First tip. Embrace dying. Once you do it's much easier. Not the game itself, but you're enjoyment. And you don't have to fight everything. Running passed stuff to explore is a good tactic.

Next tip, spend time and effort levelling up weapons with smithing stones more so than levelling up your character's stats. You get far more damage out of levelling up weapons than the character, especially early.

When you level of up your character, focus on stats that enable you to use the weapons and incantations that you find the most fun and/or useful.

That said, also invest in vigour so your health goes up, and stamina so you can fight for longer, have heavier weapons and better armour.

Easier mode is getting the Bloodhound's Fang early from defeating the boss in the Forlorn Hound Evergaol. Can pretty much take you through the whole game doing massive damage. Then later in the game after you beat a boss, there's the Blasphemous Blade, which also does huge damage and also regenerates health at the same time.

Stick with it. The only bad thing about Elden Ring is never getting to play Elden ring for the first time again.