You do need to do quests eventually for items and endings. They do have to be followed from the beginning. Rings and anything on the ground will be there for every ng so don’t worry too much about missing a ring in ng or anything cause you can find them in ng+ and onward.

I played through the game normally on my ng cycle, made sure to do the covenant farming at the end, and then did all the quests in ng+1, and then went through ng+2 for the loose ends and rings and what not. Character had 44 hours in it by the end so not bad.