Step one is figuring out what you want to do with your next character. Usually after playing through the game the first time a player wants to try something new, so generally people pick a class they didnt first go around. I recommend you play around with the mugenmonkey build calculator(google dark souls character planner or builder). You might be interested in doing a build with intent for PVP in which case the calculator will be of great use as it will allow you to min max your build with relative ease.
This is a template I was messing around with but kind of scrapped it, I did a screen cap pasted it into MS paint cropped out the uncessary bits and saved it.

I recomend you create your own original build and not coppy anyones its more fun I think to push yourself and be creative and expressive with your character.

Also try not to create a build that focuses on one thing, you dont want to limit yourself, you may find you get bored and want to try new things. Try and do as much as you can without spending too many stat points. For instance I almost always recomend 16 str, you can use a rediculous ammount of weapons with 16 str. Similarly 20 dex is a good benchmark for a lot of dex weapons.

The level you want to build to is important. If you are looking to get into PvP i would recomend a lower to mid ranged dark wraith to get more comfortable with fighting other players. I have lvl 32 and 42 darkwraiths I use to invade in depths/blight town/sen's. At those levels you can invade in a lot of places and are high enough level(so you shouldnt be able to invade in burg/parish) you arent preying upon characters that are too weak to defend themselves most of the time. You dont want to torment newbies, its dull, unsatisfying, and dickish. Keep in mind that in general most PVP happens around lvl ranges 99-120. You might consider also 50-75 for anor londo, new londo, demon ruins, tomb of the giants, dukes, onward darkwraithing without being at a considerable level disadvantage. I like trying to have lower level characters because its an exciting challenge for me to do less with more.

Finally, super important. TAKE THE MASTER KEY!!!!!! for your starting item(if you dont pick theif).

There is a lot to consider here most importantly is how you want to play hopefully try some new things so its a lot of preference but some important things to consider are poise benchmarks and weapon selection based on stats(generally if you are making a low level character you will want to use elemental weapons as your scaling will never be enough to make it comparable). Keep in mind in dark souls in general you get way more return from upgrading gear than leveling up. I mention upgrading gear but level up as you get extra souls you shouldnt have to grind for levels too much.

Quick on poise:
76: ultra greatsword/great axes/great clubs 2hand normal attacks.
51: one handed ultra greatsword/great axes/great clubs 1hand normal attacks.
53: great curved swords, great swords, blunt weapons, axes 2hand normal attacks.
36: great curved swords, great swords, blunt weapons, axes 1hand normal attacks.
31: curved swords, swords, katanas, great scythe, whips, spears, halberds and polearms normal 2hand attacks(Also Shotel strong/R2 attacks).
21: curved swords, swords, katanas, great scythe, whips, spears, halberds and polearms normal 1hand attacks(Also Shotel strong/R2 attacks).
8: rapiers, daggers, 2hand normal attacks.
6: rapiers, daggers, 1hand attacks also fist weapons.

I tell you its really lame getting stunlocked but its hard to reach the 76 poise break without being over 25% weight. In most cases having the fast roll is superior to defense but in pvp due to lag it isnt always reliable. I have been pretty successful getting over 53 poise on characters as low as lvl 30 without being over 25% weight(using havels/wolfs ring and 20 endurance).

Doing a series of videos covering this guide at least to anor londo maybe some after. The first few videos are already up.


new to making videos so if you have any experience and advice I'd appreciate it.

This is where the real guide begins. There isnt much to say about the asylum there isnt much different to be done but heres 2 things. Talking to Oscar of Astora and spamming A is faster than killing him, and when you do the drop attack on the asylum demon if you do a leap attack and then drop attack you actually hit him with both doing the drop attack damage and the leap attack damage(will save you like 2 hits, wahoo...).

Ok so you are now in fire link, go ahead and level up collect the items if you want, i always get the humanity but usually skip the rest. You may want to run through the graveyard and pick up the zweihander or winged spear, your call. Bottom out your souls because the very first thing you should do is run down to new londo and grab the firekeepers soul there.
I already have the item so i left a blood stain there to show you where it is, it is visible from the bridge as you go towards the first area with ghosts, hang a right go through the arches there is a thin bridge just under the surface of the water, crossing it will spawn more ghosts and they will kill you but you should be able to get the item first, this is why I told you to empty out your souls. You can homeward bone if you are fast enough but frankly its not worth it to me. If you are having trouble with its look up a video google search new londo fire keeper soul should sort you right out. Then take the soul to anastasia and upgrade your flasks to +1.

Here is why I highly recommended to get the master key. Go down to new longo again and if you havent already pick up the Estoc. Found here in new londo, it is the best un upgraded weapon to kill havel at this point.

So take exit into the valley of the drakes which requires the master key. You should recognize it as the way you left blight town. Go past the undead dragon, you can grab the soul in his left hand without waking him I would not advise you go for the astora straight sword or dragon shield though you could grab one of both of them if you are daring, you may die as a result though. If you do wake him and die you can actually get past him on a small ledge to the right as soon as you get close to him, its often over looked. Past the undead dragon keep moving and you will approach the first drake, dodge through his lightning or side step it if he doesnt do the sweeping breath attack. in a little cave behind him is a humanity, you will likely die getting it but if you feel up to running back through here go for it. After you get past him run past the next drake and up into the tower on the right, take the elevator and hit the bonfire.

Now that thats done you need to go get the red tearstone ring, go back down the elevator run past all the drakes across the bridge and climb the tower to the right of the door, you should be able to do this safely if you are under 25% weight, grab the ring then jump off the tower, if you jump to the left you can survive the fall but will likely die to the drakes immediately, it is possible to run back to the bonfire unscathed though it shouldnt matter if you die you should not have much in the way of souls or humanity right now.

Kill the black knight by parrying/riposting him if you have gotten skilled at that or just back stab him. Grab the Grass Crest shield and move towards havels tower. You can grab a soul item by the crystal golems and lure one out. Use a shield that doesnt block 100% phys, you should have started with one if you didnt pick knight or warrior. If you did pick knight or warrior either use the grass crest shield or put your weapon in your left hand and block with it. Equip the red tearstone ring and estoc. Let the crystal golem hit you a few times, once you get sorta low start blocking his hits until you see the ring activate at 20% hp. Run away from the golem and straight at Havel the rock.

Havel will oneshot you regardless so it doesnt matter your what your hp is at. If you are skilled at parrying him it should take 5-6 parries around 181 damage(depending on your stats) a riposte to wipe him out. If you arent so skilled or confident you can back stab him about 8 times, you should be able to do this in a few tries. Havel's ring will let you wear heavier armor to make up for skipping upgrading armor for a while, while being mid to light weight.
After thats all been done run up the winding cliffs above the bonfire and head towards andre. Run past the titanite demon giving it a wide birth and hit the bonfire past andre. Then proceed into the parish, kill the berenike knight and grab the firekeeper soul. Head down the elevator shortcut and hit firelink again get the flask upgrade. FLASKS +2!

This is the first time you will stop and grind a little, you need to pick a weapon and get it to +5. You can upgrade your armor but its not necessary. Also you may want to grab the wolfs ring in darkroot, its pretty easy to get you can actually jump from where the wolfs ring to a safe spot so you dont have to fight the stone knights.

It should go without saying level up as you see fit but get 9 titanite shards for upgrading a weapon to +5. You can easily get shards from enemies around the parish, if you are good at parrying you should have no trouble killing all the balder knights and the armored hollows. Make sure you pick up the basement key and juke the gate past the boar, there is a hollow soldier who does not respawn, he is standing to the right of the boar, who will run and close the gate as soon as he sees you, once you kill him he does not respawn make sure you kill him so you can keep that gate open. Once your weapon is +5 take out the gargoyles, you should have no trouble.

*Note* after you kill gargoyles Lautrec will be freed from the tower if you didnt free him already and by the time you complete blight town or touch the fire keepers soul down there he will kill the fire keeper and the bonfire will go out. If you want to kill him kick him off the ledge, he is actually pretty tough to fight, reloading or dying and respawning will move his item drop to where he was sitting. If you do kill him you will miss out on getting his armor set, as well as anastasia's dingy rob one of the best armor peices in the game.

I dont ever use the drake sword because it doesnt scale and I dont spawn the dragon so you cant get it. The dragon wont spawn unless you trigger the scene in the burg where he lands on the bridge in front of you past the fog door. Not spawning him makes it easier to move to the lower burg or get to solaire and back.

The next thing to do is kill the capra demon pull him out and dodge around him to avoid being boxed in by the dogs. Next head for the depths and grab the large ember. Other things you might want to do are get the pyromancer NPC, touch the bonfire, and kill kirk knight of thorns the NPC phantom invader(for the souls and humanity as well as a shot at the barbed straight sword).

At some point you will also need to get a weapon with bleed unless you started as theif. Easy ones to get are the morning star blow the elevators in firelink, the katana(kill undead merchant in burg(access the burg from the bridge(make sure you kick the ladder) do not go from fire link or you will spawn the bridge dragon)) buy the reinforced club from undead merchant or get lucky and get the barbed sword from kirk. You may also want to grab the 3 gold pine resin's from the house in the burg at this time as they come in handy on numerous boss fights, while you can farm them and buy 3 from domhnall of zena, these are easy to pick up with no cost if you have the master key and little time.

*note* you can kill the taurus demon if you want but i never do so i have an area where I can do transfers or duel friends, he only gives a pitance of souls anyway.

Once you have your bleed weapon(does not need to be upgraded) head back to the asylum. Make sure you grab the key for the west wing of the asylum before you get in the nest because a big reason you are returning is for the rusted iron ring. In any order grab the rusted iron ring, kill the black knights get the peculiar doll and kill the stray demon.
On killing the stray demon just equip your bleed weapon and go to town on him. It doesnt matter how much damage the weapon does because every 3 hits in quick succession should proc a bleed draining a percentage of his hp(maybe like 10-15%). The stray demon's move set is very easy to learn it shouldnt take you long to recongize all the que's of his attacks and fight him without ever getting hit. Once you've killed him, taken the slab and gotten everything else I mentioned return to firelink. You may want to take the 20k souls stray demon gives you and turn them into andre for the crest of artorias.

Alternatively you could spend them on something else and use the souls from ceaseless discharge also exactly 20k souls. Getting the seal early on is helpful because you can farm souls in darkroot forest or join the forest hunters cov to get the darkwood grain ring or acess to shiva's wares. You will also be able to farm gold pine resins from the two big mushroom men in the pool near the enchanted ember. They have 100% chance to drop a resin as far as i can tell, if your item find is higher you can sometimes get 2. Gold pine resin's will be parramount for killing queelaq and iron golem expediently(they are also pretty useful for other fights).

Ok all that out of the way the next thing you will want to do is farm large titanite shards from the leeches in blight town they drop it with high frequency and you can pump up your chances by popping humanity up to 10 if you have it to spare. I highly reccomend you make a +10 weapon before queelag the gold pine resin will put you over the top for taking her out with ease. Make your way down to blight town through the valley of the drakes and rest at the bonfire. If you look out across the swamp you can see 1 leech by himself equip the rusted iron ring and pop any humanity you can spare and head straight for him. then follow the edge of the area to the left of him and you will find a bunch more there are 22 leeches in all that you can kill per run, you should make about 10-20k souls farming them by the time you get the 9 large titanite shards you need.

If you want to make a divine weapon or fire weapon, you will get plenty of green shards from the leeches as well.

If you are going to have any attunement slots you will want power within, to get it you will have to climb up the scafolding to the right of the bonfire in blight town. Once you get to the mosquito thing you can either kill it with ranged attacks/ spears or hit and run. Alternatively you can actually roll under his attacks and get the power within and die if you dont care about losing souls or humanity. Probably the easiest way to kill him is actually to get behind him, if you go turn around from where you are facing him there is a ladder just off to the right of direct south from the mosquito thing, up the ladder is a toxi dart fellow, smash his face or kick him off. Follow the scafolding into the wall and kill a mole man waiting there, go down the ladder and walk down the ramp viola, behind the mosquito thing and it cant hit you, literally go to down on his ass.

After you get your weapon to +10 take out Maneater Mildred for the souls and humanity then take out queelag. Once done hit the bell, hit the daugher of chaos bonfire, take out ceaseless if you want using the method where you trick him into falling to his death. Easiest way to do that is to grab the gold hemmed set, then move towards ceasless and wait for him to splash lava up on the platform(this would likely one shot you) then sprint head long back to the fog door and wait for him to catch up, when he plants his arm on the cliff hit it a few times and he will fall.

At this point theres a lot you can do. You may want to grab the fire or chaos ember before leaving the demon ruins/blight town. To get the chaos ember pull out the taurus demons one by one and kill them then do a running jump at the closest point to the ember. You should be able to grab it before you burn to death and your blood stain will be out of the lava. Equipping gold hemmed set will give you a boost to fire resist which may give you an extra second in the lava.

You can grab 2 firekeepers souls now, one by killing the daughter of chaos, fair lady, the bonfire will go out but if you touched it you can still warp there and sit at the demon ruins bonfire. The 2nd one is on the way out of blight town near all the toxic dart enemies. Keep in mind that at this point if you havent killed lautrec he will kill the fire keeper in firelink. Her armor is good(the chest peice specifically) I usually let him. However you wont be able to upgrade your flasks until Anor londo if you do let Lautrec kill her.

You should have no trouble killing pinwheel if you need a mask or something from catacombs/tomb. Make sure you DO NOT touch any bonfire in the tomb, the run back is a ♥♥♥♥♥ its always easier to go down from catacombs.

You can also do butterfly if you havent already done so, you can kill hydra and rescue dusk from the crystal golem in the cave at the back of the basin to get her armor specifically the crown of dusk which boosts magic damage significantly. You can also fight sif and then 4 kings if you are planning to create a darkwraith. In order to do 4 kings you will have to either A) run all the way to ingward past the ghosts and kill him(which can be a pain) or B) use a bow to ping him with arrows from the stairs past the ladder you kick down, ghosts will drop agro on you there so you will be safe. Hitting ingward in the head with arrows should agro him before you knock him out of range, then he will run at you and it will be cake to finish him off. I would recomend you do this later but its your call. You can get the very large ember, farm chunks/slabs from darkwraiths at this point(you can actually do this before you kill sif). Charcoal Pine resin or a chaos weapon will sort you out on the 4 kings.

If you have any armor that you plan to use in your final build go ahead and upgrade it as much as you can.

Head to Sen's and make sure you grab the Covetous Gold serpent ring, its pretty much required for any humanity or chunk/slab farming. Getting the ring is pretty simple, once you hit the 2nd boulder trap go down and wait in the narrow slot that leads to where the mimic is, watch as the boulders go by until you see the hole is filled up with boulders. The next boulder will break the wall giving you access to the ring, get it then take the elevator in the room where the mimic is. Make sure you get off on the first stop you see cause the next one is spikes.

Killing the golem should be cake, if you have trouble summon tarkus he will sort you out. However you should not need him a +10-15 weapon with gold pine resin's will rock out on just about any build. Just make sure to hit the same leg every time, and watch for him to do his grab where he will raise his empty hand, this targets inbetween his legs, if you see this roll out from under him quickly.
Anor londo is pretty standard getting past the archers can be a pain if you are slow or unprepaired. Dodge rolling through the arrows and getting in melee range is the goal. If you have been neglecting your weapon upgrades grab the crystal halbard from the one of the chests(the chest is a mimic) in the room to the left of the first bonfire, kill the giants and the mimic get the halberd its a very good weapon to use on the upcomming bosses.
If you have charcoal and gold pine resins you should not have trouble with Ornstein and Smough. Ornstein is weak to fire, Smough is weak to everything, can be bled and super weak to lightning. To make the fight quicker its easier to demolish Smough very quickly. Try and keep them both in your sight, and do not attack Smough if Ornstein is behind him, O can hit you through Smough. Whenever the fight enters the second stage their weaknesses even out a bit but you can use either resin if you want or none at all. Watch out for the butt slam attacks, if you cant get out of the way block though you will still take some damage it will save you.


Once you have the lordvessal the world of dark souls is your oyster, complete your build and have fun pvping or whatever you want to do.

I hope this was helpful or gives you some new ideas to try next time you want to make a new character. Its a quick way to get one off the ground without using trainers or any such ♥♥♥♥, enjoi.