We go melee because it's the best way to learn the game and it's extremely straight forward. The plan is always to close the gap and kill, plain and simple. You won't be relying on fancy gimmicks but on solid fundamentals instead. Timming your dodges, figuring out when to heal and when to attack, that's the kind of things you want to master first and foremost.

As you know, melee stats are strength and dexterity and we refer to builds using both as quality builds. This is because in the first game Demon's Souls, there was an upgrade path using both stats called quality and we kept calling it this way ever since !

There are many benefits to go quality, you get to use weapons that scale in both stats at maximum effectiveness, but nothing stops you from using regular strength and dexterity weapons as well. In other words you get to use pretty much all weapon classes with equal efficiency. This is great as it doesn't lock you in a specific playstyle (appart from being a warrior type character) and you may experiment with many different setups for both PVE and PVP.

Naturally it involves a high investment in both stats and will lock you out of any serious casting abilities, which is completely fine. Playing as a mage is very strong especially in PVE but it also requires of you some solid prior knowledge of the game, where are the good spells, what weakness are you looking to exploit, not to mention FP management. Let's not worry about any of this !

First you need to select a class of course! Now all of them are pretty much a viable option in the long run so if there is one that you really like by all means go for it. However for the sake of min-maxing and actually get the best possible start you want to pick Vagabond. The stats allocation is pretty much perfect for our goal and it also has strong starting gear which will carry you for quite a while. As a general rule for any build : you want to pick the class that has the least amount of points in the stats you know you don't care about.

For keepsake aka starting gift, don't think too hard about it and just pick the Golden Seed. This grants an extra flask from the very start and it's by far the best option. Stonesword key could be another choice if you know what you're doing. In truth it doesn't really matter as you can get all of these fairly quickly anyway.

Once you've started you just have to unequip the halberd and you're good to go. If you want to use the halberd instead of the straight sword just make sure you're not in heavy load and unequip something else until you reach medium load. Turn all your flasks into the HP variant whenever you're able to and forget about FP forever!

Soon enough you'll reach Limgrave, which is the proper starting area. You really want to explore most of it and take your time collecting early loot and runes to level up. From your starting point you should avoid the knight on a horse for now and move north east to reach the Church of Elleh. Here you'll meet Kale, a friendly merchant npc. The church itself acts as a makeshift base where you may perform very basic upgrades on your weapons.

From here move east through a forest until you reach a campsite. There will be a Grace there where you'll meet your new best friend, Torrent. Now you have all your starting options unlocked, you may travel with ease, level up, upgrade your gear, buy or sell things as well as crafting.

As a general rule from now on, consider the yellow arrows on the map as a suggestion for where you would find the next major event, think of it as the main quest if you will, but you definitely don't have to follow it. In fact if you do it too soon you'll be unprepared for the challenges ahead and there's no reason to handicap yourself.

Instead start exploring some more and keep growing your character. Your main goal for now should be to upgrade your straight sword to +3 and level up a few times. Only then should you aim for Stormwind Castle and hopefully have an easier time. Anything in Limgrave is mostly safe as long as you remain careful. Weeping Peninsula to the south is also an ok place to go. Of course you could go anywhere else instead or try to enter the castle straight up if you're brave enough !

Since any levelup also makes the next one more expensive, you should spent your first points wisely. Any veteran will tell you, you want to level up Vigor first and nothing else for a while. Increasing HP is the most valuable asset you can have as it lets you afford to make mistakes (and mistakes will be made lol). Any other stat early on is a waste of ressources, unless you really know what you're doing. Let's take a closer look at them, starting by the main ones.

VIGOR :
Always prioritize Vigor : whether you're enjoying some high damage foes in PVE or some max damage PVP friends, there's almost no scenario where you would want to have a small HP pool. It just makes sence right? Early on you want to focus on this until you reach 20/25. Then you may chill for a bit and level up some other stats but once you've reached the prerequisites for whichever weapon you want to use, start pumping vigor up to at the very least 40. I strongly suggest going to 60, you'll appreciate the breathing room trust me.

ENDURANCE :
This one you want to be mindful of your rune spending as you don't really need much to make your build work as far as stamina goes, but you also kinda want more equip load to enjoy some real armor/heavier weapons. I suggest stopping at 20 and see how it goes for you. You don't need much stamina because all it does is allowing you to perfom some sweet 10 hit combos which you'll never use as the small ennemies die in a few hits and the stronger ones won't let you do it. That being said,more equip load is always good to have and the extra stamina isn't useless either.

STRENGTH AND DEXTERITY :
Being a quality build we definitely want these as high as possible, up to 50 or 60. Remember that there is no point in rushing this process : the added damage is extremely small at first and it would be a massive waste to focus on this too early. In practice most of your damage output comes from weapon upgrades which improves base damage but also scaling. You will only see scaling damage starting to slowly kick in after a few upgrades. Not to mention you also need fairly high levels for it to be significant. One thing to keep in mind, even though you probably want to level both stats in equal mesures, the game grants you a solid 50% strength increase anytime you 2-hand your weapon. Therefore you want your stats to reflect this as you're very likely to 2-hand your weapon most of the time.

Others stats :
We do not care and don't even touch them. As a Vagabond your base Mind value of 10 provides enough FP to use weapon skills and/or summon ashes early on and the one you really want to use consumes HP anyway. You may consider leveling up faith or intelligence ever so slightly to unlock some spell tools, a cheap healing miracle, curing poison or scarlet rot, none of which can't be dealt with using items instead, I strongly recommend to avoid leveling any of these stats for this build.

Quick recap on building plan :
1 > Vigor to 25 (grow some HP pool)
2 > Endurance, Strength and Dexterity to 20 (unlock most weapons)
3 > Max Vigor, up to 50 or 60 (max out HP pool)
4 > Level Strength and Dexterity towards 27 / 40, then 34 / 50 (pump scaling damage)
5 > Add some Endurance if necessary, up to 30 (pump equip load for more defence)
6 > Strength and Dexterity to 40 / 60 (more scaling damage)

If you follow this plan you should be near the end of the base game as you're completing the last step, which should be somewhere around lvl 140 / 150. You could level up way beyond this which isn't the worst idea if this is your first time (and being overleveled can't hurt you if you want to have an easier time with end game areas, DLC and NG+).

But remember that being super high level will eventually destroy your multiplayer experience and you should consider staying at a somewhat lower level in order to enjoy some fair coop / pvp. If you don't care or if this is your first time then don't worry too much about it and consider making a dedicated online character later instead.

ARMOR :
Since we're going for a high HP tanky melee build it makes sence to add as much defence as possible to maximize the usefulness of our massive HP pool. Of course you can't neglegt fashion so feel free to use whatever you like. If we're talking pure value, you want to look at physical def, poise, weight and try to find a balance within those.

Defense is obvious, you want to prioritize physical as it is the most common damage type you'll encounter.

Poise is your ability to take hits without being interrupted, basically trading hits if you will. This is very useful in all sorts of situations, the more you have the better.

Weight is going to be your worst ennemy, the better the armor the heavier it gets. You definitely never want to reach heavy load status.

Your starter armor set as a vagabond is good enough for now : it will carry you through at least half of the game if not more. Then you may acquire Radhan set after beating him, or the Scaled set if you start doing some volcano quests. Once you get to the DLC you can grab the Solitude set very early and all of these are great and effective choices.


WEAPONS :
I used to suggest the Bloodhound's fang as a main early weapon and I must say, after going though another round of the game using it including the DLC, in my eyes it is still one of the best you can get. High damage, high stunlock potential, buit-in bleed effect (which can be improved with a resin), simple yet effective moveset, there's very few things that can stop you once you get used to it. You may get it very early and being a special weapon it uses somber smithing stones rather than the regular ones meaning you will most likely get it to max level faster.

Mini walkthrough on how to get this weapon early : explore the Mistwood until you hear the wolf. Move back to church of Elleh and talk to Kale about it : he will teach you an emote. Then perform said emote in the wood and Blaidd will show up : become his friend. Now you just have to beat the boss in the gaol south of Limgrave, near the path leading to the Weeping Peninsula : summon Blaidd and he will essentially kill the boss for you!

If you can't stand it, try any colossal sword, good old zweihander comes to mind but any other massive weapon gets the job done if you're not into swords. Whatever your choice is, you don't have to restrict yourself to a single weapon. By all means try and experiment with everything you find, that's the whole point of a quality build. I strongly suggest your first main weapon should be a big one : being able to stunlock most foes is immensely valuable.

You should invest in a bow at some point to use as a tool to pull some ennemies, play around with the fire columns in the catacombs from a safe distance... There's plenty of creative uses for it even if you don't use it to deal serious damage it's still a great idea to have a ranged option. Any will do, black, composite or even a basic short bow is good enough for this purpose. Throwing knives, kukris etc are also a viable alternative for the same reasons.

For shields anything goes, even your two handed weapon is good enough for the occasional block. If you really want one try to find something that is light but still have 100% physical block or close enough to it. The inverted one from Siofra river is a nice one to get but there's shields everywhere so pick whatever you like best.

You may want to go for a greatshield if you fancy a more defensive approach, nothing wrong with that, in fact it's one of the strongest PVE playstyle considering how it makes life easy and stress free (very weak in PVP though). The downside to this is their weight so you'll usually have to sacrifice some armor in order to wield it and still be in medium load. Which ends up being ok because if you block everything then armor isn't as relevant. Remember to let your guard down and only block when necessary to recover stamina faster.


TALISMANS :
There's quite a bunch to grab all over the place and you will probably have to make do with whatever you find until you get the good ones for the build. Most of them are very situational or require a dedicated build/playstyle in order to truely shine. In that regard unfortunately your best bet is usually to be on the boring side and go for the generic ones that boost even further what we're already going for : increasing max HP, physical DEF, equip load, stamina and so on.

> Turn off auto-wall recovery
Anytime you're in a narrow path or too close to a wall, the camera will auto-adjust itself. This is really bad because it's out of your control : the last thing you want is being close to an edge and randomly walking off to your death just because the game decided to turn the camera around.



> Turn on Recent items
Considering the vast amount of stuff you'll get, soon enough you'll find something new and waste way too much time trying to figure out what it is and where it's at. This fixes this issue and you have no reason not to use it !



> Be smart be aggressive
Dodge forward is the most important tip I could ever give. Almost all ennemies have good tracking and leap forwards while they attack. Meaning : if you need to heal or get away you will naturally try to roll backwards and almost always be punished for it. Forget about this and dodge forward instead, as in through the incoming attack : this will put you either behind or to the side of the ennemy (which is exactly where you want to be) and now you get to decide what the next move should be. Jumping is also a strong dodging move.

If you need to heal do it at a time you could attack rather than randomly drinking flasks.

Never forget about guard counters (R2 after a sucessful block). This simple move is very safe and effective throughout the entire game. Don't be afraid to rely on it especially early on.

Parrying is awesome but it requires some time to get used to it. Once you are, it stop being a high risk/high reward play only to be low risk/high reward which is a great way to turn any threat into a joke, provided they are parryable of course. Don't think too hard about it if you feel like it's too much for you : you can beat the entire game without it. Think of it as an extra layer of stuff you could work upon to become stronger.



> Try to play unlocked as much as possible
By virtue of playing unlocked you get to aim your strikes and you'll end up enjoying a lot more freedom on how you want to deal with any situation. It improves the camera greatly during certain boss fights and also make you stronger in PVP by default : you instantly become harder to predict, it's easier to avoid backstabs, enable the possibility of deadangle attacks and so on. It is essential to master this if you want to seriously delve into PVP.

Using the lock on isn't wrong, but you need to see it as an extra tool you can use sometimes rather than being a way to enable combat mode. The way to do it is to "claw grip" your controller : thumb on thumbstick, index on circle/B (but you're pressing it from the side) and middle finger on the triggers. Don't hurt yourself playing in this position it can be hard on the hand. You don't even have to do it all the time, yet being able to run around while turning the camera feels so good that once you get a taste you'll never go back.



> Explore and take everything, avoid obvious danger
There is no shortage of harder better faster stronger foes, a giant bear, some optional boss here and there out in the open... whatever it is there is no shame in running away or avoiding the confrontation. You don't have to fight every single thing just because you can. Graveyards are full of heroes, sometimes being a coward is ok if it means staying alive!

Try to be methodical in your exploration, there's secrets everywhere and if not there's always some upgrade materials or runes to collect, so take your time and don't skip the smaller dungeons. If you find yourself stuck because you reached a harder place then just leave and come back later. There will be plenty of times to die over and over on the same boss or whatever, there's no need to do add more of these instances inentionally.



> Embrace the suicide runs
Sometimes an area is just too much to deal with and so you might want to spend all runes so that dying is meaningless and then start running around avoiding all encounters (despite triggering them). By doing so you'll often realize that this wierd area that was troublesome playing the "intended" way is actually a joke if you run past everything. Then you could play the same area in reverse and have an easier time. Very true for places like Siofra river where you get to have all the snipers kindly showing their backs to you. If you end up losing some runes don't worry, it's bound to happen and it doesn't matter in the long run.



> Use summoning ashes
These friendly npc summons are here for a reason. Don't sleep on it and upgrade them, they can carry you through all the boss fights and if they don't at least they provide some breathing room for you to heal or deal some damage or something. No shame in using those especially if you're a new player : use and abuse it, you'll have all the time in the world to become a pro player at a later stage.

As a Vagabond you don't have too many options due to low max FP. Wolves and Jellyfish will be your friends early on. Then once you beat Siofra River you'll find the Ancestral Follower. You barely have enough to summon this guy and he will get the job done just fine until you find much later the Mimic Tear, which is a clone of yourself ! So of course that's the one you want to use.

Make sure to unequip uncessary items/weapons to prevent its AI from doing stupid things. Basically you want to unequip everything except armor, main weapon and maybe a shield. As long as you have at least 1 item of a kind in your bar (some crab,some resin) the mimic gets to use an infinite amount for free. It may also decide to spam these items and not do anything, you never know ! Bottom line : restrict its options when you summon it.



> Use bleed effects
While each boss has its own weakness to exploit and therefore you could use something better, nearly all of them are at least susceptible to bleed. This should be your go-to move by default, even when they aren't weak to it per se, using a bleeding weapon like the Bloodhound's fang + a bleed resin + a clone pretty much guarantees a few bleed procs during fights.

A very small amount of bosses are actually immune to it though, in that case consider using other resins to increase damage. The very best only have a small amount available so you should be careful not to waste them, prioritize items you can craft. Elemental damage, sleep or poison effects are always worth a try, you might very well find something crazy if you bother experimenting a bit.

> Eat some crab
Somewhere in Liurnia you'll find a guy wearing a metal mask selling Boiled Prawn. Make sure to buy at least 1 (and the medallion too for some quest). This guy will eventually move near the Capital where he will sell Boiled Crab, which is the same item only slightly better.

He may or may not die at this point, so make sure to acquire his Bell should something tragic happen to him, this way you get to buy his stuff from the Roundtable Hub. Pretty useful item I must say, it boosts physical def for some time and it's very cheap. Nothing crazy but then again there's no reason to not buy a ton and use it all the time.



> Kill the merchants lol
Kale is cool so I keep him alive and safe in Church of Elleh. Any of the others nomadic merchants though? Well to be honest there is no way to remember who sells what and where, so the best move is to systematically execute all of them (and their pony lol), loot their bell and get access to all of them at once from the Hub.



> Craft some stuff
Now most of the crafting you can do is actually not that great so it's easy to forget this is even a thing. However if you're like me and you can't stop yourself from grabbing everything you can no matter what, chances are, you're probably loaded with materials. Crafting some resins is a good choice, most notably bleed resins but any other is still free extra damage. Items to cure poison and scarlet rot are very useful too. Arrows and rainbow stones is never bad either.



> Initiate Ranni's Quest
Once you reach Liurnia you may find a path to the Carian manor, along which you may get some precious somber smithing stones, but most importantly this is the starting point to a chain of events that will eventually reward you with some key items needed to explore 100% of the map.



> Rune Arc, Star Shard and Great Runes
Sooner or later you'll find some of these and you really don't want to use any of them, because they are either only available in limited quantities or extremely boring to farm.

Great Runes have different effects which only apply to yourself if you burn a Rune Arc, until you die and then you'll need to burn another one. It can be great if you're confident in your abilities but I strongly suggest you keep them around if you're struggling against a specific late game boss and just need an extra boost to overcome it.

Star Shards are used to restore FP but you really want to keep them all. You don't need them anyway and at some point in the future you'll meet someone who will trade some stuff for it.



> DLC
You probably want to beat the game before going there, then again you should reach it pretty late anyway so if you can go, maybe you should. In this world you'll acquire blessings that are actually permanent buffs for you or your summons but they only work within the DLC. It's pretty good, use it as soon as possible. I know this is obvious but I initially thought these buffs would be temporary and I delayed its usage for no reason, so I figured I might mention it just in case someone else is doing the same lol

Boost HP, dodge forward or use a greatshield and block everything, use bleed, clone yourself.

If you struggle getting there, or if despite all of this some encounters are still too much to handle, then get online and summon random people to get carried. This is the true easy mode and there is absolutely no shame in getting some help.

Don't be intimidated by the elitist mindset that is poisoning this community. Enjoy the game however you want, if you like it odds are you'll play it again with a different build or something and soon enough you'll naturally become a stronger player and start giving up on the cheesy strats. Or maybe you're in the mood for more extreme cheese? As long as you're having fun you're doing fine !

As a last piece of advice : if you took the time to explore everything you probably have acquired most weapons and spells by the time you reach the last boss. Don't be afraid to beat the game, you get to keep playing afterwards and you manually decide when to initiate NG+.

Use this opportunity to respec your character and play around with all the wierd weapons and spells you couldn't use to figure out what kind of build you'd like to try next. Give PVP a shot at the colosseums, do some coop... whether you want to be competitive or just having fun going on random adventures, it's always a good time to see what kind of stuff other people are doing. Steal some ideas and start making your own builds !


Hopefully this wall of text was kind of helpful and not too boring!
Good luck tarnished.
Thx for reading my tedx.


BTW Thx for the points and stuff guys, really appreciate it <3
Good extra tips / suggestions in the comments too !
Keep slaying.

Need to go even more in depth for PVP and all? Try this other excellent guide
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3258935003