Elden Ring Beginner Advice

Exploration:
- You'll want to search every part of the map and find as much items and treasure, there's no rushing the game. The more you explore, the stronger you get.
- If you look on the map you can see monument shaped icons, this is where maps are located. Try and get them asap.
- The game will want you to go to Stormveil Castle right away, but it's way too early. Explore every part of the southern map first and gain many levels.
- Throughout the world you'll find caves, tunnels, and catacombs. These are mini dungeons to explore. Catacombs have items to level up your spirit companions, Tunnels have ore to level up your weapons.
- You'll find creepy looking statues here and there. The direction they're facing is where a catacombs is located. Also, glowing blue trees show you where a mine is located.
- These  small black & red spots on the map indicate that there's a mines there.
- In certain locations you'll find these white scarab's rolling a ball of dung. If you kill them, you get a new move you can equip to a weapon. Kinda like the gold skulltullas in OoT. You'll hear them from a distance with a sparkling sound.
- Make note of stuff on your map by placing icons. Like if you found a boss enemy that you can't take on just yet.


Battle:
- Dodging is the number one mechanic to understand. With it, you can roll through almost any attack. Timing is key. It can give you openings to attack. Say a boss did a ground stomp move and you rolled right as they landed, you take no damage and you can get some hits on the boss.
- Jump attacks are useful for breaking an enemy's stance. When you hear a noise and the enemy is downed, you can walk up to them from the front and do a critical blow. Don't just keep attacking, go for the critical. Every enemy, even bosses can be downed after enough hits.
- When you walk behind an enemy, whether they've seen you or not, you can land a critical blow on them for free. Any time you can get behind an enemy you can take advantage of that. But beware, some enemies can do the same to your backside.
- In the early game you don't need to face off against stronger enemies in the field, feel free to run for it and focus on exploring and finding stuff instead.
- Don't enter a boss battle with a handful of runes, you will risk losing them. Try and spend them on a level up or merchant. Use golden runes from your inventory to get enough runes to level up.
- It's good to have two weapon types for different enemy types. For example, slash weapons like swords are good against fleshy enemies while strike weapons like a mace or morning star is good against undead, rock enemies, scale, or armored enemies. Once you level up endurance enough times, you can easily equip two weapons without it being too heavy
- You can lure a single enemy from a group if you throw a knife or shoot a bowgun. Helpful for picking them off one by one.


Leveling:
- Level up as soon as you can, prioritize leveling up over buying stuff from merchants. It's never a waste to use your runes to boost your level and you're going to need tons of level ups.
- Try and focus on leveling your vigor for a good while. Having more HP is very important.
- Level up your endurance so that you can get more stamina which means more chances to dodge attacks. It also increases your equip load to have heavier gear.
- Level up strength or dexterity if the weapons you're using scale with that stat. You can see which stats a weapon scales with.
- No matter which stat you choose on a level up, your defensive stats automatically go up and resistances.
- Save your golden rune items and only use them to help you edge closer to a level up. They're also helpful if you're short on runes to buy stuff from merchants.


Equipment:
- In this game you're going to pretty much keep the armor you started with for a very long time. You'll find different armor and weapons in the world, but usually they're not for your class or they're low end.
- You can equip more than one weapon at a time and switch between them, but be aware that it will increase your equip load. For the start of the game only keep one weapon equipped.
- Try to keep your equip load on medium. Avoid heavy load which makes your dodge rolls slow and heavy. The status screen shows your equip load.
- Once you find a weapon you like using, you can level them up with smithing stones. Chances are that the weapon you're using will be the one you're going to use for a long long time. it's rare to find suitable weapons so don't hold back on upgrading hoping for something better to show up soon.


Other Info:
- Anything you want to know about, such as what an item is for, always look it up. This game is designed around reading its wiki page or asking friends. Always google everything you need to know. If you keep the game in borderless fullscreen, you can use alt tab to easily switch to the web browser.
- When you die you drop all your runes. They land exactly in the spot you died and you can go pick them back up. If you jumped off a cliff and died from fall damage, the runes will be on the upper cliff and not on the floor.
- Be sure to buy the crafting tool from the merchant, as well as any cookbooks. These unlock new crafting recipes.
- If you get completely stuck on a boss you can craft a furlcalling finger remedy. Once you use it, you can see summon signs from other players to join your world to help fight the boss. But this also opens you up to being invaded by other players.