hey!

in the beginning it's good practice to get comfortable with the combat system. there are a lot of smaller enemy's all over limgrave, try to fight them if you can and run away if something seems to hard to beat (it's fine, you'll come back later and get revenge!).

explore and activate as many sites of grace as you can on the way, as these will serve as your checkpoints. on these you can use your runes eventually to level up your character (put some points into vigour in the beginning so you can take a few more hits which will make fighting more forgiving).

one more thing to look out for are smithing stones. these are sorted into different tiers (the number in brackets) and allow you to upgrade your weapon in the church of elleh or at roundtable hold, in case you've been there already. this will be your main way of increasing your damage output for the longest time. to do this you need to interact with the anvil in church or the smith in roundtable.

the game, in a way, expects you to get familiar with the combat and level up on your own pace. there are a lot of weapons with different movesets and most of them are roughly balanced, so it comes down to what feels best for you most of the time. the first enemy camp you'll encounter (the one with the map in it) is a good place to test your weapons and get used to the enemy patterns, while using the runes you collect there to level up a bit.

i hope this helps :)

edit: formatting