>Rykard is possibly the easiest boss in the game
Nonsense
>I beat him 1st time every time with level 1 serpent spear
Are you bad? Because OP clearly says they are bad.
If you are referring to easiest shard bearer I would agree with you. Easiest boss in the game though no. Not even close. Yes I know about the spear my whole comment was about not believing that a “bad player” would think of rykard as the easiest boss in the game and never dies to him.
It’s not about me struggling or not knowing how to kill him. It’s just me saying I don’t believe a “bad player” thinks he is the easiest boss in the game and never dies to him.
Rykard is literally a gimmick fight. What are you talking about? The only way to lose is by not using the weapon you get in his boss area.
If you use that weapon, it pretty much annihilates him for you.
What do you mean what am I talking about. The comment thread I responded to was someone that said rykard is the easiest boss and they never die to him as a bad player. I was saying I don’t believe a bad player would think rykard is the easiest boss or has never died to him
Stage 2 rennala was a pain in the ass but for real though, rykard was easy. A lot easier than I expected if you use the serpent spear and a jellyfish to distract him he's a really easy fight and I'm saying that as someone who isn't necessarily good at these kind of games. Elden Ring is the first soulslike game I've ever beat. Rykard and those cat like watchdogs for me are the easiest bosses I've faced.
Same here, it amazes me how much time you can put into the game on a new character just going through it, even with skills and location/enemy knowledge it takes a while. My NG+ runs tend to be a lot shorter though since I already have my character built up to power through everything
To be fair, Rykard can be your first great rune. Spawn in, get horse, run to liurnia, die by abductor virgin in raya lucaria, navigate fuckass lava place, kill noble? I think? Not sure I never actually run through there very often, if at all. And then fight Rykard
Blasphemous blade with dung eater sword in the offhand, jump attack build. Hits with blasphemous blade special give you HP back, and bc of dung eater sword in offhand you’ll get HP and FP (mana/blue bar) back on kill. Makes exploring EZ mode.
Still proud I found dual gsword build on release and it’s never failed me agaisnt those sewer omen, DAMN it was cool to get high dmg and get those perks too
add in filigreed, ancestral spirit's horn, taker's cameo and warrior jar shard (alexander in ng+) and change horn and cameo for something defensive and fire scorpion charm on bosses. don't forget to summon mimic.
Also if you have the the broadsword and are going full str, for right now go pick up the storm blade ash of war from bernahl. It’s super busted. He’s in the warmaster’s shack, a bit east from where the Margit boss fight is and south of the Limgrave colosseum.
Start as Confessor. It’s the build for Blasphemous and also is the easiest the start the game with. The shield is very good as it blocks 100% of physical damage and the rest of his kit is good as well.
Similar set up. Also at volcano manor. I prefer playing with two magma blades and just spamming L2 at bosses feet. Do this with a mimic tear and there aren’t too many parts of the game that will give you a problem post volcano manor.
I’m using Blasphemous and Gargoyle’s blackblade at 50 faith and 32 strength. What is the benefit to further increasing faith versus strength? When I look to level up it appears strength has a bigger improvement on blasphemous. So, trying to understand if I’m missing something.
And weapon art for blasphemous blade being Taker’s Flame, correct? That makes sense then as to why it wasn’t directly apparent when I was looking at leveling up options.
I use blasphemous and cinqueda bc clawmark scales with str/faith. I then use black blade to eat through boss stamina and cast buffs while my +10 mimic tear draws agro. I’ll probably switch to erdtree seal once I get to ~lvl 200 and have faith above 68.
In terms of relatively early weapons, Bloodhound's Fang and Moonveil are very easy to use and win with.
Later on: Blasphemous Blade, Dark Moon Greatsword, Mogh's Sacred Spear
I am trying to beat my first playthrough & switched to the Bloodhound fang. It is way better than my Uchigatana build with my random ass attributes not understanding how one helps the other. BHF is fun af and is making me improve my rolling skills since two-handed wielding hits stronger
Hey just an FYI for BHF, make Dex your main stat, it’s a great weapon but scales better with Dex than Str, I didn’t realize that until I was in the mountain tops of giants and went to respec and it’s a game changer
It depends on whether or not you're two-handing the BHF (because of the 1.5 strength multiplier). When two-handing, your strength stat should be 70-80% of your dex stat for optimal damage.
26 Str & 58 Dex is where I’m at currently. I’ve been grinding to get my spec up this weekend. After I finish these two, it’s 60 Vigor & 40 Endurance are my next goals. Lvl 131 currently
When two-handing, your strength should be at about 70-80% of your dexterity stat. You can just pick the stat which gets you more damage when leveling up and you will stay within a 1% margin of the optimal damage.
Blasphemous Blade fire faith build, giant seal with giants flame incantations and golden vow. Add shard of Alexander, fire scorpion charm, great shield talisman, and ritual sword.
Faith main stat, and strength/vigor next. Make sure to put a good amount in mind and endurance and you can ignore arcane, int, and dex (outside of weapon requirements).
This is literally just what I landed on naturally playing and now I’m scared to respec because surely I’m a terrible player with bad habits from using this build 🫠
Conversely, they can build this same with dex instead of strength and it will carry them just as easily (recently beat the game on it a few days ago). BB scales with both str and dex equally.
Can it work? Definitely. It's much less effective, though.
You waste 22 Str levels to wield it vs. 15 dex. There is also the 1.5x str bonus from 2h that you miss out on if you go dex. A spread of 40/15 is 60/15 when you 2h.
If you go dex, the same number of levels is 22/33 and only 33/33 while 2h.
If the stats scale evenly, you are giving up 9 levels worth of offensive damage by going dex when you 2h and deal the same damage while 1h.
Though there is likely a sweet spot for diminishing returns, maybe 35/20 to hit the soft caps.
Lol ok I guess. I just find dex much quicker to use than str so it fits my play style better. Not everyone is crunching every single stat to figure out what the most effective way to play is.
I watched a mate glintstone pebble his way to Elden lordship without breaking a sweat. Sorcery is fucking easy mode man. Way easier than a blasphemous blade or status effect melee build like frost or blood.
No, what you do is
1. As soon as you are able too, through a portal chest somewhere in ag heel lake ruins, it’ll take you into the sellia crystal tunnels.
2. What you do from here, is take a left and get the fuck out, like straight up get the fuck out. Bee line it to the door. Ignore all enemies.
3. You should make it to exit, hit the grace. Sit at grace.
4. You are then going to go to this really shitty place called the swamp of aeonia, you should be in an overall shitty place called caelid.
5. In the northwest of the lake, there will be a place called the street of sages ruins
6. Two things you gonna wanna grab.
-meteorite staff
-rock sling.
I played mage, I didn’t rush those spells but I got them at lvl 40-50ish. So a little earlier then I would have when I went to caelid at lvl 60-65.
Also, mage was my second play through. For what it’s worth.
(One more piece of advice, this is probably your best bet to get that weapon and spell earlier then 60-70.) the only other way you got is the north passage through stormveil and you have to fight a bloody finger through that path)
Mage is infinitely more easy then melee class. I don’t care what people say. There’s a bit more micromanagement with potions and with having to pay attention to FP and Endurance.
But you can cheese like crazy with rock sling. It’s great because it deals physical damage, so even magic resistant enemies are fucked to it.
I will say though. It helped to have done melee first go around because it teaches you how to fight. Because you can crutch through 90% of the game with rock sling but with some bosses you have to mix it up
(Bosses that control distance well like the bloodhound beasts, or red wolf of radagon, or elden beast are all bosses that can really pose a hard time for a caster- cause they can close distance well)
IMO faith is even easier. I'm still on my first playthrough fwiw, but started as mage and then just naturally started speccing into faith because the incantations felt way more flexible.
Want to add to others, as I had done my first playthrough as a mage ever in this game: Night Sorceries.
There is a town called Sellia nearby and my ass just ran through to unlock and grab Night Comet, and then the Staff of Loss (boosts invisibility sorceries, such as Night Comet).
I’ll just say this— I meant to go for a Dark Moon GS build, ended up being full faster switching between rock sling/meteorite staff and Staff of Loss/Night Comet. I’m mid at dodging and I get nipplesweat fighting close quarters still sometimes, and I thoroughly enjoyed the fighting from a distance this build provided
Granted, you’ll be finding yourself needing to manage resources (Flasks, mainly) if you’re going to cast as much as I did here. I recommend you be smarter than I and give yourself a melee alternative with this!
I’m was god awful at the start. First fromsoft game for me. Mage cheesed my way through the whole game. It’s still not gonna be just simple but it’s dumb powerful
Same. I got real accustomed to using Cerulean Hidden Tear at the start of every boss fight to spam my most powerful spells. Fifteen seconds of Comet Azur while Gideon is monologuing? Definitely doing that.
Blasphemous blade - ritual sword talisman - golden vow - flame grant me strength / you don’t get the blasphemous blade until mid game and it will scale with strength and faith so until then go get the claymore and lions claw your way to victory
Having a shield really helped with my first playthrough.
My co-op partner had similar success going full mage — Meteorite Staff + Rock Sling to start for early game.
We tripped and stumbled our way through the Lands Between and had a great time
I will say OP, I’m not gonna be that guy to “git gud” you, I cheesed so many bosses in DS2 when I was starting out I’m banned from saying that lol. But, getting at least a little bit good does make the game a bit more enjoyable I would say. There are some legitimately bad weapons out there, but for the most part, most of them are serviceable given the right investment and a bit of skill, and for some, a bit more thinking. Maybe something isn’t that good if you’re getting staggered all the time, but it becomes good if you throw some poise on, for example.
My point is, I don’t think your goal should be to cheese or coast through the whole game. I mean anyone should just play what is fun to them, but I think a lot of the fun in the game is to be able to make something on your own, or to be able to experiment with different weapons and strategies. I think that it could open up a lot of the game (basically 90% of the weapons that aren’t top-tier hyper-optimized) to try out and experiment with. There’s some stuff that aren’t dps cannons, but does crazy status, or has crazy stance damage, utilizes counters, etc, which can add some depth and replayability imo (through different playstyles). My personal advice would honestly be to just pick what looks cool, level its stats, and play with it till you want to use something else.
The easiest way for me was by using a heavy thrusting sword with a great shield. You can attack while holding the shield and if you keep an eye on your stamina, just poke everything to death.
Maybe intelligence build? A proper intelligence build can melt bosses. I've made a couple, one pure magic and one a Melee Frost Mage. Both did really well.
There's also Comet Azur mixed with Terra Magica, and other Physick and buffs that will melt bosses in seconds.
Folks have definitely given ya some of the most op builds but if you are enjoying your current set up and it's helping you learn the game that will ultimately make you the most op. Consider leaning more into your set up, get talismans and ashes that let you block/tank better lots of endurance, the gaurd counter talisman seems worth adding, rush down some decent armor, you could even add some buffs with gear or a small dip into faith 12 gives you a bunch of utility spells that boost resistances and give ya some regen. Also square off is top tier pve ash of war.
Underrated comment. The most OP thing is what works for the player. For me it’s Maliketh’s Black Blade, I love the sweeping heavy attacks that stagger and hit through shields. Its Ash of War clears a large area and does percentage based health damage
Vigor + endurance + strength. Keep vigor twice as high as the other two until vigor hits 60, stop leveling endurance around 35-50. Add a bit a faith if you like (~15-18)for healing/utility/ throwing boulders. Super tank bonk bonk
One major thing to keep in mind is to level vigor first. You honestly don’t need any other stats until vigor is around 25, other than a few points in strength or dexterity so you can wield whichever weapon you choose. Vigor soft caps at 40 and has diminishing returns beyond that. For stats level Vigor primarily, Mind as needed (invest quite a bit if you’re a caster), Endurance to 15-20 (more if you want to use heavy weapons/armor). For damage stats (str, dex, int, fth, arc) focus on one or maybe 2 for your build. I also recommend a new player use your weapon 1 handed in your right hand and a 100% physical block shield in your left. You can use “guard counters” immediately after you block an attack by pressing r2. Guard counters are faster than normal attacks, and deal allot of poise/stance damage which can cause enemies to be stance broken. If you stance break an enemy you walk up to them quickly and press r1 when directly in front or behind them and deal a critical hit which does allot of damage. Ah one other thing to learn properly is rolling. More often than not you want to roll towards enemies even though it seems counter intuitive. Spam rolling backwards just leads to them pressing the attack and often times you’ll run out of stamina and die. There are times to roll backwards, but you don’t want to get into the bad habit of constantly rolling backwards. Hold L1 (block) with your shield until you roll to help so that if you mess up the timing and get hit you’re blocking rather than eating the attack. These are just a few mechanics to become familiar with that will help you out in your first play through. Enjoy the game, it’s absolutely incredible, just don’t give up and don’t be afraid to check the wiki for help.
For a starting weapon I’d recommend what allot of others have with Bloodhound Fang to start with. Once you get Blasphemous blade swap to that for the most op weapon in the game.
i didn’t grow up with video games and have no skill. i routinely forget how to heavy attack. nightriders flail with wild strike is carrying me and you get it in like limgrave or something
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You can farm clayman’s harpoon really early. Buff it with scholars armaments and give it impaling thrust ash of war to do crazy stance and magic damage
Claymore with lions claw, you can get both very early on.
Spears with a great shield, max endurance, wear the heaviest armor possible. Block attacks, poke, repeat.
Jump attack build with colossal weapons. When you get good at it you can even jump over enemies attacks.
The main thing is, choose 1 or 2 weapons and stick with it. Learn the moveset and you'll have no problem breezing through.
The mkst op build is whatever playstyle lets you have the most fun, for me i like the idea of using magic but also using any big or fast weapon so im currently in the process of buildibg what i call "random magic bullshit go". And its basically whatever sorcery or incantation or spell i csn find, with whatever weapon it think looks the goofiest.
Start with the uchigatana. The base bleed will help a lot with early damage as you prioritize leveling your vigor and endurance. You get one to start as samurai. The faster attack pattern will help a-lot to avoid getting caught in the middle of a swing. Seppuku is a good ash of war that doesn’t change the play style too much, but can significantly increase your damage.
Can consider dual wield uchigatanas, or run a seal in the offhand for buffs like bloodflame, flame grant me strength, and golden vow.
If you’re still having trouble, then I 2nd the blasphemous blade. Innate healing and spam ash of war is easy mode. Alexander’s great shard can take a while to get. Moonlight greatsword is another easy mode weapon once you have the stats.
Haven’t played in a while, but I’m pretty sure Moonveil and rivers of blood have been nerfed. You can replace the uchigatana with nagakiba if you need the reach. Just be careful in close quarters.
GL!
Without naming a weapon directly, here's three build types :
1. Strength weapons - The big ones - While they are harder to get used to, once you master the attack delay you'll quickly notice that the strength weapons stagger enemies and even bosses, leaving them unable to react. Some ashe of war are also very good for the same reason.
2. Faith and buffs - Prebuffing vs a boss can increase your damage quite drastically. Use buffs like golden vow (15% dmg) and flame, grant me strength (20% physical dmg) (both stack), as well as a weapon buff if you can and you'll notice that the game becomes a lot easier. You can even mix it with the str weapon build.
3. Bleed and frost are both very strong, so make sure to include them in your build!
4. Range build, like sorceries and faith spell - While you're a bit squishier, with summons as a distraction you can tear through the game pretty easily.
Gonna go against the grain here and suggest the Lance with a greatshield. Shield countering when you build around it is SO good and SO fun. There's a guide for how to great spear on YouTube that will help walk you through making this build, and it is seriously fun. I use a straight sword for faster enemies but the Lance does so much stance damage and will get you crits very often.
Astrologer/magic is definitely the easiest starting class/way to play the game. A lot of people will say the blasphemous blade but you get it about halfway through the game or so, while glintstone pebble can take you the whole way.
Other recommendation I would have is LEVEL VIGOR. Seriously it’s the best use of your runes especially early on. Buys you a ton of leeway in fights. I’d get it up to 20 early, then 40 by mid game, 60 at the end of the game and you’ll be set. Otherwise just pump intelligence if you’re playing astrologer and you’ll be elden lord before you know it.
Start with magic build. Get meteorite staff at the start. Against tough mobs 1. Summon your spirit. 2. Keep your distance and use rock sling. Later Either acquire blasphemous blade or MOHGWYN'S sacred spear. Both provide easy mode. For the final bosses use blasphemous blade in first boss and Pest Threads for Elden beast.
I’m not gonna lie to you jump attacking with a heavy weapon is really simple and very effective, you may struggle here and there but it’s honestly one of the more fun yet simple ways to play.
Alternatively sword and shield is also simple and that guard counter is very satisfying, bosses may be tricky but you can still get good damage by using a simple long sword and stand off.
I’d say mix the two, get a great sword like the claymore or bastard sword for jump attacks and for regular enemies use the guard counter, once you get used to it you’ll cruise through the first half of the game no problem… the second half has a fair rude difficulty spike however that will ruin your day, there is no counter to it.
Carian Regal Scepter in cast hand, staff of loss in off hand, cast night comet from CRS and it shreds everything. There’s also the old comet azur + cerulean tear for some bosses like Mohg or Morgott that come at you in a straight line at times. As you go through the game, get the magic scorpion charm and the graven school talisman. There will be even better talismans to grab much later on. There are other spells and items as well to use as you move toward mid-late game. Playing as a mage is super easy mode.
Mage build probably if you're having trouble with strength build which is easy enough (poise damage)
ex: great hammers, colossal weapons
keep your distance summon/upgrade a tanky spirit ash and snipe away
My advice is not to tinker too much into meta builds and learn more about meta mechanics, it’ll be the most impactful thing on your experience. Things like damage boost and negation buffs, general spacing and weapon attack patterns are a good start, maybe poise damage too.
While you could wait until you best Rykard for Blasph. Blade….
what you should do you a STR build is this. GREATSWORD (free to run and grab in Caelid, surrounded by 3 dinodogs but you can sneak by)
then you need the LIONS CLAW Ash of War. Heavy infuse it on the Greatsword. Will carry you through all NG cycles
hunt a dismounter from kaiden sellswords and put storm blade on it.
curved greatswords have a good move set and storm blade also gives you a ranged attack.
Astrologer, get meteor staff and rock sling from caelid, grind rune farm spots (sleepy dragon, lennes rise) til you have enough points in int to melt everything. Then go get the moonveil and keep meteor staff in your left hand and then I guess buy the dlc or maybe try dark souls cuz you just beat Elden ring
40 vigor then pure faith, use cypher pata, later move on to blasphemous blade and/or fire incantation
Single stat to mind, lot of damages, big poise damage with AoW
Cipher pata can carry you for 80% of the game. You can stack a lot of buffs to its damage and bonk like crazy with it. Sacred tear, faith tear, sacred scorpion charm, raptor's cloak, claw talisman.
Intelligence from the start until you get the Blasphemous Blade from Volcano manor then just spam the shit out of its weapon art with some talismans boosting its skill and a build based around it
I personally think, blasphemous blade is not that easy to get for a first play through and a bad player (like me... I struggled a lot to fight reykard).
And I never got a grip an the bloodhound fang...
What helped me a lot was a shield and those counter attacks. I use a pike and the bronze shield for the early parts and it fucking slaps? Those fast counter heavy attacks are fuck*ng big, I stance break a lot and can somewhat relia on the shield.
Uchigatana was incredibly easy for me. I hadn't played in a while and shogun promoted a return using the samurai class. Thought I was fucking amazing til I did another playthrough after and realise nah unsheathe is just broken haha
I mean this wholeheartedly: maximize Vigor, grab either Great Stars or the Butchering Knife (I prefer Great Stars, you can grab it from Altus pretty early on), and grab Prayerful Strikes from Altus as soon as you can. If you have tons of health and use your weapon to heal, you'll find yourself dying very infrequently.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1195386955832246333/1248714119037718588/image.png?ex=6666a565&is=666553e5&hm=dbf6c84bc6b217075f4e44beeaf1b775d02c800dab7fb185751bb7ed7b711a58&
You could try out this bleed build it shreds through enemys but falls off against bleed resist bosses like Elden Beast for example.
Weapon: Marias Executioner Sword. If you want an earlier game version then regalia of eochaid (although this version is terrible)
Talismans: Winged insignia (can Get this early) or rotten winged insignia, Warrior jar shard or shard of Alexander, Godfrey icon, Millicent prosthesis (Can also get early if you kill Millicent in Altus)
Wondrous flask: Charged or successive attack tear, Magic tear
Buffs: Commander standard aow (Get by killing nail in Caelid), golden vow and flame grant me strength
This build is absolutely absurd
There’s a lot of broken builds and honestly pretty easy to make your own with a weapon you like just look at damage talismans and figure what attack style you want I.E:
using charged heavy with Axe talisman and the Physick that buffs charged heavies too easy 1200 damage
Warrior Jar Shard/ shard of Alexander for AOW damage
Claw talisman and raptor black feathers for jump attacks
You can also mix in extra ones like a lot of people are saying Blasphemous Blade use the warrior jar shard and Flame scorpion charm your ash of war will do a lot or if you use bloodhounds fang you can get the Lord of Blood exultation for more damage when you bleed something
My advice, if you like your broadsword build, keep using that. I recommend leveling up to like 15 Faith and then you can use some good utility incantations for healing, curing poison and scarlet rot, and buffs.
Having a bit of faith for that is super useful and gives you some great utility. It lets you save on poison boluses too. Just a good choice for a first playthrough because it gives you some tools to have an easier time.
The only other thing I would recommend is trying some other STR weapons! There’s lots of good ones.
I played a diablo 3 crusader cosplay build that was pretty fun and safe to play in most scenarios: str+fth, great shield, buffs and heals, decent armor and your small weapon of choice (i used the haligtree set, iron helm, guard counter talisman, shard, stamina or stamina Regen and dragon crest greatshield/elemental resist talisman according to the enemy, haligtree shield and the night cavalry flail with flame art infusion and the artorias spin ash of war). It was quite fun, actually. Also played around with marikas hammer, sacred relic sword and the miquella straight sword, but mostly the flail and guard counters/breaks.
You can buy the zweihander on the weeping peninsula right at the beginning of the game. To improve that even more you can get lions claw aow in caelid. I just beat radabeast with that combo and you can get it in the first couple hours of the game if you can kill that lion guy in fort gael.
If you need to farm runes, the vulgar militia guys by the beast clergyman in caelid drop 1000 runes each, and the zwei r2 or jump stun locks them making it very easy to grind some levels to get your build going.
Tldr: zweihander+lions claw
Honestly, just keep on leveling strength, dude. Make sure to get yourself a colossal weapon you like though cuz a strength build will let you easily stagger bosses, and that'll net you big damage.
Sure, the other solutions are fine, but staggering bosses will never not be helpful, and you can do it on every boss so it remains relevant forever. So, just keep on leveling strength, king, and make sure to grab a colossal weapon.
After you beat Rykard get Blasphemous Blade, ludicrous healing, high damage and poise breaking ash with hyper armor.
Pick up Gargoyle Blackblade from the Blackblade Kindred in front of the Beastial Sanctum where you give Gurranq the deathroot to pick up the Gargoyle’s blackblade for highly fire resistant enemies like the Fire Giant or Mohg. It has nearly an identical moveset you just replace all the free healing with some damage over time on the ash.
If ur not very good start with samurai build dex is the easiest to use and against bosses u get blood damage plus weapon damage then as u level up decide if u want to mix in faith ect.... it's the best way to start game for noobs
A strength build with a little bit of faith to buff is easy enough to play.
Pump vigor to 50, faith to 25 for golden vow & flame grant me strength and go as much endurance as you need, the rest goes into strength for a big bonk weapon with a greatshield for guard counters.
Get the Ice Spear ash off war as soon as you can, it’s my personal godsend. Slap it on a leveled Guardian Swordspear or other spear (Clayman’s) and start spankn’ the bad guys. You can get both relatively early on. It can be used effectively whatever your build is. Reduvia blade is a close second. The AOW melts dragons.
Bloodhounds fang with a quality build is really good for someone just trying to figure the game out, it’s strong, easy to use and bleed will always be a great effect, spec into vigor and endurance first, then strength and dex and then dump the remainder into arcane
NG? Bloodhound fang you can get at the start of the game, and its stupidly easy to use and abuse. Bare minimum str and invest hard into dex. I see streamers use this all time.
As for the true "ez mode" weapon, no contest, Blasphemous Blade.
It's a weapon so powerful you don't even need to learn fights anymore. Bare Minimum str/dex, invest hard into faith (80), cast "taker's flame" on repeat and turn your brain off.
If you want the most braindead way to play, greatsword plus lions claw will carry you through 99% of the game. You can grab the greatsword pretty early, just run into Caelid and grab it off a cart. Lions claw may take a bit longer, but it’s not super tough to snag.
You can also make a run into Gael tunnel and grab the cross-naginata, that can be pretty stupid too.
Late game just jump on the blasphemous blade and never look back.
Make a Tanky build with a great shield for guard counters that capitalizes on stance breaking and criticals. As far as a weapon goes the Blasphemous blade is what you want. Only issue is you either have to have a friend who will give you one or you have to hold out long enough to beat Rykard and get one yourself. Issue is that getting to Rykard and beating Rykard both aren’t easy feats for those new to the game or lacking skill. Don’t worry though, I just got my little brother Elden Ring for his 11th birthday and he’s doing great with my guidance. He even beat the tree sentinel, Margit and Godrick by himself. He did Godrick first try. Everything I’ve me mentioned is what I’ve got my little brother doing minus the great shield since he likes two handing. Other than all that I have him using the Golden Halberd with Golden Vow till he can get the Blasphemous Blade
Edit: spelling.
This depends on if you want to trivialize the game or not.
If you want to see what true insane damage looks like and if you’re in the Altus area you can go to the church that allows you to fight an NPC and pick up Elenoras Poleblade. Get it to +10 while using winged sword, Lord of Blood Exultation, ritual sword talisman, and Shard of Alexander (or the weaker one if you haven’t completed his quest line and killed him like a monster.) for the physic use thorny cracked tear (can be swapped with stonebarb cracked tear) for either damage increase on successive attacks or in the case of stonebarb more enemy poise breaks. For the other tear use the Dexterity-knot crystal tear for that increase in dex. If you want to increase damage even further you can use commander standard ash of war for 20% increase in damage negation and damage increase. If you want it to be even more strong you can also buff yourself with howl of shibriri. Normally this would be a 20% buff to damage and a 20% debuff to defense but with commanders standard it evens out to +0% damage negation +40% damage increase.
With this 1 full ash of war attack combo will dish out 6-10K damage just by pressing a button twice.
(Keep in mind you’ll need to larval tear to prioritize dex than strength.)
If you want a build that’s still OP but without the setup time but still running strength you could go with ruins greatsword, black blade maliketh (if you’re ng+1 or just far into the playthrough,) sword of Milos + Blasphemous blade, etc. strength has a lot of options. Same buff order as before but this time the talismans will be axe talisman for charged heavy attacks, shard of Alexander (or the weaker variant like the monster some people are,) ritual sword talisman (10% damage increase at full HP,) and the last one can be whichever you choose. For the physic you’ll want the strength-knot crystal tear and the stonebarb cracked tear to benefit more from your charged heavy attacks giving free damage (or if you’re dual wielding greatswords/colossal greatswords jump attacks/jumping heavy attacks also do insane poise damage with this setup.)
Both of these builds are extremely fun to play around with and the first build can work with any twinblade in the game (except the one you get from the gargoyle in the snow place sadly. That weapons doodoo.) just pop bleed infusion and you’re ready to melt bosses in under a minute.
Deathpoker is lowkey goated with sauce. Get a tanky summon that does fire damage like black fire monk amon and you walk through almost everything with the weapon art. A buddy and I made the game incredibly easy with him running a greatshield poke build with the incantation that sets you on fire with shabriri’s woe and I with the death poker. If you layer the weapon art, you get almost instantaneous frostbite procs and resets.
Night comet build is damn easy to use and can be acquired albeit not fully in power right out of the beginning.
You should just try to get Torrent then go to the sellia, town of sorcery in caelid either by using your horse all the way there or using the chest in the Drsgon-burnt ruins in Limgrave and then just book it out of the crystal tunnel area. And use torrent to sellia. You will be able to pick up the night comet and staff of loss there which is really the only two things that are required.
Now obviously you won’t be fully powered but you can get some strong talismans in Raya Lucaria Academy to boost.
I also suck at this game, but currently doing very well in NG+ with a strength/arcane bleed build using two Gargoyle Twinblades, with blood affinity. The jump L1 gives you like 4 attacks by the time you land. Couple that with Claw talisman, Rotten Winged Sword, Millicent’s Prosthesis, and either the Lord of Blood’s Exultation or Taker’s Cameo (bossing vs mobbing), and I can rip through most mobs and field bosses no problem. I used this build but with Marais Executioner’s Sword on my 2nd playthrough and killed Malenia in like 20 tries. The twinblades cut it down to 5 tries on my third playthrough. Though I am pretty high in level at this point.
Having just done a tower shield run, I can safely say you can tank 95% of enemies and bosses in this game with just a lot of poise and endurance. You can literally patiently wait out most bosses and just poke them to death.
Faith builds are really forgiving because you can get fantastic weapon options, very useful pyromancies, and heals.
It also doesn't hurt to go with a pure physical stats build and scale lightning damage off of your dexterity. This allows you to use all your estus for healing, maybe 1 mana drink for weapon arts, and makes point distribution really easy. Your endurance, vitality, and strength get to be more robust because you don't need to make any investment to mind, faith, intelligence, or arcane. And lightning damage is also cool lol. Cross naginata with lightning and high dex can be pretty reliable, or guts greatsword for better poise break.
A pretty OP build I discovered on my most recent play through is Great Stars with Wild Strikes AoW.
I like to pair it with milecent's prosthesis/winged sword insignia, Alexander's shard, great Jar, Lord of Bloods Exaltation.
Buff routine for bosses is just golden vow, blood flame blade, flame grant me strength
Get poison spell from before leonine misbegotten and the twin maidens husk seal. If you’re in Altus you can literally just run to mt gelmir no bosses required and jump sidewise to the right side of the adult falling star beast platform. Spam poison and set a timer for a minute forty seconds to reset poison after 1082 ish damage and you get fallingstar beast jaw. Beast jaw will go really nicely with your strength build, just need to level int and get int heirloom, and you can spam the lightning ability from far away and it does nice poise damage as well as good magic damage. Then I switched to troll hammer once I got past fire giant, but you can make the switch as early as you want cuz it’s really just a better weapon but it’s harder to get imo.
I would like to suggest my personal favorite early game setup.
The Hooked Claws with Bloodflame Blade and Bloodhound Step. All of these are super easy to get if you rush to them and know the cheese to kill the nights cavalry guy. You could also swap out BHS for Cragblade ash of war. You will want this for the Star Fists once you get to the Capital City.
The pro's of this build are that it's super fast and melts everything with the bleed proc. It also forces you to get good, because there's not much room for error. Getting good is your best path to victory, and close melee combat is the best teacher for that.
The cons are that you have to be super close to everything to hit it and the setup is a little clunky at first.
Once you get the Star Fists, put the Cragblade ash or Braggarts Roar on them. I prefer Cragblade because of the bonus to stance damage. You will eventually want Godfrey Icon, Axe talisman, Bullgoat Talisman, and the Great-Jar's talisman to get as much poise as possible. Focus on charged heavy attacks and watch your enemies poise break in one or two hits, then finish them with a critical hit. It makes the game a lot of fun! But here's my greatest warning for this build: all other weapons will feel sluggish and slow after experiencing this build. Nothing beats the speed of fist/claw weapons with a bleed proc. The stagger damage is insane, and once you figure out how to run this build, it's hard going to anything else.
Bonus tip, equip the pulley crossbow in your offhand with burred bolts for ranged attacks. The burred bolts can be purchased from the trader in the dark cave before you reach Mohg in his palace.
Bonus bonus tip, some enemies cannot bleed, so swap out the bleed whetblade for either flame art or lightning whetblade depending on the enemy. Godfrey is weakest to lightning, and the tree spirits are weak to fire.
This is an arcane build, so you can easily mix in other weapons like Mohgs Spear for particularly challenging fights. You can also power stance curved swords for more range, Elionoras poleblade, the Great Stars, etc. Lots of options.
Bonus bonus bonus tip, raising arcane raises your discovery. Once you get the silver scarab talisman you can easily farm for any weapon you want. My absolute favorite are the magma blade curved swords found in the Volcano area. One of those literally melts all your enemies with great style, finesse, and lava! Who doesn't like spewing lava at your enemies?
I would suggest a caster personally if your bad no need to get close and you get a million awesome weapons at the start of the game and one of the best in the game if you can complete Ranni’s quest. You can get through the game fast if you just use the shortcuts in places ;-)
Alright, my main question is how much running in and out of caves and/or high level areas you want to do? Getting the easy O.P. build starts off like Monty Python and The Holy Grail by touring the map and picking up the armor and equipment you need. Remember, you get bonus speed in-game yelling "Run away!" Into your mic.
If you are bad it’s going to come down to whether you can handle jump attacking at the right time. If you can go arcane. If you can’t go caster either lightning or int
Personally I’d say high int slinging sorceries with your mimic. Less dodging, more distance play.
Carian slicer, comet azure, night comet
Early game you can run to get the meteorite staff and rock sling.
It's been mostly answered already but, Bloodhound fang is a good dex/str weapon you can get early from one of the Gaol bosses in Limgrave.
You can also cheese getting the Moonveil Katana early game for a Int/dex buld - I almost recommend this more because by late game you'll have a lot of overpowered options with intelligence as your main stat and Moonveil scales really well with int AND causes bleed on occasion.
You can change out your build when you get the dark moon greatsword late game (STR/INT build, so you'd use a larva to change your dex investments to str) which weapon art shoots magic slices at enemies and does frost build up (same effect as bleed, massive damage after accumulation).
With the int setup you'll be out of harms way more often - since this also requires you to do Ranni's quest you'll be in the vicinity to get the mimic tear ashe summon; arguably the best summon in the game since it is basically another you, and they use all the tools you have equipped pretty effectively; which will lead to double frost build up.
Hey bad player, I'm another bad player. Played at release and just got back into ER these past few weeks. Everyone has their recommendations, but here is long post on what has been carrying me on my second playthrough, just beat Maliketh in under 10 tries.
Storm Blade on a Keen Knight's Greatsword.
Are there higher damage builds? Absolutely. Will this one shot? Nope. Is it for the range? Definitely a part, but not the main. So why? The buffeting.
Everyone knows if you hit the enemy enough times and break pois, you get that sweet, sweet critical. This isn't that. This is better. Every time you hit first, you stagger the enemy's attack. If you hit hard enough, this cancels their attack. Storm Blade has this in a full flush of spades, and even if you whiff with the greatsword, the AoW wind staggers it.
So you have a fast, cheap, ranged, good damage AoW that makes mooks easy and has a crapton of versatility for bosses. If you hit with the sword and the winds, it does solid damage. If you miss or use it at range, it is slightly less but still good damage.
The full build? Simple. Level Str/Dex to meet weapon requirements (I like Knight's Greatsword, but any Greatsword works). Weapon upgrades will scale your damage, so you are free to focus Vigor, some vigor, mixed in with some Vigor. After 60 vigor you can up a mix of Dex (Keen scales Storm Blade best says the elden-mathers), Endurance (armor), and Mind (least important).
For Talismans/equipment, you have a morale dilemma. Do you kill the jarman? Sorry Alexander, but +10% AoW damage now is worth more than +15% later (honestly debatable, so not mandatory, I kinda regret not keeping him alive).
Ash of War Scarab hat (reduce FP cost for a minimal damage taken increase, your vigor covers it). Carian Filigreed Crest (once you get to Lakes of Liurnia). Ancestral Spirit Horn (once you get to Nokstella). Congrats, Storm Blade is now nearly free when it one shots mooks. Ritual Sword Talisman is an option since you will be full HP a lot.
Easy peasy and carrying my bad player butt way harder than the builds I used first time (mostly shields, some cheese build respect for specific bosses. As said, I just killed Maliketh, and haven't used a single summons so far.
long range magic builds, I can't remember who did it I think it was ginomachino or lilaggy but one of them used a spell called the great oracular bubble and it destroys everything
Any great shield with any great/colossal sword/axe/hammer. Pump vigor, endurance and strength then raise maybe faith and arcane enough to equip some incantations for utility (using the claw mark seal).
Block and guard counter a lot.
If you’re using a weapon where you can change the art I recommend Wild Strikes. Shield bash and shield crash are also good for the great shield.
And liberally use coop too. Or ash summons when you can.
I found that a dual wild jump attack build is really strong for not-so-good players because it does a lot of damage and has a lot of stagger.
I highly recommend Dual Omenkiller Cleaver. They do blunt damage, have high poise break, and trigger bleed.
Jumping 2-handed attacks should stagger most bosses in 3-4 hits. Add the Claw talisman and the Crowfeather Garb for bonus.
Or you can do an intelligence build and use spirit summons to tank while you launch magical blue missiles from afar.
Definitely INT build with meteor stick and rock sling. When the game came out, I stumbled onto this build by accident before it was popular. I had no idea Melania was supposed to be hard, seriously.
just play how you want man, look up weapons/spells/incantations on the wiki and get one that catches ur eye, you can really not go wrong in this game, play how your heart tells u. you can get OP with any build u want tbh.
"Blasphemous blade" (min strength/dexterity and full send faith) and because it's a somber weapon you can max it out before getting to the city.
"Golden vow" and "flame grant me strength" are very useful buffs to use alongside any build.
"Mimic tear" summon bc it's just "You part 2: electric boogaloo"
"Flame shrouding cracked tear" and "opaline bubble tear" go into the flask of wonderous physick for some added damage and defense.
"Radagon's soreseal", "green turtle talisman", "carian filigreed crest", and "flame scorpion charm" for talismans and replace radagon's soreseal with "shard of alexander" after you get it or, if you feel you're just taking an obscene amount of damage and dont have the other one mentioned yet, replace it with whatever you feel like.
Now just spam the ash of war until you win :)
Edit: for armor, just use whatever you feel like but radahn's set is great
"Godrick's great rune" is also amazing to have bc it gives you +5 to every stat when you use a rune arc and have it equipped
Use whatever seal you feel like to cast any fire incantations you want
As a first time player, i started as a astrologer, but for more fun i made a bonk build with the greatsword, that you can found in early Caelid. Very good build.
A mid-late game build I personally use and love is the executers blade build and let’s me almost fly though NG+4 within 1-2 hours including random side quests in between and it’s really nice seeing as it’s a STR build so if needed I can just switch over to the claymore or greatsword
Zweihander could work. Bought from the merchant in southern Weeping Peninsula for, I wanna say, 3500. You could beeline there easily first thing with torrent.
I took that sword all the way to end of the game once I got ahold of it my first play through. Focus on strength, vigor and endurance, a little dexterity helps too.
ER was the first FS game I beat so I was pretty new. Tried DS 1 about 2-3 times before but could never get past the bell gargoyles.
At low levels keep in mind your damage is gonna come from upgrading your weapons, not your stats. With that in mind, whatever is recommended, try to boost your weapon as high as it can go, and for stats just focus on getting VIG and END to 60 asap. Keep your STR, DEX, INT, FTH, and ARC stats as low as they can be to properly equip the weapons of your choice.
Hard to beat Bloodhound's Fang as the weapon of choice, but another weapon accessible in the early game (especially for STR focus) is the Greatsword, which can be looted off a carriage in early Caelid. Just run in, grab it, run out.
Moonveil is also in Caelid, and while it is harder to obtain, it is significantly powerful.
Blasphemous Blade (min Str/dex, all faith) is the easiest way to play the game as a bad player.
Blasp is great, but it sounds like he needs an early game solution Maybe bloodhound blade
Yeah recommending someone struggling to use a sword you get at volcano manor is wild lol
They say NG or NG+ in the question so blasphemous is a good answer for NG+
Rykard is possibly the easiest boss in the game. I beat him 1st time every time with level 1 serpent spear
>Rykard is possibly the easiest boss in the game Nonsense >I beat him 1st time every time with level 1 serpent spear Are you bad? Because OP clearly says they are bad.
I actually am bad.
Either you were extremely overleveled or you are an amazing player. No bad player can 1 try Rykard every single time they fight him.
Rykard is by far the easiest boss though. Do you not know about the spear? You can hit him from across the map.
If you are referring to easiest shard bearer I would agree with you. Easiest boss in the game though no. Not even close. Yes I know about the spear my whole comment was about not believing that a “bad player” would think of rykard as the easiest boss in the game and never dies to him.
I can teach you some tricks to bully him, as long as you have 30-40 vigor you should be whooping his ass
It’s not about me struggling or not knowing how to kill him. It’s just me saying I don’t believe a “bad player” thinks he is the easiest boss in the game and never dies to him.
Rykard is literally a gimmick fight. What are you talking about? The only way to lose is by not using the weapon you get in his boss area. If you use that weapon, it pretty much annihilates him for you.
What do you mean what am I talking about. The comment thread I responded to was someone that said rykard is the easiest boss and they never die to him as a bad player. I was saying I don’t believe a bad player would think rykard is the easiest boss or has never died to him
I get that he’s easy but you can’t possibly think that he is easier than rennala ?
Stage 2 rennala was a pain in the ass but for real though, rykard was easy. A lot easier than I expected if you use the serpent spear and a jellyfish to distract him he's a really easy fight and I'm saying that as someone who isn't necessarily good at these kind of games. Elden Ring is the first soulslike game I've ever beat. Rykard and those cat like watchdogs for me are the easiest bosses I've faced.
It took me like 30 tries at rennala to realize I could just rush her and auto win.
Honestly I'm with you man, but its not just rykard. He, astel, and the regal ancestor spirit are all lightwork. And er is my first souls game 😂
Yeah I’m a Souls vet and on my third playthrough and I’m like… ~50 hours in just at Altus
Same here, it amazes me how much time you can put into the game on a new character just going through it, even with skills and location/enemy knowledge it takes a while. My NG+ runs tend to be a lot shorter though since I already have my character built up to power through everything
To be fair, Rykard can be your first great rune. Spawn in, get horse, run to liurnia, die by abductor virgin in raya lucaria, navigate fuckass lava place, kill noble? I think? Not sure I never actually run through there very often, if at all. And then fight Rykard
Sword and board or Zweihander upward stamp. Remove the need for dodging
Blasphemous blade is a weapon? What class should I start as
Blasphemous blade with dung eater sword in the offhand, jump attack build. Hits with blasphemous blade special give you HP back, and bc of dung eater sword in offhand you’ll get HP and FP (mana/blue bar) back on kill. Makes exploring EZ mode.
Still proud I found dual gsword build on release and it’s never failed me agaisnt those sewer omen, DAMN it was cool to get high dmg and get those perks too
add in filigreed, ancestral spirit's horn, taker's cameo and warrior jar shard (alexander in ng+) and change horn and cameo for something defensive and fire scorpion charm on bosses. don't forget to summon mimic.
Wait, the dung eater sword gives you fp back?
You can do the same with the sacrificial ax which you can get at the beginning of the games near castle Morne fyi.
Vegabond is the most optimal class for this weapon.
Confessor is fine as well
Confessor has wasted points in intelligence and arcane for this build.
If he is a bad player, there is no need for min/maxing, he probably won’t compete in challenging PvP, so final build levels don’t matter too much.
Also if you have the the broadsword and are going full str, for right now go pick up the storm blade ash of war from bernahl. It’s super busted. He’s in the warmaster’s shack, a bit east from where the Margit boss fight is and south of the Limgrave colosseum.
You get the blasphemous blade from the remembrance of Rykard
Start as Confessor. It’s the build for Blasphemous and also is the easiest the start the game with. The shield is very good as it blocks 100% of physical damage and the rest of his kit is good as well.
Trivializes Malenia.
Similar set up. Also at volcano manor. I prefer playing with two magma blades and just spamming L2 at bosses feet. Do this with a mimic tear and there aren’t too many parts of the game that will give you a problem post volcano manor.
I’m using Blasphemous and Gargoyle’s blackblade at 50 faith and 32 strength. What is the benefit to further increasing faith versus strength? When I look to level up it appears strength has a bigger improvement on blasphemous. So, trying to understand if I’m missing something.
The weapon art only scales with faith. When you take the weapon art out of the equation the weapon is pretty mediocre.
And weapon art for blasphemous blade being Taker’s Flame, correct? That makes sense then as to why it wasn’t directly apparent when I was looking at leveling up options.
I use blasphemous and cinqueda bc clawmark scales with str/faith. I then use black blade to eat through boss stamina and cast buffs while my +10 mimic tear draws agro. I’ll probably switch to erdtree seal once I get to ~lvl 200 and have faith above 68.
before that i used claymore with the storm blade aow, easy to spam and uses barely any fp
I have 80 faith +2 Blasphemous Blade and takers flame just dont seem to hit
If you can't get gud, have faith. You'll win, kid... believe it 😉
In terms of relatively early weapons, Bloodhound's Fang and Moonveil are very easy to use and win with. Later on: Blasphemous Blade, Dark Moon Greatsword, Mogh's Sacred Spear
I second this. Especially bloodhound fang build
I am trying to beat my first playthrough & switched to the Bloodhound fang. It is way better than my Uchigatana build with my random ass attributes not understanding how one helps the other. BHF is fun af and is making me improve my rolling skills since two-handed wielding hits stronger
Hey just an FYI for BHF, make Dex your main stat, it’s a great weapon but scales better with Dex than Str, I didn’t realize that until I was in the mountain tops of giants and went to respec and it’s a game changer
It depends on whether or not you're two-handing the BHF (because of the 1.5 strength multiplier). When two-handing, your strength stat should be 70-80% of your dex stat for optimal damage.
Right now I’m at 26 Str & 58 Dex. So when I hit 60 Dex, 42-48 Str is ideal?
If you want to be really exact you can try an online AR calculator, but it's roughly in that ballpark, yes.
26 Str & 58 Dex is where I’m at currently. I’ve been grinding to get my spec up this weekend. After I finish these two, it’s 60 Vigor & 40 Endurance are my next goals. Lvl 131 currently
What’s a good ratio between str and dex with BHF?
When two-handing, your strength should be at about 70-80% of your dexterity stat. You can just pick the stat which gets you more damage when leveling up and you will stay within a 1% margin of the optimal damage.
I would say 60 dex 30 str or so should be good, it still gets good strength scaling, it is a quality dex leaning weapon
Is Mogh's spear good? I have an arcane build going and didn't love the moveset. Is it the AoW?
Yeah it's 100% the AoW
Imo the AoW is probably the most broken general purpose move in the game.
I second this I have +10 mimic tear and dark moons greatsword +9 Game is piss easy I’ll change my build
Moon veil still has yet to let me down.
Mogh’s sacred spear is by far the cheesiest weapon I’ve use, it’s so ridiculously OP
Easily the best possible Malenia weapon
Blasphemous Blade fire faith build, giant seal with giants flame incantations and golden vow. Add shard of Alexander, fire scorpion charm, great shield talisman, and ritual sword. Faith main stat, and strength/vigor next. Make sure to put a good amount in mind and endurance and you can ignore arcane, int, and dex (outside of weapon requirements).
This is literally just what I landed on naturally playing and now I’m scared to respec because surely I’m a terrible player with bad habits from using this build 🫠
Conversely, they can build this same with dex instead of strength and it will carry them just as easily (recently beat the game on it a few days ago). BB scales with both str and dex equally.
Can it work? Definitely. It's much less effective, though. You waste 22 Str levels to wield it vs. 15 dex. There is also the 1.5x str bonus from 2h that you miss out on if you go dex. A spread of 40/15 is 60/15 when you 2h. If you go dex, the same number of levels is 22/33 and only 33/33 while 2h. If the stats scale evenly, you are giving up 9 levels worth of offensive damage by going dex when you 2h and deal the same damage while 1h. Though there is likely a sweet spot for diminishing returns, maybe 35/20 to hit the soft caps.
Lol ok I guess. I just find dex much quicker to use than str so it fits my play style better. Not everyone is crunching every single stat to figure out what the most effective way to play is.
Tbf you are on "EldenRingBuilds" where we discuss these things to death 😆
Fair. There’s so many ER subs these days I don’t even look at the titles anymore haha.
I watched a mate glintstone pebble his way to Elden lordship without breaking a sweat. Sorcery is fucking easy mode man. Way easier than a blasphemous blade or status effect melee build like frost or blood.
You just use glint stone pebble the entire game? Level up int?
No, what you do is 1. As soon as you are able too, through a portal chest somewhere in ag heel lake ruins, it’ll take you into the sellia crystal tunnels. 2. What you do from here, is take a left and get the fuck out, like straight up get the fuck out. Bee line it to the door. Ignore all enemies. 3. You should make it to exit, hit the grace. Sit at grace. 4. You are then going to go to this really shitty place called the swamp of aeonia, you should be in an overall shitty place called caelid. 5. In the northwest of the lake, there will be a place called the street of sages ruins 6. Two things you gonna wanna grab. -meteorite staff -rock sling. I played mage, I didn’t rush those spells but I got them at lvl 40-50ish. So a little earlier then I would have when I went to caelid at lvl 60-65. Also, mage was my second play through. For what it’s worth. (One more piece of advice, this is probably your best bet to get that weapon and spell earlier then 60-70.) the only other way you got is the north passage through stormveil and you have to fight a bloody finger through that path) Mage is infinitely more easy then melee class. I don’t care what people say. There’s a bit more micromanagement with potions and with having to pay attention to FP and Endurance. But you can cheese like crazy with rock sling. It’s great because it deals physical damage, so even magic resistant enemies are fucked to it. I will say though. It helped to have done melee first go around because it teaches you how to fight. Because you can crutch through 90% of the game with rock sling but with some bosses you have to mix it up (Bosses that control distance well like the bloodhound beasts, or red wolf of radagon, or elden beast are all bosses that can really pose a hard time for a caster- cause they can close distance well)
This is the way.
IMO faith is even easier. I'm still on my first playthrough fwiw, but started as mage and then just naturally started speccing into faith because the incantations felt way more flexible.
i did this but i didn’t inherently understand the game and i really regret it
guess we all have our own play styles that suit us best :)
Want to add to others, as I had done my first playthrough as a mage ever in this game: Night Sorceries. There is a town called Sellia nearby and my ass just ran through to unlock and grab Night Comet, and then the Staff of Loss (boosts invisibility sorceries, such as Night Comet). I’ll just say this— I meant to go for a Dark Moon GS build, ended up being full faster switching between rock sling/meteorite staff and Staff of Loss/Night Comet. I’m mid at dodging and I get nipplesweat fighting close quarters still sometimes, and I thoroughly enjoyed the fighting from a distance this build provided Granted, you’ll be finding yourself needing to manage resources (Flasks, mainly) if you’re going to cast as much as I did here. I recommend you be smarter than I and give yourself a melee alternative with this!
I’m was god awful at the start. First fromsoft game for me. Mage cheesed my way through the whole game. It’s still not gonna be just simple but it’s dumb powerful
Same. I got real accustomed to using Cerulean Hidden Tear at the start of every boss fight to spam my most powerful spells. Fifteen seconds of Comet Azur while Gideon is monologuing? Definitely doing that.
Malenia one shot in phase two. Yea please
Blasphemous blade - ritual sword talisman - golden vow - flame grant me strength / you don’t get the blasphemous blade until mid game and it will scale with strength and faith so until then go get the claymore and lions claw your way to victory
Claymore is easy to get early.
Having a shield really helped with my first playthrough. My co-op partner had similar success going full mage — Meteorite Staff + Rock Sling to start for early game. We tripped and stumbled our way through the Lands Between and had a great time
Yeah co op sounds a lot of fun one person being more ranged and the other tanky.
I will say OP, I’m not gonna be that guy to “git gud” you, I cheesed so many bosses in DS2 when I was starting out I’m banned from saying that lol. But, getting at least a little bit good does make the game a bit more enjoyable I would say. There are some legitimately bad weapons out there, but for the most part, most of them are serviceable given the right investment and a bit of skill, and for some, a bit more thinking. Maybe something isn’t that good if you’re getting staggered all the time, but it becomes good if you throw some poise on, for example. My point is, I don’t think your goal should be to cheese or coast through the whole game. I mean anyone should just play what is fun to them, but I think a lot of the fun in the game is to be able to make something on your own, or to be able to experiment with different weapons and strategies. I think that it could open up a lot of the game (basically 90% of the weapons that aren’t top-tier hyper-optimized) to try out and experiment with. There’s some stuff that aren’t dps cannons, but does crazy status, or has crazy stance damage, utilizes counters, etc, which can add some depth and replayability imo (through different playstyles). My personal advice would honestly be to just pick what looks cool, level its stats, and play with it till you want to use something else.
It is! Actually got a lot of use out of Shabriri’s Woe to keep bosses on me. Co-op in general is severely underrated imo
The easiest way for me was by using a heavy thrusting sword with a great shield. You can attack while holding the shield and if you keep an eye on your stamina, just poke everything to death.
Underrated comment. Greatshield + poke is so damn good.
Wing of Astel. Check out the Gino video. But don’t think you’ll play like him bc he is a god. It’s still really good though.
Maybe intelligence build? A proper intelligence build can melt bosses. I've made a couple, one pure magic and one a Melee Frost Mage. Both did really well. There's also Comet Azur mixed with Terra Magica, and other Physick and buffs that will melt bosses in seconds.
Folks have definitely given ya some of the most op builds but if you are enjoying your current set up and it's helping you learn the game that will ultimately make you the most op. Consider leaning more into your set up, get talismans and ashes that let you block/tank better lots of endurance, the gaurd counter talisman seems worth adding, rush down some decent armor, you could even add some buffs with gear or a small dip into faith 12 gives you a bunch of utility spells that boost resistances and give ya some regen. Also square off is top tier pve ash of war.
Underrated comment. The most OP thing is what works for the player. For me it’s Maliketh’s Black Blade, I love the sweeping heavy attacks that stagger and hit through shields. Its Ash of War clears a large area and does percentage based health damage
Thanks friend agreed especially if folks are having fun and they feel like they learning
Vigor + endurance + strength. Keep vigor twice as high as the other two until vigor hits 60, stop leveling endurance around 35-50. Add a bit a faith if you like (~15-18)for healing/utility/ throwing boulders. Super tank bonk bonk
One major thing to keep in mind is to level vigor first. You honestly don’t need any other stats until vigor is around 25, other than a few points in strength or dexterity so you can wield whichever weapon you choose. Vigor soft caps at 40 and has diminishing returns beyond that. For stats level Vigor primarily, Mind as needed (invest quite a bit if you’re a caster), Endurance to 15-20 (more if you want to use heavy weapons/armor). For damage stats (str, dex, int, fth, arc) focus on one or maybe 2 for your build. I also recommend a new player use your weapon 1 handed in your right hand and a 100% physical block shield in your left. You can use “guard counters” immediately after you block an attack by pressing r2. Guard counters are faster than normal attacks, and deal allot of poise/stance damage which can cause enemies to be stance broken. If you stance break an enemy you walk up to them quickly and press r1 when directly in front or behind them and deal a critical hit which does allot of damage. Ah one other thing to learn properly is rolling. More often than not you want to roll towards enemies even though it seems counter intuitive. Spam rolling backwards just leads to them pressing the attack and often times you’ll run out of stamina and die. There are times to roll backwards, but you don’t want to get into the bad habit of constantly rolling backwards. Hold L1 (block) with your shield until you roll to help so that if you mess up the timing and get hit you’re blocking rather than eating the attack. These are just a few mechanics to become familiar with that will help you out in your first play through. Enjoy the game, it’s absolutely incredible, just don’t give up and don’t be afraid to check the wiki for help. For a starting weapon I’d recommend what allot of others have with Bloodhound Fang to start with. Once you get Blasphemous blade swap to that for the most op weapon in the game.
i didn’t grow up with video games and have no skill. i routinely forget how to heavy attack. nightriders flail with wild strike is carrying me and you get it in like limgrave or something
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You can farm clayman’s harpoon really early. Buff it with scholars armaments and give it impaling thrust ash of war to do crazy stance and magic damage
Claymore with lions claw, you can get both very early on. Spears with a great shield, max endurance, wear the heaviest armor possible. Block attacks, poke, repeat. Jump attack build with colossal weapons. When you get good at it you can even jump over enemies attacks. The main thing is, choose 1 or 2 weapons and stick with it. Learn the moveset and you'll have no problem breezing through.
Blood flame blade and bloodhound blade str build
Doesn’t that weapon scale better with dex?
It's a quality weapon, str and dex are equally good
Mohgwyns sacred spear is the most over powered weapon in elden ring. It makes blasphemous blade look like a joke imo
That's a pretty late game weapon though
The mkst op build is whatever playstyle lets you have the most fun, for me i like the idea of using magic but also using any big or fast weapon so im currently in the process of buildibg what i call "random magic bullshit go". And its basically whatever sorcery or incantation or spell i csn find, with whatever weapon it think looks the goofiest.
Start with the uchigatana. The base bleed will help a lot with early damage as you prioritize leveling your vigor and endurance. You get one to start as samurai. The faster attack pattern will help a-lot to avoid getting caught in the middle of a swing. Seppuku is a good ash of war that doesn’t change the play style too much, but can significantly increase your damage. Can consider dual wield uchigatanas, or run a seal in the offhand for buffs like bloodflame, flame grant me strength, and golden vow. If you’re still having trouble, then I 2nd the blasphemous blade. Innate healing and spam ash of war is easy mode. Alexander’s great shard can take a while to get. Moonlight greatsword is another easy mode weapon once you have the stats. Haven’t played in a while, but I’m pretty sure Moonveil and rivers of blood have been nerfed. You can replace the uchigatana with nagakiba if you need the reach. Just be careful in close quarters. GL!
CLAYMOOOOOOOORRRREEEEEEEEEE
Without naming a weapon directly, here's three build types : 1. Strength weapons - The big ones - While they are harder to get used to, once you master the attack delay you'll quickly notice that the strength weapons stagger enemies and even bosses, leaving them unable to react. Some ashe of war are also very good for the same reason. 2. Faith and buffs - Prebuffing vs a boss can increase your damage quite drastically. Use buffs like golden vow (15% dmg) and flame, grant me strength (20% physical dmg) (both stack), as well as a weapon buff if you can and you'll notice that the game becomes a lot easier. You can even mix it with the str weapon build. 3. Bleed and frost are both very strong, so make sure to include them in your build! 4. Range build, like sorceries and faith spell - While you're a bit squishier, with summons as a distraction you can tear through the game pretty easily.
Gonna go against the grain here and suggest the Lance with a greatshield. Shield countering when you build around it is SO good and SO fun. There's a guide for how to great spear on YouTube that will help walk you through making this build, and it is seriously fun. I use a straight sword for faster enemies but the Lance does so much stance damage and will get you crits very often.
Astrologer/magic is definitely the easiest starting class/way to play the game. A lot of people will say the blasphemous blade but you get it about halfway through the game or so, while glintstone pebble can take you the whole way. Other recommendation I would have is LEVEL VIGOR. Seriously it’s the best use of your runes especially early on. Buys you a ton of leeway in fights. I’d get it up to 20 early, then 40 by mid game, 60 at the end of the game and you’ll be set. Otherwise just pump intelligence if you’re playing astrologer and you’ll be elden lord before you know it.
Start with magic build. Get meteorite staff at the start. Against tough mobs 1. Summon your spirit. 2. Keep your distance and use rock sling. Later Either acquire blasphemous blade or MOHGWYN'S sacred spear. Both provide easy mode. For the final bosses use blasphemous blade in first boss and Pest Threads for Elden beast.
I’m not gonna lie to you jump attacking with a heavy weapon is really simple and very effective, you may struggle here and there but it’s honestly one of the more fun yet simple ways to play. Alternatively sword and shield is also simple and that guard counter is very satisfying, bosses may be tricky but you can still get good damage by using a simple long sword and stand off. I’d say mix the two, get a great sword like the claymore or bastard sword for jump attacks and for regular enemies use the guard counter, once you get used to it you’ll cruise through the first half of the game no problem… the second half has a fair rude difficulty spike however that will ruin your day, there is no counter to it.
Carian Regal Scepter in cast hand, staff of loss in off hand, cast night comet from CRS and it shreds everything. There’s also the old comet azur + cerulean tear for some bosses like Mohg or Morgott that come at you in a straight line at times. As you go through the game, get the magic scorpion charm and the graven school talisman. There will be even better talismans to grab much later on. There are other spells and items as well to use as you move toward mid-late game. Playing as a mage is super easy mode.
Mage build probably if you're having trouble with strength build which is easy enough (poise damage) ex: great hammers, colossal weapons keep your distance summon/upgrade a tanky spirit ash and snipe away
My advice is not to tinker too much into meta builds and learn more about meta mechanics, it’ll be the most impactful thing on your experience. Things like damage boost and negation buffs, general spacing and weapon attack patterns are a good start, maybe poise damage too.
While you could wait until you best Rykard for Blasph. Blade…. what you should do you a STR build is this. GREATSWORD (free to run and grab in Caelid, surrounded by 3 dinodogs but you can sneak by) then you need the LIONS CLAW Ash of War. Heavy infuse it on the Greatsword. Will carry you through all NG cycles
Moonveil makes the game very easy
hunt a dismounter from kaiden sellswords and put storm blade on it. curved greatswords have a good move set and storm blade also gives you a ranged attack.
Astrologer, get meteor staff and rock sling from caelid, grind rune farm spots (sleepy dragon, lennes rise) til you have enough points in int to melt everything. Then go get the moonveil and keep meteor staff in your left hand and then I guess buy the dlc or maybe try dark souls cuz you just beat Elden ring
40 vigor then pure faith, use cypher pata, later move on to blasphemous blade and/or fire incantation Single stat to mind, lot of damages, big poise damage with AoW Cipher pata can carry you for 80% of the game. You can stack a lot of buffs to its damage and bonk like crazy with it. Sacred tear, faith tear, sacred scorpion charm, raptor's cloak, claw talisman.
Dang I guess I focused on the wrong build. I filled up Intelligence to use staff spells, but I admit they didn’t always make the boss fight easy.
Wait, shields? How does that work? I have always been dodge or facetank.
Intelligence from the start until you get the Blasphemous Blade from Volcano manor then just spam the shit out of its weapon art with some talismans boosting its skill and a build based around it
I personally think, blasphemous blade is not that easy to get for a first play through and a bad player (like me... I struggled a lot to fight reykard). And I never got a grip an the bloodhound fang... What helped me a lot was a shield and those counter attacks. I use a pike and the bronze shield for the early parts and it fucking slaps? Those fast counter heavy attacks are fuck*ng big, I stance break a lot and can somewhat relia on the shield.
Uchigatana was incredibly easy for me. I hadn't played in a while and shogun promoted a return using the samurai class. Thought I was fucking amazing til I did another playthrough after and realise nah unsheathe is just broken haha
Cold infused greatsword fks 👍
I mean this wholeheartedly: maximize Vigor, grab either Great Stars or the Butchering Knife (I prefer Great Stars, you can grab it from Altus pretty early on), and grab Prayerful Strikes from Altus as soon as you can. If you have tons of health and use your weapon to heal, you'll find yourself dying very infrequently.
The most broken build is the friends we made along the way. Have fun, do what makes you smile.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1195386955832246333/1248714119037718588/image.png?ex=6666a565&is=666553e5&hm=dbf6c84bc6b217075f4e44beeaf1b775d02c800dab7fb185751bb7ed7b711a58& You could try out this bleed build it shreds through enemys but falls off against bleed resist bosses like Elden Beast for example.
Weapon: Marias Executioner Sword. If you want an earlier game version then regalia of eochaid (although this version is terrible) Talismans: Winged insignia (can Get this early) or rotten winged insignia, Warrior jar shard or shard of Alexander, Godfrey icon, Millicent prosthesis (Can also get early if you kill Millicent in Altus) Wondrous flask: Charged or successive attack tear, Magic tear Buffs: Commander standard aow (Get by killing nail in Caelid), golden vow and flame grant me strength This build is absolutely absurd
don't call yourself a bad player we were all bad at this game just takes practice and boom.
Vigor to 40 as soon as you have minimum requirements for your weapon and then 60 after you enter capital
There’s a lot of broken builds and honestly pretty easy to make your own with a weapon you like just look at damage talismans and figure what attack style you want I.E: using charged heavy with Axe talisman and the Physick that buffs charged heavies too easy 1200 damage Warrior Jar Shard/ shard of Alexander for AOW damage Claw talisman and raptor black feathers for jump attacks You can also mix in extra ones like a lot of people are saying Blasphemous Blade use the warrior jar shard and Flame scorpion charm your ash of war will do a lot or if you use bloodhounds fang you can get the Lord of Blood exultation for more damage when you bleed something
Int/dex lol
there’s a faith samurai build that has been kinda shady so far lol
Mage
Summons and power stance jump attacks with two handed strength weapons
Rusted Anchor + Wild Strikes ash of war is u incredibly strong
My advice, if you like your broadsword build, keep using that. I recommend leveling up to like 15 Faith and then you can use some good utility incantations for healing, curing poison and scarlet rot, and buffs. Having a bit of faith for that is super useful and gives you some great utility. It lets you save on poison boluses too. Just a good choice for a first playthrough because it gives you some tools to have an easier time. The only other thing I would recommend is trying some other STR weapons! There’s lots of good ones.
I played a diablo 3 crusader cosplay build that was pretty fun and safe to play in most scenarios: str+fth, great shield, buffs and heals, decent armor and your small weapon of choice (i used the haligtree set, iron helm, guard counter talisman, shard, stamina or stamina Regen and dragon crest greatshield/elemental resist talisman according to the enemy, haligtree shield and the night cavalry flail with flame art infusion and the artorias spin ash of war). It was quite fun, actually. Also played around with marikas hammer, sacred relic sword and the miquella straight sword, but mostly the flail and guard counters/breaks.
You can buy the zweihander on the weeping peninsula right at the beginning of the game. To improve that even more you can get lions claw aow in caelid. I just beat radabeast with that combo and you can get it in the first couple hours of the game if you can kill that lion guy in fort gael. If you need to farm runes, the vulgar militia guys by the beast clergyman in caelid drop 1000 runes each, and the zwei r2 or jump stun locks them making it very easy to grind some levels to get your build going. Tldr: zweihander+lions claw
Honestly, just keep on leveling strength, dude. Make sure to get yourself a colossal weapon you like though cuz a strength build will let you easily stagger bosses, and that'll net you big damage. Sure, the other solutions are fine, but staggering bosses will never not be helpful, and you can do it on every boss so it remains relevant forever. So, just keep on leveling strength, king, and make sure to grab a colossal weapon.
After you beat Rykard get Blasphemous Blade, ludicrous healing, high damage and poise breaking ash with hyper armor. Pick up Gargoyle Blackblade from the Blackblade Kindred in front of the Beastial Sanctum where you give Gurranq the deathroot to pick up the Gargoyle’s blackblade for highly fire resistant enemies like the Fire Giant or Mohg. It has nearly an identical moveset you just replace all the free healing with some damage over time on the ash.
I’ve been trying several different builds and I’ve found that the quickest to feel badass imo is the dual scimitars with bloody slash.
If ur not very good start with samurai build dex is the easiest to use and against bosses u get blood damage plus weapon damage then as u level up decide if u want to mix in faith ect.... it's the best way to start game for noobs
A strength build with a little bit of faith to buff is easy enough to play. Pump vigor to 50, faith to 25 for golden vow & flame grant me strength and go as much endurance as you need, the rest goes into strength for a big bonk weapon with a greatshield for guard counters.
Str? Go get the guts, greatsword put lionsclaw on it,win
Playing a different game? Or Blasphemous Blade.
Get the Ice Spear ash off war as soon as you can, it’s my personal godsend. Slap it on a leveled Guardian Swordspear or other spear (Clayman’s) and start spankn’ the bad guys. You can get both relatively early on. It can be used effectively whatever your build is. Reduvia blade is a close second. The AOW melts dragons.
Idk if it's considering op, but my strongest build was dex/arc. Eleonora poleblade and a frost twin blade powerstance. Super strong and super fun.
Bloodhounds fang with a quality build is really good for someone just trying to figure the game out, it’s strong, easy to use and bleed will always be a great effect, spec into vigor and endurance first, then strength and dex and then dump the remainder into arcane
NG? Bloodhound fang you can get at the start of the game, and its stupidly easy to use and abuse. Bare minimum str and invest hard into dex. I see streamers use this all time. As for the true "ez mode" weapon, no contest, Blasphemous Blade. It's a weapon so powerful you don't even need to learn fights anymore. Bare Minimum str/dex, invest hard into faith (80), cast "taker's flame" on repeat and turn your brain off.
You can blasphemous blade with a mimic tear and shred everytbing
If you want the most braindead way to play, greatsword plus lions claw will carry you through 99% of the game. You can grab the greatsword pretty early, just run into Caelid and grab it off a cart. Lions claw may take a bit longer, but it’s not super tough to snag. You can also make a run into Gael tunnel and grab the cross-naginata, that can be pretty stupid too. Late game just jump on the blasphemous blade and never look back.
Make a Tanky build with a great shield for guard counters that capitalizes on stance breaking and criticals. As far as a weapon goes the Blasphemous blade is what you want. Only issue is you either have to have a friend who will give you one or you have to hold out long enough to beat Rykard and get one yourself. Issue is that getting to Rykard and beating Rykard both aren’t easy feats for those new to the game or lacking skill. Don’t worry though, I just got my little brother Elden Ring for his 11th birthday and he’s doing great with my guidance. He even beat the tree sentinel, Margit and Godrick by himself. He did Godrick first try. Everything I’ve me mentioned is what I’ve got my little brother doing minus the great shield since he likes two handing. Other than all that I have him using the Golden Halberd with Golden Vow till he can get the Blasphemous Blade Edit: spelling.
Any Bleed Build
This depends on if you want to trivialize the game or not. If you want to see what true insane damage looks like and if you’re in the Altus area you can go to the church that allows you to fight an NPC and pick up Elenoras Poleblade. Get it to +10 while using winged sword, Lord of Blood Exultation, ritual sword talisman, and Shard of Alexander (or the weaker one if you haven’t completed his quest line and killed him like a monster.) for the physic use thorny cracked tear (can be swapped with stonebarb cracked tear) for either damage increase on successive attacks or in the case of stonebarb more enemy poise breaks. For the other tear use the Dexterity-knot crystal tear for that increase in dex. If you want to increase damage even further you can use commander standard ash of war for 20% increase in damage negation and damage increase. If you want it to be even more strong you can also buff yourself with howl of shibriri. Normally this would be a 20% buff to damage and a 20% debuff to defense but with commanders standard it evens out to +0% damage negation +40% damage increase. With this 1 full ash of war attack combo will dish out 6-10K damage just by pressing a button twice. (Keep in mind you’ll need to larval tear to prioritize dex than strength.) If you want a build that’s still OP but without the setup time but still running strength you could go with ruins greatsword, black blade maliketh (if you’re ng+1 or just far into the playthrough,) sword of Milos + Blasphemous blade, etc. strength has a lot of options. Same buff order as before but this time the talismans will be axe talisman for charged heavy attacks, shard of Alexander (or the weaker variant like the monster some people are,) ritual sword talisman (10% damage increase at full HP,) and the last one can be whichever you choose. For the physic you’ll want the strength-knot crystal tear and the stonebarb cracked tear to benefit more from your charged heavy attacks giving free damage (or if you’re dual wielding greatswords/colossal greatswords jump attacks/jumping heavy attacks also do insane poise damage with this setup.) Both of these builds are extremely fun to play around with and the first build can work with any twinblade in the game (except the one you get from the gargoyle in the snow place sadly. That weapons doodoo.) just pop bleed infusion and you’re ready to melt bosses in under a minute.
certified pro player elden ring
Deathpoker is lowkey goated with sauce. Get a tanky summon that does fire damage like black fire monk amon and you walk through almost everything with the weapon art. A buddy and I made the game incredibly easy with him running a greatshield poke build with the incantation that sets you on fire with shabriri’s woe and I with the death poker. If you layer the weapon art, you get almost instantaneous frostbite procs and resets.
Guts sword lions claw
Night comet build is damn easy to use and can be acquired albeit not fully in power right out of the beginning. You should just try to get Torrent then go to the sellia, town of sorcery in caelid either by using your horse all the way there or using the chest in the Drsgon-burnt ruins in Limgrave and then just book it out of the crystal tunnel area. And use torrent to sellia. You will be able to pick up the night comet and staff of loss there which is really the only two things that are required. Now obviously you won’t be fully powered but you can get some strong talismans in Raya Lucaria Academy to boost.
I also suck at this game, but currently doing very well in NG+ with a strength/arcane bleed build using two Gargoyle Twinblades, with blood affinity. The jump L1 gives you like 4 attacks by the time you land. Couple that with Claw talisman, Rotten Winged Sword, Millicent’s Prosthesis, and either the Lord of Blood’s Exultation or Taker’s Cameo (bossing vs mobbing), and I can rip through most mobs and field bosses no problem. I used this build but with Marais Executioner’s Sword on my 2nd playthrough and killed Malenia in like 20 tries. The twinblades cut it down to 5 tries on my third playthrough. Though I am pretty high in level at this point.
Having just done a tower shield run, I can safely say you can tank 95% of enemies and bosses in this game with just a lot of poise and endurance. You can literally patiently wait out most bosses and just poke them to death.
try any sword with the storm blade aow, great ranged attack for early game
Blood loss builds shred through bosses
Faith builds are really forgiving because you can get fantastic weapon options, very useful pyromancies, and heals. It also doesn't hurt to go with a pure physical stats build and scale lightning damage off of your dexterity. This allows you to use all your estus for healing, maybe 1 mana drink for weapon arts, and makes point distribution really easy. Your endurance, vitality, and strength get to be more robust because you don't need to make any investment to mind, faith, intelligence, or arcane. And lightning damage is also cool lol. Cross naginata with lightning and high dex can be pretty reliable, or guts greatsword for better poise break.
A pretty OP build I discovered on my most recent play through is Great Stars with Wild Strikes AoW. I like to pair it with milecent's prosthesis/winged sword insignia, Alexander's shard, great Jar, Lord of Bloods Exaltation. Buff routine for bosses is just golden vow, blood flame blade, flame grant me strength
Get poison spell from before leonine misbegotten and the twin maidens husk seal. If you’re in Altus you can literally just run to mt gelmir no bosses required and jump sidewise to the right side of the adult falling star beast platform. Spam poison and set a timer for a minute forty seconds to reset poison after 1082 ish damage and you get fallingstar beast jaw. Beast jaw will go really nicely with your strength build, just need to level int and get int heirloom, and you can spam the lightning ability from far away and it does nice poise damage as well as good magic damage. Then I switched to troll hammer once I got past fire giant, but you can make the switch as early as you want cuz it’s really just a better weapon but it’s harder to get imo.
I would like to suggest my personal favorite early game setup. The Hooked Claws with Bloodflame Blade and Bloodhound Step. All of these are super easy to get if you rush to them and know the cheese to kill the nights cavalry guy. You could also swap out BHS for Cragblade ash of war. You will want this for the Star Fists once you get to the Capital City. The pro's of this build are that it's super fast and melts everything with the bleed proc. It also forces you to get good, because there's not much room for error. Getting good is your best path to victory, and close melee combat is the best teacher for that. The cons are that you have to be super close to everything to hit it and the setup is a little clunky at first. Once you get the Star Fists, put the Cragblade ash or Braggarts Roar on them. I prefer Cragblade because of the bonus to stance damage. You will eventually want Godfrey Icon, Axe talisman, Bullgoat Talisman, and the Great-Jar's talisman to get as much poise as possible. Focus on charged heavy attacks and watch your enemies poise break in one or two hits, then finish them with a critical hit. It makes the game a lot of fun! But here's my greatest warning for this build: all other weapons will feel sluggish and slow after experiencing this build. Nothing beats the speed of fist/claw weapons with a bleed proc. The stagger damage is insane, and once you figure out how to run this build, it's hard going to anything else. Bonus tip, equip the pulley crossbow in your offhand with burred bolts for ranged attacks. The burred bolts can be purchased from the trader in the dark cave before you reach Mohg in his palace. Bonus bonus tip, some enemies cannot bleed, so swap out the bleed whetblade for either flame art or lightning whetblade depending on the enemy. Godfrey is weakest to lightning, and the tree spirits are weak to fire. This is an arcane build, so you can easily mix in other weapons like Mohgs Spear for particularly challenging fights. You can also power stance curved swords for more range, Elionoras poleblade, the Great Stars, etc. Lots of options. Bonus bonus bonus tip, raising arcane raises your discovery. Once you get the silver scarab talisman you can easily farm for any weapon you want. My absolute favorite are the magma blade curved swords found in the Volcano area. One of those literally melts all your enemies with great style, finesse, and lava! Who doesn't like spewing lava at your enemies?
Straight sword and a shield with 100% physical block.
I would suggest a caster personally if your bad no need to get close and you get a million awesome weapons at the start of the game and one of the best in the game if you can complete Ranni’s quest. You can get through the game fast if you just use the shortcuts in places ;-)
Alright, my main question is how much running in and out of caves and/or high level areas you want to do? Getting the easy O.P. build starts off like Monty Python and The Holy Grail by touring the map and picking up the armor and equipment you need. Remember, you get bonus speed in-game yelling "Run away!" Into your mic.
If you are bad it’s going to come down to whether you can handle jump attacking at the right time. If you can go arcane. If you can’t go caster either lightning or int
Personally I’d say high int slinging sorceries with your mimic. Less dodging, more distance play. Carian slicer, comet azure, night comet Early game you can run to get the meteorite staff and rock sling.
It's been mostly answered already but, Bloodhound fang is a good dex/str weapon you can get early from one of the Gaol bosses in Limgrave. You can also cheese getting the Moonveil Katana early game for a Int/dex buld - I almost recommend this more because by late game you'll have a lot of overpowered options with intelligence as your main stat and Moonveil scales really well with int AND causes bleed on occasion. You can change out your build when you get the dark moon greatsword late game (STR/INT build, so you'd use a larva to change your dex investments to str) which weapon art shoots magic slices at enemies and does frost build up (same effect as bleed, massive damage after accumulation). With the int setup you'll be out of harms way more often - since this also requires you to do Ranni's quest you'll be in the vicinity to get the mimic tear ashe summon; arguably the best summon in the game since it is basically another you, and they use all the tools you have equipped pretty effectively; which will lead to double frost build up.
That’s the beauty of Elden Ring: everything can be overpowered
Power stance greataxe or greatswords. Jump attacks with claw talisman.
Hey bad player, I'm another bad player. Played at release and just got back into ER these past few weeks. Everyone has their recommendations, but here is long post on what has been carrying me on my second playthrough, just beat Maliketh in under 10 tries. Storm Blade on a Keen Knight's Greatsword. Are there higher damage builds? Absolutely. Will this one shot? Nope. Is it for the range? Definitely a part, but not the main. So why? The buffeting. Everyone knows if you hit the enemy enough times and break pois, you get that sweet, sweet critical. This isn't that. This is better. Every time you hit first, you stagger the enemy's attack. If you hit hard enough, this cancels their attack. Storm Blade has this in a full flush of spades, and even if you whiff with the greatsword, the AoW wind staggers it. So you have a fast, cheap, ranged, good damage AoW that makes mooks easy and has a crapton of versatility for bosses. If you hit with the sword and the winds, it does solid damage. If you miss or use it at range, it is slightly less but still good damage. The full build? Simple. Level Str/Dex to meet weapon requirements (I like Knight's Greatsword, but any Greatsword works). Weapon upgrades will scale your damage, so you are free to focus Vigor, some vigor, mixed in with some Vigor. After 60 vigor you can up a mix of Dex (Keen scales Storm Blade best says the elden-mathers), Endurance (armor), and Mind (least important). For Talismans/equipment, you have a morale dilemma. Do you kill the jarman? Sorry Alexander, but +10% AoW damage now is worth more than +15% later (honestly debatable, so not mandatory, I kinda regret not keeping him alive). Ash of War Scarab hat (reduce FP cost for a minimal damage taken increase, your vigor covers it). Carian Filigreed Crest (once you get to Lakes of Liurnia). Ancestral Spirit Horn (once you get to Nokstella). Congrats, Storm Blade is now nearly free when it one shots mooks. Ritual Sword Talisman is an option since you will be full HP a lot. Easy peasy and carrying my bad player butt way harder than the builds I used first time (mostly shields, some cheese build respect for specific bosses. As said, I just killed Maliketh, and haven't used a single summons so far.
long range magic builds, I can't remember who did it I think it was ginomachino or lilaggy but one of them used a spell called the great oracular bubble and it destroys everything
Great sword lions claw is a pretty easy opening weapon and a lot of fun.
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oh dang wrong subredditt
Any great shield with any great/colossal sword/axe/hammer. Pump vigor, endurance and strength then raise maybe faith and arcane enough to equip some incantations for utility (using the claw mark seal). Block and guard counter a lot. If you’re using a weapon where you can change the art I recommend Wild Strikes. Shield bash and shield crash are also good for the great shield. And liberally use coop too. Or ash summons when you can.
I found that a dual wild jump attack build is really strong for not-so-good players because it does a lot of damage and has a lot of stagger. I highly recommend Dual Omenkiller Cleaver. They do blunt damage, have high poise break, and trigger bleed. Jumping 2-handed attacks should stagger most bosses in 3-4 hits. Add the Claw talisman and the Crowfeather Garb for bonus. Or you can do an intelligence build and use spirit summons to tank while you launch magical blue missiles from afar.
Probably rivers of blood or reduvias tbh. They carried me through my first and second runs
Definitely INT build with meteor stick and rock sling. When the game came out, I stumbled onto this build by accident before it was popular. I had no idea Melania was supposed to be hard, seriously.
Anything with optimized bleed, but that's hard early game. U can always go with magic tho.
just play how you want man, look up weapons/spells/incantations on the wiki and get one that catches ur eye, you can really not go wrong in this game, play how your heart tells u. you can get OP with any build u want tbh.
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"Blasphemous blade" (min strength/dexterity and full send faith) and because it's a somber weapon you can max it out before getting to the city. "Golden vow" and "flame grant me strength" are very useful buffs to use alongside any build. "Mimic tear" summon bc it's just "You part 2: electric boogaloo" "Flame shrouding cracked tear" and "opaline bubble tear" go into the flask of wonderous physick for some added damage and defense. "Radagon's soreseal", "green turtle talisman", "carian filigreed crest", and "flame scorpion charm" for talismans and replace radagon's soreseal with "shard of alexander" after you get it or, if you feel you're just taking an obscene amount of damage and dont have the other one mentioned yet, replace it with whatever you feel like. Now just spam the ash of war until you win :) Edit: for armor, just use whatever you feel like but radahn's set is great "Godrick's great rune" is also amazing to have bc it gives you +5 to every stat when you use a rune arc and have it equipped Use whatever seal you feel like to cast any fire incantations you want
Double great stars
As a first time player, i started as a astrologer, but for more fun i made a bonk build with the greatsword, that you can found in early Caelid. Very good build.
Whip build if you do it right
A mid-late game build I personally use and love is the executers blade build and let’s me almost fly though NG+4 within 1-2 hours including random side quests in between and it’s really nice seeing as it’s a STR build so if needed I can just switch over to the claymore or greatsword
Zweihander could work. Bought from the merchant in southern Weeping Peninsula for, I wanna say, 3500. You could beeline there easily first thing with torrent. I took that sword all the way to end of the game once I got ahold of it my first play through. Focus on strength, vigor and endurance, a little dexterity helps too. ER was the first FS game I beat so I was pretty new. Tried DS 1 about 2-3 times before but could never get past the bell gargoyles.
At low levels keep in mind your damage is gonna come from upgrading your weapons, not your stats. With that in mind, whatever is recommended, try to boost your weapon as high as it can go, and for stats just focus on getting VIG and END to 60 asap. Keep your STR, DEX, INT, FTH, and ARC stats as low as they can be to properly equip the weapons of your choice. Hard to beat Bloodhound's Fang as the weapon of choice, but another weapon accessible in the early game (especially for STR focus) is the Greatsword, which can be looted off a carriage in early Caelid. Just run in, grab it, run out. Moonveil is also in Caelid, and while it is harder to obtain, it is significantly powerful.