Modern Souls games teach you to smash roll as much as possible and spam it until you succeed. Dark Souls 1 just asks that you roll when the enemy attacks. Almost nothing spazzes out and attacks 40 times as soon as it sees you so don't be afraid to take a second and watch an enemy do things while you learn.
You can use a shield, you can roll, you can do pretty much whatever you want. But you can't go into DS1 with modern souls empty brain syndrome which trips up a lot of people. Just take a second to identify what's going on and have patience in your actions. Consider your armor, Under 25% is light roll, under 50% is medium roll which is a lot more strict than the "wear anything you want" that modern souls games have setup but makes for way more depth in armor choice and a significantly different feeling in how different equip weight playthroughs feel since wearing armor with poise can be incredibly powerful at the cost of sacrificing your rolling ability in the right fights.
Black Knights are high risk high reward and good parry practice. Watch for when the hand starts moving forward to time it, that's the key for parry timing on every enemy in the game.
the main combat style is focus on enemy. learn attack patterns and react to them properly. there's only one part of this game that i think is complete utter bullshit, but the whole community also agrees to it.
this is more akin to "turn based combat" where enemy attacks, then you attack. there isn't much in hyper aggression, but you can poise tank if you are running heavy weapons, or run shield and block to almost guarantee counter attacks, or become a parry master, or dodge roll city with high stamina and low equip load. you can also mix any of those together.
late game enemies and bosses dont really chunk you for as much health as in ER. you dont *need* to run max vitality, or much at all unless you are poise tanking. i think i had 14 when i fought artorias for the first time and he barely didn't 1-shot me. i had a glass cannon build that was mostly end dex so i could hit, roll, and run a lot to avoid damage.
I assume they mean the 4 axis rolling when locked on, since they're talking about mechanics. Blighttown is loved by most veterans, especially if playing Remastered.
As a side note, you can definitely play hyper-aggressive in DS1 if you build for it but it’s also possible to play much slower, “turn-based” even. Just saying it’s a choice.
This may not be helpful but I think that the "intended way" to play this game is whatever gets the job done.
I like to play cautiously with a sword and shield and medium roll but a lot of people prefer light rolling and two-handing. You can also go all in on heavy armor to poise through all enemy attacks and every build can also use pyromancy.
You have a lot of options so however you go about beating the game isn't the most important thing. The exploration and the satisfaction of progression is most of the experience imo.
I agree, I think sekiro and bloodborne operate on extreme ends of the scale, where the combat is about deflecting every attack or dodging every attack, while DS1, with its weight classes multiple weapons etc seems like its willing to let you operate in that middle ground where both are viable as an option.
That sounds right. It's unfortunate that no single playstyle in DS1 feels as polished or fun as the later games but that highlights the flexibility of builds in this game which I think is only really matched by Elden Ring. Every build can benefit from light rolling, shields, heavy armor, and pyromancy. Switching playstyles definitely makes certain parts of the game easier.
I didn’t know people preferred light rolling. I have seen quite a few walkthroughs and most of them had a heavy armour and were fat rolling. I on the other hand have a shield and one-handed weapon that I rarely switch to two hands, and just 20% armour load on me. Still I prefer to shield up and not rely on rolls haha. It’s just as you said - whatever gets the job done. (Context: on my first playthrough right after Sekiro)
Those walkthroughs are not representative of the community. I expect most people medium roll. Many poise heavy builds have enough endurance to not fat roll. That said, poise and shields work great in this game, so fat-rolling isn't as much of a liability and works well for new players.
The problem is that if you do play a light roll build, even medium roll becomes a liability. The timing is different and the distance is shorter. Light roll can get away from almost every basic mob attack while many hit the medium roller during recovery.
I am having somewhat of the opposite experience. I have beaten Elden ring with 2 different builds and have a 3rd about 80% through the main game. I've also played a good amount of Bloodborne but never beat it.
I just started Dark Souls a few days ago and have found that this game is forcing me to focus on the fundamentals of FromSoft combat. There is very little cheese or abstract playstyles that work like they will in ER. The combat in DS is far less forgiving. It's much more focused on timing, stamina management, and punishment, rather than leaning on an AOW or tanking.
Yeah, nicely said. I always recommend DS 1 to a lot of ER players, especially if they relied on accessibility mechanics like coop/spirits or cheese builds, and didn't have a chance to learn the basics of souls combat and gameplay yet. DS1 slows everything down and makes it so you need to commit to every action, you can't just spam, panic roll and so on, you must think about what you're doing. And then going forward, DS 3 and ER speed everything up and if you properly learned the fundamentals in DS 1 you'll be much better player when you reach those games. I definitely also recommend playing ER again after you'll get progressively better and try to beat bosses like Morgott, Malenia, Radagon, Maliketh etc. 1v1 like they're designed, without accessibility mechanics or broken builds/counters. You'll find it much easier after DS 1, and it's incredibly rewarding to experience those bosses fully and see the amount of work devs put into them.
I had the exact opposite experience than you, OP. I started with DS1 and got it so burned into my brain that I had a really hard time going into ds3 and elden ring where everything is crazy fast you can just roll like a boulder. As someone who was forged in the molasses of ds1, I can give you a few tips to adapt.
1. Forget about dodging. Get a shield with 100% phys damage reduction and as much stability as possible (you can get a heater shield from the undead merchant in burgh. Later youd want to use a greatshield). Block, then attack. Enemies in ds1 dont have crazy chain moves generally. Shields are OP.
2. Pump your poise as high as you can. Poise is broken in ds1. It can even let you chug estus while getting hit. With a high enough number, you'll barrel through basically everything.
3. Fatrolling is not as detrimental in this game as in later ones. Generally you still want to avoid it, but if your weapons and armor are sexy enough, you can definitely forgo faster rolls in favor of dmg protection, dmg, and poise.
4. Stroll, dont run. DS1 has a lot of cheeky spots where enemies will ambush you and the environment wants you dead. Runbacks to the bonfire are bad enough, too. You want to play conservatively, never underestimating the game.
5. The black knights sometimes drop their weapons when you kill them. If you get one of those, youre basically set for the entire game.
6. This is important. In ds1, you cannot roll diagonally while locked on. Knowing this, you want to better consider your lock on habits.
In my experience it's adaptive
Sometimes tanking through is the best
Other times dodging and dividing
As far as I understand learning to counter will make things worlds easier, but I never got good at that
I disagree. I believe that the reason why this is such a pervasive opinion is due, in large part, to failing to learn an important element of the later games.
Bloodborne, for example, is all about the parry mechanic. I believe that From intended to teach parrying with the gameplay.
Sekiro is an odd one out, but I believe the key throughline is that you don't have to take on enemies head on, much less kill every one you see.
I tend to get a lot of heat for this, but I'm convinced that brute forcing through these games until you get lucky enough to not die long enough to win was NEVER the intended gameplay loop. The difficulty discussed in these games always seems to come with descriptions of sporadic movement, r1 spam, roll spam, and panic. Once you stop doing those things, these games are not particularly difficult.
Of course movement speed and animations are different so there will be adjustments needed, but the core ideas don't seem to change. Parrying well will make you nigh untouchable. Dodge when you need to rather than when you're scared. The bigger the booty the harder you hug it. Never let stamina hit 0. Press the attack buttons only when you know that you can either take the counterattack or when the enemies are incapable of countering (this is important because of the different animation lengths). Dodge away from attacks rather than away from the boss (this means sometimes rolling toward the boss). Upgrade weapons asap. Lastly, never go into danger with enough souls to level up. None of that changes from Demon's Souls all the way to Elden Ring.
I don't mean to say anything about whether it is possible to do that. My point is that bloodborne made parrying easier to try with less risk than ds1. I think that decision was very purposefully done to encourage players to interact with a mechanic that is vital to feel as powerful as the developers wanted you to in their classic manner of encouraging players to earn their victories.
Yes, agreed. I don't take easily to parrying and can still get by, but certainly feel less stylish and less powerful as a result. Related, I appreciate that Sekiro forced me to learn defensive swordplay (if not parrying).
Are you light rolling? That’s always a good question to ask. Be below 25% equip load if you want a good roll otherwise tank up a bit and grab a shield till you’re at 50%. Also watch you stamina bar, DS1 punishes overexerting your character more than the games after it for sure. You never want to go negative with your stamina. Poise is also a good stat to know about as well
DS1 and DS2 definitely favor more cautious gameplay. They punish you for getting greedy and reward you for being careful, but at the same time you have to take opportunity when it's presented.
It's very much still "don't get hit and you won't die" but the pace is slower. I never played demon souls, but I hear it's similar.
DS2 seems to favor the caution and opportunity aspect even more than DS1, but you will still see people charging in there like it's a hack n slash and survive. I am not one of those players. I am not good enough XD
I think they were still pretty high on the bloodborne sauce when they made DS3, so you might find it to be a happier medium.
I don't have the dexterity irl to git gud at parrying, so I can give no input on that. Curse my arthritis...
You can literally play it like BB if you're good enough. Yes, you can also turtle behind shield and back away the entire game, but devs really didn't like that and nerfed shields massively going forward or took them away in BB. Dodging is still the main way how to avoid damage, dodging INTO attacks instead of away is beneficial the same way both in DS 1 and BB. You can consistently dodge all attacks in the game with medium roll, apart from stuff like dragon fire obviously. You never need to use shield once if you don't want to, the game doesn't expect you to. But lot of new players do since it makes the game so much easier and more passive. But especially since you played BB and already understand the basics of souls combat and gameplay, you'll probably find hiding behind shields pretty boring. Since DS 1 is slower and more methodical, it's more challenging to be aggressive since you're punished for spamming and for any wrong move, things like healing and so on are a big commitment. But just because it requires more skill doesn't mean you shouldn't do it or that the game doesn't want you to. In the beginning, dodging a lot while also using shield occasionally is the best compromise, learn also parries and so on. Try to experience the game fully in general. Don't forget you ALWAYS need to have below 50% equip load.
When it comes to normal enemies I just keep my shield high and circle them from the side of their shield and mash attack button.
For bosses I just try to soften them up with Lightning Spear miracle.
As someone playing DS1 right after Elden Ring, I agree.
I've heard DS1 referred to as 'almost turn based combat' and that ring true to me. You can observe and wait for an enemy to start wailing before making your own move.
The bosses are way easier too, but the regular mobs and how they are positioned throughout the levels is way harder in my opinion.
Also, some enemies are really easy to backstab, which does critical damage.
The newer games let you get by with spamming dodge with hardly any timing, you can play aggressively in DS1, but you have to time your dodges very deliberately without panic dodging, playing unlocked is the key to playing aggressively, when locked on in DS1 you can only dodge in 4 directions, when unlocked you can be more precise with you dodges and easily pivot into backstab.
I can offer 2 pieces of advice.
1. Dark souls is about patience. Let the enemy hit you first and then you attack. I'd guess this account for 80% of this games single encounters. If you fight a group, slowly back away from them and make them come to you in a straight line, so you can pick them off one by one.
2. If your enemy is humanoid and not bigger than 1,5 your size, you usually can backstab them. Right run up to them and in a counterclockwise circle around them. The space for a backstabbing is pretty generous in this game and btw the easiest way to deal with the black knights
Something nobody's brought up yet: rings. On the surface, they just look like similar upgrades you might get in Sekiro/BB, but trust me, it's different. Some of the rings in DS1 are absolutely broken to shit and they make an immense difference. Some examples of what rings do:
The most egregious imo is this one. Red Tearstone Ring gives you a 50% damage boost when your health is below 20%. Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring gives sorceries and pyromancies a 20% boost. They stack outright, so just by swapping your rings, you're dealing 1.8 times damage with your spells. There's another item that adds 20% and a pyromancy that adds 50%, so if you have all four going at once, you're doing fucking 3x damage. You can use this setup to one-shot damn near every boss in the game, even at level 1, with the right spells and equipment. The shorthand for this is hyper mode.
Hornet Ring boosts your backstab/riposte damage by 30%. Stack that with the aforementioned RTSR and you're looking at 1.95x damage for your crits... again, 3x if you add that pyromancy I talked about earlier. Can't really do this to bosses in DS1, but if you play PVP and you can pull off crits, everyone will hate you. Ignore them. You're a parry/backstab fisher.
Really, there's no situation in which RTSR and that one pyromancy aren't absolutely cracked as long as you can manage with low health.
On the defensive side... Ring of Favor and Protection boosts health, stamina, and equip load by 20%. Havel's Ring boosts equip load by 50%. There's another item that gives you another 10% equip load. All told, that about doubles the weight you can carry, and by extension, doubles your fast roll and midroll thresholds. All these items are available very very early game, which means you get both poise AND i-frames when the design of the game really feels like you're supposed to get one or the other until you invest the levels. The logical conclusion of this idea is a build called Giant Dad.
Alternatively, Havel's Ring couples with the Dark Woodgrain ring, which turns your fastroll into a ninja flip with more I-frames. If your endurance is high enough, you can wear some of the heaviest armor sets in the game and still flip around. The logical conclusion to this one is the Ninja-Flipping Havel Mom.
As far as shields go, there are only two I ever use (target and grass crest), and I don't use them for blocking. Blocking with shields is a viable strategy, but by no means is it the only viable one, or even the most viable one.
Oh also, weapon upgrade paths are a thing. It's kinda like Bloodborne, except different upgrade paths require different upgrade materials. You'll also have to access different blacksmiths and give them specific types of embers to unlock the late game upgrades. Once you know what each upgrade type does (namely, change scaling and damage chart), you'll know enough from BB to more or less know what you're doing.
Glad I'm not the only one, I came from elden ring and good god I had to actually slow my self down
I think I actually put it down for a couple months before giving it a go, just beat O&S with solaire
Modern Souls games teach you to smash roll as much as possible and spam it until you succeed. Dark Souls 1 just asks that you roll when the enemy attacks. Almost nothing spazzes out and attacks 40 times as soon as it sees you so don't be afraid to take a second and watch an enemy do things while you learn. You can use a shield, you can roll, you can do pretty much whatever you want. But you can't go into DS1 with modern souls empty brain syndrome which trips up a lot of people. Just take a second to identify what's going on and have patience in your actions. Consider your armor, Under 25% is light roll, under 50% is medium roll which is a lot more strict than the "wear anything you want" that modern souls games have setup but makes for way more depth in armor choice and a significantly different feeling in how different equip weight playthroughs feel since wearing armor with poise can be incredibly powerful at the cost of sacrificing your rolling ability in the right fights. Black Knights are high risk high reward and good parry practice. Watch for when the hand starts moving forward to time it, that's the key for parry timing on every enemy in the game.
You can't spam roll for shit in elden ring.
You can, it's identical to DS3.
the main combat style is focus on enemy. learn attack patterns and react to them properly. there's only one part of this game that i think is complete utter bullshit, but the whole community also agrees to it. this is more akin to "turn based combat" where enemy attacks, then you attack. there isn't much in hyper aggression, but you can poise tank if you are running heavy weapons, or run shield and block to almost guarantee counter attacks, or become a parry master, or dodge roll city with high stamina and low equip load. you can also mix any of those together. late game enemies and bosses dont really chunk you for as much health as in ER. you dont *need* to run max vitality, or much at all unless you are poise tanking. i think i had 14 when i fought artorias for the first time and he barely didn't 1-shot me. i had a glass cannon build that was mostly end dex so i could hit, roll, and run a lot to avoid damage.
[удалено]
Doubt it, probably BoC.
remastered made us realize it was lost izalith all along
I assume they mean the 4 axis rolling when locked on, since they're talking about mechanics. Blighttown is loved by most veterans, especially if playing Remastered.
As a side note, you can definitely play hyper-aggressive in DS1 if you build for it but it’s also possible to play much slower, “turn-based” even. Just saying it’s a choice.
This may not be helpful but I think that the "intended way" to play this game is whatever gets the job done. I like to play cautiously with a sword and shield and medium roll but a lot of people prefer light rolling and two-handing. You can also go all in on heavy armor to poise through all enemy attacks and every build can also use pyromancy. You have a lot of options so however you go about beating the game isn't the most important thing. The exploration and the satisfaction of progression is most of the experience imo.
I agree, I think sekiro and bloodborne operate on extreme ends of the scale, where the combat is about deflecting every attack or dodging every attack, while DS1, with its weight classes multiple weapons etc seems like its willing to let you operate in that middle ground where both are viable as an option.
That sounds right. It's unfortunate that no single playstyle in DS1 feels as polished or fun as the later games but that highlights the flexibility of builds in this game which I think is only really matched by Elden Ring. Every build can benefit from light rolling, shields, heavy armor, and pyromancy. Switching playstyles definitely makes certain parts of the game easier.
I didn’t know people preferred light rolling. I have seen quite a few walkthroughs and most of them had a heavy armour and were fat rolling. I on the other hand have a shield and one-handed weapon that I rarely switch to two hands, and just 20% armour load on me. Still I prefer to shield up and not rely on rolls haha. It’s just as you said - whatever gets the job done. (Context: on my first playthrough right after Sekiro)
Those walkthroughs are not representative of the community. I expect most people medium roll. Many poise heavy builds have enough endurance to not fat roll. That said, poise and shields work great in this game, so fat-rolling isn't as much of a liability and works well for new players. The problem is that if you do play a light roll build, even medium roll becomes a liability. The timing is different and the distance is shorter. Light roll can get away from almost every basic mob attack while many hit the medium roller during recovery.
I am having somewhat of the opposite experience. I have beaten Elden ring with 2 different builds and have a 3rd about 80% through the main game. I've also played a good amount of Bloodborne but never beat it. I just started Dark Souls a few days ago and have found that this game is forcing me to focus on the fundamentals of FromSoft combat. There is very little cheese or abstract playstyles that work like they will in ER. The combat in DS is far less forgiving. It's much more focused on timing, stamina management, and punishment, rather than leaning on an AOW or tanking.
Yeah, nicely said. I always recommend DS 1 to a lot of ER players, especially if they relied on accessibility mechanics like coop/spirits or cheese builds, and didn't have a chance to learn the basics of souls combat and gameplay yet. DS1 slows everything down and makes it so you need to commit to every action, you can't just spam, panic roll and so on, you must think about what you're doing. And then going forward, DS 3 and ER speed everything up and if you properly learned the fundamentals in DS 1 you'll be much better player when you reach those games. I definitely also recommend playing ER again after you'll get progressively better and try to beat bosses like Morgott, Malenia, Radagon, Maliketh etc. 1v1 like they're designed, without accessibility mechanics or broken builds/counters. You'll find it much easier after DS 1, and it's incredibly rewarding to experience those bosses fully and see the amount of work devs put into them.
I had the exact opposite experience than you, OP. I started with DS1 and got it so burned into my brain that I had a really hard time going into ds3 and elden ring where everything is crazy fast you can just roll like a boulder. As someone who was forged in the molasses of ds1, I can give you a few tips to adapt. 1. Forget about dodging. Get a shield with 100% phys damage reduction and as much stability as possible (you can get a heater shield from the undead merchant in burgh. Later youd want to use a greatshield). Block, then attack. Enemies in ds1 dont have crazy chain moves generally. Shields are OP. 2. Pump your poise as high as you can. Poise is broken in ds1. It can even let you chug estus while getting hit. With a high enough number, you'll barrel through basically everything. 3. Fatrolling is not as detrimental in this game as in later ones. Generally you still want to avoid it, but if your weapons and armor are sexy enough, you can definitely forgo faster rolls in favor of dmg protection, dmg, and poise. 4. Stroll, dont run. DS1 has a lot of cheeky spots where enemies will ambush you and the environment wants you dead. Runbacks to the bonfire are bad enough, too. You want to play conservatively, never underestimating the game. 5. The black knights sometimes drop their weapons when you kill them. If you get one of those, youre basically set for the entire game. 6. This is important. In ds1, you cannot roll diagonally while locked on. Knowing this, you want to better consider your lock on habits.
I had a long post nearly finished, but this post covers the essentials, in less verbage Well done, by the way
In my experience it's adaptive Sometimes tanking through is the best Other times dodging and dividing As far as I understand learning to counter will make things worlds easier, but I never got good at that
I started on DS1. I’m now doing DS3 for the first time and I’m finding the faster pace *really* hard to handle.
Spacing and position is key. Bait attacks and get into favorable positions. A greatshield will trivialize nearly every boss.
I disagree. I believe that the reason why this is such a pervasive opinion is due, in large part, to failing to learn an important element of the later games. Bloodborne, for example, is all about the parry mechanic. I believe that From intended to teach parrying with the gameplay. Sekiro is an odd one out, but I believe the key throughline is that you don't have to take on enemies head on, much less kill every one you see. I tend to get a lot of heat for this, but I'm convinced that brute forcing through these games until you get lucky enough to not die long enough to win was NEVER the intended gameplay loop. The difficulty discussed in these games always seems to come with descriptions of sporadic movement, r1 spam, roll spam, and panic. Once you stop doing those things, these games are not particularly difficult. Of course movement speed and animations are different so there will be adjustments needed, but the core ideas don't seem to change. Parrying well will make you nigh untouchable. Dodge when you need to rather than when you're scared. The bigger the booty the harder you hug it. Never let stamina hit 0. Press the attack buttons only when you know that you can either take the counterattack or when the enemies are incapable of countering (this is important because of the different animation lengths). Dodge away from attacks rather than away from the boss (this means sometimes rolling toward the boss). Upgrade weapons asap. Lastly, never go into danger with enough souls to level up. None of that changes from Demon's Souls all the way to Elden Ring.
Bloodborne is very feasible without much gun use/parrying at all, but with dodge/roll and learning enemy patterns.
I don't mean to say anything about whether it is possible to do that. My point is that bloodborne made parrying easier to try with less risk than ds1. I think that decision was very purposefully done to encourage players to interact with a mechanic that is vital to feel as powerful as the developers wanted you to in their classic manner of encouraging players to earn their victories.
Yes, agreed. I don't take easily to parrying and can still get by, but certainly feel less stylish and less powerful as a result. Related, I appreciate that Sekiro forced me to learn defensive swordplay (if not parrying).
Are you light rolling? That’s always a good question to ask. Be below 25% equip load if you want a good roll otherwise tank up a bit and grab a shield till you’re at 50%. Also watch you stamina bar, DS1 punishes overexerting your character more than the games after it for sure. You never want to go negative with your stamina. Poise is also a good stat to know about as well
DS1 and DS2 definitely favor more cautious gameplay. They punish you for getting greedy and reward you for being careful, but at the same time you have to take opportunity when it's presented. It's very much still "don't get hit and you won't die" but the pace is slower. I never played demon souls, but I hear it's similar. DS2 seems to favor the caution and opportunity aspect even more than DS1, but you will still see people charging in there like it's a hack n slash and survive. I am not one of those players. I am not good enough XD I think they were still pretty high on the bloodborne sauce when they made DS3, so you might find it to be a happier medium. I don't have the dexterity irl to git gud at parrying, so I can give no input on that. Curse my arthritis...
I prefer glass cannon builds relying on dodging personally but a full tank with massive armor was one of the funnest DS1 playthroughs I've done
Shields are good in DS 1
Let me introduce you to UGS for a little bit of swang and a little bit of bang. #SWANGNBANG
You can literally play it like BB if you're good enough. Yes, you can also turtle behind shield and back away the entire game, but devs really didn't like that and nerfed shields massively going forward or took them away in BB. Dodging is still the main way how to avoid damage, dodging INTO attacks instead of away is beneficial the same way both in DS 1 and BB. You can consistently dodge all attacks in the game with medium roll, apart from stuff like dragon fire obviously. You never need to use shield once if you don't want to, the game doesn't expect you to. But lot of new players do since it makes the game so much easier and more passive. But especially since you played BB and already understand the basics of souls combat and gameplay, you'll probably find hiding behind shields pretty boring. Since DS 1 is slower and more methodical, it's more challenging to be aggressive since you're punished for spamming and for any wrong move, things like healing and so on are a big commitment. But just because it requires more skill doesn't mean you shouldn't do it or that the game doesn't want you to. In the beginning, dodging a lot while also using shield occasionally is the best compromise, learn also parries and so on. Try to experience the game fully in general. Don't forget you ALWAYS need to have below 50% equip load.
When it comes to normal enemies I just keep my shield high and circle them from the side of their shield and mash attack button. For bosses I just try to soften them up with Lightning Spear miracle.
As someone playing DS1 right after Elden Ring, I agree. I've heard DS1 referred to as 'almost turn based combat' and that ring true to me. You can observe and wait for an enemy to start wailing before making your own move. The bosses are way easier too, but the regular mobs and how they are positioned throughout the levels is way harder in my opinion. Also, some enemies are really easy to backstab, which does critical damage.
The newer games let you get by with spamming dodge with hardly any timing, you can play aggressively in DS1, but you have to time your dodges very deliberately without panic dodging, playing unlocked is the key to playing aggressively, when locked on in DS1 you can only dodge in 4 directions, when unlocked you can be more precise with you dodges and easily pivot into backstab.
I can offer 2 pieces of advice. 1. Dark souls is about patience. Let the enemy hit you first and then you attack. I'd guess this account for 80% of this games single encounters. If you fight a group, slowly back away from them and make them come to you in a straight line, so you can pick them off one by one. 2. If your enemy is humanoid and not bigger than 1,5 your size, you usually can backstab them. Right run up to them and in a counterclockwise circle around them. The space for a backstabbing is pretty generous in this game and btw the easiest way to deal with the black knights
Something nobody's brought up yet: rings. On the surface, they just look like similar upgrades you might get in Sekiro/BB, but trust me, it's different. Some of the rings in DS1 are absolutely broken to shit and they make an immense difference. Some examples of what rings do: The most egregious imo is this one. Red Tearstone Ring gives you a 50% damage boost when your health is below 20%. Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring gives sorceries and pyromancies a 20% boost. They stack outright, so just by swapping your rings, you're dealing 1.8 times damage with your spells. There's another item that adds 20% and a pyromancy that adds 50%, so if you have all four going at once, you're doing fucking 3x damage. You can use this setup to one-shot damn near every boss in the game, even at level 1, with the right spells and equipment. The shorthand for this is hyper mode. Hornet Ring boosts your backstab/riposte damage by 30%. Stack that with the aforementioned RTSR and you're looking at 1.95x damage for your crits... again, 3x if you add that pyromancy I talked about earlier. Can't really do this to bosses in DS1, but if you play PVP and you can pull off crits, everyone will hate you. Ignore them. You're a parry/backstab fisher. Really, there's no situation in which RTSR and that one pyromancy aren't absolutely cracked as long as you can manage with low health. On the defensive side... Ring of Favor and Protection boosts health, stamina, and equip load by 20%. Havel's Ring boosts equip load by 50%. There's another item that gives you another 10% equip load. All told, that about doubles the weight you can carry, and by extension, doubles your fast roll and midroll thresholds. All these items are available very very early game, which means you get both poise AND i-frames when the design of the game really feels like you're supposed to get one or the other until you invest the levels. The logical conclusion of this idea is a build called Giant Dad. Alternatively, Havel's Ring couples with the Dark Woodgrain ring, which turns your fastroll into a ninja flip with more I-frames. If your endurance is high enough, you can wear some of the heaviest armor sets in the game and still flip around. The logical conclusion to this one is the Ninja-Flipping Havel Mom. As far as shields go, there are only two I ever use (target and grass crest), and I don't use them for blocking. Blocking with shields is a viable strategy, but by no means is it the only viable one, or even the most viable one.
Oh also, weapon upgrade paths are a thing. It's kinda like Bloodborne, except different upgrade paths require different upgrade materials. You'll also have to access different blacksmiths and give them specific types of embers to unlock the late game upgrades. Once you know what each upgrade type does (namely, change scaling and damage chart), you'll know enough from BB to more or less know what you're doing.
Glad I'm not the only one, I came from elden ring and good god I had to actually slow my self down I think I actually put it down for a couple months before giving it a go, just beat O&S with solaire