I fully agree with you on the hidden information problem. So many people seem to kind of praise this though. I, for one, started 3 characters and with every on

I fully agree with you on the hidden information problem. So many people seem to kind of praise this though. I, for one, started 3 characters and with every one of them I ran into a problem at around the time when the lightning spear becomes too weak. Pretty much the only option I saw was to craft a weapon, but the crafting system just isn't explained at all. The only way to learn something about the crafting is, as you said, trial & error, which is just frustrating, especially if you have to sacrifice rare resources for that. Basically if you want to play the game without the wiki (which still feels a bit like cheating for me) you either have to put in insane amounts of effort (I mean come on, it's still only a game!), or you're fucked. I really hope Dark Souls 2 is better in offering at least basic explanations of the friggin' game mechanics. </rant>