Board Thread:Dark Souls/@comment-188.67.81.186-20131212200209/@comment-96.48.25.0-20131214125931

Easy start up guide:

Stuff to get to make your start up easier, look for their location in the wiki -

Winged Spear (with any shield), spear is still a viable option after they nerfed the stamina usage, since it's just PvE vanilla run. Winged Spear + any upgrade path all do decent to better damage than most spears in the game.

Estoc - A great beginner weapon, since it gets bonus backstab damage. You also can hide behind a shield and still attack.

Astora Straight Sword/Dragoncrest Shield, may or may not require suicide run, depending on your control reflexes or you have enough patience with bow and arrows. A decent thing to start with, espeically for a starting shield. The stability isn't that great, but the fire damage reduction is good and it doesn't require luck like the Black Knight Shield.

Spider Shield - A good shield even after a Blight Town run.

Long Bow - You can pick it up easily as loot in Darkroot Basin, just +5 it and bring some cheap wood arrows, so you can get the next 2 items easily. Long Bow + poison arrows can make short work of a lot of enemies.

Oolacile Ivory Catalyst - caps at 180 Mag. Adj. at Int of 12!!  An excellent catalyst even for non-sorcerers. You can get Great Heavy Soul Arrow at mere Int of 16.

Crown of Dusk - there aren't much magic wielding enemies at the begining, so bypassing a 20% bonus damage is delusional.

Morning Star + Talisman - can be gotten easily at the Firelink shrine. Morning Star does bleed damage, so it's not bad as a blunt weapon.

Reinforced Club - an excellent starting weapon with decent damage and bleed effect at a paltry cost of 350 souls with your first merchant.

Claymore, Drakesword - Both at 6 units, so a bit heavy for beginner but can be gotten at the same time. I usually recommend lighter weapon for beginners since they seem to have a tendency to wear full armor or choose a melee/manly classes with full armor. Both are good weapons, but Claymore can be used even late game when properly upgraded.

Havel's Ring - An excellent ring for a lot of players no matter the style, espcially since Ninja ring has been nerfed. Havel or Havel's follower in the tower isn't hard to kill. I did it at my very first play through using a +2 Winged Spear with a Soldier Shield. There are tons of guides on how to kill him online, just be careful since his drops hasn't been fixed, so you want to kill him on solid ground. +50% carrying capacity is always awesome.

For me personally, I usually go with an easy set up at first play -

Crimson Armor/Pyromancer's begining armor + Knight armor mix for poise and resistance + no klanking sound to alert enemies at your approach. You can mix in Soldier's Waistcloth for light leg wear with a little poise.

Estoc/Winged Spear + Dragoncrest/Spider shield, enough said already.

Oolacile Ivory Catalyst + Crown of Dusk + Bellowing Dragoncrest ring = just about OHKO for most begining enemies.

Havel's ring and Long bow will round it up.

You can use most of those with min. stats investment, and be free to choose your build later.