Dark Souls
- You lose souls (currency and xp combined) and humanity on death, but you can retrive them by absorbing the green orb left at your corpse. If you die on your way there though, they're gone. So. Early on, don't hold on to thousands of souls, especially if you're going into uncharted territory. Spend them on items and levels, you don't lose those.
- In the same way, you can consume the soul items to gain souls the currency, only use them right before you level or buy something.
- You can wear heavier armors but the big thing is blocking and dodging, especially dodging. How fast you can roll and otherwise get the hell out of the way of an attack that is almost certainly going to wreck most of your health is dependent on your Equip weight. Dark Souls appears to have several more levels of equip weight than Demon Souls, and I think the fastest one we know of is at 10% of your equip weight.
- For the love of god, get the Orange Soapstone (or whatever it's called) from the first merchant, because without it you can't write messages or rate them. And writing messages (whether to be helpful or troll newbies) is one of the best parts of the online. Also, rating messages positively will make them stay around longer, which is good for the ones that are actually helpful.
- You must have a specific item to cast spells. Pyromancy, Miracles, and Sorceries each require a different item (Pyromancy Flame, Talisman, Catalyst respectively). You can refill your casts of a spell by resting at a bonfire.
- By offering Humanity to kindle a bonfire (must not be Hollowed to do so), you can increase how many Estus Flask charges it will give you to rest there. By default, it gives 5, but you can upgrade it to 10, 15, and I believe it maxes out at 20, but I'm not that far into the game myself, so someone can correct me on those if necessary.
- Class only determines your starting class, items, and soul level. Soul level determines how much it costs to buy the next level - going from 1 to 2 is cheaper than going from 2 to 3, and so on.
- The pyromancer is probably the best bet for new players, starting as it does with a decent weapon and pyromancy right off the bat - fireball is very handy for much of the early game. Pyromancer also starts at soul level 1, the only class to do so, so you level up faster initially.
- Really, though, one could make a case for any class at all except the deprived, which starts with no armour and shit weapons. It ceased to matter what your class was after an hour or two.
- You pick a gift at character creation. All of the items can be found elsewhere, and most are dubiously useful. The Skeleton Key is the best gift, because it will be a while before you're able to buy it, and it's handy from the get-go.
- Oh, and general tip - you will die, you will lose souls and humanity because you couldn't get back to where you died. This is not a big deal. Try not to stress because you've just lost 10,000 souls and 7 humanity and died a second time. You'll make that all up again before too long.