S&S is a kinda hard game, and even disregarding that, the lack of information makes it needlessly hard to get into which might ruin your first impression. To help people get past that initial hurdle, I figured I might as well write a little guide telling you the ropes without having to go look for wikis. Hope it helps!

When starting the game, you can choose from eight different classes. While there is no huge difference in starting stats, their original skill distribution can make parts of the skill tree inconvenient to reach without huge investment in intermediary nodes.

• Knight: Starts off with skills in swordfighting and heavy armor, making them a solid offensive choice for your first run if you think playing as a paladin is too boring, and with just a single skill point's worth of investment you can access the center of the skill tree and thus respec in any direction.
  
• Mage: Starts off with a basic fire spell and skills in magic and wand use. Requires great stat investment to access good melee skills, as these skills are far from the center of the skill tree, and are weak early in the game as the first ranks of magic spells are not very powerful. One of the first bosses' weapons, a magic greatsword made from the Village Of Smiles' boss remains, can be created with alchemy relatively early on and is a powerful weapon for magic builds, so if you want to go for a mage with physical options, invest in swordfighting over hammers or knives. With the proper stat investments, mages have access to the most powerful attacks in the game, but they excel at burst damage and not endurance and are very underwhelming early in the game.
  
• Paladin: starts off with powerful heavy armor, a mace, and the skills to use both; it's a good class for defensive builds. Also starts with a ring that regenerates HP slowly when worn, although the effect generally is not very noticeable.
  
• Thief: focused on dexterity, knives, and light armor, but is easy to customize into any class since their starting skill is next to the center of the skill tree. Starts with a bunch of bombs and throwing knives.
  
• Chef: starts with poor equipment and no skills, making the start of the game a challenge. Only pick this class if you really want a challenge, and you probably shouldn't read this guide if you have that mindset :P
  
• Cleric: starts with the lv.1 prayer skill, which allows you to cast prayer magic such as healing, but requires a lot of skill point investment to get offensive skills such as blunt weapons, magic, or armor. An excellent choice in co-op gameplay as many of their healing and buffing spells affect both players, and becomes very powerful in single-player as well with proper stat investments due to buffs and healing.
  
• Pauper: starts with okayish and varied equipment (an axe and a spear) but no skills, letting you experiment with any skills you want. A jack-of-all-trades starting class that is less challenging to play than the chef, although not the easiest one either.
  
• Hunter: starts with skills in whips and guns/crossbows, far from the center of the skill tree; while this gives them access to rare skills early, this also means you lack customization options early on. Their original weaponry also isn't the best damage-dealing stuff in the game, but makes up for power with range. Make sure to get access to a merchant ASAP so you can restock on ammunition, or your crossbow won't do you anything good.

When creating a character, you will be able to select Effects, which is a rare and helpful item of some sort you will start the game with, default set to 'nothing'. As the items are not explained, it can be hard to know what to pick, so here's a quick breakdown.

• Red Shards - A small quantity of healing items. Red Shards heal a small amount of HP over a long amount of time, and are generally not very useful. Not recommended.
  
• Stone Sellsword - Offer at a sanctuary to enable co-op gameplay. Selecting this as a starting gift is ideal if you plan to play the whole game co-op right away.
  
• Amber Idol - Upgrade material for alchemy used to turn a weapon into a boss weapon. It takes a while to get one normally, so if you feel like cosplaying as The Sodden Knight as soon as you can, it's an ideal starting item.
  
• Grasping Ring - Increases salt gain. Perfect to cut down on the time spent grinding and the best gift if you have no idea which item suits you best.
  
• Crystal Sphere - Allows you to convert a pre-claimed sanctuary to your creed. Not useful early in the game, but lets you access an alchemist earlier than normally and can be very useful later in the game when the absence of creed devotion bonuses in other creeds' sanctuaries can be more notable. However, at that point in the game, you've likely already picked one or two of these up.

Once you get washed up on the island the game takes place on, you will meet an old man that prompts you to select a creed. While it's hard to tell at this point, each creed offers different items at their merchants, meaning that each creed gives a very different gameplay experience and some weapons and consumables are exclusive to some of them. Don't fret too much about making the perfect choice - you'll be able to change creeds later, and apart from the three starting creeds, there's several other creeds available later in the game, each with their own benefits.

A creed lacking focus, The Three has a very varied selection of goods and is definitely the best creed to start with, although their breadth means they lack advanced items later in the game. They sell Birian Firepots right from the start, bombs that start fires over a wide area, which although having relatively low damage makes them very easy to hit with. In particular, stocking up on these lets you defeat the boss of The Watching Woods very easily. Leveling up your devotion gives you access to free buff items to imbue your weapon with fire and thunder, which is especially helpful early in the game when the 500-gold price tag makes buff items unaffordable.


Favors holy attacks and prayers. Their sanctuary healing items are the most powerful in the game and are also very quick to consume, and their clerics has access to almost all prayer scrolls in the game, but their merchants has very limited selection of both weapons and consumables. Lightvessels are relatively weak bombs, with low damage and small area-of-effect, and mostly useful against enemies with an actual weakness to holy attacks; their merchants only sells the most basic bolts, arrows and bullets. Levelling up your devotion gives you access to a holy-elemental weapon buff and a potion that heals focus, cures poison AND restores health.


Favors lightning and melee attacks. Their blacksmiths have the largest selection of weapons for sale, as well as the first two levels of upgrade materials. Sells both birian firepots and grenados, giving you access to two different types of bombs, as well as items to temporarily infuse your weapon with both fire and thunder. On the other hand, they have access to fewer spells and prayers, making them a poor choice if you plan to be a caster. One of the better creeds to start with. Grenados have the largest area of effect out of all the bomb items, but their successive explosions are randomly spaced and it is thus difficult to hit enemies with all of them.
Levelling up your devotion gives you access to an thunder-elemental weapon buff item and a buff item that temporarily boosts your stamina recovery speed.

S&S has two major types of safe zones: Sanctuaries, and Shrines. Sanctuaries are big buildings with their own musical theme, and belong to a creed; shrines are smaller and neutral. When resting at a sanctuary, you get restocked on the life and stamina potions belonging to the sanctuary's creed, no matter what creed you belong to, and when resting at a shrine, you get restocked on the items belonging to your creed. Shrines are typically used as a checkpoint right outside a boss room, while most sanctuaries are placed at the beginning or center of an area. You can only level up at sanctuaries, so if you have enough salt to level up, it's generally a good idea consider backtracking (after resting up at the shrine) so you don't risk losing it to the boss that's nearby. Note that if you die to a boss, dealing 25% of its max health in damage is enough to reclaim your salt, you don't need to kill the boss.

Sanctuaries are more than mere checkpoints, they are basically hub towns. While most sanctuaries initially are empty, you can use Offerings to permanently move in an NPC of a given type to that sanctuary, up to four per sanctuary. Using a Stone Merchant moves in a merchant, using a Stone Mage moves in a mage, and so on; each NPC gives the area a passive boost such as increased item drop rate or improved shield block capacity apart from providing services at the sanctuary, so it's often a good idea to offer them even if you already have NPCs accessible elsewhere. Don't worry too much about the limited number of offering items, they are relatively common treasures and are also randomly dropped by some enemies; you will be able to refill them as you go along.
Just keep in mind that Stone Guides gives you access to fast-travel, so you might want to save a slot in sanctuaries here and there to summon a guide to later.

What each type of NPC does:

• Merchant: Sells consumable items like bombs, ammunition, salt, healing items. Causes enemies in the region to drop more gold.
  
• Blacksmith: Upgrades items' power in exchange for special upgrade materials and salt. Sells weapons and armor. Gives a physical attack bonus in the region.
  
• Alchemist: Transforms basic items into more advanced items using special upgrade materials and salt. Gives a magic resistance boost in the region.
  
• Guide: Allows free fast-travel to any previously visited sanctuary. Sells fast-travel items. Increases item drop rate in the region.
  
• Cleric: Sells Prayer scrolls and cleric equipment. Boosts the power of prayers in the region.
  
• Mage: Sells Magic scrolls, wands and staves. Boosts the power of magic attacks in the region.
  
• Sellsword: Allows you to summon another player for co-op or PvP. Improves shield blocking in the region.
  
• Leader: Allows you to hand in certain items to upgrade creed devotion, enabling you to get more free items when resting at a sanctuary and unlock more items in the creed's shops. Increases salt gain in the region.