"Whenever an end game player finally gets there first set of 5 star, armor they are thrilled, they feel on top of the world. But, lots of those particular people don't know that, that armor is useless unless the shield they use is of the same calibur. If your shield can't stand up to a good amount of damage, then your a goner."

You can do fine, just remember the 5 D's of dodge ball; dodge, dip, dive, duck, and dodge!

Spookats are the cat ghosts that shoot or bite.

Greavers are the moth-bats that fly at you and leave a gas cloud behind when they attack. That gas cloud is the monster equivalent of a Haze Bomb, and passes right through your shield's force field (your shield would suffocate you if it didn't let gases through).

If you hit a Greaver while it's charging its attack, the Greaver will always flinch and its attack will be canceled.

Do not just run from an attacking Greaver, they can move faster than you and will still hit you. Intercept them as described above, or shield-shove them away!

I got Dauntless Delver on my first try without ever owning a 5* shield.

The shock-block works for shock but not fire; I've discovered and used it since Tier 1. Sometimes it won't though, but I assume that's just shield-lag.

I thought shielding fire dealt half-damage. Could be wrong though.

@Yoshipatrol : Shock does elemental damage, fire does normal damage. I'd imagine, flavorwise, the reason you can block shock is that the shield bubble grounds your character. Fire, well... holding a block of metal in front of your face isn't going to help you from being on fire. Shields with fire resistance might help, but I'm not too sure on that.

It was definitely doing half a bar when I shield instead of 1 bar when I was playing earlier.

here is some tips from my experience:
a) don't use mechaknight with quicksilvers around. It's shock spasm will trigger them.
b) change the default controls shield button to something that will allow you shielding while moving while maintaining the ability to launch an attack at any time (my configuration is wsad for moving, left mouse button for shield and right mouse button for attack, try if it works for you like that or with swapped attack/defend buttons)
c) monster's health scales with party size, just because you can solo danger rooms doesn't mean you will be able to carry a party of 4 in one
d) when trying to acquire 2-star gear check the auction house to see if someone doesn't sell the item that you want below the crafting cost, you should also include recipe price in costs if you never intend to craft for UVs that specific item
e) don't let your shield break, it takes some time for it to regenerate - its yellow? retreat in safe range to at least get it green
f) you can't tank Alpha Wolver's bite attack, you simply can't, side step with accounting their ability to turn in later tiers
g) when in party and engaging in combat with Wolvers/Devilites/Gremlins don't use your gun if you can't lead your shots or when you are not using Magnus line, you spamming projectiles inside groups of these will trigger their dodging mechanics making the whole taming play much harder for other people
h) just because a weapon deals effective damage to a type of monster doesn't mean you will be able to effectively deal damage to that type of monster with it, before you craft a 3-star weapon experiment with the 2-star version to save yourself some energy and possibly dissapointment at later parts
i) Calibur charge attack is nice but seriously, think twice before you use it in a party, for most stuff the charge attack will stop enemies attacking but there are cases where it won't, most prevalent offender being Retrodes with their beamspam
j) when using a heavy sword in a party (sealed sword line / khorovod) have in mind other people with whom you teamed up, the knockback from swings is pretty big, you can almost throw monsters on teammates, you can alleviate totally the possibility of doing such a thing by positioning properly in relation to the nearby teammate by being with your back to him and facing the monster
k) you can drop on ground vials and pills and vitapods by dragging them from the HUD to the ground
l) two things about consumables, you should always have a slot for health pills, there are also remedy pills, while you won't find them attractive at first you will certainly see its value when it kills off that fire/shock/poison instantly ("i can just wait for the effects to end", sure, for most time you will be able to just wait till that but there are times when the status effect will be effectively a death sentence on you and status vials other than stun/freeze haven't had any use by me outside of Royal Jelly
m) when you are going to get back to Haven, notify your party of this fact and it would be nice from your side to drop everything that you have on you on the ground before going up
n) everyone can see if you can/can't afford that elevator fee on our screens so don't ask anyone to pay for your tab because you don't have enough energy when you actually do, actually, you shouldn't be asking strangers for that in first place
o) in jelly danger rooms kill all lichens before proceeding with killing other slimes, merged lichens count as slain monsters in wave triggering so if you have a lichen colony currently and some jelly cubes, when you kill all of the jelly cubes leaving lichens another wave will spawn
p) when using alchemers always have consideration that each bullet ricochets, this can be vital when dealing with blocks at times when blast blocks surround you

thats all from me for now

Think of it as using your shield to surf across the spikes. Tony Hawk pro spike surfing with a shield 2.

I usually find only 1 curse, most time not even that thus i don't pick them up, for the "i-dont-really-care-because-it-doesnt-add-too-much" statuses that are either situational or provide just additional damage (shock/fire/poison) i can always use guns that inflict them. Only bombs can provide reliable freeze/stun (i'm saying reliable since it has to be reliable to fullfill its role of being a crowd control/slowdowner tool) and those take time to setup. Meanwhile vials are almost instant if you exclude the throwing action and have a 100% success rate. Shock isn't viable everywhere and Poison is eh "Basically, from what I can see, enemies that are poisoned can still get healed although the amount of HP they gain is significantly reduced compared to not being poisoned. It is completely clear that they do not take damage from being healed though." Also, from my experience all hits wake up sleeping monsters but i can be wrong on that, in that case record a video please because i can't find any confirmation anywhere on your claim.

Just to clarify, this is all with the mindset "surviving is most important", don't really care that much for those 3 monsters that i will kill a little faster.

Mainly because the demos die extremely fast from curse. Doesn't anyone else know about that?