Help for a new player, coop

Hey everyone,

I finally convinced my brother, living in another country, to get this game. That we could play coop was a big sell, if not the biggest. However, this game is challenging enough, and with Trolls invading, it is completely turning him off.

My build advice for him was (note, this is a build for a new person, not an optimized one) was to get your str/dex to around 20, put a few into resistance (not useless if you have very low humanity all the time), push END to 20, Vit to 16, then continue to pump str/dex equally.

Gives a lot of weapon options, and allows the use for things like Long Swords, Bastard Swords, Great swords (he doesn't want to be told how to find the best items, so I'm sticking with things that he finds along the way).

Any other advice? Mainly it's the low level trolls. But I have no good solution for them, and I don't want to make my own troll character to combat them, although I have debated it. The main reason would be because he wants to coop in my world as well.

He's had the game for 2 months, but he only plays when I play, so a handful of hours a week. He hasn't even made it past the Gaping Dragon yet.

Death to trolls.

Edit: Perhaps I could make a build that used some faith with Force and try to knock them off ledges to their death. In most sections of the game there are such ledges, and trolls are usually over confident. Just gotta make it seem like you're a noob.

Thinking about this more, I'm thinking what I could do is take one of my advanced characters, do an Inventory transfer to a new character, and only use said gear if I get invaded. That would give me everything I need in terms of Gear. Force would still be quite useful I'm thinking to knock people off of edges; please correct me if I'm wrong! (Would like to know before I attempt it, and we both die horribly). Does increased Dex increase cast speed of Force? It's already super fast.

Well, resistence is pretty useless even with no humanity :suspect: , you could make him a Vit/End spear user tanker for his first playthrough, i think its the most easy build to finish the game (that and a sorcerer hibrid)

Sadly anti-griefing sounds like it is your best bet, just use the weapons for when you are invaded by a griefer as you said. Also remember, when an invader arrives it is best to head for the boss and engage them, sending the vader home. Usually a vader has some tricks up their sleeve as well as general PvP knowledge, so it if you can the best course is to merely not engage them.

Is RES such an oversight in Dark Souls that it's useless even without Humanity? I was under the assumption that it is useless, but only because you don't have to increase your SL to get the same thing with Humanity.

As for an END/VIT build, they are reliant on non-scaling weapons are they not? Are there common weapons available that it would have access to?
No DrakeSword, no masterkey/runs into special areas to grab weapons. This is someone that wants to play the game 'normally' without specialized knowledge. Imagine there is no Wiki, no forum, nothing; just you in the game, and you have to figure it all out yourself. That's why I think STR with a bit of dex would be useful. I can't think of a good weapon that is common that you wouldn't have scaling. Reinforced Club perhaps, but it's an ugly weapon.

The pickaxe is a pretty good weapon with STR scaling if I remember correctly, as well it deals thrust damage. If he started a cleric, the mace is excellent as well.

Great. Going to use trickery hopefully, so I'll get Elite Knight Armour upgraded fully, and a Lightning Claymore +5, with Havel's Ring and a Plate ring (likely Fire or Lit depending on what they have) and just lvl up my END/VIT early game. Using DWGR would be nice but it may tip my hand/trickery. Usually trolls like to play with their 'prey', and if I can trick them, then stunlock/claymore them to death that would be awesome.