In all seriousness, it will be a vast departure from anything you have ever experienced in an open world game. You will not have a map covered in objectives and markers you have to go and clear. You don't have long quest log you have to keep referring back to. You won't have a compendium of items and materials you have to go find.
From Software games are ambiguous and unforgiving.
What Elden Ring provides to the newbie is the ability to say, "This is hard... Imma go do something else for a while, first." Then you come back and have a new weapon, ash of war, summon, or just learned to "get gud". Now that boss seems much more manageable.
NEVER expect for the game to blatantly tell you anything. Be curious and be ready to fail. You will die a lot, and that is part of the design. You learn from failing. You will sometimes walk into a boss room, barely take away 1/20th of his HP, and die immediately. Instead of rage quitting, think about what you could have done differently. Try again. If you are getting one-shotted with a standard attack, you may be underleveled. The benefit you will have, joining in their most recent game, is they no longer punish you with a 5 minute hike back to the boss that just killed you. There is usually a close Point of Grace or Statute to respawn at, which usually puts you less than 20 seconds away from the place you just died.
I have said it before in this thread, but I always focus on killing quickly. Be mindful of your stats and focus on only 3. The others, you just get up to a point that allows you to use whatever weapon you want. You will be able to respec in game, but not for a while, and it's not unlimited.
Focus points on your main Damage attribute (Dex, Str, Faith, Int, Arc), then Vigor for HP pool, then either Mind for a magic user or End for a melee user. Don't be one of those newbies that throws all of your attributes in VIgor. Each point doesn't give you THAT much HP, and you are probably only dying because you aren't avoiding attacks. You're better off just learning not to get hit, and putting those points into your damage. Bosses hit so damn hard, that an extra 125 HP won't help you as much as an extra 15 dmg, imo. I went back and forth between VIgor and Dexterity until Vigor was 25. I then focused on Dex until about 50, then worked on vigor a little more. I think my vigor was around 40-45 at level 150.
Always keep this in mind... many people have beaten the dude that pissed you off. It's sometimes easy to forget about a mechanic in the game, because you hadn't used it yet. If you hit a wall, stop and think if there is a better way to confront the challenge.
That's about all I have. Elden Ring is a top 5 game of all time, for me.
