What the fu*k do I level up

So you got souls but want to level your character up effectively?

Introduction

So this guide will deal with levelling up, and what attributes you may want to focus on. A brief rundown of guide contents to keep things in perspective:

-First I'll go over what to not level
-Then I'll advice on what to level
-Afterwards I'll speak about INT and FAITH and ATTUNEMENT

Generally you want to level END, VIT, STR, and DEX; I'll speak about the previously mentioned stats in the last bullet point a little more in-depth as they're only useful if you're going down a particular route and even then, there are caveats and downsides. Dark Souls has a bit of magic involved but in general it's more supplementary and a feature not worth delving too far into if you're trying to make the most out of your levelling up and trying to get the most damage and effectiveness out of your levels.

A little advice on souls

So Dark Souls. It's a video game.

You net souls by killing enemies, and you use these souls to level up equipment and your character. You lose these souls by dying; you respawn at the previous bonfire you rested at.

RESTED at, NOT lit (you can light a bonfire but if you don't rest at it you aren't respawning at it). You can regain the lost souls by going to where you died and picking them up, but if you die again before picking them up then they dissappear.

So word of advice: never carry around an assload of souls. That's stupid. If you keep dying and make it a third of the way toward the required souls to level up, then just grind. Cause you're gonna keep dying and wasting time and souls. So grind that area a bit.

What NOT to level up

So you decide to level up with those souls; cool. That's a great idea.

But NEVER level up resistance. Ever.

The ONLY place you'll really need the poison resistance is in Blghttown, and that area can be passed easily with a spider shield. VERY easily.

Bleed damage? No one inflicts bleed damage other than, like, three enemies in the game. And it's nothing to worry about. I guess the ONE THING I want you to walk away with from this guide is to

NEVER
LEVEL
RESISTANCE

You can stop reading now. That's basically it; don't waste points on Resistance. It's an absolute waste of time.

What TO level up

No matter the build, you will ALWAYS want to level up:

Endurance

Endurance determines the green bar under your health bar. Everytime you attack this bar goes down, it's basically your ''action points''. If there's no green bar left you can't attack. More green bar=more actions in battle. Keep in mind that you can always attack if there is even a SLIVER of green left, so even if your attacks take up half of the green bar if there is even 1% of it left you can attack again.

Also note that all weapons vary in how much of the bar they take. Larger weapons take huge chunks of the bar, smaller and faster weapons take up much less.

The green bar also affects what you can block with your shield. When you have your shield up you will block damage, but in turn some of your green bar will disappear instead. Levelling up endurance levels up how much green bar you have and, effectively, how much damage you can block. If you are blocking and all of your green bar is gone (typically if it was a massive attack that ate it all up), then you will enter your stun animation. What you are doing when blocking is effectively trading a loss of the red bar (health) for a loss of the green bar, which regens. So in many ways more green bar=more regenerating health. Like I said, If the attack that you blocked ate up more of the green bar than you have in stock at the time of the attack, you will be stunned.

Levelling up endurance also levels up your equipment load. More equip load=you can load more equipment. All armors and weapons weigh a set amount, if the combination of all of this (displayed in the status screen) is under 25% of your max load then you can roll incredibly fast. If it is under 50% of your max equip load then you roll at a moderate speed; above 50% and you can't roll at all. If you go beyond the equip load you are a statue and cannot move whatsoever. The importance of rolling cannot be understated; rolling has invincibility frames and many times will save you. Rolling takes some of your green bar, but if you have to chose between rolling away from an incoming attack that WILL stun you because you don't have enough endurance left to fully block the attack, then rolling will save you and put you in a position to regen endurance and go at it again.

Basically, endurance is your life. No MATTER what the build you're going for, you should ALWAYS level up endurance. It's vitalness in gameplay can't be understated. If you don't know WHAT to level up, just level up endurance. I put this first on this list for an effin reason; because it's important.

Vitality

Self explanatory. More vitality means more health. Although a little word on vitality:

When you level up other stats you'll also notice that your defenses go up across the board as well. When you level up any stat practically every single stat in defense goes up anyway, which means your EFFECTIVE HP is ALWAYS going up, no matter how slight. Even if you have the same HP you started out the game with, if you levelled everything else you should have double or more to every defense, which means you actually have more HP than what you began with.

I say this because I'll note: if you're trying to go for a build or want to level something up but are worried about HP and tempted to put points into it, then don't worry too much. I'm not saying should never level vitality, what I am saying is that if you don't want to then don't worry too much about it. I finished the game with around 18 vitality; most of your defense comes from armor anyway and often times you'll be blocking with your shield, which means your damage tanking will REALLY come from your endurance stat, which regenerates. All attacks can be blocked with your shield (well 99% of them), so in many ways endurance is the real stat you should worry about when it comes to tanking hits. The red bar (vitality) is more for when you screwed up in a fight and took a sword slash on the chin.

Because you won't be running into fights and tanking hits. You'll be going into fights rolling and having your shield up. Dark Souls isn't a game about going ham and damaging the enemy with hits that are whittling their HP faster than they whittle yours. Odds are if you got hit 4 times in a boss battle you're dead. Additionally, you have flasks that have a base of 5 charges (can be levelled up to around 15 charges); these flasks restore hp. They always refill when you rest at a bonfire, so even if your vitality isn't too high you will always have hp restore on-hand.

Still, I list vitality as a stat you should level up because no matter the build it is always worth having more HP. Still, I'll say this is a stat you should level LAST, or a stat you should level if you don't know what to level and you have endurance up to 40 (more on that later)

Strength and Dexterity

Around 90% of all weapons in the game require a base Strength and/or Dexterity stat to wield them. What this means is that you can't use a weapon until you meet the requirement (say, 19 strength). Generally speaking, STR based weapon are huge, inflict massive damage, but have slower attack animations and use up more of your endurance bar per attack. DEX weapons are faster, use up less endurance, but strike for less damage.

Many weapons have either a STR requirement or a DEX requirement, but many have a requirement in both STR and DEX. In general, having your DEX up to around 24 or so should let you wield pretty much all DEX weapons; whilst STR weapons generally have higher reqs and the largest ones have requirements of up to 50 STR.

Generally levelling up both stats up to 20 should give you great versatility in wielding the hundred of weapons in the game. The question is HOW MUCH you want to level either STR or DEX. Some people prefer STR based weapons, which are larger, have slower attack animations, deal massive damage and potential to stun enemies (thereby stopping their attack animations). Other people prefer dexterity weapons, which allow more attacks with your endurance bar, and don't punish you as fiercely if you miss a strike (because their attack animations and recovery animations are much quicker), thereby allowing more range in endurance bar usage.

You can google the different weapons in the game and see the best of the DEX weapons and STR weapons and see what you like more. But generally you want to level up STR and DEX along with VIT and END, but unlike those two stats the question is how far you want to go into dumping points into STR and DEX. See, weapons have requirements to meet in order to wield, but they also SCALE off your stats. You'll notice ratings on weapons, ranging from S to E next to pictures representing STR, DEX, INT, and FAITH (more on that later).

Along with requirements to meet in order to wield, weapons also scale off your stats, gaining bonus damage. If a weapon has an S rating next to DEX, then it scales INSANELY well with your DEX stat: more points into DEX=more bonus damage. Conversely if the weapon has an E rating it doesn't gain as much bonus damage off said stat. So whilst you should level up STR and DEX to meet weapon requirements, a second question is how much you want to dump into STR or DEX in order to scale weapons into the late game and gain bonus damage. Whichever of the two you pick will be determined by what weapons you use; if you use STR weapons obviously you will dump more into STR for bonus damage late game.

I will give a bit of pointed on this a little bit later, but the general idea here is that you want points into DEX and STR to meet requirements to wield weaponry. Past reqs you dump more points into these stats to get bonus damage. I mentioned INT and FAITH earlier, I'll get onto this in a later section.

What to....maybe level up

Attunement

Levelling up attunement levels up your defenses. Every set amount of levels you get an attunement slot.

Attunement level 0-9 = 0 attunement slots
Attunement level 10-11 = 1 attunement slot
12-13 = 2
14-15 = 3
16-18 = 4
19-22 = 5
23-27 = 6
28-33 = 7
34-40 = 8
41-49 = 9
Attunement level 50 = 10 attunement slots

past level 50 you get no more attunement slots and your stats don't increase, so it's an absolute waste levelling up attunement past 50.

What are attunement slots? Well, you see on your HUD how you have, on the left of the screen, a weapon on the right of a cross, a shield on the left of said cross, a flask on the bottom, and a blank slot at the top? The blank slot at the top if your attunement slot. At bonfires you can add spells and such to that slot. More attunement slots=can carry more magic and miracles and pyromancies.

What are magic and miracles and pyroamancies? Well, this game has spells and miracles and pyromancies that are either bought off merchants or discovered on corpses. Miracles are just that: miracles. Their affects tend to be supplementary and 'supportive'; from healing spells to spells that take you to the last bonfire you rested at, to spells that form a wave around you pushing back and damaging enemies to spells that tank you up and/or take status effects off you. Magic spells are more offensive based: its fireballs and lightning blasts and all that wizardry bullsh*t.

In other words, Miracles are generally ''white mage'' magic (the healer in RPG's), whereas magic spells are the ''black mage'' (offensive oriented spells). Pyromancies are a special category (don't ask me why but they treat fire oriented spells as a special case). Pyroamancies are offensive oriented fire spells. They're actually not that varied; there's like 5 different pyromancies. Fireball; larger fireball, big fireball; and....I think that's it.

Miracles, Pyromancies, and Magic spells require an item to be used. Just as you have a sword equipped, you must have a talisman to use miracles, a pyromancers hand to use pyromancies, and a wand equipped to use magic sorceries. All you do is equip a talisman, or wand or pyromancers hand in your secondary slot and press the attack button to use whatever miracle/sorcery/pyromancy is currently equipped in your attunement slot. If you have a miracle equipped in your attunement slot and have a pyromancers hand on and press the attack button, nothing happens. More attunement slots=more slots to place more magic spells and such.

and no, you can't cheat the system by going around with only one attunement slot and just changing whats equipped in said slot in the middle of the field. You can only equip/unequip whats in your attunement slot at bonfires. So yes, having more attunement slots makes a diference.

Why do I not put this as something that NEEDS to be levelled up? Because it really depends. You see: magic and spells and such have a limited number of uses. You can only use, say, fireball 4 times in the field. Afterwards you need to make your way back to a bonfire to refill said spell, just as you refill flasks at bonfires. The spell (and flask, for that matter) refills automatically at bonfires, free of cost. But because they have limited uses on the field you can't go the entire game being a wizard. You cant zap zap zap people all game; you can zap them 5 or so times before you need to go back to your sword and shield.

So if you're going to dump points into attunement past 4 slots, then you're going a dedicated build and will have to rely on said spells. In which case it's worth going to 10 slots since spells have limited uses, and you want the most amount of spells at your disposal to make it from bonfire to bonfire.

Additionally, you don't need spells or magic to pass the game anyway. Attunement slots are for casters, but it's not a requirement like the other stats. Some spells are worthwhile (like the miracle that teleports you to the previous bonfire you rested at), whilst many are helpful but not required. Your damage will come from your weapon; spells and the like are only to make life easier/to spice things up. If you had unlimited uses on spells this would be an ENTIRELY different story.

I'd say two attunement slots are enough. Realistically you don't need any and you won't be making life harder, but teleporting to the previous bonfire you were at (instead of having to walk to it) and the healing spell (which is like having more flasks) are worth it. If you're going all wizard then obviously level this up to 50, but unlike STR or DEX (weapon requirements) you don't need to level attunement at all.

Faith

Pretty useless stat to be honest, but what prevented this from going into the 'As useless as resistance' category is that increasing this stat increases the potency of miracles. Not all miracles are support oriented spells, as some are offensive oriented and increasing your faith increases their damage.

But these offensive oriented spells total to 7 (might be 8, but its very little) in the game, most of which have a MASSIVE faith req to use. MASSIVE. MASSIVE. And honestly, increasing Faith to use two spells that are pretty good is REALLY not worth it. You can use them maybe 3 times before needing to go to a bonfire, and all those points spent on meeting the ridiculous requirement (we're talking a req of 30 or more here) were better put into getting 100 more damage on your weapon with the scaling.

Faith is for miracles, and only a few miracles are really worth it. You can google them, but just know that past 20 faith or so you're dumping a substantial amount of points into a stat that is almost as useless as resistance. You need to meet the requirement first, then you put more points to increase the damage. Unless you want to go Dumbledore on the game and are dedicated to casting and want the full magic experience, then attaining the miracles that actually make the massive amount of points spent on this stat takes dedication. See, attaining a substantial portion of these spells requires you to join covenants whereby you need to level up your rank in said covenant by entering PVP, and PVP is dead unless you use third party tools which makes it easier to get in touch with others.

Like I said, for the MASSIVE amount of points required to use....what, 4 decent offensive based miracles? You're better off putting points into DEX and STR for actual damage from bonfire to bonfire instead of three bursts of massive damage that will kill enemies that will die in two hits ANYWAY. It's more for dedicated buils.

Intelligence

Now we're talking. The game has like, 13 miracles total. But it has, like, 24 sorceries total. I may be off on the numbers, but the point is the game has a ton more sorceries than it has miracles. In other words; levelling up intellgience=more applicable use.

Like I said, Faith has some good spells but all those points spent to get them is almost laughable since there are, like, three. On the other hand, there are a ton of sorceries that have under 20 INT requirement. Just like Faith and Miracles, Sorceries have base requirements for their use, and offensive oriented sorceries scale off INT.

But also like Faith, this is more if you're going for a Harry Potter build. Just as with miracles sorceries have limited uses before needing to be refilled at bonfires. To really get the most out of massive poinst put into INT or Faith, you also need a decent amount of attunement slots to take advantage of casting. But unlike Faith, you have a lot of spells at your disposals at lower levels. Still, due to their limited uses treat them as ''suplementary'' to your sword and shield, unless you're going all in and getting 10 attunement slots.

Anyway, I talked about DEX and INT when speaking of DEX and STR and weaponry requirements/scaling. Here's the section I promised:

Levelling up FAITH and INT - why and why not

So in an earlier section I said that STR and DEX are levelled to meet weapon requirements, and past that they're levelled so weapons get bonus damage. I also mentioned that some weapons have INT and FAITH requirements, and levelling THOSE stats up also give bonus damage if they scale with said stats. Still, I made it seem like STR and DEX were more important and vital, and I placed those two in stats you should level, whilst putting INT and Faith in a section for stats you shouldn't worry too much about and only focus on if you wanna go a specific route. So what's the deal; if some weapons scale with INT and FAITH and some weapons have requirements in those two, why not couple them with STR and DEX?

So here's your INT and Faith section:

INT and FAITH are levelled to meet requirements for miracles and sorceries. Offensive oriented spells scale off the stat they require

(Speaking of which, pyromancies (the third wizard category I didn't talk about in the last section) don't scale off Faith or INT and they only do more damage with a higher levelled pyromancers hand, which can be levelled by purchasing levels with souls. Pyromancies are easy to get, easy to level, and are sort of an in-between for someone that wants to wizard their sh*t up but not put points into Faith or INT)

BUT some weapons have requirements in INT and Faith. And by SOME I mean.....like, two.

They're not even that great a weapons. Fu*k them. Most weapons don't scale with INT and FAITH, and by most I mean 99% of them. Pretty much every weapon you find and acquire in the game has 0 reqs or scaling with Faith or Intel.

BUT, you can level weapons and armor up. I said this in the beginning of the guide; souls are used to level up your character as well as level up armor and weaponry in the game. I won't delve too deep into this as I want to stay on the topic of character levelling and clear up what you may want to level and what to avoid, but weapons can also be levelled up.

There are, from what I recall, 6 or so paths when levelling weapons up (might be 7 or 8). You level up all weapons up to +5, and then you can choose a path. You can also 'redo' any levels you put into a weapon, bringing it back to +5 and then picking an alternate route. But any souls and items used to level said weapon are lost for good, meaning you gotta farm them up again.

Either way, a few of the upgrade paths add magic damage to your weapon. Again, you can google weapon upgrade paths on your own (the paths are the same for all weapons, so no, it isn't individual paths for all 100+ weapons), but the point is that some of the paths add magic damage or ''chaos/Divine'' damage to the weapon.

These upgrades also add scaling; so that your weapon now scales with either Faith or INT.

So DEX and STR are required to wield practically any weapon in the game, but when said weaponry is upgraded down either the INT or FAITH scaling upgrade paths, their scaling changes to require Faith or INT, and their damage also scales off Faith or INT. Like 3 weapons have a base requirement of faith or int when discovered, and that's because they've already been upgraded down those paths for you. Upgrading a weapon down the faith or int routes reduces its STR or DEX (or both) scaling.

Why you may NOT want this

So there you are, reading this guide thinking to yourself, ''oh cool, so I CAN go Hogwarts and be a wizard! The developers knowing that spells have limited uses also provided upgrade paths for weapons so that your weapons will scale off INT or FAITH so that your points in INT and FAITH aren't wasted for a few spells that will be used from bonfire to bonfire. Now weapons will scale off those two stats! Sure it's sort of roundabout in that most weapons will first have to be upgraded to scale off INT or FAITH, and I still need to meet the base STR and DEX reqs of most weapons before even thinking of grinding materials and making them magic or faith based, but the game made INT and Faith less useless than I initially thought because of the guide!''

Well, yeah. Here's the thing though: ultimately Faith and INT based weapons do less damage than weapons upgraded down the regular route (up to +15), the route which leaves them at their STR and DEX scaling. Part of the problem is that weapons that do magic damage do both physical AND magic damage. Sure, some enemies are weak to fire and the fire imbued weapon may do more damage, but for most enemies your weapon will be hitting them for both physical and magical damage. Meaning that the damage gets reduced twice because armor values in the game for magic and physical damage are seperate.

What this means is that they do less damage. Faith based weapons also have the requirement of you carrying around Humanity to get bonus damage (along with Faith scaling the weapon also gets bonus damage for humanity carried). Humanity, just like souls, is lost when you die (requiring you to make your way to the point of death and recovering souls and humanity lost, if you die before recovering this then its lost for good). To add to that: even if you have a ton of humanity Faith based weapons still don't do as much damage as weapons upgraded down the regular route.

so TL;DR Faith and INT weapons don't do as much damage as weapons upgraded down the regular route that scale off STR and/or DEX.

So what to make of Faith and INT

FAITH

In short; FAITH is for support oriented spells, generally. There are a few offensive oriented ones that are pretty neat, but the requirements for them are MASSIVE and some require PVP to acquire in a game that is old and has none anymore.

Well, that's a lie. There's still PVP, but it sure as sh*t isn't as alive as Dark Souls 3, and it requires third party tools to find another person to fight.

Weapons that are upgraded down the FAITH scaling paths (occult and divine weaponry) don't do as much damage as weapons upgraded normally. Ultimately faith is so-so since there aren't many miracles to use anyway, and many of the upper level ones require a massive investment in the stat.

Out of all the stats I'd say it's the second most useless due to how sparesely used it is, the ineffectiveness of Faith weaponry, and how underwhelming it is in general. It's probably the least thought of stat the devs made.

Put points into it if you're going INT as well, since the investment is massive and only really worth it if you're going to make the most of it and couple it with INT. Otherwise meet the base requirement for some spells you may want to use and leave it at that.

INTELLIGENCE

More useful than Faith because of a higher variety of spells and lower requirements for their use. The weapon upgrades still don't prodive more damage than weapons upgraded regularly though, unless said weapons had low scaling to begin with. Even then, the damage being split in two means it's also reduced twice through enemy armor, ultimately ending up in less damage dealt in general.



Ultimately if you're going the damage route and want to make the most of your levels then STR and DEX are the way to go.

When do I stop levelling up a stat?

Whatever the stat you choose to level up, here's a tip: don't level it past level 40 (other than vitality).

You see, the damage scaling drops off after level 40. So whether Faith based weapons, INT based weapons, or STR/DEX, after level 40 the scaling and damage bonus drops off. I forget the exact math, but from level....say, 20 to 30 you might get 50 bonus damage from a weapon with S scaling, whilst from level 40 to 80 you get 50 bonus damage.

In other words you get diminishing returns on weapon scaling and bonus damage after level 40. It's not worth getting 40 or so extra damage out of 60 additional levels (for reference, you might get 200 bonus damage from level 1-40). The points are better spent on Vitality.

The only reason to level STR, INT, FAITH, or DEX past 40 is to meet requirements. And no DEX weapon has a requirement past 30 or so. A few STR weapons have insanely high STR requirements, I believe one weapon is past 40. And I think one miracle has a FAITH requirement of 50, but don't quote me on that.

Endurance is the same...sort of. Your stamina (the green bar I talked so much about) stops going up past level 40. Afterwards levelling up Endurance only increases your equipment load. Which I guess is useful if you want to have really heavy armor and be below 50% equipment load. But there are rings in the game that can be equipped and MASSIVELY increase your equip load anyway.

The only stats worth levelling past 40 are attunement (since level 50 nets you the last attunement slot), and vitality. Vitality, even with a drop off, is still an effective stat to level if you've got what you need from the other stats. You will be levelling up the stats that your weapons scale off for damage, after levelling endurance to 40 (you HAVE TO do this, trust me) vitality is the final stat to level. Even with a drop off it's the most logical step.

This is also the reason why vitality is one of the final stats I level. I already explained effective hp and how stamina can be seen as 'regenerating health' since that's where the damage will be applied, to the green bar instead of the red bar when an attack is blocked. How in many ways the red bar is really only a sort of ''mistake'' bar for when you accidentally take a hit on the chin, since you AREN'T supposed to be tanking hits in this game cause you will die in a few hits. But it's still the most logical step, after maxing the bonus damage on your weapon/sorceries.

A little word on two-handing weapons

And finally, a little word on two-handing weapons.

Your character is typically carrying a shield in one hand and a weapon in the other. You can put away your shield, though, and two hand a weapon. When you two hand a weapon, your strength stat is increased by 1.5, so your damage with said weapon goes up and the required Strength to weild it goes down.

It makes sense, since a weapon that can't be utilized with one hand due to low str should be able to be used if you two hand it, since you're using both hands thereby increasing strength.

So if you have this huge sword that needs a requirement of 24 strength to use, you might not be able to use it with your shield since you have 16 STR, but if you two hand it you meet the requirement. Since .5 of 16 is 8, and 16+8 is 24.

The downside is obvious: you don't have a shield. You can't block attacks. You can still roll though, and rolling=invincibility frames. Blocking doesn't matter anyway if you can two hit kill enemies (or one hit). So two handing is best when exploring and seeing that you can kill enemies quickly with the adjusted damage. Not so good for boss fights unless you're really doing a ton of damage and can end it quick.

You can also play a little strategically and have your shield up when blocking attacks from a boss, and quickly put your shield away and two hand a weapon, inflicting more damage than if you one handed it. Then you can immediately go back to one handing the weapon and blocking any attacks the boss dishes out. This requires a bit of familiarity with attack patterns, though, and knowing when to put your shield away and when to bring it out.

Anyway, along with allowing you to use weapons that you otherwise can't use one-handed, two handing also presents an interesting mechanic in terms of planning what to level up.

You see, 27x1.5=~40

Remember how I said levelling up stats past 40 isn't worthwhile since the diminishing returns don't make it worthwhile and the additional damage isn't worth all the levels, or even that substantial?

Well, since two-handing a weapon increases your STR stat by 1.5, then two-handing STR weapons effectively makes your stat 40. In other words, level 27 on STR is all that's required since two handing said weapon will boost your stat to level 40. The downside, like I said, is that you can't have your shield out. But since putting away your shield and bringing it back out is actually fairly quick, any person familiar with battle in Dark Souls can easily get accustomed to putting away their shields when going on the offensive and bringing them back out when going on defense.

In this manner, you can level up your weapon scaling stat to 27 and place points into other stats. Having your shield ready on the fly is still worth it instead of putting it away and bringing it out, but it's definitely something to keep in mind. You can level STR to 27 then level up a different stat to use other abilities for a bit whilst you decide where to go with stats, and still get the benefits of a STR weapon scaling with a stat of 40 by two handing it. Later in the game you'll most likely be used to battle and can two hand effectively.

This also goes both ways: you can two hand a STR weapon at level 40 and get the benefits of level 60 scaling (40x1.5=60)

Two handing is most useful for those gigantic fuc*ing Axes and Swords. The ones that require 50 STR or some other ridiculous sh*t. Two handing comes into its most practical use with STR weapons since a few of them have massive requirements.

Worth noting is that even if your weapon is primarily DEX based, if it scales off STR (even at level E), then two handing it will still give a decent damage boost once you're 27 in STR. There's also a hidden damage multiplier when two handing any weapon period, so you'll get a damage boost on STR weapons, but even if your weapon doesn't scale off STR at all it still has an increase in damage.

Thanks to Skater901 for pointing out an error on my part here; requirements aren't reduced for all weapons by two-handing them, just STR weapons

TL;DR

-Don't level up resistance, EVER

-Screw Faith, maybe get enough for homeward or heal

-3 or so attunement slots are fine, maybe one more

-INT is okay if you wanna meet reqs for sorceries, but don't put much past...ehh..level 18 or so unless you're going magic route in terms of weapon upgrades

-level up DEX and STR, also level up weapons to +15; you get the most damage with the scaling off STR and DEX and don't need the other upgrade paths

-Level up Endurance to 40 NO MATTER WHAT

-Vitality is cool and always will be cool, but prioritize weapon damage and endurance before it. Have it around 18 or so for 70% of the game and you're solid. Just make sure to upgrade armor as well.

-two-hand weapons for BONUS DAMAGE and when going through an area where you can 2 hit enemies or less.

[Shadow Wizard Goon Squad]

Didn't look at all the comments so don't know if this has been corrected yet, but strength does not softcap at 40, it softcaps at 27. Unless you intend on wielding a weapon that takes more than 27 str to two hand (so basically nothing except the biggest weapons) you are much better off pumping vit and end on strength builds.

Also, as far as "blocking 99% of attacks in game", it's generally better to set yourself up to fast roll instead of blocking every attack. Blocking heavier attacks from bosses has a heavy stamina cost and oftentimes a knockback, which shortens your windows to actually attack. Do yourself a favor, learn the roll timings for attacks. Almost all weapons have fast and decent damage on rolling light attacks, so dodges and attacks can often be chained together.

[CazadorDeLobo]

+1 Resistance is bad

[[para]dox]

Thanks!

[CptDumplin]

ALSO:
Don't worry too much too much about your solid equipment load maximum, as there are 2 rings that enhance your maximum equipment load by 70%.
One being Havel's Ring, which adds 50% of your native maximum load ontop, the other being the ring of Favor and Protection, that adds 20% to your maximum Health, Stamina and Equipment load.

[itsmeHawkeyeG]

This is a great guide you got here

I gotta say, one thing I disagree with is the value of Vitality...
Vitality, #1!
That is to say that Dark Souls taught me that HP is the most important stat in any RPG though I get what you are saying about upping your damage too and it depends on whether you want vit gouge or glass cannon type ;)

[FaithlessZealot]

i leveled resistance to break the META

[Cpt.Zalan]

Sorry I can't hear you over my 2640 poison resist

[Cpt. Moist Panties]

I'll take your word for it. I assume they're rare drops.

[Salok]

"Gave the covenants a quick google and the PVP ones give miracles and/or swords."

The rewards are farmable off certain enemies, Darkmoon items can be farmed on crow demons in Painted World, Evil Eyes for Nito can be farmed from lizard-like enemies in the depths and that's about it.

[Cpt. Moist Panties]

Yeah, looked it up and you do get a damage boost on all weapons whether they scale off STR or not when two handing, but you were right. Credit given in that section