DeS - First playthrough questions

Dark souls veteran looking to play des for the first time. I'm sure all of this has been beaten to death already, but bear with me if you can. I have read the "so I just got my copy of demon souls" thread and the "travelers guide" by Sentiel and Walter (great info here, +1's) but still have a few questions.

1. Is there a better character planner than the following link? https://sites.google.com/site/darksoulstats/demon-s-souls-calculators

2. What SL range can I expect to reach by the end of the first play through.

3. In dark souls, a safe way to build a primarily melee char was to invest the minimum in weapon requirements and go down the elemental weapon path while increasing vit/end to a comfortable level. Once the desired levels of vit/end has been attained, focus on dex/str for weapon scaling. Is this method viable / recommended for des?

4. Is there any weapon upgrade path that is next to useless (ie. raw weapons from dks).

5. I want to make a 27/40 or 40/40 build to try a variety of weapons. In des, upgrading weapons changes what stat the weapon scales with. Is there a noticeable benefit in going down the quality upgrade path when I can focus on either dex or str path for the same weapon instead?

6. One of the methods of increasing white tendency is by killing bosses. Do bosses re-spawn?

That's it for now. I'll post more questions if I think of any. Thanks in advance to all that reply.

Cheers!
DigitaLinsanitY

1. Cannot answer

2. Similarly to DkS, SL 50-70.

3. In DeS, there is an elite non-scaling weapon and quite a couple of really powerful early game weapons. It isn't just viable, but reccomended for both begginers and experts.

4. Probably the "Dark" path for a couple of reasons. There is also the "Tearing" path, but it doesn't suck, it just tries to act as a medium between 2 paths, so anything it can do, the other path can do better. It is very rare for this path to be the best choice in any particular situation.

5. Quality has a slight damage edge over other paths, but it is very low. Only recommended if you have extra points to spare or you feel like using many weapons on 1 character.

6. They don't. White Tendency is hard to get (or rather, really easy to mess up) as opposed to Black. You're either really good  to get White Tendency or you've taken a ton of precautions so your Tendency doesn't lower.

I should probably add that diminishing returns for str/dex start at 50, not 40.

A tip: don't make a dex build that uses a non-unique weapon, since then you'll have to farm for a pure bladestone (not fun).

Another tip: always have you're equip load under 50%. Armour is pointless. Unless you're fighting 1-1 dreglings, the difference in damage between going naked and wearing full brushwood is negligible.

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