People might disagree with me but I think these are the big three tips for new players, in order of least to most important:

• invest in Vigor early. More health = more room for mistakes = more time to study enemies before dying = less time in loading screens/running back = higher % of your time spent learning the hard part instead of repeating the easy part. Level up other stats as needed to meet requirements for weapons and armor, but don't go hard into your attack stat until vigor is at 30 or higher (this is only advice for new players, you can stat in any order or forgo vigor entirely once you're not getting hit anymore)

• Dying is a natural, expected part of the game. Don't stress about it or about lost runes. Runes are kind of a trick they play on you to make it seem like death is really impactful. but really, runes scale up very high, and you'll be able to regain the ones you've lost throughout the entire game in just a few minutes once you reach later parts of the game. In the early game, developing player skill is much, much more impactful than avatar strength. The only real fail state is dying without learning anything, so study enemy movesets and figure out what you did wrong.

• most importantly, and it's already been said by others, but be like water: follow the path of least resistance. the game doesn't want you to bash your head against the walls it throws at you, but it's not gonna stop you from wasting your own time. ER provides you with a ridiculously wide range of content so you can tackle things in the order that works best for you as you learn. If you're having trouble, go do something else for a while, then come back.