Decided to play this as my first Fromsoft game and it is absolutely kicking my arse. Kinda fun though and I totally see myself gradually grinding my way through areas before hitting a total brick wall and giving up for good.
Anyone know where I can grind for coins or whatever in the early game so I can level up vigor a bit and not get absolutely fucking massacred every 10 minutes?
There is a portal NW of the 3rd Church of Marika. That takes you to the beast chapel. Go AROUND the Gargoyle and head south, should find a Golden Seed enroute to the Site of Grace near the bridge. Now you have two choices here. Fight or no Fight.
No Fight you need to go east from that site of grace and drop off the cliff and go south across the bridge to Lenne's Rise Site of Grace. From there you can follow the road west and then a Giant Ball will spawn, if you can get it to suicide itself off the cliff using Torrent you nab almost 2k. Go back to the site of grace and rinse and repeat as necessary.
The Fight method is from the Farum Greatbridge site of grace are a bunch of little dudes in black. They give 1055 runes a kill. If you get the Lordsworn Greatsword from the Gatefront ruins you can kill them in 7 hits 2 handed. Hit them 4 times then they stagger, Crit them, then two more times for the finish. You can get the Greatsword in the back of the Cart like 20 ft south of the Gatefront Site of Grace.
There is a 3rd one time method and that involves a few steps but its 91k runes.
1. Get a Golden Chicken Foot. You can get one if you go east from the Church of Elleh, its the church with the Tree Sent in the beginning, once you hit the beach follow it south like a big "C" when you get to the waterfall there is an item on the ground thats a Gold chicken foot.
2. Go south to the Weeping Peninsula, past the bridge you will eventually get to a crashed Caravan. If you look in the back of the cart you should find a Morning Star.
3. Go north from the Gatefront Ruins to the Stormhill Shack. Then follow the road east till you get to Caelid and jump over the fire wall to find the Rotview Balcony Site of Grace. From here go NE/Then East but stay south of the road, its full of Giant Rat Dogs, eventually you will see the Caelum Ruins Site of Grace. From here go NE off the road and you will see a spot to jump across a chasm to Dragonbarrow with a site of grace in sight. Follow the road north to get the map then go south and drop down from the cliff. Keep going south and hug the edge of the land but DO NOT DROP OFF. Go east and eventually you will see a fort, in front of it is the Fort Faroth Site of Grace.
4. Equip the Morning Star and make sure the Gold Chicken foot is on your items list. Your going to attack the tail of the Giant White Dragon and use the Bleed effect to kill it. Should take 6 bleed explosions (with low arcane) and it will be really close to death. Use the chicken foot and swing away till the final bleed explosion kills it for around 91k runes.
Edit: also those Youtube videos about AFK farming are scams just to sell stuff from their website. You won't get millions of runes because the only reason they are is they are maxed level. Just an FYI.