6. Spend Souls Before A Boss
Like any other RPG, Dark Souls lets you level up your character in Majula, the world's hub. To do this, talk to the kindly lady next to the bonfire who likes to waffle on about nothing in particular. When out and about killing and dodging enemies, you'll pick up souls as they die, shown in a tally in the bottom of the screen. You can use a bonfire to immediately travel back to Majula and spend these souls to level up your character, improving your abilities. For new players, you should know that upon death, your character drops all the souls carried. You can recover these; simply travel to the area where you died and interact with the green misty bloodstain to recover your lost souls. If you don't get there on that life, your souls will be lost forever. When fighting a boss, losing souls due to a death can be extremely deadly. Every boss on Dark Souls 2 is accessed by going through a mist gate; when you die via a boss, the only way to recover your souls is to enter again and try to kill the boss. You can then get locked in a cycle where you can't leave due to wanting your soul collection, but can't win against the boss. Instead, trek back to the bonfire and put your souls to good use long before you even contemplate going in.