5. Explore Everything
An old trope of any RPG game for certain, but one that's never more rewarding than in Dark Souls 2. Traveling off the beaten path, even down precarious cliffs or around big, dangerous-looking enemies, will often lead to you finding something extremely valuable and useful like a weapon or an Estus Flask Shard (used to give you new Estus Flasks that can be used to heal your character). DS2 is positively stocked to the gills with secrets, including hidden walls that you have to examine to open, contraptions that can only be opened using an item called Pharos' Lockstone and lord-knows what else. Exploration is of course an extremely dangerous and risky task, but with time comes skill, and with skill comes the ability to move around the environment for a lengthier period without dying. Dark Souls 2 has a penchant for putting items in places that look out of reach; if this is the case, the item in question is probably even better than usual and there will be a way to actually get to where it is.