Dark Souls 3 is without doubt a video game. Whether it's objectively good or not is beyond the scope of a guide like this, but it certainly has an x-factor to keep you playing it. A lot of people showed up for Elden Ring and are now beginning to check out the rest of the franchise, so if that's you, you're the target audience for this guide. This is essentially a collection of information I'd like to have known when I started but didn't, as well as some gameplay advice to help you on your way.

Spoil Yourself. I can't stress this enough. Souls is not a series that rewards blind experimentation. Choose your endgame build before you even start a character and work towards it. You can use FextraLife[darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com] or wikidot[darksouls3.wikidot.com]; both are bad in their own ways. Generally speaking the wikidot will provide more useful quantitative information but very little qualitative information and vice-versa. Fextralife's community, for better or worse, is heavily PvP-focused and so their discourse revolves heavily around that aspect of the game, which can make it less useful if your focus is the campaign, but vastly more useful than wikidot if you want to jump into PvP (in which case this guide is not for you).

Use Blue Sentinel[www.nexusmods.com]. Blue Sentinel is a safe-to-use anti-cheat tool that helps resolve certain lingering exploits that are still unpatched, and if you're into PvP, it's also a big QoL bump. Even if you're not, it helps avoid a number of crashes. Bamco claims that they've fixed a large number of exploits but I wouldn't be too inclined to believe that given that their decision to take the servers down and then put them back up essentially coincided with Elden Ring's honeymoon period (and their given reason, "because of dangerous exploits", was still present in Elden Ring anyway, so it's not as if they genuinely had their userbase's safety at heart).

Do some levelling math. Your Soul Level is equal to your stat point total, minus 89 (a character with 99 stat points is SL 10). You can use a tool like MugenMonkey[mugenmonkey.com] to help you plan a character build. You'll likely reach the end of the game at level 60 minimum (the first DLC is pitched at about 60-70 minimum), and you'll probably at most reach about 80 in regular play; you may reach up to 100 if you follow the DLC. (Note that the de facto PvP cap is 120, if that's what you're interested in.) This means you only have so many levels to spare unless you're going to go out of your way to grind souls; do some math first, write down what you settle on, and stick to it. You'll need to check out some information on stats and caps for this; Sir.Badpun wrote a pretty good guide for it on Steam.

You will fail. Often repeatedly. While this game is not as sloppily put-together as Elden Ring, it does have a lot of jank and relies probably too-heavily on ambushes and surprise attacks. When you die or fail, it's important to try and identify what happened and what you can do about it. Except in unusual circumstances (e.g. you're much lower-level and less-equipped than the game expects), changing your approach to a situation will generally yield dividends more quickly than simply going away and grinding.If you're interested in exploiting the game for fun and profit I strongly suggest checking out ymfah's content.

The game presents you with 10 starting classes, which determine your starting stats (and therefore Soul Level), as well as your starting equipment. You can find an overview here[darksouls3.wikidot.com]. However, because your starting stats can never be refunded (even with a Tongue), you want to avoid a class that has too many points in a stat you won't use (Luck is the primary offender here, especially for PvE*). With that in mind, there are really only a few classes that you should consider choosing.

Choose Knight[darksouls3.wikidot.com]. Knight has a very nice stat spread and can wear heavy armor almost immediately (which is most useful early in the game), starts with a very functional weapon, and has high enough Strength and Dexterity to wield most early-game weapons; it also starts with a 100% physical block shield.
Choose Mercenary[darksouls3.wikidot.com]. Mercenary starts with Sellsword Twinblades and that's kind of the whole purpose of starting as this class; Twinblades+resins can absolutely annihilate a lot of bosses and it's frequently used in speedruns (the weapon, not this class). This one is probably a more advanced strategy so I'd recommend Knight for a first try.

Choose Sorceror[darksouls3.wikidot.com]. Sorceror starts with very high intelligence and attunement. The downside is that their starting gear is quite bad (except for the Dragoncrest Ring which provides a 12% spellcasting benefit).
Choose Assassin[darksouls3.wikidot.com]. This is a more advanced option probably more appropriate for a spellsword-type build; its primary claim is that it begins with Spook, a sorcery that is very useful for quickly clearing through areas (so probably not great for your first playthrough).
Using magic in general is a bit of an advanced choice because of the need to manage an additional resource (FP) much more closely, but magic tends to be very powerful when used correctly.

Don't choose miracles for your first playthrough. If you must, then consider the Herald[darksouls3.wikidot.com], who has very functional starting gear but starts with an unfortunate 11 points in Luck.

Don't choose pyromancy for your first playthrough either, but if you want to, the obvious choice is Pyromancer[darksouls3.wikidot.com], who begins with a reasonable 14/14 casting spread (more on this later), a buff ring, and a reasonable 12/9 str/dex without overinvesting in Luck.

While you can go for something more complicated if you want, if you want to drill down on the basics in your first playthrough before branching out, I recommend Knight. Play through to the Undead Village and if you're not enjoying it, restart and pick something different; repeat until you find something that clicks with you (but note that magic-using classes tend to take a lot longer for that to happen).

Levelling up your character has some unintuitive pitfalls that you kind of desperately need to think about or you can end up with badly-invested stats.

When two-handing a weapon (by pressing triangle/y for your right hand, or holding the button for your left hand), you're treated as having half-again Strength value, i.e. if you have 10 Strength and two-hand a weapon, you're treated as having 15 Strength. The most common use for this is to reach a high Strength requirement without needing to actually invest that many points in Strength: if a weapon has a Strength requirement of 30, you only need 20 Strength to two-hand it. Dexterity has no equivalent, but with one exception (the 11/40 Frayed Blade), its requirements tend to be lower (the next-highest is 28).

I referenced this earlier in another guide, but essentially each stat has a certain point where it experiences a sudden hike in the degree to which diminishing returns are applied. If you don't want to memorize individual numbers, the easiest way to remember is that 40 is softcap one, 60 is softcap two, and 99 is the hardcap (where you either no longer gain any benefit at all or cannot put any more points in the stat).
To make this more complicated, some stats (notably Intelligence and Faith) have "reverse soft caps": after reaching a certain break point, your gains per invested point increase rather than decrease. Thank you From Software. This page has a good overview[docs.google.com], but I'll repeat some of it here for ease of reading:

Vigor gives more Health with every point put into it until 17, at which point it begins slowly scaling down again. There's a small drop off at 26, and 44 is where it begins to drop off more drastically. Generally speaking you're going to want somewhere in the ballpark of 39-49 vigor regardless of your build. There is no "one-hit protection" in DS3, so HP provides an important buffer for if you mess up or the game buffers/crosses your input or the hitbox is jank.

Attunement is the tax stat for spellcasters, providing extra spell slots and FP. FP gains become almost nonexistent after 35. Spell slots are gained at Attunement 10, 14, 18, 24, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80, and 99; however, there are rings that provide extra spell slots, so you are unlikely to actually need more than 18 or 24 attunement.

Endurance gives extra stamina and like Vigor, has an odd investment curve where it scales up over time and then experiences a drastic drop-off after 40. The best gains in stamina are from 26 to 40; where you stop is largely a matter of preference. 26, 29, 32, 24, and 37 all represent potential soft caps.

Vitality governs physical defense and equip load, as well as poison resistance. Equip load has no cap: you gain 1 Equip Load per point of Vitality, starting from a base of 40 Equip Load at 0 Vitality. The physical defense boost gets a huge increase after 15 (from 0.33 to 1.7 per point), which is reduced to 1.2 after 26 and then hard caps at 40. The problem with wearing heavy armor is that after a given point it really stops factoring into your survivability that much because of the way absorption works (more on that later), so Vitality is often a dump stat (lots of people won't raise it at all, or not higher than 15 which is enough to wear entry-level knight armor).

Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Faith are your offensive stats, and govern which weapons you can use, which magic you can cast, and how much bonus damage you get. While these do have specific soft caps, where you end up actually depends more heavily on your final weapon for the build, because different weapons receive different benefits from scaling - this is why it's important to design the character before you even start playing. Playing the game blindly is an exercise in frustration.

Luck handles status buildup, item discovery, and scaling for the few pieces of equipment that use that (Hollow infusion and Anri Straight Sword). Basically, treat 40 as the cap for a Hollow-infusion weapon (remembering that at 15 Hollowing and a +10 weapon gives +5 luck while you're holding it; same for shields but >making a +10 shield, so you only actually need 35), 50 as the cap for a status-based build (mainly bleed), and 60 as the cap for Anri's Straight Sword (50-60 is only 1 AR per level but it's usually worth). You can probably treat Luck as a dump stat on your first playthrough, which is why I made noises about a lack of Luck on some starting classes.

Now we're finally going to talk about the elephant in the room: stat scaling. Upgrading weapons increases their base damage, but it will also frequently increase their scaling: an amount of "bonus" damage that is based on the weapon's (mostly-hidden) scaling modifier and your relevant statistic. Because of this, you may not need to reach de jure caps on stats in order to reach the de facto cap for your weapon, and is yet another reason why researching first is so important to having a smooth run through the game.
When two-handing a weapon, your Strength is treated as half-again greater. This applies to Strength scaling bonuses as well, so you'll typically do more damage when two-handing a weapon. However, if the weapon has no Strength scaling at all, then two-handing it will not provide any increase to damage from scaling. That being said, most two-handed movesets have higher motion values (the game's term for the "power" of a move, which the damage calculations are filed through), so you will probably still see an increase in damage, but it won't be dramatic.

Early in the game, you have low stats and limits to how far you can upgrade things because you don't have access to areas where you can get the appropriate upgrade materials. Consequently, offensive stats are actually an enormous trap: you will raise your level but get almost no benefit out of it because the amount of bonus damage is so paltry. Therefore, early in the game you should probably put as many points as you can get your mitts on into Vigor: the increasingly-large amounts of HP will benefit you both now and in the future, while putting points into offensive stats will only help you later, when you have both the weapon you're planning for and access to upgrades to make its scaling worthwhile.
This also makes the Fire Gem quite a good starting gift: the bonus fire damage is significant and the removal of scaling is essentially irrelevant in the early game.
Obviously, this also shouldn't stop you from meeting requirements - if you need to put points into offensive stats to wield the early-game weapon/spell you want, then do that.

When talking about Souls games it's important to remember that the community is very insular and that the PvP community is by far the loudest and most vocal branch of it. Therefore, when you're doing your reading-up, make sure you have the context in mind: are people talking about PvE or PvP, which operate under almost completely different rulesets? This guide focuses on PvE aspects.

There's also some jargon that you could stand to be aware of:

• Absorption is a factor by which damage is reduced. More on this later; it deserves its own section.
  
• Active Frames are how long an action is 'active' for (the time in which it can 'do' something). This can refer to parrying, i-frames, attacking, and so on.
  
• Attack Rating or AR is a weapon's outgoing damage after scaling is applied and before Motion Value and Defense/Absorption are calculated. Weapons reach their AR 'caps' at various combinations of offensive stats, and those aren't always identical to the stat's own de jure cap.
  
• Damage is the final damage dealt after Defense/Absorption (modifiers increase this damage directly!).
  
• Hitstun is the period in which you can't do anything after you get hit, which could be for just a moment or could be for a long time depending on what hit you. Note that if you are hit while already in hitstun, that second instance of hitstun will be greatly shortened, allowing you to act immediately (mostly a known PvP tactic to try and force a parry).
  
• Hyper Armor is the state in which Poise is active (see below).
  
• Motion Value is a modifier to your AR based on the attack being used, and is how the game allows a weapon to have more or less powerful attacks within one moveset.
  
• Poise is a property of equipment that allows you to endure an attack without staggering while your Hyper Armor is active. (This is also a verb: to "poise through" something is to not be staggered out of your action.) The way this works is mildly complicated and very different to how it worked in e.g. Dark Souls 1, but very similar to Elden Ring (where your poise health resets on a 30s cooldown); unless you're using a two-handed weapon's weapon art or a charged attack, just assume that any attack that hits you will stagger you and you'll be safer for it.
  
• Poise Damage is a property of attacks that leads to enemies staggering. In players this has the result of making them flinch or get knocked around, but in enemies it can open them up for a critical hit.
  
• Recovery Frames are the period of time (measured in frames - 1/60th of a second for DS3 PC) in which you can't do anything after an action's active frames have expired.
  
• Roll Cancel is a technique whereby either the startup or recovery frames of an action are cancelled by performing a dodge roll. This term can also mean "the earliest possible frame on which you can roll after starting this action".
  
• Soul Level or SL is the total measure of a character's stats, minus 89 points; it is used for matchmaking and also influences your damage resistances a small amount (not as much as stats).
  
• Split Damage is an undesired property of certain actions which deal both physical and elemental damage, typically resulting in less damage than an attack which deals one or the other. This is due to the way absorption works.
  
• True Combo refers to a sequence of attacks that will always work on another player (and NPC-type enemies) if the first hit connects.

There are also some common abbreviations to be aware of:

• ASS - Astora Straight Sword
  
• FaP, Favor, or Fapring - the Ring of Favor & Protection
  
• GS - Greatsword (the weapon category, not the weapon named Greatsword)
  
• ISS - Irithyll Straight Sword
  
• LKGS - Lothric Knight Greatsword
  
• LS - usually Longsword
  
• MLGS or Moonlight - Moonlight Greatsword
  
• O&U or O+U - Onikiri and Ubadachi
  
• PKCS - Pontiff Knight Curved Sword
  
• PvE - Player Versus Environment, i.e. enemies and bosses
  
• PvP - Player Versus Player, i.e. online competitive play
  
• RTSR - Read Tearstone Ring
  
• UGS - Ultra Greatswords (category)
  
• WA - Weapon Art, the L2 ability of most weapons

Damage can be broadly split into three categories (physical, elemental, and status), and then split down further based on the specifics:
Physical Damage can be standard (slashing), thrust, or strike.
Elemental Damage can be magic, fire, lightning, or dark.
Status Damage, or more correctly Buildup, can be bleed, poison, toxic, frostbite, or curse (instant death).

Generally speaking, standard and thrust damage will work against soft enemies, while strike works better against enemies in heavy armor or hide. Elemental weakness and status buildup varies heavily by enemy, but fire is almost always a good choice unless the target is made of stone or on fire itself.
Also note that thrust weapons have a special property: during 'counter hit' frames (when one is attacked mid-animation), the attacker's vs thrust absorption is reduced by 30% (this is often but not always the equivalent of a 30% damage increase), or 49% if the counter-attacker is wearing the Leo Ring.
Finally, being hit by any attack during "instability" frames will produce a meaty thunk sound and increase damage by 40%, which is a lot.

Now, the fly in the ointment here is the way that "Defense" and "Absorption" work.

Defense basically tells the incoming damage which formula to use, based on comparing it to ATK (the weapon's AR after being filtered through the Motion Value):

• If DEF >8x ATK, deal damage equal to 0.10 * ATK
  
• If DEF >ATK, deal damage equal to (19.2/49 * (ATK/DEF-0.125)^ 2 +0.1) * ATK
  
• If DEF >0.4x ATK, deal damage equal to (-0.4/3 * (ATK/DEF-2.5)^ 2 +0.7) * ATK
  
• If DEF >0.125x ATK, deal damage equal to (-0.8/121 * (ATK/DEF-8)^ 2 +0.9) * ATK
  
• If DEF <0.125x ATK, deal damage equal to 0.90 * ATK

(Taken from wikidot[darksouls3.wikidot.com])

The damage value here is then filtered by absorption, which is 100 * (1 - ( - [absorption]/100)), with the bracketed value before [absorption] being multiplied by (1 - [absorption2]/100) and so on for each additional piece of equipment that provides absorption.

This essentially means that your actual defence value directly reduces the damage you take (but note that an attack will always deal at most 90% of its post-MV attack damage), but absorption will only reduce a % of that leftover damage value.
This has two obvious side effects:
First, as enemy attack values scale up through area progression and NG+ cycles, defensive values become increasingly useless. This means that by the late game, for PvE purposes, armor is only useful for its absorptions and not its raw defense value. Fashion Souls is a go!
Second, because this also applies for enemies, a weapon that does e.g. 100 physical damage and 100 fire damage will generally do less damage than a weapon that does 200 physical or 200 fire damage, because absorptions are a percentage reduction to damage taken. Favor weapons that deal a large amount of one type of damage.

tl;dr after about Irithyll of the Boreal Valley defence no longer matters, only absorption and fashion do, and split damage is terrible.

Status buildup is governed by your "resistance", which is expressed to you in action as a bar that fills up when status buildup is applied. The way this is implemented is actually slightly strange from the user's point of view, which is why it can sometimes look like you suddenly suffered status buildup when your resistances went up, but don't worry about it too much.
Status will build up as long as the attack passes through the defender's hurtbox, even if they otherwise take no damage or even block the attack, but i-framing through status buildup is actually fairly reliable, especially for status from quick weapon buildup (you'll mostly feel this in PvP).
When the status buildup reaches the top of the bar, it "pops" and the status becomes active. Buildup is increased by Luck, apparently, but it's hard to find hard and fast numbers.
In addition to their typical cures, all status can be cured by using Caressing Tears or Divine Blessing.

Bleed, when it pops, instantly deals a % of the subject's max HP as damage (the value is a bit variable but it's generally 15% of their max HP plus an additional value based on the weapon, its blood infusion status, its reinforcement level, and so on). Bosses take half as much damage as they should from Bleed generally (Slav Knight Gael takes 20% in his phase 2 and 3 instead). Use a red moss to cure it. (Will also cure maggot infestations from walking worms and giant flies.)

Poison, when it pops, deals a small amount of maxHP%+flat damage every tick for 90 seconds (when inflicted by the player or Storyteller Staff) or 180 seconds (if inflicted by enemies, the environment, or poison arrows). Poison itself is not likely to kill you, but the constant wearing-down of resources and HP can easily get you killed. Cured with a purple moss.

Toxic, however, is very likely to get you killed, as it deals a significant amount of damage over time (0.001% max HP + a non-trivial amount of flat damage per tick) and gives -15 stamina regeneration. Cured with a blooming purple moss.

Frostbite is unusual because outside of a very few enemies and bosses it's actually at its most powerful in the player's hands. When frostbite pops, it instantly inflicts 11% max HP+85 flat damage (same rules as Bleed for bosses, including Slav Knight Gael), and the subject suffers -15 stamina regen and -7% absorption for 15 seconds. Here's where it gets fun, however: if a subject with Frostbite takes Fire damage, Frostbite will instantly be removed but buildup will not be reset, allowing Frostbite to be instantly re-procced. This is extremely potent in PvE where few enemies resist Frostbite and it's much easier to hit them with the followup fire attack.

Curse is exclusive to enemies and kills you when it pops, ignoring Ring of Sacrifice. Nothing can instantly reduce buildup; you can only increase your resistance.

Regular enemies essentially fall into four-and-three categories: NPC-type enemies, humanoids, beasts, and "weird things". The other category relates to their size: small, medium, or large. Generally, the best way to handle an enemy is with patience, and the game loves to try and prevent you from doing that by having patrols of multiple enemies or ambushes.

The best way to cope with these is by luring an enemy out. Use a firebomb or better yet, a throwing knife, to hit just one enemy and aggro it, then defeat it without moving closer. This is slow, but it's relatively safe.

Humanoid enemies are roughly your shape and bipedal, but they range from being smaller than you (like the mad thralls) to twice your height (like fire witches). Generally speaking you can expect them to attack you with weapons or magic. Small humanoids will often bounce off your shield if they attack you and you block, while weaker mediums will do the same, and most medium humanoids that use weapons can be parried (or guard broken if they have shields). Large humanoids tend to wield commensurately large weapons that are often unparryable.

This category covers animalistic enemies that (generally) don't use weapons, instead relying on biting, clawing, and so on. Status is common. Smaller beasts tend to bite quickly and can easily stunlock you, while large beasts tend to have massive HP pools and hit hard, but are often a bit on the slow side. However, large enemies basically universally have terrible hitboxes, so be careful about trying to stick to them too much or you might get hurt from the other side of the enemy.

This covers unusual enemies that don't really fit into other categories, like the dragon aberrants in the Gaol, the human centipedes in Irithyll, and walking worms. These enemies tend to be very unique and so it's worth playing extra cautiously around them, but they also tend to fall into the category of being either easy to kill, or having a specific weakness that completely neuters them (it's fire most of the time).

Some enemies move and behave similarly to the player character. This includes invaders, pre-placed enemies that fight like the player does, and so on. Typically these enemies do not respawn and guard (or drop) valuable loot. They can come equipped with estus flasks for healing as well. Always try and engage one at a time, and don't expect fair play: their estus will heal them for an absurd amount of HP and god forbid they riposte you, in which case you will probably instantly die. These are generally the hardest fights in the game, and it's not really surprising that one of the game's hardest bosses is essentially just a boss version of this NPC type.

• Dark Souls Dogs can literally teleport to you if they're off-camera, so try and look at them all the time if they're aggroed. Fortunately they will usually bounce off shields.
  
• Skeletons will revive unless killed with a blessed weapon. However, hitting one with a strike weapon will also shatter them and make them put themselves back together again.
  
• Gaolers will reduce your maximum health very rapidly if you are within their line of sight and they are not staggered. While the effect does wear off fairly quickly, your health is not restored (it remains at whatever it was reduced to). Have fun!

It isn't. A combination of too-high enemy damage output, player defense not being powerful enough, and the indulgence in second (or third!) phases and ambushes means that the most feasible way to contend with the game is to aim for as much damage as possible, with only the minimum survivability required to make your damage stick.
The unfairness eventually tilts back in the other direction as the player's own skill and knowledge improves, as the generally sloppy coding allows for bosses and enemies to be skipped entirely or only fought when the player feels they can take care of it, and it's further possible to simply obliterate many bosses if you have access to a specific resource.
However, the foreknowledge the game demands essentially ensures that your first playthrough will be your roughest, especially if you are playing blind. Without knowing which enemies to farm, what weapon to finish with, how stats should be invested etc. you will very easily gimp yourself and make a game that is already out to get you much more difficult than it needs to be.

This might be true in PvP but it's absolute rubbish in PvE. Pyromancy gives access to many utility spells which can completely negate difficult encounters or boss fights, and Miracles have easy access to very high-potency damage options, as well as utility spells that can ease your estus if you don't mind hanging around and waiting a bit.
The downside to Pyro especially is the way scaling for Pyromancy works, requiring you to invest in two offensive stats as if you were doing a quality build but for magic.

This one is flagrantly untrue but it was told to me very early in my Souls-playing career and it took me way too long to realise I was being trolled so shout out to that guy from my twitch chat whose name I don't even remember because it was years ago!

I actually see this one a lot and I'm hoping that the influx of new people who are hopefully a lot saner than the insular console squeaker generation will ameliorate it but the general idea here is that you'll hear a lot of "oh you weren't using a pure str build? you basically cheated and so it doesn't count as beating the game" or "oh you summoned for a boss? lol carried no skill".
Don't be like that. The game gives you tools for a reason. Use them. Most of them are bad because it's a Souls game, but if you're creative enough you can find plenty of uses.

You need Blue Sentinel. (You don't need it AS MUCH now but you still need it)

The community likes to play this up as being skill related and suggesting that the problem is you but what's more likely is that if you're dying repeatedly and not sure what you're doing wrong, it's some jank on the boss, like a terrible hitbox or a technique simply not working (i.e. Soul of Cinder is entirely immune to thrust-based counter hits and cannot be parried at all); you might be trying to parry an enemy with a long-reaching attack that is better paired by committing a violation of common sense and facing away from them to be parried, and so on.
In short, while your fundamentals are still important, it's also just as important to identify what's wrong with the enemy you're fighting and how to deal with that. This will usually speed you to victory faster than simply trying to level up your own skill.

YouTube video coming soon(TM) but

Grab everything pre-Gundyr and knock out the Crystal Lizard in case you want to use its scale.
(You can farm the hollow mobs after the bonfire for their chime if you want, which is painful but interesting)

Head up to the bonfire and talk to everyone to exhaust their dialogue, buy a large leather shield and prism stone from the Handmaiden
(If your starting weapon is decent and you started with the Fire Gem, infuse it)

Head back out and turn right as you walk out the Firelink main door to grab the Kite Shield and kill the Nameless Swordmaster (you can lure him off the edge very easily, if he falls quit and reload to put his drops at the top of the stairs)

Head back inside and up the stairs (to your left if facing out of Firelink, to your right if facing in), then out to the Giant Tree

Use the tree nearby to jump up onto the roof
Grab the Estus Shard and trade anything useful with Pickle Pee Pump-a-Rum Crow[darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com]

Walk past the nest and hit the illusionary wall opposite where you entered from, drop down at the far end and open the chest for the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring (gives +souls)

Head to the High Wall
(Turn right and fight the Pus of Man add at the top of the tower if you like, remember you have to wait for it to fully transform to get the drop)

Head left, then left again (make sure to kill the adds with lanterns) and around the dragon to grab some resin

At the stairs with the two shield mobs, head up the stairs and sprint once you reach about the halfway point to the door ahead of you. If you're fast enough, you will beat the dragonsfire there

Unlock the other door from the inside (ignore the chest for now), carefully kill the nearby adds and either fight or avoid the Lothric Knight

Be careful of the thief mob to your left; run out the door to your right and up the stairs to the checkpoint bonfire

Head back into the small turret you just came out of (where the chest was). The chest is a Mimic that drops a Deep Hand Axe, which is not super useful in and of itself but may be an upgrade depending on your starting class, and the Mimic may drop the Symbol of Avarice (you can farm one later but getting one early doesn't hurt)

Head back to the checkpoint bonfire area, walk out on the beam to get some more resin, drop on the thief mob when it wanders under you and kill the other one near the table, then head out onto the roof area (be careful of enemies popping up beside you and from the ladder)

As you head out onto the roofs, sprint left past the peasants as one will turn into a Pus of Man and freak out. Stay left to find and kill a Crystal Lizard for its Raw Gem (infuse this next time you can warp back to Firelink, the raw damage bonus will vastly outstrip your offensive stats for some time no matter what class you started as)

Turn right at the corner of the roof and drop down, kill the crossbow adds and the ambush adds, then backtrack slightly and to your left to grab some bombs

Turn around and head into the door, being careful of the spear-wielding Lothric Knight with the greatshield. Go left from here and you'll be in a three-tiered room with plenty of enemies; start by heading forward (mind the ambush to your left but grab the broadsword in the room he comes out of). The black-tarped barrels will explode if they come into contact with fire, so use those to clean out enemies. There's an Estus Shard in here, as well as a key guarded by dogs.

On the middle section, check the area where the guy throwing firebombs is to find a chest with the Silver Eagle Kite Shield (100% physical block and WA shield)
At the top section, head up and go across, then crash through the debris across the room, to find a chest with the Astora Straight Sword (this got nerfed so it's no longer godlike though)

Head out from the bottom of the room to find a dropdown leading to the Rapier, and either avoid or very carefully fight the giant Cherub Knight

Turn right here and go up the stairs (watch for ambushes). Turn right immediately to find a Ring of Sacrifice (saves your souls if you have it equipped when you die, otherwise sells for 2000 souls), then keep heading up the stairs (another ambush), activate the elevator and unlock the door. This leads back to the first bonfire in the area; either go to it or use a Homeward Bone to get back to Firelink

Teleport back to the Tower on the Wall fire and go down to the bottom level. The door here can't be unlocked, but if you go in the other direction you'll find your way to a prison where a "mad thrall" mob is imprisoned. Use your Cell Key, talk to him, and agree to his terms to recruit Greirat the Thief to your Shrine (and also get the Blue Tearstone ring)

Teleport back to the High Wall bonfire and practice running from there to the elevator down to the ambush courtyard as quickly as possible without engaging anything unnecessary or getting hurt. (Make sure you step on the elevator after it stops at the bottom so that it goes back up to the top if you die.) This is called a "runback" and working them out will help you a lot when you're getting murdered by bosses

Head down the stairs again. If you're embered there's a summon sign here for a helpful guy with a big axe who will help you clear out the Lothric Knights in this area. Explore the higher area to your left first

Talk to Emma in the big church room a few times to get a key item for progression and the Way of the Blue covenant, which you can equip in your covenant slot (this one will try and find a player to help you if you get invaded)
(If you summoned a buddy you might be stuck in here, wiggle left and right and roll to bully him out of the doorway)

Head down and knock off the enemies (you can summon the Swordmaster at the bottom of the stairs if you're 1. embered and 2. beat him)

Kill Vordt (easy), check if you have near 20k souls yet, if you do then go back to Firelink and buy the 20k soul key from the Handmaiden, which opens the tower near the Giant Tree

(While you're here, talk to Greirat again)

Open the tower, run up, and carefully clamber down the broken part of the bridge to kick down a ladder. You can access the Crow from their nest on top of the roof via this ladder (no need to do the shrine jump every time you want to trade)

Head back up the tower again, cross the bridge, ride the elevator up, follow the stairs up, grab the Fire Keeper Soul (actually not necessary unless you plan to 1. hollow and 2. don't want to stay that way permanently but now you know where it is)

Head back down to the door you opened after crossing the bridge and carefully look down the right side (if facing the bridge) or the left side (if facing the elevator)

Take off all your clothes and equipment (important), cast Spook if you have it

Carefully roll to the item you can see (this will take a few tries), grab it, heal, and drop down to the bottom to get the Estus Ring (causes Estus to refill more HP when used)

Head back to Vordt and raise your flag to get kidnapped by gargoyles

Head down the stairs, kill the dogs and turn left; go around the left side of the carriage to grab some Crystal Skulls and kill two more dogs

Head out onto the bridge of dead peasants to find the one still alive, Yoel, and recruit him

(Yoel will appear in a room across from Greirat at the Shrine. He can teach basic sorceries but more important is his ability to "draw out true strength". This takes the form of a 'curse' which will turn your character into beef jerky and power up weapons with the Hollow Infusion, as well as acting as 'free' levels - so in other words there is no downside except you look like a side of beef left on the asphalt in summer. You can get a new free level from Yoel by dying a number of times equal to the number of free levels already received from him +1, e.g. if you've already received two levels you need to die 3 times. You can only receive 5 free levelups like this, and they do count towards your soul level. You must receive 5 levelups from Yoel if you plan to achieve the Lord of Hollows ending)

Head back through the gate and tag the bonfire, observe the giant archer

Follow the path into the house (be careful of an enemy who may clip into the floor and be hard to hit). Go around to the right and through the debris to snag a buckler (be careful of the mad thrall enemies), then out onto the balcony. Knock down the hanging corpse (important); walk around the corner to grab some repair powder (and fight an enemy). Repair Powder is not useful in most circumstances but it does sell for 100 souls a pop so it can be used as currency for small sundries

Go back down through the house. Carefully throw a firebomb at an enemy group near black barrels to clear out a bunch of them all at once, and be especially careful of the undead preacher with the mace (she has a grab attack). This will move you along where you knocked the dangling body off earlier, so grab Loretta's Bone from it

Grab the estus shard she was guarding and turn right, go over the bridge, watch for ambushes (especially the mad thrall with the flamberge) and open the door

Head left over the bridge and drop down short of the plateau onto the little trail (watch out for the pitchfork guy who will try to push you off), then go right and light the bonfire. Head out and up the stairs (watching out for the guy with the pot and the firebomb throwers). Keep heading up stairs to reach a caged Pyromancer who you can recruit (do this even if you don't plan on being a Pyro because the pyromancy flame is a useful source of fire damage)

Head back across the bridge and this time go around the stables (from the side you originally entered from), watching out for mad thrall ambushes. There's a Caduceus Shield to be snagged here, but your actual goal is to jump over to where the big red guy with a cage is wandering around (do not attack him, he will not aggro you at this stage)

Walk to the dangling corpse and very carefully jostle it around onto the ledge, then knock it down to claim the Flame Stoneplate Ring

Talk to the cage on the red guy's back to end up... somewhere. Grab the greatshield drop and talk to the NPC there to receive the Mound-Makers covenant (wildcard PvP covenant), exhaust his dialogue for a Homeward Bone and bone out to Firelink

Give the Bone to Greirat, teleport somewhere else, teleport back to Firelink and talk to him again for a gesture, then teleport back to the Cliff Underside bonfire in the Undead Village

Carefully head out and turn right at the bottom of the stairs. Wait until the patrol has passed and drop down onto the cart. Kill the dogs and pass into the sewerway

Grab the Caestus and carefully kill the rats. There is a rodent of unusual size at the end of the tunnel so be careful (drops a Bloodbite Ring). Climb the ladder, open the door and light the bonfire and rest at it

Ember up if you haven't already and wander a bit away from the bonfire to spawn Parry God Hodrick. Wait for him to come to you (he can get distracted by mobs and caught on terrain), defeat him for a nice chunk of souls and a Vertebrae Shackle (trade with the Crow)

Go back through the sewer and across the bridge this time. Sprint past the guys with the pots, open the door, go around the elevator and quit+reload to deaggro the mobs. Talk to the onion

Stand on the elevator and quickly get off to lower it, then stand on top of it to go up to the top of the tower

Talk to the giant and make peace. Do not ever use the white branch he gives you (it will be stacked separately from others) or your truce is broken. (You can kill him for the Hawk Ring but not now)

Go back down. Look for a wooden platform as the elevator is descending and roll onto it. (This is one of Souls' favorite ways to try and hide things so always be on the lookout when you're on an elevator)

Talk to the onion and engage the fire demon. Make sure he survives and exhaust his dialogue for some Siegbrau (trade it) and a couple of gestures

Raid the area for some useful items (Large Club, Fire Clutch Ring, Northern Set). Carefully check the house, watching for dogs, grab items from chests (roll away afterwards). Sprint past the hugging preachers and up onto the rooftops for Flynn's Ring, then parkour your way across to another tower

In this tower, carefully make your way down and break boxes to get the Chloranthy Ring (+stamina regen) and Lucatiel's Set. Carefully exit and turn left, kill a dog, grab the item, and bone out to the bonfire where you fought Hodrick

(There are a number of largely useless items to your left and back up but there is a crystal lizard if you're so inclined, and a preacher who can drop Gnaw)

Otherwise, head forward and through the gate, let the giant archer take care of the mobs for you (don't stand too close). Explore the graveyard to your left for the Cleric's Set and some Ashes, and check the detached section of the ground near the tree for an Undead Bones Hard

Head up the stairs and left to fight the Curse-Rotted Greatwood and snag his Kiln

Bonfire back to Firelink, give the ashes to the shrine maiden, buy the sewer key from her, talk to Greirat and send him to pillage

Head back to the bonfire where you fought Hodrick, open the locked door the giant rat was guarding, turn left, go through the skeletons (bring a bow if you want the hanging items)

Crystal Lizards on your right but be cautious of the dropdown ambush

Head left and past the rats to rescue a maiden (touch her and take her into your service), then talk to the knight outside to recruit him

Head back to the giant's tower, take the lift down, grab the Irithyll Straight Sword from the Boreal Outrider (this weapon is cracked btw)

Carefully make your way down the Road of Crucifixions. Check everywhere, there are lots of useful items scurried away

Once you make it to the bonfire and meet Anri and Horace, congratulations, the game becomes slightly less linear here and you should be able to go ahead on your own.

The first DLC, "Ashes of Ariandel", becomes available as soon as you reach the Cleansing Chapel at the Church of the Deep, by talking to the knight mumbling to himself by the altar. You will spawn very close to a bonfire so don't worry too much if you just want to unlock it and stop him yammering to himself every time you go through. It assumes you're around level 60-70 but is noticeably rougher than base-game sections that assume the same.

It's also full of extremely good loot, and since you can access it so early in the game, it can be worth doing a few runs through here (possibly with a map) to grab a bunch of swag and level yourself up before you move deeper into the Church or Forbidden Woods.

Note that the boss of Ashes of Ariandel is one of the harder, if not the hardest boss in the game, thanks to having three phases, one of which is a split fight, and leaving aoe goo all over the floor, so you might want to leave it for later.

The Ringed City is much larger than Ashes of Ariandel (it's roughly comparable in scope to DS1's DLC, but the actual size of each area is much larger). It's also basically pitched at characters who have already beaten the game at least once, and has +3 versions of many rings that you can find +1 and +2 versions of in NG+ (perhaps most notably a +3 fapring).

To access it varies depending on if you own Ashes of Ariandel or not:

• If you do own that DLC, then you must access Ringed City by defeating the final boss of Ashes of Ariandel and using the bonfire beyond them.
  
• If you do not own that DLC, then a port to the DLC will appear after defeating Soul of Cinder.

Ringed City essentially caps off the whole Dark Souls series, giving some lore revelations that would work better if the game wasn't completely schizophrenic about its approach to Dark Souls 2's existence and ending with an incredibly good but unfortunately a bit too-easy boss fight. I recommend playing it last before you move into a NG+ cycle.

There are essentially two discrete ways to interact with online play - cooperative and competitive - and multiple ways of going about it.

Leave, or use, a summon sign created by a White Soapstone. The only cooperation-centered covenant is the Warriors of Sunlight, available from a house just past the Preacher guarding an Estus Shard in the Undead Village. Usually you're best off leaving summon signs either near bonfires or near boss doors.

This is actually much more complicated and largely out of my area of expertise, but the basic premise is that you invade people by using Cracked Red Eye Orbs (or the repeat-use Red-Eye Orb from the Dickwraith below the Tower on the Wall in Lothric). Only people who are embered ("host of embers") will appear to be invaded; defeat them to claim Embers of your own.
For duels, you can use the Red Soapston to leave a Red Summon Sign.
Two areas of the game have "faction" systems (Forbidden Woods for Farron Watchdogs and Irithyll/Anor Londo for Aldritch Faithful) where any embered player can be randomly invaded by a player in that covenant.
If a player in the Way of Blue Covenant is invaded, a player in the Darkmoon Swords or Blue Sentinels will (hopefully) be summoned to defend them.

The Matchmaking system takes into account your Soul Level and the highest-upgrade weapon you've ever owned, and uses it to make a decision about who you can invade or be invaded by to try and keep things fair. You can read more about this here[darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com], since it's kind of complex.

This is a catchall section for random stuff that I think is worth noting that doesn't really fit anywhere else.

This is my term for a tactic that lots of people probably figure out on their own, but the idea is that since your stamina regenerates more slowly while your guard is up, you should only guard in time to defend the enemy attack and not hold the button down the rest of the time (the name is because you "pulse" L1 rather than holding it or tapping it). It's less useful in DS3 than it is in DS1 because DS3 has Bloodborne brain poison but it's still useful in certain situations. Having improved stamina regen will improve the results.

Pyromancy scales off the lower of your int and faith, so in effect, you need to keep them roughly even.

Medium humanoids and NPC-type enemies can be backstabbed. When you do so on NPC-type enemies, they will stand up and turn around as part of their recovery animation. There is a very small window after they stand up, before they begin moving, where you can initiate a backstab again. Note that a lot can happen to make this go wrong (if they move they can just walk out of the backstab animation even if you initiate it, for example), but it is still possible.

There is a single pre-placed Blessed Gem in the Cathedral of the Deep, at the far right end of the rafter section, guarded by a Cathedral Knight. This is largely relevant because this area also contains the Sage's Coal you need to use it, and you can therefore make one blessed weapon (preferably a strike weapon) before going into the Catacombs where you actually need it. For the most basic of basics, you can buy the Mace from Greirat, but if you're going to the Cathedral anyway you have other options (Large Club from Undead Village area, Reinforced Club from same, Morning Star from the Handmaid w/Paladin Ashes, Drang Hammers).

This is well known but worth mentioning; killing Emma (the NPC who gives you the Way of Blue covenant and the Lothric banner) will spawn in Dancer of the Boreal Valley. Defeating her will allow you to access Lothric Castle, which is the pre-dungeon to, essentially, the last area of the game; that means endgame loot. The downside is that Dancer is a very difficult boss (you would normally only come here after defeating the four other Lords of Cinder), although Pyromancers can potentially cheese her with Toxic Mist.
The value of this is arguably reduced because you can get advanced loot from Ashes of Ariandel and that doesn't require you to kill Dancer, but it's there if you want to try it out.

If your weapon art is a stance and you have a WA shield like the Silver Eagle Kite Shield, holding L1 to block and while keeping it depressed holding L2 to enter stance will cause you to transition from guard to stance immediately, and back into guard as soon as you release L2. The application of this is largely limited except that it allows you to block from stance without having to release your stance, but it's noticeably useful if you are using the uchigatana and Silver Eagle Kite Shield earlygame, as you get access to a parry with that WA. (It's less useful for dedicated parry WAs like the Farron Legion GS)

Dark miracles only scale with Faith unless cast from the Sunless Talisman or Caitha's Chime (in which case the softcaps of 45 apply), turning your dark miracles into a more-expensive quality weapon (Sunless Talisman does add a small dark damage buff per hit to Lifehunt Scythe though).
Due to a bug or by design, the White Hair Talisman (which can cast pyromancies) only applies its Intelligence scaling if your Int is equal to or higher than your Faith and it doesn't work with dark spells very well at all.
However, the Crystal Chime, which casts sorceries and miracles, provides its dual scaling to all casts (except physical miracles which only benefit from Faith), and it doesn't give boosted dark damage like the dark spell-themed casts do. Meanwhile, the Izalith Staff only gives dual scaling to dark sorceries and only uses its intelligence scaling for normal sorceries.

Casting speed increases with Dexterity to a cap of 50. The more dex, the faster you cast, so dex is important for casters (Sort Of). Sage's Ring will increase your casting speed by treating you as if your Dex was 30/35/40 points higher than it actually is for the purposes of casting speed; Witchtree Branch and Saint-Tree Bellvine also give +99 casting-speed-only dex. Generally speaking you want to rely on Sage's Ring rather than raising Dexterity, but a dex-based spellsword (maybe using an Assassin base?) can take advantage of this earlier than most. Note that there is no +3 version available in Ringed City so unless you go to NG+ you need 20 Dexterity to reach the cap with the +0 Sage Ring (unless you're using Witchtree Branch or Saint-Tree Bellvine).

This was a bit of a ramble but I hope you found it useful for getting started. This is meant to be a starting point, not the ending point - there are other guides and information repositories that provide far better-detailed, specific information, so you should move on to them when you're done here. I hope this made it a little bit easier to get started, at least.