling-down an HP sponge and more about figuring them out.

You can let enemies bounce off your shield to stun them before retaliating, though it doesn't work on everyone.

Soul Remains from World 4 skeletons works on far more things than you think in every area - don't sleep on it.

Bows are very OP in this game. Compound Longbow in 4-1 is the best in the game and works well in both Str and Dex builds (when made Sticky).

Holy Arrows (buyable after beating 4-1) will deal heavy magic damage to enemies, letting you be a discount mage even if you have no Magic stat. This is especially useful against enemies weak to Magic.

Besides the main strategy to kill them, the vast majority of bosses have an even easier way that you will only notice if you are perceptive. In the remake, many achievements are linked to doing these secret strats.

Scimitar is a good noob friendly weapon that helps ya ease into the combat.

Git gud!

In all souls games (except maybe Sekiro), patience is the key. Go into boss fights trying to dodge/parry attacks before trying to do any damage. Learn each bosses attack patterns. And remember, you WILL die. So dont get discouraged.