May I offer some unsolicited advice.

1. Your damage output is as important if not more important than “getting gud”. The more damage you do, the fewer attacks you have to dodge. That’s kind of the secret to all these Souls games.

2. Damage and damage mitigation come from stacking many small, incremental bonuses and upgrades. The most important upgrade for damage is upgrading your weapon with ores. Pick one weapon (eg. Longsword) and invest all ores into it.

3. It’s possible to suicide-run into dangerous areas for upgrade and powerful items since you don’t lose items that you’ve picked up upon death. You can collect mid and high-tier ores this way even at low level.

4. It’s perfectly okay to farm exp from non-bosses. The best places are higher level areas (relative to your character) where common enemies give as much exp as early game bosses, yet who can be killed near save points. There are various areas for early, mid, and late game, just Google them.

5. If you’re still having trouble, do each step in the following video as you feel comfortable. youtu.be/GYI5Z3jhKB4