So, with all the Souls talk going on lately I foolishly decided I wanted to get a platinum in Demon's Souls. I booted up my save file from ~3 years ago, where I was about 1/2-2/3 the way through NG+. I have most of the best weapons in the game (Northern Regalia, BBS, DBS, etc.) and some decent gear sets, but it seems that my gear has far outpaced my stats, which are as follows:

VIT21, INT18, STR32, END24, DEX20, MAG18, FTH19, LCK8

I don't think I've done a good job in leveling my stats. I can't wear the equipment I really want because I'm either overencumbered or too slow. And I don't think I've put points in the right stats to maximize the weapon modifiers. So where would you put points to get me back on track? Any soul/mat farming tips?

Look up the Stockpile Thomas glitch if you want to farm souls. Best, and by best I mean cheapest, way to farm souls.

4-2 was always my go to spot for farming. You can pop the mantas, run past the merchant, stay on the ledge and kill the reaper in under 45 seconds with a good bow, and doing that will net you over half a million per hour (on NG, you get way more on NG+) if you are quick enough and can stand the tedium.

On NG+ you may need to pepper that Reaper a few more times than on NG, but I assume something like a lava bow would still kill him in a few shots.

Point spending depends on what gear you eventually want to end up using. Based on your current stats you're probably best off just going for a STR weapon instead of trying to buff DEX or something up too much. Maybe the DBS or Meat Cleaver? As for gear, I went with the Old King stuff or Dark Silver but that's just me.

As for farming, either the Stockpile Thomas glitch or do 4-2 with an Avarice Ring. The glitch goes like this:

• First, drop off all but 1 of the item you want to dupe with Stockpile Thomas. You should be holding exactly 1 of the item you want to dupe (or, in the case of hitting the item limit, drop off as many as you can).
• Now make sure you've got either Nexial Binding in your Square slot, or Evacuate in your casting slot
• Next, head over to Blacksmith Boldwin and enter the "Buy" menu. Select Crescent Moon grass so that the "quantity" slider pops up.
• Without exiting any dialog menus, walk your character over to Stockpile Thomas while jamming on either the Square or L1/R1 button (depending on what you've got. I used Evacuate and put the casting item in my right hand, so I'd be hitting R1)
• If it worked right, you'll get right in front of Stockpile Thomas with the prompt, "Do you want to return to the Nexus? Yes/No" Hit the START button to exit this dialog and then speak to Thomas like normal
• Dump off the item you wanted duped and if it all went well, you should hit a loading screen and be returned to the statue in the center of the Nexus. You should also have 99 (sometimes the number goes way higher, but you can only ever effectively have 99) of the item in your inventory.

If it didn't work right, you'll immediately know because Blacksmith Boldwin will say, "Got no interest, eh? I can tell you're not going to last long." If this happens, just try again as the timing can be a bit iffy. You can do this for Soul items (boss souls, regular soldier souls, etc.), as well as materials (even the loathed Pure Bladestone!), grass and consumables but not with armor/weapons as far as I remember.

The farming method in 4-2 is much more conventional and if you're opposed to glitching than this is probably the 2nd quickest way to gain souls. Equip your Ring of Avarice, your strongest bow and arrows and head to the Adjudicator's Archstone. From there, run straight, drop down and immediately head down the tunnel past the shop keep. Stay up here on this ledge and target the Reaper below. It should take about 2-3 hits to kill him. Killing him will also kill his summoned friends, and gain you quite a lot of souls in the process. Once you get the souls, turn back around toward the Archstone and fall off the ledge. You'll respawn at the Archstone, ready to rinse and repeat. Just make sure to pick up your souls on the way back! Good luck!

Running backwards from 4-3 in PBWT with soul drain or whatever the one hit kill spell is called and the soul boosting items gets you about 100k souls per kill on the black phantom gold skeletons, just walk slowly up behind them; takes like 3 minutes for 250k souls or something.