User blog comment:TheJZkiller/Soul Level 1/@comment-6003396-20140121012338

One of the main limiting factors of a lvl 1 playthrough is the weapons that one can use effectively. There are only a handful and some include: Battle Axe, Hand Axe and Reinforced Club. These are the one's that I use primarily. Pyromancies, as mentioned below, and are a great help indeed. No bows can be used, but the Light Crossbow can be used one handed and the Heavy Crossbow can be used two handed. The Fire, Chaos and Lightning upgrade paths are good choices, as they eliminate stat scaling parameters (which aren't very useful at lvl 1 anyway), and supplement with high fire or lightning damage instead. Chaos especially is useful since it scales with humanity, which will also help slightly with some increases in defense, so the counter should be kept high regardless.