question unlimited game pass, newbie mistake

The game itself is not in question. The game downloaded and worked fine. When you purchase the game you receive a code for the Unlimited pass, which I did not receive. This pass in retail copies is on an insert.

newbie question what is DRM

This is the only account that has unlimited game pass.

I'm not aware of armor gaining anything from scaling. Perhaps you are referring to shields? The scaling for shields only helps with shield bashing, so if you aren't doing that, don't worry about that scaling.

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The scaling is the amount of increase in attack rating. Note that when you upgrade to elemental paths, you usually don't get any scaling on the weapon anymore. So, at higher levels, +15 is generally better than anything else. When you look at the weapon
screen, the base damage will be displayed followed by a +number. That number indicates the increase you receive from scaling, and it goes into the weapon's AR (Attack Rating). This is not the same as the damage the weapon will do, as there's some sort of
conversion the game does to go from attack rating to damage once the enemies defense is taken into account. (Sorry if this is much more than you were looking for).

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And, no one got a manual with the game that explained this stuff.

It's basicly comparable to the American grading system I think ( I don't live in America though ).

If something scales with D, it will scale a bit but quite poorly. C is better, B is decent, A is good and S is the best you can get. So that's basicly how you can tell wether to level up your dexterity or strength if you want to use a specific weapon.

Also this works for strength-scaling weapons only, but if you 2 hand it your strength level will temporarily increase by 50%, so if you're 20 strength before it will become 30. Leveling up skills over level 40 ( like dex and strength ) is usually not recommended,
because after level 40 it will barely effect a weapon anymore.