What is the absolute least skill required approach to the first hours in order to introduce a very casual person to the game?

get the horse and explore, I hated the difficulty... especially the Margit fight, but just riding around on torrent everywhere and collecting loot while running away from mobs of enemies was rlly fun

Speedrun to the following things: Meteoric Staff in Caelid along with Rock Sling, and the spirit calling key item to use spirit summons.

Summon spirit friendo, hang back, hurl rocks at it is a pretty strong strategy that can help even the very inexperienced overcome the tough early bosses, and it's a strategy that can only get better later. As well, Rock Sling hits infrequently and can from great distance away which is good for aggro control (the summon hitting more rapidly means she will be less likely to aggro enemies onto her). The staff also can't be upgraded and while it is weak later on it starts off strong for early game so that streamlines stuff a bit for her starting out.

She'd probably be put off by the wimpy range of Glintstone Pebble but it's honestly a fantastic spell regardless that will show its value as one becomes more comfortable with the game. But still there's strong spells to get later.

This can't work everywhere since you can't summon everywhere but they usually let you summon in difficult sections, and almost every boss. For more basic encounters I'm less sure what can make that easy without costing too much FP over time. Maybe a halberd. The poking moveset halberds. Those will stagger most things, even scary knights, and can get good enough reach to initiate the attack before in the enemy's range. Can be good. Not OP or anything but eh.

sword+shield, pump vigor, use blocking and guard counter. aint getting much easier

Early game, get a greatsword and learn the stealth mechanic for backstabs and the charged R2 so you stagger enemies for a R1 critical hit. Almost all early game enemies will stagger with a charged R2 and many bosses stagger pretty easily. Poise damage is fixed and not improved with weapon upgrades, so staggering an enemy is a very effective playstyle early game to make up for your lack of damage.

Similarly, the guard counter is very effective, just hold your shield up, wait for a hit and sound and then guard counter hit the enemy.

Ride around, unlock areas, use torrent to run in and get stuff, similarly, running on foot should get you past almost all enemies, so run around, grab items and don't worry if you die as you should be spending your runes all the time, taking the stress away from dying. Use a map to show you grace positions, mark some on your map and go discover them, it'll open things up nicely without ruining anything.

Also, throwing pots are very helpful, my go to is the volcano pot , a lingering hit box and fire damage is very helpful... Plus you can farm materials very easily.. unfortunately it's in altus, but that can be reached without really fighting much, before that, you can just use a normal fire pot, very useful for avatars etc. A bow simplifies things somewhat, you can pick of enemies from a distance easily, a bit boring, but it's certainly a tactic that'll work.

Fighting cowboys walkthrough starts first couple episodes gives a pretty good run around the map getting loot and setting up yourself for success right from the start

The mimic tear, which creates an allied NPC copy of the player character (abit one whose health and durability can be further upgraded) which is available after defeating the shardbearer Radahn. Once the midgame biome Aldus Plateau is reached, the "festival of combat" will commence, which provides a unique advantage: during Radahn's fight, you can summon 6-ish NPC allies, each of which has multiple summon signs to call them back in after they get knocked out. Theoretically, the festival of combat can defeat the shardbearer without the player character directly involving themselves in the brawl.

There are four ways to Aldus Plateatu. The "coward's path" is a effectively a relatively normal boss fight. It's fairly well hidden, but there are several NPCs scattered about that'll instruct you on where to find it (with various levels of crypticness). The lift requires a scavenger hunt for a paired set of holy mcguffins, one of which you're subtly guided to around the start of the game, which in turn guides you to it's twin. If you know where they are, you can even yoink them without combat. The lift itself is a massive landmark, and pretty much impossible to miss. The other two are teleportation options you'll find along NPC questlines, though one of them requires a somewhat harder boss fight, and the other requires Radahn to already be defeated.

Once Radahn is defeated, the enterence to the city of Nokrom will be marked on your map, and can be entered. There's a fairly short gauntlet to run, but the only thing that's truly threatening is a hostile mimic tear. However, you can cheese the ditto by going in as a duo, and unequipping the host before commencing the fight. Near the end, you'll be able to grab the mimic tear from a side room unlocked with stonesword keys, a limited resource that unlocks many treasure cashes spread thorough the game.

Closing game and playing Stray.