From a distance, Dark Souls looks like any third-person action RPG, and while it shares many of the mechanics with other titles in the genre it also does things a little differently. If you're new to the series it can all seem a bit baffling, so here's a grounding for those of you who don't know your Ashes from your Estus Flasks. Further down you'll find a guide to levelling your character efficiently, including where to find the best places in the game to farm Souls.

This guide explains in detail end-game soul farming after the lord of cinder. Guide to Soul Farming During End-Game Read I don't claim to have discovered this or neither am I the original founder. I'm just promoting a good way of soul farming. Serpent ring/+3. Shield of want. Archdragon peak. Note: Both these items boost.

- You can find the rest of our Dark Souls 3 guide on the main guide page.

Remember: in Dark Souls dying is pretty much a central game mechanic, and to start with you're likely to die a lot. If you find you can't go more than five minutes without meeting a sticky end - don't worry, this is normal, and as you learn how each enemy type behaves, where they're lurking, and how to tackle them, you'll start dying less often. (At least for a while.)

When picking a starting class: It's possible to build any kind of character, regardless of your choice of starting class. But if you're new to Dark Souls, we'd recommend building a hybrid of damage dealer and tank using the Knight as a starting point. The Knight's initial armour is a reasonable balance between agility and protection; you start with a ring that grants bonus health; and the pre-rolled stats provide a good base for a melee-focussed combat style. By all means experiment and find a style that suits you, but most beginners do find combat easier to handle with a melee weapon and shield equipped most of the time, and a fairly durable character.

Estus Flasks, Bonfires and Embers

Consuming Estus is really the only way in the game to heal or regain FP (mana), and while the supply is effectively infinite, there's a limit to how much you can carry at any one time, and your flask can only be refilled at a bonfire. It's also a single pool for both HP and FP, so choosing between a ready supply of healing or magic power can be a balancing act. The blacksmith in the hub can change how much of your Estus supply is allocated to each.

Bonfires act as healing and restocking stations, checkpoints, safe havens, and fast travel points, and finding one is generally accompanied by a huge sigh of relief. Resting at one will refill your Estus Flask, but doing so also respawns all enemies (with the exception of bosses and giants), so backtracking to top your supplies up isn't really an option.

Thankfully, the size of your flask can be increased by finding Estus Shards over the course of your travels, and the power of each dose can be increased by finding Undead Bone Shards (these upgrades can only be performed in the hub area), so leave no stone unturned. Alternatively, you can cheat and take a look at our Dark Souls 3 Bone Shard Location guide and Dark Souls 3 Estus Shard Location guide.

By consuming an Ember you're granted an additional 30% HP, can summon spirits to help with some boss fights, and will be able to invade (and be invaded by) other players. These effects last until you die, and as Embers are a fairly scarce commodity they're best saved for those moments where you're really starting to struggle.

Combat, weapons, armour and enemy types

Odd though it may seem, combat in the Souls games is one of the most realistic depictions of real-life violence you'll ever find: one or two blows can prove fatal, blocking requires effort and you can still be knocked over or injured anyway, fighting with heavy pieces of metal is tiring, and on the whole it's a lot better to just avoid getting hit in the first place if you can.

Generally speaking, you're much better taking your time in each fight: waiting for openings in your opponent's defence before striking not only reduces the chance of you taking damage, it also tends to result in your own attacks being more effective. Blocking, evasion, and mastery of the dodge-roll are vital - you may be able to survive a few fights by simply running in and tanking damage while waving a sword about haphazardly, but as a long-term survival strategy, it's unlikely to prove effective.

Weapons: Different weapons attack in different ways: light weapons tend to do less damage than heavier ones but require less stamina to use and can attack faster, long bladed weapons are good in open areas against multiple opponents but may be unusable in confined spaces, thrusting weapons can be more effective than slashing against slow enemies, and so on, so keeping more than one on you is generally a good idea. They can be reinforced and upgraded at the blacksmith in the hub area by using Titanite and gems that you'll collect along the way, so remember to pay him a visit whenever you're levelling up.

Armour and Mobility: Armour and weapon weight affect your mobility and stamina usage, so a balance needs to be kept between protection from damage and the ability to get out of the way - light armour will keep you nimble but will help less if you get hit, whereas heavy armour will make you less manoeuvrable but provide better protection against damage and make you harder to stagger. Keep an eye on your Equip Load stat when you try out new gear: at 70%, your ability to roll will be reduced, and when it hits 100% you'll be almost unable to move.

Enemy types: Enemies come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, but broadly speaking skinny or spindly-limbed enemies rely on speed, and more muscular enemies will rely on brute strength. Heavy enemies can still have a quick attack or two, and skinny ones can still pack a huge punch, but their general attack style and behaviour will be governed by their body shapes.

In addition to physical damage, some enemies will apply status effects - an icon and a meter will appear in the centre of your HUD, and when the meter fills you'll be hit by the effect, so they're often an indication to back away from combat for a moment to let them drop. Effects include frostbite (slows movement), toxicity (gradual HP loss until it clears), bleeding (large, sudden HP loss), and curse (instant death).

(Bosses are an exception to this, of course, but we won't spoil any of the fun by going into them in any detail here.)

Loot and Souls

Depending on your Luck stat, enemies will occasionally drop some loot when they die. Usually it's just a few extra souls or a junk weapon that you can sell, but sometimes it's more interesting.

You'll also find items on the hundreds of corpses that litter the place, and these are usually more substantial. As a general rule, the harder it is to get to one of them, the more valuable it's likely to be: corpses out in the open will usually hold a small number of trapped souls or some Titanite; ones that are a little tricky to get to will likely contain an Ember or a larger trapped soul; and those that you have to go a long way out of your way or face great danger to collect will range from rings to Estus and Undead Bone Shards.

Not quite last but definitely not least are the Souls after which the games are named. They come in three types - soft souls, trapped souls, and named souls - and act as both XP and currency for use at vendors.

Trapped and named souls are collected as items and you keep hold of them if you get killed. Soft souls are collected automatically from nearby enemies when they die (either at your hand or someone else's), but get dropped when you die. If you can return to where you dropped them without dying again you can collect them, but if you die again before you can reclaim them, they're gone forever - so it's never wise to carry too many around.

Consuming trapped and named souls converts them into soft souls, which is required before you can use them, but until you need them it's best to keep them safe in your inventory.

Named Souls are dropped by bosses, and aside from their large soul value they have an additional use: in the hub area, sat on a throne, you'll find Ludleth of Courland, and once you've given him the Transposing Kiln he'll swap specific named souls for unique weapons or other items.

Farming

There are a few points in the game where there are either a large number of enemies or one high-value opponent placed near to a bonfire, and you can kill the bad guys and rest at the bonfire to force them to respawn as often as you like. So if you're ever feeling overwhelmed by the odds, you may want to make a few laps of these areas to stock up on souls with which to level up your character and buy gear.

Cathedral of Ash: It takes about a minute to run a circular route round the area, and each lap will net you 220 souls.

Dilapidated Bridge: This is worth around 600 souls per minute. Run from the bonfire towards the heavy under the arch, kill him, and return. Each lap takes about 30 seconds - and as a bonus, he seems more prone to item drops.

Cleansing Chapel: You can gather 900 or so per minute by running out through the front door and quickly dealing with the enemies just to the right.

Farron Keep Outskirts: This one's a little different - the actual soul rate is out of your control here, as someone else is doing all the work, but as it requires just running and then standing still for a while, you can read a book or something while you're doing it. Just head from the bonfire to the archway into the outer area to trigger two enemies into making a patrol, step back a little to stay out of sight, and wait.

Profaned Capital: 2,500 souls per minute available here. From the bonfire, drop down the ladder into the centre of the tower, drop through the opening at the back, run round anti-clockwise and tackle the flying statue, then climb up the ladder back into the tower. If you position yourself just in front of the ladder lying on the ground outside as he flies in, he'll land in a perfect position for you to strike the first blow, and it does actually save a few seconds to throw yourself off the edge and die afterwards (as long as you remember to collect your souls each time).

How beneficial these farming runs are depends largely on your current level - to go from 16 to 17 requires 1882 souls, but to go from 71 to 72 takes a little over 30,000 - and it's not a realistic strategy for making massive gains. But if you're a few souls short of levelling up, it's handy to have a ready source.

Levelling and buying items

How one update ended a six-year career.

Your soul pool is used for both improving your own stats and buying gear and upgrades, so you need to balance one with the other, but the lion's share of your souls will likely be used for levelling purposes.

There are a lot of stats you can increase when you gain a new level, and each one will affect a range of secondary characteristics: for example, Strength will increase both your melee attack power and damage resistance. Before you're committed to an upgrade, the UI will highlight all the areas it improves so you know what you're going to get. (All the stat items can be increased to 99, so the level cap is around 800.)

Where you concentrate your improvements depends on your style of play and your preferred armour and weapon loadout. But if you're taking the melee damage/tank route, then Vigor, Endurance, Strength and Vitality are the most important.

Finding your way around

The first section of the game is quite straightforward navigation-wise, but once you get properly stuck in you will discover that the paths split and it can be quite tricky to identify where you should head to next. We have prepared a detailed overview in our Dark Souls 3 - where to go guide, which includes a handy map indicating how the different locations connect to each other.

- Keep reading for our guide to joining every Covenant in Dark Souls 3.

- You can find the rest of our Dark Souls 3 guide from the first page of this article.

Dark Souls III is really tough, folks. That's the whole point, sure, but you don't have to spend the entire game in your own, personal hell.

There are three totally cheap tricks that you can pull off during the game's opening hour. They don't break the game, but they do give you an early edge in the first location you explore.

SEE ALSO: 'Dark Soul 3' is wonderful, but haven't we played this game before?

Just don't be surprised when you discover that nothing in Dark Souls III, not even these tricks, qualifies as 'easy.'

1. Cheese through the tutorial boss

The tutorial boss, Iudex Gundyr, is a powerful, armored warrior that transforms into a nightmarish tree-crow-deathbeast when you knock it down to half health. It's a great introduction to Dark Souls bosses: everything is terrible until you start to win, at which point everything gets more terrible.

There's good news, though. If you start your game with the 'Pyromancer' class — which is a great starter option in general — you can dust this boss from a distance, with minimal worry.

First you need to thoroughly explore the area leading up to the boss, to find the Ashen Estus Flask. Estus Flasks still heal you in Dark Souls III; the 'Ashen' variant recharges your Focus Points (FP), which are spent every time you cast a spell.

Two full FP bars is all you need to take out the tutorial boss. Just hammer him with fireballs — rolling to dodge attacks all the while — until he's gone. Try to keep yourself a medium distance from the boss; get too close and he'll rock you with melee attacks, but get too far away and he'll close the distance with punishing leap attacks.

It might take a few attempts, but this is an easy way past the only boss fight in Dark Souls III that doesn't give you the option to level up beforehand.

2. Glitch your way to an extra Estus Flask

This is a straight up cheat. You're not supposed to be able to get the loot referenced here until you spend 20,000 Souls — Dark Souls currency — on a special key.

Shortly after you defeat the first boss, you come to the Firelink Shrine. It's your hub for the rest of the game, the place you return to when you want to level up, improve your gear or buy stuff from one of the loot vendors.

As you enter Firelink for the first time, you'll see four sets of stairs, to your right and left. Two sets lead down into the central pit where the Firelink bonfire is located. And two others lead up. You want to ascend the staircase to the right of where you enter.

Follow the relatively straightforward path until you can go no further. You should be right next to a red-tiled rooftop with a tree right next to it. You'll know you're in the right spot if you see a corpse on the roof with a treasure pickup floating above it.

Technically, you shouldn't be able to get on that rooftop right now. But if you sprint into the aforementioned tree's roots and leap at just the right moment, you can get up there.

See here:

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The GIF makes it look easy; getting the timing down is a little tricky. But you need to sprint into that piece of the tree's roots and jump as you start to glitch up the side of it. If you're having trouble, try removing all of your armor and weapons before you jump.

Once you're up, grab the loot and follow the rooftop around to a stone walkway, which leads to a door opening into the upper rafters of Firelink. Carefully walk out and grab the treasure off the corpse hanging over a rafter. You can't miss it.

That loot is an 'Estus Flask Shard,' which you can turn in to the Firelink blacksmith to add an extra Estus Flask charge to your total. Having four flasks instead of three in the early game is a huge help.

3. Easy Souls farming for your early leveling

Farming Souls is an integral part of the Dark Souls experience. You explore an area, finding all it's treasure-riddled nooks and crannies, before taking on a boss. But the inherent risks of exploration mean that amassing Souls with which to level up and improve your weapons is its own, dedicated affair.

Once you have Firelink unlocked and can travel to the High Wall of Lothric bonfire, there's a very easy exploit you can use to pile up Souls quickly.

It won't carry you through the entire game. Leveling up gets more expensive with each new stat point purchased, and enemies along the High Wall just aren't that lucrative. But for your first few levels, this is as safe and easy as it gets in Dark Souls.

Simply fast-travel to the 'High Wall of Lothric' bonfire and go down the stairs that are directly in front of you. Kill everything at the bottom of the stairs — including the harmless worshipers (they're worth 30 Souls apiece!) — and follow the path straight to another set of stairs, leading down.

In the next room, kill the couple of enemies you find there and walk into the little alcove with the barred window at the opposite end of the room. There's a horde of enemies on the other side of the bars, as well as a dragon.

You want to run in a circle in the alcove until the dragon lets loose with some fire breath. Even though the dragon fire kills the enemy horde, you get the Souls for it.

Here's a look at how it works:

Note that you might need to trigger the fire breath twice to clean everything up. If it's your first time in that location, you also might need to use the ladder in the alcove room to reach the area beyond the bars.

Just follow the path outside and head up the stairs on the left until the dragon spawns. Once it's spawned a first time, it's there forever (unless you kill it).

After you've gathered your cheap-o Souls from the dragon breath, head back to the High Wall bonfire and use it to reset everything. Repeat this process until you're happy with your pile of Souls.

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