Ok, I literally just beat the game today, spent 100 hrs or so doing it - much of that time was me just looking around, trying to find stuff. Got to level 110 on first game. I actually think I became obsessed with this one. Some suggest doing the levels like this: 1-1, 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1. I didnt do that, but think it would work. In 1-1, you will find two rings: cling and thief - both help a lot. The official guide indicates for soul farming, focus initally on 1-1 , 4-2, 4-4 (which is an archdemon level, but easy), and 4-3 - I guess I agree with that
Only level that made me go crazy was 1-4 - I HIGHLY suggest doing that dead last. Best level for soul farming: 4-4, once you find a Ring Of Avarice. You can get around 30k souls within a minute of that level, once the boss is dead
On a side note, played two hours of Dark Souls and loving it - menu system is darn near identical as I hoped - makes the controls easy
i've been gaining soul but the real trick is getting new equipment and I'm not clear on how that works yet.
so any tips are welcome
Lot of em are just from drops after you kill an enemy - one is if you have the broken sword and take one of the demon souls to the blacksmith in 3-1, He'll turn it into a BADASS sword. Forget which soul, but when you kill a major demon, just hang onto them - dont 'cash them in' as I did early on. I missed some cool upgrades that way. Stuff like that. A great site is the Demon Souls Wiki page - helped me a lot, or if I just wanted to check out something, such as World Tendency or Character Tendency - for example..
One strange weapon or item 'upgrade' is if you take shiny objects to Hawkgirl in 4-1....she'll be near a nest and just a voice. If you leave certain items and save the game and load it, an item will be exchanged. Game has a lot of secret crap like that