Dark Souls II

• From the available starting gifts, the Healing Wares or the Petrified Something (exchangeable for an item) are likely to be the most useful. Life Ring's effect is miniscule, Seed of a Tree of Giants (turns enemies against human/NPC invaders) is very situational, and the three other choices are all commonly found.

• Exhaust all dialogue with NPCs when you meet them to not miss out on anything. Many NPCs also give you items if you talk to them after having met a certain prerequisite, most commonly after you've bought enough stuff from them.

• Merchant Hag Melentia sells an infinite stock of Lifegems once she moves to Majula. These are an excellent way to heal up between fights, saving precious Estus Flask charges for in-combat healing.

• Maughlin, Majula's armorer, gains better stock the more you spend at his store so it can be worth some investment even if you don't need his initial wares. He will also sell armor sets related to certain bosses after you've defeated them.

• The covenant you can join at the cliffside shrine in Majula is the Covenant of Champions, which will make the game more difficult and prevent most co-op. Only recommended for those who are really looking for a challenge.

• Barring one or two exceptions, secret doors are opened with the loot/talk button rather than by attacking the wall as in the first game. There are also a few walls that can be collapsed using something found in the nearby environment.

• Agility, primarily increased by the Adaptability stat, governs how long you're invincible when rolling. 92/96/99 Agility are good breakpoints to aim for as below that the invincibility window is quite brief.

• To revert hollowing after death, use a Human Effigy from your inventory instead of burning it at a bonfire as the latter simply blocks online interaction for a time. Completing your duty as a summoned phantom will also turn you human.

• Unlike in the first game, your rolling speed is always the same up until 70% Equipment Load when it turns into the clunky "fat roll". Equipment Load still governs how fast your Stamina regenerates and how far you'll roll.

• Two-handing a weapon reduces its Strength requirement by 50%.

• Prism Stones, Smooth and Silky Stones (Small or normal) and Petrified Somethings can be exchanged for items with a pair of talking crows by leaving (not discarding which deletes the item) them in their nest past one of the tutorial areas in Things Betwixt. Petrified Somethings yield the rarest items.

• To "Power Stance" dual-wielded weapons which allows you to hit with both weapons at once, you need to have Strength and Dexterity equal to 1.5x the weapons' requirements. To enter Power Stance, have a weapon in each hand and hold down Triangle/Y.

• A pair of binoculars are hidden on a cliffside in Majula which can be used to aim spells in first person.

• The letters amongst weapon stats determine the weapon's scaling with your attributes. For example a weapon with "A" scaling with Dexterity benefits more from having high Dexterity than a weapon with "D" scaling in the same.

• In the Scholar of the First Sin -version of DS2, the keys required to access the three DLC areas are hidden in the game. The key to the third DLC (Ivory King) is easily found, but the first two (Sunken King & Old Iron King) are very well hidden. If you still haven't found them by the end of the game, you might need to look up their locations.

• If you're unhappy with how you've leveled up, you can reallocate your attributes by giving a "Soul Vessel" item to one of the old women in the starting area.