So I'm playing this for the first time (finally!).
Beat Demon's back in February and have been itching to play Dark.
So anyway, I'm up to the Bell Gargoyles and decided to take a break from dying and ask a few questions.
Most importantly, can I get a good explanation of the humanity stuff? Most importantly, what's 'human' and what's 'hollowed'? Is it just the counter being '0' or 'not 0'? And how does kindling fires work? Does 1 humanity make it go from giving 5 flasks to 10? Or do I need to use a bunch and therefore should just kindle 'central' bonfires?
Stat wise I'm focusing on a melee build after feeling magic cheesed Demon's a bit. Been putting stuff into vitality, endurance and strength. Should I be getting strength or do I just need a certain level for weapon equips and then not worry about it (that goes for dex as well)? And same with int/faith, is there a good spell for melee builds where I should level those to the point I can learn it? Like that heal when you die in Demon's which saved me many, many times.
Oh and what the hell are covenants and do I need to worry about them? I said no to the monk guy at Firelink Shrine for the time being.
Basically everything different to Demon's I need a quick rundown on lol
A break from dying is always a good thing to take.
You are Human when the Humanity-counter has a white lining, and your guy also looks a lot less like a zombie then. The number on the counter only represents the soft Humanity you have at the moment. Hard Humanity are the Humanity -items, which give you one (or two with Twin Humanity) soft Humanity per use.
You can only use soft Humanity to kindle bonfires or turn Hollow, and soft Humanity also gives you a bonus to defenses (up to 99 Humanity) and Item Discovery (up to 10). Some weapons also gain bonus damage from Humanity, namely Chaos -weapons. This bonus damage caps at 10 Humanity.
Kindling uses 1 Humanity (or 2 if you were Hollow) and raises the amount of Estus you get from that bonfire by 5, but is capped at 10 until you beat a certain boss, after which the cap is 20 Estus. You should mostly kindle bonfires in areas you tend to repeat, or have a tough time in. You do get a ton of Humanity, so don't worry too much about running out of it.
Stat-wise 40 is the recommended cap for most stats, after which the diminishing returns really start hitting you. Some BIG weapons need more Str than this, but you can still use those if you wield them two-handed, which adds half of your Str to your Str. Raising attack-stats (Str/Dex) depends on whether you want to make the weapon elemental or not: You can turn a weapon with high (A/S) Str scaling into an utter powerhouse by investing more points into that stat, at least until Str 40. Turning a weapon elemental completely removes stat-based scaling from the weapon, making it do flat damage according to its upgrade-level. You can do a lot of damage at really low Str/Dex by using elemental weapons, and investing those left-over points to other stats. It depends on what kind of character you want. Note that you cannot use Resins/spells on elemental weapons.
If you don't want to invest into Int/Fai, you can use Pyromancy, which has a lot of good attack and buff -spells. It's quite expensive, but really useful for any kind of character. You only need some Attunement slots and a free weapon/shield slot to use them.
Some useful Pyromancies:
Great Combustion/Black Flame - Extremely useful close-range spell, which gets really powerful as you upgrade your Pyromancy Flame.
Power Within - A big boost in damage and stamina regeneration, at the cost of draining your health slowly.
Fire Orb/Great Fireball/Great Chaos Fireball - Ranged spells, useful.
Fire Storm/Fire Tempest/Chaos Storm - Large AoE damage around you. Somewhat useful, but slow.
Miracles and Sorceries often require quite a big investment in stats to get powerful, with some exceptions.
Miracles:
Tranquil Walk of Peace(Fai 18) - Slows enemies down who are near you, also applies to other players, stopping them from getting away from you. Very useful in PVP.
Vow of Silence(Fai 30) - Stops spellcasting around you, useful. Needs a lot of Faith though.
Magic Barriers(Fai 18/24) - Useful against mages.
Heal(Fai 12) - With 5 casts, this is a real boon in the beginning of the game, with low Faith investment as well. That being said, it's not really worth going Faith just for this.
Sorceries:
Magic Weapons(Int 10/15/25) - Good if you're going to invest in magic, but getting only the lowest of these with the minimum stat-investment is definitely not worth it.
Covenants are like guilds, you should definitely join them. Find one you like, and keep with them, at least until you've gotten all the Covenant rewards. Note that if you don't use the Pardoner to leave a Covenant before switching to another, you gain Sin. At least for most Covenants.
Edit: Good god that took too long to write.
