Do you have any tips or general suggestions for a first time Dark Souls player?
Sure! What Dark Souls game are you playing first? I can offer more specific tips for 1 and 3 (the two I finished), but for now I'll just go for more general ones:
-First and foremost, get used to dying, and don't get frustrated with how much you die. Death is a crucial aspect of the soulsborne gameplay, and is treated as a mechanic more than a punishment. Try to spend all of your souls on levels or items before you start a new section to prevent frustration on soul loss, and shrug it off when it inevitably does happen. You'll always be able to gain back whatever you've lost by just running through the level again
-Bows are always useful. Pick a bow to upgrade (basic longbow is good for strength, compound for dex), and then use any souls that you can't put towards leveling to buy as many arrows as possible. Cheesing annoying enemies by sitting above them and shooting them to death is a valid way to play when you don't feel like fighting them fairly
-I advise going for a quality build if you're uncertain what weapons you want to use. A quality build levels up vigor, endurance, strength, and dexterity, so you'll have access to a variety of good weapons that scale off both strength and dex. You can also go pure strength or pure dex- dex has lower damage numbers but faster weapons and crit damage, while strength has slow weapons that deal a lot of damage. Strength is easier, but I always run dex on my first playthroughs because it forces me to learn the fights better (and I'm a very aggressive player)
-Test out cool new weapons by going to a low-level area and mucking around with them BEFORE you upgrade or allocate any stats to wielding it. If you don't have enough strength, then two-handing will give you 50% of the strength that you currently have, oftentimes giving you the required stats to wield a weapon
-Your armour and weapons have weight to them that affects your character's range of movement, giving you light, medium, and heavy rolls. You pretty much always want to be going for light rolls, as they have the most invincibility frames, but in DS1 going heavy doesn't really matter if you have good enough armour to just facetank everything in your path. Don't do that with the other games though, poise isn't as good
-Save your pine resin for tougher enemies/bosses, and try to remember what enemies are weak to which element. Dragons and armoured enemies are weak to lightning, but anything that uses armour, fire, etc will likely NOT be weak to that element. Bleed is also pretty damn strong on anything that has flesh
-Learning how to parry is excellent for dealing with knight-type enemies; parrying is deflecting a blow from a sword with your shield that leaves the enemy open for a critical hit, which can be maximized with weapons like daggers, the hornet ring, and any other weapons with high crit values. Certain shields like the buckler or weapons like the parrying dagger have longer parry time windows, iirc, so that'll make timing your parries easier (I know the buckler is better for a fact, but I never use the parrying dagger)
-Dodging into and to the right of a swing is always the best play. You don't want to dodge backwards or with an attack, because that'll just land you right in the middle of the attack's hitbox, or leave you vulnerable to a follow-up. You want to stay on the enemy's flank or ass so that you can deal damage or heal while they're busy turning around
-Something very important that I learned from a soulsborne challenge runner: YOUR HEAL WINDOWS ARE THE SAME AS YOUR ATTACK WINDOWS. Do NOT heal in a moment where it wouldn't be safe for you to do an attack, no matter how low your health gets. Panic-healing will just result in you getting hit again, which will either completely negate and waste the heal or kill you. It's better to take the chance and wait until its safe to heal to max than it is to just try to tank damage
