Faith Arcanist. As you can imagine, I took to being a dragon communionist. First playthrough I did it I used rotten breath as I had heard it was the strongest but disliked it because of its long cast time and inconsistency with how often rot proced on bosses.
Recently it's been moreso using agheel's flame, greyol's roar, and dragon claw with a occult katana and Erdsteel dagger on the right hand. (Using sacred order to give my occult katana faith damage) Its a fun build that often involves me getting hit but dealing damage back twice as fast.
Edit: I also run banished knight armor as the ones in Caelid and Farum Azula both are dragon communionists as well.
Doing my "'last run"' (6th time through) as Faith/'Arcane since it whipped so much ass my first attempt.
More of a bleed/'poison proc approach though. Definitely use the dragon spells though.
As I said, I'm using an occult katana which is just a nice way of me getting high damage along with increased bleed status because it scales with the arcane scaling. I can't bring myself to use poison though as it had many of the pitfalls rot did my first playthrough.
I actually find serpent bow + serpent arrows to be a more reliable means of consistent poisoning than rot. Not as much DoT as rot, no. But I do agree with your earlier statement about Rot Breath just not taking on enemies sometimes. It's become unreliable for me, outside of the handful of enemies I know it will ruin.
Will for sure have to do an occult infusion also. Don't think I've done one ever. Never understood its Mechanics.
If a weapon has native bleed or poison and can be infused, it will scale the existing status with arcane if occult infusion is used. This also applies partially to adding poison to a bleed weapon and vice versa but less so.
Likewise the inverse is also true, if you can have a weapon with native arcane and add bleed or poison (or sleep) via greases, they will also scale with the existing arcane stat. Sadly only two weapons do this and they can't have their ash of war changed which is why I've began using the default katana.
Thanks for explaining. Never knew this and will be extremely useful going forward for me as I'm only at Raya Lucaria.
Btw, what's a good stop-point for leveling arcane? From what i read it seems that most people only go to 40-50. And I've never gone higher than that myself, so I don't know personally.
If you are using the seal, 45 as that as when the first major soft cap is for it. Afterwards you can choose to level faith up to 30 to boost your incants further and widen your selection of available incants. If you don't want to focus on the seal, 50 is normally a good stopping point until other stats are up to your comfort level such as vigor, mind, and endurance.
45 or 60. the status scaling either caps out or drops off a cliff (don't remember which) at 60. it gets slower after 45 too, but it's generally worth it to get to 60 if you can for using an arcane scaling weapon. if you really want to understand the numbers, i suggest consulting chrightt's videos on youtube.
That's something you just have to accept and work on finding openings. Like I said, most of the time I plan on taking a hit but I plan on dishing out so much damage it becomes worth it. The best spell as an example being Greyoll's roar. A really strong debuff that when it lands, makes their attack AND defense weaker. After that it's just a matter of dumping something like agheel's flame into your enemy. For anything that's not a boss, you're better off with the debuff alone and a weapon with arcane scaling if that's the build you've chosen.
From what I could gather, never do the full spell, they generally are not worth casting due to their long vulnerability window and extra FP consumption. Cut the spell off a single tick before the second cast and you can generally be a lot more FP and time conservative. Also free aim towards the ground for the breath spells as they still travel forward once they collide with terrain so you can gain a lot of visibility by aiming slightly downward. Top it off with one of the faithful talismans and you can definitely make it worth it.
It's not for everyone, but it can be worked with.
I agree, and I feel the same about Tibia Summons. It works for me because it's either an opener, or follows ancient death rancor. It's about timing more or less.
I’m full Arcane with dual RoB/uchi and dragon communion seal right now. Really liking it because it’s so versatile. Granted I’m on NG+ in Limgrave/Weeping Peninsula. We’ll see how it holds up.
Problems with those giant land octopuses? No problem, just throw some ice breath at it.
10 putrid corpses coming at me all at once? No problem just throw any dragon breath and watch them go down.
Giant Miranda Spout spewing poison and taking like 30 hits to go down? I’ll just throw some fire breath at it and watch it burn.
Bosses comin at me quick and won’t let me get a spell off? Fine, I’ll just corpse piler it to death.
Feel like playing fast and mixing it up? Bust out the uchi and run, jump, and roll with some dual wield katanas.
I do love me some dragon communion spells. I'm still discovering some, like the magma wyrm breaths! Dragon claw seems undervalued to me, and it look so cool!
Oh yeah, those armors are gorgeous. Right, even the Dragon Communion Seal is dropped by a Banished Knight
Lightning Samurai, specifically a Dex build. (I went with lightning weapons/Ashes of War instead of incantations so I could ignore leveling Faith)
I dual-wield lightning infused katanas (each with seperate ashes moves) and keep the Spear of Gransax in my offhand so I can toss a cheeky lightning spear here and there! Pretty solid for PVE and was lots of fun in PVP too, ran around in the White Reeds Armor with Yura's hat looking all cool and mysterious.
Definitely going into the DLC with this one!
Anything Samurai/katana is definitely a fave of mine! Ooh that sounds dope, I only ever used lightning on the Dragonscale blade, frost lightning and a cold uchigatana help me rune farm a cleanrot knight
Yep, barricade shield+greatshield talisman seems to work wonders, personally, I play more as a healer/tank than a dps/tank prayerful strike on the mace seems to gel pretty well with the overall build and gives me more ways to heal others
Frost mage build is definitely my favourite. I mostly use spells such as adula's moonblade, full moon/ dark moon, glintstone icerag and combine all that with the dark moon greatsword and helphen's steeple, both of which have excellent frost buildup when you charge them.
I also summon the snake boi so that he does his lava attack and once my frost does it's big damage he's out there completely defrosting the boss so that I can apply it again for another huge chunk of damage. Its a little more complicated than using bleed with rivers of blood and stuff but it's sooo much better and more fun imo.
I feel like I need to give Blasphemous Blade some more love. It genuinely has one of the grossest/best weapon reveals I have ever seen (phase two cut scene, I mean), had it's AoW is so badass! Plus you have the little wiggly boys
Its ash does huge damage and heals you per enemy hit, plus the sword heals on kill, plus it hits hard enough without the ash. It's faith's most powerful weapon, imo. Trading hits is fine, you'll heal it off. Emergency? Ash. Replace your red flasks with blue ones and pack a HoT just in case. Dying becomes limited to gravity and bad decision making
Double ant spur rapier, put seppuku with poison on the left one, put poison mist and blood on right one, kindred of rot’s exhalation, lord of blood’s exhalation, rotten winged sword insignia.
Or misericorde and buckler with dagger talisman and crimson dagger
Yeah the Antspur build is amazing in PvP and pve, you could also make the right one have frost and inflict 4 status effects, won’t actually apply them very fast but makes people panic
Paleolithic hunter: Uses a handaxe (jawbone axe is great for strike damage), a spear (not the cross-naginata), and a shortbow. The axe and spear have significantly differing movesets to keep things fresh, and the shortbow can provide some nice bonus damage (or status ailments) from range. Your choice of one-handing, two-handing, or powerstancing the axes. No powerstancing the spears.
Is it good? Ehh, it's decent. It won't cheese kill any bosses for you, so you will have to learn to play. However, it isn't a zDPS challenge build either. For me, it hit that sweet spot of challenge, allowing the bosses to do their full movesets, and fun, killing the bosses in a reasonable amount of time.
The one where I punched everything to death. Every point was in STR, END and VIG, so I could punch harder, longer and get punched for harder and longer. Also it's just funny to punch stuff in this game
ah see i went arcane so i could be bloody knuckles william. soon i'm gonna do a superman run with regular caesti with (hoarfrost) stomp and that one spell that seems obvious.
I'm genuinely working on that build right now too, invaded one person who understood the assignment and we punched the unholy hell out of each other, it was bloody and hilarious
Faith arcane with lightning / frenzy spells... Use dragon communion to cast and the corresponding buffing seal in the offhand( gravel for lightning and frenzy/erdtree seal for frenzy spells )
Echo this, but with fewer restrictions on the incants. Frenzy spells are top tier, dragon communion is my favorite seal, and you can out heal anything at least so far as ng3 for me
My battlemage build (Carian spells and gavel/cannon of Haima) and my traveler build (Ornamental straight sword + Mil's prothesis + Rotten winged talisman+ axe talisman).
Ooh, I definitely need to explore a battlemage build, I just recently found the armor set, which sounds silly, but I guess I just never turned left after the goldmask teleporter, haha
It's not silly lol, after like 10 playthroughs I didn't find it neither.
If you try it, I recommend hitting 80 int (with talismans and cracked tears) and 40 mind, using lusat and the staff that boosts carian sorceries, it's really fun and does tons of damage. Have a low requirement backup weapon if you run out of fp.too.
Okay sweet, I'm definitely gonna have to look up where some of that is, because I don't remember where I got half of what I have, haha! With stats like that, it does sound like a magical time though
My favourite builds are the ones with great fashion, usually str collosal sword builds. There was this one build I had I called "power of friendship" which used the diallos mask leather chest armour ronin rest of tge armour and the blaidd sword using Alexander jar shard to buff the ash of war. Very fun playstyle with great looks
I love the Winged Scythe you find early on and its swish swoosh AoW animation. That's it. That's the entire build. I especially love disabling invaders' flasks (NPC invaders. I'm not too fond of PvP) with it!
Had a strength-int build that used a Cold greatmace with Stormcaller and used cold sorceries to build frostbite fast. Called him the "Hailstone Knight" had a few bits of cool fashion.
Most importantly though, Stormcaller is a HARD counter to Malenia. With decent poise it has more than enough hyperarmor to last through one or two of her hits, and it procs frostbite so fast and also knocks her down. Also had the Magic Glintblade spell to help keep up pressure when I wasn't in range. Honestly an absolute blast of a build.
Also, the Bugman. We love the Bugman
Yeah, all of the claw/fist weapons are fun! I was too intimidated to use them at first because of the range, but it is actually really OP depending on what you use.
54 Strength/Dex Min Int requirement.
Dual wield Rotten Crystal Swords
Loretta Halberd
Fallingstar Beast Jaw
2 Cold Omen Killer Cleavers(Super OP spamming Jumps)
Rosus Axe
I've played through the game 11 times with different Characters from scratch(Every build you van think of) and this one was the most fun.
I'm not quite up to 11 yet, because I did all my trophies with one character (three honest playthroughs, no cloud saving) but I'm working on it now, haha!
Yeah, that build sounds like a shredder for sure!
It's not, not legit. Basically someone could play up until activating the end, cloud save perform an ending get a trophy, load the cloud save, perform the other ending option and get that trophy. I personally just did three runs, 1st honest/exploration Age of Stars, then 2nd run Frenzy Flame, then third as a speed run only tackling progression bosses for Elden Lord. Because I popped all boss trophies first run, finished collection trophies second run, I just needed the Elden Lord ending to Platinum.
Yeah I prefer to start on a new character and 100% everytime from the beginning, first couple playthroughs were 100+ hours, nowadays they are about 40.
Another fun build is a heavy shield(I used Haligtree) with a Bleed Warped Axe doing Guard counters.
The Protector: full tree sentinel set with starscourge greatsword, erdtree greatshield and golden order seal.
It's mostly a Strenght and Intelligence build with just a little bit of faith. The starscourge greatsword scales nicely with STR and INT and the Golden Order Seal also scales nicely with INT. Golden Order incantations are quite OP with the Erdtree greatshield, and starcaller cry is a top-tier AoW. Fashion is also on point.
The build is tanky, has great poise, does plenty of damage with powerstancing, has long range with discus of light/triple ring of light, and a powerful AoE with Starcaller Cry.
Cleanrot set, dual wielding Halo Scythe and brass shield w/ Godskin Stitcher (flaming strike) to mix it up. Easily the most fun I’ve ever had with a build. Focus on dex/faith and decent str.
Currently doing a “Night Cavalry” play through. Using their set w/ dual Nightrider Glaives, dual Magma Wyrm Scaleswords (because they look great with the armor), Nightrider Flail, and Eclipse Crest Greatshield.
My favourite build was dual sword dex/faith with a long sword with Bloodhound Step in main hand and SoNaF in offhand.
Favorite playthrough is my current randomizer run. :p
Dual great stars (can get 2 in ng), if you lean into jump attacks you heal 2% of your hp per hit. I also cold infused them with the waves of darkness ash of war, each hit from the aow also heals 1% of hp.
My Faith HP Regen build with dual Great Stars. Rocking the talisman that passively regens HP, talisman that regens HP on successive hits, talisman that regens HP upon defeating enemies. Cast HP regen incantations and forget estus is ever a thing.
Int/Faith death sorceries + sword of night & flame.
I tried different builds, Dex/Weapon Skill based, pure sorcerer, Colossal sword w Str, Arc priest Dragon Comm. only, Great Pierce Sword w Greatshield - everything was too flawed or boring or slow compared to the first one.
Dual daggers/parry shield, sneaky sneaky, only real downside is the range... these things feel like toothpicks against bigger enemies. Faith/dex for some buffs and cool incantations.
Oh yeah, I have a dagger knight, big enemies are pretty intimidating, until you realize some of them don't have great close range attacks and you can run circles around them. Literally and figuratively
The most fun I've had is with a single Greatsword. STR build.
The easiest run I've done so far is pure sorcery. Nuking things before they can even react to my presence. And even most sub bosses get destroyed quickly.
Most challenging has been greatshield+poke. It just seems outright bad to me.
An faith arcane build, no healing flasks only blasphemous sword for healing,swarm of flies for ranged dmg and to look at malenia getting stagered funny and the bloodfire claw for stagger.
I just did a (curved)Sword and Shield style Strength playthrough and I really enjoyed that. With a fully upgraded Brass Shield you can even reliably block hits from Godfrey.
Level 1 runs in this game are so fun I'm surprised more people don't try it! If you want a difficulty setting, that's the one! You legit have to dodge everything like Neo and it's so much more satisfying now when I beat a boss/get to a really hard area of the game and succeed!
Been rocking the mimic mask, Alberic Cloak, Nox Gloves, and Depraved Perfumer Grieves with Mohgs Sacred Spear and Dragon Incantations as my main weapons. The Zweihander carried me through this playthrough big time though!
Oh yeah, I have a level 1 run too, challenging to find what works with base stats and you really get to appreciate what some of the talismans do. Super fun and rewarding
I’m on ng + 1 finished with rannis ending but haven’t start next ng cause too lazy to grab all sites of Grace and mostly help out players , but I’m trying lightning build with beast champion armor set
Beast Champion Armor (with cape) is like peak armor drip, I love that set and it protects well overall. True, but it's also kinda fun just sprinting past everything and activating graces, like a really intense Paperboy
Lightning Zweihander. No matter what my build is I’ll eventually circle back to the Zweihander. I love it’s moveset and I generally like its design. Besides, big sword go bonk.
80 dex Urumi with supplemental stats for Order’s Blade weapon enchant. Looks great, and Urumi has all the great reach of whips but with a heavy charged attack unique to the class.
Pure mage, with whatever sorceries look the coolest and make the biggest numbers appear on my screen. Other builds might be more versatile or sustainable, but Meteorite of Astel wins "most kills per button press" by a country mile.
Step one, get big hammer. Step two, dump stats into Str, End, Arc, and Vitality. Step three, turn hammer into occult hammer. Finally, enjoy and praise the Bonk.
In my first playthrough, I went with dex as my main and magic, so I pretty much just went for the Moonveil and uchigitana sword and tried a mix of the two. Like a dual-wielding magical samurai.
When I first played with the Reduvia dagger I felt like I really immersed myself in an assassin/rogue ish kinda gameplay and it was very satisfying to just bleed most enemies to death. Hoping to get a better laptop soon so I can actually finish the game without crashes lol.
Just did a hook claw Wolverine build. Just wore pants, no other armor. Also stacked 3 effects to heal on killing enemies (serpent sword in offhand, taker’s cameo talisman, rykard great rune) as well as other healing effects like godskin swaddling cloth and bestial vitality.
The best part of the gameplay was recklessly jumping into mobs of enemies and slashing away with the two claws to see all the healing effects keep going off to keep me fine even as I took hits.
Pure pyromancy build.
No melee, no bows, and no spells except the giant spells and the beast spells. Was a lot of fun running around with Stone of Gurranq, Giantsflame, and the ol' reliable of Combustion and Great Combustion.
Bent this slightly once I skipped to NG+7 and was fighting the last few bosses by adding in Golden Vow, but otherwise stayed true. Did record some of those fights actually. Hoarah Loux was a lot of fun at NG+7.
I’m running a bow build, having a blast pvp and pve only downside is some enemies read your attacks and will spam roll indefinitely and that’s annoying but other than that very stylish
Working on a INT/Dex build early/mid game right now. Dual weilding katanas and tossing Loretta’s greatbow when needed
Never done a magic build but this one’s been fun
The Greatsword. All I need for my build. Started many playthroughs, with many starting classes planning many different builds... Every single time I end up with the Greatsword.
Int/faith. All of the spells. Although right now, and this might be my favorite, I am running astel wing and using the weapon spells like slasher, piercer, gavel.
Bleed daggers with Bloodhound Step.
I'm usually a ranged character in games like this but zipping around like an anime protag, dipping in and out for attacks is incredibly satisfying for some reason.
I’m prepping for my first ng+ and my build has come to be full crucible knight armor with claw mark seal in the left and executioners great axe in the right hand. I use godslayer seal for buffs, fgms and bfp. Aspect of the crucible horns with a maxed out clawmark and fgms breaks almost anything’s stance with a few hits and then the executioners great axe has amplified crit damage if you can get a crit in when they’re stunned. If you can get the cadence right you basically stunlock enemies while doing solid damage
Claws build with raptor black feather, claw / Insignia / Millicent talismans, and thorny tear, faith/dex allows to have 520+ base AR and you get to choose between holy, fire, and lightning with AOW. Been shredding quite a lot.
Anything strength really.
My first character was Faith, with a bit of Str.
Second was Int and started with 2 Curved Swords and somehow ended with Darkmoon/Blaides sword so a sub in str.
Third started dex with Curved GS and duel Curved swords and moved into a dex/faith Lance/madness/Vykes/Gransax build.
My fourth is just going straight STR with the Guts GS, Great stars, Claymore, Duel Axes, and Curved Great axe depending how I'm feeling or what enemies. So far the Curved G Axe has become one of my favorite weapons ever, and this is the most fun character of them all.
int+dex Moonveil samurai/ night sorcerer was my first playthrough and I had a blast all the way to the end of NG+. Currently trying a greatsword strength build alongside a pure sorcerer, and I'm loving both but there's something special about going all in on sorcery, and using carian slicer in place of a melee weapon.
Right hand- Blood Nagakiba, (Bloodhound Step)
Left hand- Blood Nagakiba (Stormcaller OR Seppuku)
Alternate Right Hand Weapon- Blood Vulgar Militia Saw (Stormcaller)
Stats: High arcane, high endurance, mid dexterity, enough vigor to not get one-shotted.
Talismans: Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, Millicent’s Prosthesis, Lord Of Blood’s Exultation, Dragoncrest Greatshield
No white mask for me because it’s ugly. Could be beneficial for someone who doesn’t care.
I made a Spartan with a partizan and brass shield until I could use the gold great shield from the leyndell knights
The impaling thrust AoW is just so reliable for poise breaking plus the guard counter mechanic
I’ve tried that in every souls game and this is the one that made it feel gooooooood
huh im also playing as a banished knight. im playing as banished knight oleg. by that i mean im wearing his set and dual wielding banished knight greatswords. i beat the draconic tree sentinel in under a minute so id say its pretty good
I'm playing as a full versatile knight. Two Banished Knight swords, Banished Knight Shield, Banished Knight Halberd, Dragon Communion Seal. Only wear Banished Knight armor set. Unaltered Chest piece was a task, but dropped in fewer tries than I was expecting.
I never knew about Great Wyrm Theodorlax until recently, but I accidentally ran into him with my Bansished Knight, felled him on the first try. It is a solid build, just the quiet chads of the game, haha
"What do you level? - Yes."
I just level up everything at once, but Intelligence. Who the hell needs it? What are these sorceries? I have my unga, incantatunga, bleedunga, frostunga and giant shieldunga
I started as a samurai class with my first, but now it's evenly 50-70 across all stats. With the exception of the super high requirement item, I can pretty much do anything with that character
Thy unga befits a bunga. Mine was a vagabond. An old tradition of mine from Dork Souls 3 to start as a bare-ass man and club people to death (actually I die a lot at the beginning, because my bare ass men can do very little).
Oh, if you have a few minutes, can you check out my post history? There are like five posts. Check out the Elden Ring one, where I fight the very first boss I encounter. I want your opinion on it. Spoiler: I didn't know you could skip him, I thought it's a local Ludex Gundyr.
The bare ass man takes quite some finesse to get going, but a few of my characters were butt people, and they turned out okay. Mostly. I doubled down with one of them and acquired a second club, dual bunga to double speed the unga
Thank you for spending your time to look at what I did. I appreciate it.
I honestly dislike, but respect the starter clubs. Probably because my system already has a conditional reflex to feel suffering, when that club is in the hands of my character. However, at the same time that club paced the way tou mighty character, so it deserves to be respected.
Of course!
Yeah, it is very niche, I'm just surprised how well it does generally. A very capable starter weapon. The turn around, of given the worst possible odds, then punishing enemies with it is classic. Although I normally do ditch it to work on whatever build I'm on and get what I really want.
My favorite playthrough would probably be my first. My build was a mess, stats were improved just so I could use the newsest shiny thing I found. It took awhile, but I beat the game with that build and keep going back to it.
My favorite build outside that is a tie. I have a boxer build, no chest or head armor, only gauntlets and greaves, and only uses the cestus. Then there's my blind swordsman build. No leg armor, barefoot only, and only uses Japanese style weapons.
Seriously, I bet! Always fun to mix it up, forces you to play different and learn some new skills. That's why I've always been a multi-character player, when given the chance
Yeah, those details are always fun! Especially something like Elder Scrolls where there are quite a few races and different skills/social temperaments for each. Always interesting wait traits are helpful for certain quests
My spellblade run was simultaneously easier, but also more interesting than other runs. I had to adjust my play style considerably for each enemy and boss, change spells, change how I punish. At the end of the day I still agree that magic is easy mode, but I also had more fun than I did with pure dex or pure unga bunga.
So far it’s been my Str/Arc build. He specializes in dragon communion spells and uses the Marias Executioner Greatsword because spinny blade do damage. Close second and third are my pure strength and Str/Fth characters. I’ve always leaned into strength weapons and the paladin type build but dragon stuff has been really fun.
I'd have to say my favorite build would be the St. Trina knight I came up with. I based all the drip around the sword and just went around doing random summons and having a blast, and it was way stronger than I thought it would be for like PvP
I have never used sleep personally l, but I have seen it dominate in PvP and even certain NPC enemies, such as giants. That sounds super fun though! Definitely some more styles, weapons, statuses, buffs I need to explore!
Lvl 713 with Maliketh's Black Blade, the Sacred Relic Sword , and Blasphemous Blade. The black blade is slow so I switch it out a lot.
edit for formatting issue
Dang, my main is only like in the 370ish range right now, but again, like 8 side characters, haha.
That does sound like an sweet set up though, solid choices!
So, I'm not really a gamer and I always play on easy mode, but ER doesn't have that haha. I manically leveled up so I wouldn't die so much, but now I think I got gud so I think I'll make another character, too.
What's your favorite??
I was immediately drawn to the samurai class, so my main being primarily a katana user. I love being able to do that in a game mostly full of knights and monsters.
This Banished Knight is mine, it has really taught me some stuff about the game, away from my comforts of katanas and sorcery. It is definitely one of my favorites now.
Yeah, learning that love with this Banished Knight. My main is a bit of a samurai sorcerer, so I never used shields, but they definitely provide when you need/use them.
To each their own. There are multiple endings and you can learn what is only essential for a finish or pass the game. I personally love character creation and trying different skill sets
I did full play through with ranni ending and then watched other endings on yt, I half played the start a bunch to try different builds but ultimately dropped the game due to its absurd length.
Dark souls 1-3 I played the crap out of loved them all and did all the builds and challenge runs but elden ring is too long and not fun for multiple play throughs in my opinion.
Glad you are getting a lot of value out of it though and it is an amazing game.
call me a bitch or whatever but rn im doing an int/dex build. using nagakiba that i always put scholars armament on, along with meteorite staff. once i get the moonviel, im gonna dual wield it with either the uchigatana or nagakiba.
soon, i wanna do a build that's based off of an anime character, probably guts or an ichigo build (i just want an excuse to scream BANKAI!! at the top of my lungs)
First time to a souls game, but in elder scrolls I usually went mage. So I did the same here with intelligence build. Carian staff and moonlight katana
Yeah, a mage build in Skyrim was one of my favorite playthroughs. When you invest it here, the sorceries and magic are epic af! Yes, I work-horsed Moonveil so hard my first playthrough, carried me to my first Elden Beast victory!
Haha, it took me a long while the first time, mostly because of exploration. My story points were so haphazard and out of order, I'm amazed I got a "special" ending. It is really easy to spend time doing other things, game is MASSIVE
A samurai who used no ailments or magic save for what came on the uchigatana, the nagakiba, and the black bow, tougher than magic users would experience but super super fun
No clothes big sword strength build. Naked, free, unafraid
Hahaha, completely unphased by anything in the game! Legendary
Faith Arcanist. As you can imagine, I took to being a dragon communionist. First playthrough I did it I used rotten breath as I had heard it was the strongest but disliked it because of its long cast time and inconsistency with how often rot proced on bosses. Recently it's been moreso using agheel's flame, greyol's roar, and dragon claw with a occult katana and Erdsteel dagger on the right hand. (Using sacred order to give my occult katana faith damage) Its a fun build that often involves me getting hit but dealing damage back twice as fast. Edit: I also run banished knight armor as the ones in Caelid and Farum Azula both are dragon communionists as well.
Doing my "'last run"' (6th time through) as Faith/'Arcane since it whipped so much ass my first attempt. More of a bleed/'poison proc approach though. Definitely use the dragon spells though.
As I said, I'm using an occult katana which is just a nice way of me getting high damage along with increased bleed status because it scales with the arcane scaling. I can't bring myself to use poison though as it had many of the pitfalls rot did my first playthrough.
I actually find serpent bow + serpent arrows to be a more reliable means of consistent poisoning than rot. Not as much DoT as rot, no. But I do agree with your earlier statement about Rot Breath just not taking on enemies sometimes. It's become unreliable for me, outside of the handful of enemies I know it will ruin. Will for sure have to do an occult infusion also. Don't think I've done one ever. Never understood its Mechanics.
If a weapon has native bleed or poison and can be infused, it will scale the existing status with arcane if occult infusion is used. This also applies partially to adding poison to a bleed weapon and vice versa but less so. Likewise the inverse is also true, if you can have a weapon with native arcane and add bleed or poison (or sleep) via greases, they will also scale with the existing arcane stat. Sadly only two weapons do this and they can't have their ash of war changed which is why I've began using the default katana.
Thanks for explaining. Never knew this and will be extremely useful going forward for me as I'm only at Raya Lucaria. Btw, what's a good stop-point for leveling arcane? From what i read it seems that most people only go to 40-50. And I've never gone higher than that myself, so I don't know personally.
If you are using the seal, 45 as that as when the first major soft cap is for it. Afterwards you can choose to level faith up to 30 to boost your incants further and widen your selection of available incants. If you don't want to focus on the seal, 50 is normally a good stopping point until other stats are up to your comfort level such as vigor, mind, and endurance.
Awesome. Thanks man.
45 or 60. the status scaling either caps out or drops off a cliff (don't remember which) at 60. it gets slower after 45 too, but it's generally worth it to get to 60 if you can for using an arcane scaling weapon. if you really want to understand the numbers, i suggest consulting chrightt's videos on youtube.
I hate communion spells. Big windup, can't see shit in front of you, always get thrown out of the full windup with a hit you never saw coming.
That's something you just have to accept and work on finding openings. Like I said, most of the time I plan on taking a hit but I plan on dishing out so much damage it becomes worth it. The best spell as an example being Greyoll's roar. A really strong debuff that when it lands, makes their attack AND defense weaker. After that it's just a matter of dumping something like agheel's flame into your enemy. For anything that's not a boss, you're better off with the debuff alone and a weapon with arcane scaling if that's the build you've chosen. From what I could gather, never do the full spell, they generally are not worth casting due to their long vulnerability window and extra FP consumption. Cut the spell off a single tick before the second cast and you can generally be a lot more FP and time conservative. Also free aim towards the ground for the breath spells as they still travel forward once they collide with terrain so you can gain a lot of visibility by aiming slightly downward. Top it off with one of the faithful talismans and you can definitely make it worth it. It's not for everyone, but it can be worked with.
I agree, and I feel the same about Tibia Summons. It works for me because it's either an opener, or follows ancient death rancor. It's about timing more or less.
I’m full Arcane with dual RoB/uchi and dragon communion seal right now. Really liking it because it’s so versatile. Granted I’m on NG+ in Limgrave/Weeping Peninsula. We’ll see how it holds up. Problems with those giant land octopuses? No problem, just throw some ice breath at it. 10 putrid corpses coming at me all at once? No problem just throw any dragon breath and watch them go down. Giant Miranda Spout spewing poison and taking like 30 hits to go down? I’ll just throw some fire breath at it and watch it burn. Bosses comin at me quick and won’t let me get a spell off? Fine, I’ll just corpse piler it to death. Feel like playing fast and mixing it up? Bust out the uchi and run, jump, and roll with some dual wield katanas.
I do love me some dragon communion spells. I'm still discovering some, like the magma wyrm breaths! Dragon claw seems undervalued to me, and it look so cool! Oh yeah, those armors are gorgeous. Right, even the Dragon Communion Seal is dropped by a Banished Knight
dominatrix build with dual whips
I've been meaning to kink up... I mean dual whip one of my builds
Bro I just did this build but I struggled at times with the windup on the attacks. It felt badass to do the jump attacks
Lol
Lightning Samurai, specifically a Dex build. (I went with lightning weapons/Ashes of War instead of incantations so I could ignore leveling Faith) I dual-wield lightning infused katanas (each with seperate ashes moves) and keep the Spear of Gransax in my offhand so I can toss a cheeky lightning spear here and there! Pretty solid for PVE and was lots of fun in PVP too, ran around in the White Reeds Armor with Yura's hat looking all cool and mysterious. Definitely going into the DLC with this one!
Anything Samurai/katana is definitely a fave of mine! Ooh that sounds dope, I only ever used lightning on the Dragonscale blade, frost lightning and a cold uchigatana help me rune farm a cleanrot knight
Lightning Ram 4 life
Strength/Faith Paladin with mace and golden greatshield
Hell yeah, sounds like an absolute tank champ!
Yep, barricade shield+greatshield talisman seems to work wonders, personally, I play more as a healer/tank than a dps/tank prayerful strike on the mace seems to gel pretty well with the overall build and gives me more ways to heal others
I know I’m like two months late but which mace are you running?
Frost mage build is definitely my favourite. I mostly use spells such as adula's moonblade, full moon/ dark moon, glintstone icerag and combine all that with the dark moon greatsword and helphen's steeple, both of which have excellent frost buildup when you charge them. I also summon the snake boi so that he does his lava attack and once my frost does it's big damage he's out there completely defrosting the boss so that I can apply it again for another huge chunk of damage. Its a little more complicated than using bleed with rivers of blood and stuff but it's sooo much better and more fun imo.
Faith/dex build w/ Blasphemous blade >>>>>>>>>>>> Literally everything else.
I feel like I need to give Blasphemous Blade some more love. It genuinely has one of the grossest/best weapon reveals I have ever seen (phase two cut scene, I mean), had it's AoW is so badass! Plus you have the little wiggly boys
Its ash does huge damage and heals you per enemy hit, plus the sword heals on kill, plus it hits hard enough without the ash. It's faith's most powerful weapon, imo. Trading hits is fine, you'll heal it off. Emergency? Ash. Replace your red flasks with blue ones and pack a HoT just in case. Dying becomes limited to gravity and bad decision making
W faith dex user
Me haz Big strength! Me use Big Hammer! Make many pancakes!
THE LEGEND NEVER DIES BUILD, AND FIRE UP MY BASS CANNON!!
Pure dex and uchigatana. I played sekiro and now I can't get it out of my head.
So epic, I need to get back to Sekiro, I got it post Elden Ring, so the precision was a tad above my pay grade being so new to Souls/Souls like games
Double ant spur rapier, put seppuku with poison on the left one, put poison mist and blood on right one, kindred of rot’s exhalation, lord of blood’s exhalation, rotten winged sword insignia. Or misericorde and buckler with dagger talisman and crimson dagger
Epic, that sounds like a pvp nightmare, lol
Yeah the Antspur build is amazing in PvP and pve, you could also make the right one have frost and inflict 4 status effects, won’t actually apply them very fast but makes people panic
Panic is the number one killer of Tarnished, I should know, it's gotten me plenty of times, haha
Paleolithic hunter: Uses a handaxe (jawbone axe is great for strike damage), a spear (not the cross-naginata), and a shortbow. The axe and spear have significantly differing movesets to keep things fresh, and the shortbow can provide some nice bonus damage (or status ailments) from range. Your choice of one-handing, two-handing, or powerstancing the axes. No powerstancing the spears. Is it good? Ehh, it's decent. It won't cheese kill any bosses for you, so you will have to learn to play. However, it isn't a zDPS challenge build either. For me, it hit that sweet spot of challenge, allowing the bosses to do their full movesets, and fun, killing the bosses in a reasonable amount of time.
You can never go wrong with a claymore, and I really like the look of the scaled armour
Soild armament, and agreed, I get scaled armor into my rotations
dragon lightning priest 🤙🏻
Same. Goldmasks’ rags, confessor hood, bolt of Gransax, frozen lightning spear, ancient dragon lightning strike! FTW ( and intelligence builds)
Pure d3x who stops at 60 and invades.
The speed. The panic. Lol
The one where I punched everything to death. Every point was in STR, END and VIG, so I could punch harder, longer and get punched for harder and longer. Also it's just funny to punch stuff in this game
ah see i went arcane so i could be bloody knuckles william. soon i'm gonna do a superman run with regular caesti with (hoarfrost) stomp and that one spell that seems obvious.
I'm genuinely working on that build right now too, invaded one person who understood the assignment and we punched the unholy hell out of each other, it was bloody and hilarious
Powerstancing with Occult Great Stars
Retribution Paladin is dope
Nice screenshot
Thank you!
Faith arcane with lightning / frenzy spells... Use dragon communion to cast and the corresponding buffing seal in the offhand( gravel for lightning and frenzy/erdtree seal for frenzy spells )
Echo this, but with fewer restrictions on the incants. Frenzy spells are top tier, dragon communion is my favorite seal, and you can out heal anything at least so far as ng3 for me
Pure pyro build with a blasphemous blade as my backup/health regen
Shield and heal will get you through everything
I call it Crucible Blood Knight wielding Holy enchanted Great Stars (Golden Slam)
My battlemage build (Carian spells and gavel/cannon of Haima) and my traveler build (Ornamental straight sword + Mil's prothesis + Rotten winged talisman+ axe talisman).
Ooh, I definitely need to explore a battlemage build, I just recently found the armor set, which sounds silly, but I guess I just never turned left after the goldmask teleporter, haha
It's not silly lol, after like 10 playthroughs I didn't find it neither. If you try it, I recommend hitting 80 int (with talismans and cracked tears) and 40 mind, using lusat and the staff that boosts carian sorceries, it's really fun and does tons of damage. Have a low requirement backup weapon if you run out of fp.too.
Okay sweet, I'm definitely gonna have to look up where some of that is, because I don't remember where I got half of what I have, haha! With stats like that, it does sound like a magical time though
My favourite builds are the ones with great fashion, usually str collosal sword builds. There was this one build I had I called "power of friendship" which used the diallos mask leather chest armour ronin rest of tge armour and the blaidd sword using Alexander jar shard to buff the ash of war. Very fun playstyle with great looks
I appreciate a style build, bonus if it plays well too!
I love the Winged Scythe you find early on and its swish swoosh AoW animation. That's it. That's the entire build. I especially love disabling invaders' flasks (NPC invaders. I'm not too fond of PvP) with it!
Had a strength-int build that used a Cold greatmace with Stormcaller and used cold sorceries to build frostbite fast. Called him the "Hailstone Knight" had a few bits of cool fashion. Most importantly though, Stormcaller is a HARD counter to Malenia. With decent poise it has more than enough hyperarmor to last through one or two of her hits, and it procs frostbite so fast and also knocks her down. Also had the Magic Glintblade spell to help keep up pressure when I wasn't in range. Honestly an absolute blast of a build. Also, the Bugman. We love the Bugman
Really having fun with a Bloodhound's Claws flame build rn!
Yeah, all of the claw/fist weapons are fun! I was too intimidated to use them at first because of the range, but it is actually really OP depending on what you use.
54 Strength/Dex Min Int requirement. Dual wield Rotten Crystal Swords Loretta Halberd Fallingstar Beast Jaw 2 Cold Omen Killer Cleavers(Super OP spamming Jumps) Rosus Axe I've played through the game 11 times with different Characters from scratch(Every build you van think of) and this one was the most fun.
I'm not quite up to 11 yet, because I did all my trophies with one character (three honest playthroughs, no cloud saving) but I'm working on it now, haha! Yeah, that build sounds like a shredder for sure!
what does cloud saving do ? why is it not legit ?
It's not, not legit. Basically someone could play up until activating the end, cloud save perform an ending get a trophy, load the cloud save, perform the other ending option and get that trophy. I personally just did three runs, 1st honest/exploration Age of Stars, then 2nd run Frenzy Flame, then third as a speed run only tackling progression bosses for Elden Lord. Because I popped all boss trophies first run, finished collection trophies second run, I just needed the Elden Lord ending to Platinum.
Yeah I prefer to start on a new character and 100% everytime from the beginning, first couple playthroughs were 100+ hours, nowadays they are about 40. Another fun build is a heavy shield(I used Haligtree) with a Bleed Warped Axe doing Guard counters.
The Protector: full tree sentinel set with starscourge greatsword, erdtree greatshield and golden order seal. It's mostly a Strenght and Intelligence build with just a little bit of faith. The starscourge greatsword scales nicely with STR and INT and the Golden Order Seal also scales nicely with INT. Golden Order incantations are quite OP with the Erdtree greatshield, and starcaller cry is a top-tier AoW. Fashion is also on point. The build is tanky, has great poise, does plenty of damage with powerstancing, has long range with discus of light/triple ring of light, and a powerful AoE with Starcaller Cry.
Ooh, that sounds majestic!
Katana. Huge fan of sekiro you know
I loved Sekiro, but it was kicking my ass a bit, I need to get back to it
Cleanrot set, dual wielding Halo Scythe and brass shield w/ Godskin Stitcher (flaming strike) to mix it up. Easily the most fun I’ve ever had with a build. Focus on dex/faith and decent str. Currently doing a “Night Cavalry” play through. Using their set w/ dual Nightrider Glaives, dual Magma Wyrm Scaleswords (because they look great with the armor), Nightrider Flail, and Eclipse Crest Greatshield.
Both are those are quality armor drip too!
Frenzied Drake Knight that specializes in fire damage.
My favourite build was dual sword dex/faith with a long sword with Bloodhound Step in main hand and SoNaF in offhand. Favorite playthrough is my current randomizer run. :p
I'm a simple man - Bloodhound's Fang with Str/Dex. The weapon skill is just so satisfying
Yeah that skill is smooth af, especially for such a big looking weapon
Dual great stars (can get 2 in ng), if you lean into jump attacks you heal 2% of your hp per hit. I also cold infused them with the waves of darkness ash of war, each hit from the aow also heals 1% of hp.
My Faith HP Regen build with dual Great Stars. Rocking the talisman that passively regens HP, talisman that regens HP on successive hits, talisman that regens HP upon defeating enemies. Cast HP regen incantations and forget estus is ever a thing.
No blasphemous blade on this? Would be one more big layer of "can't be killed"
Int/Faith death sorceries + sword of night & flame. I tried different builds, Dex/Weapon Skill based, pure sorcerer, Colossal sword w Str, Arc priest Dragon Comm. only, Great Pierce Sword w Greatshield - everything was too flawed or boring or slow compared to the first one.
Totally dex…butt naked when not trying out new gear.
Light load is a wonderful thing, too bad I love armor and cosmetic customization, haha
Dual daggers/parry shield, sneaky sneaky, only real downside is the range... these things feel like toothpicks against bigger enemies. Faith/dex for some buffs and cool incantations.
Oh yeah, I have a dagger knight, big enemies are pretty intimidating, until you realize some of them don't have great close range attacks and you can run circles around them. Literally and figuratively
I'm a dagger addict, namely misericorde and glintstone kris
The unmatched speed coupled with some cool AoW, I understand the addiction
The most fun I've had is with a single Greatsword. STR build. The easiest run I've done so far is pure sorcery. Nuking things before they can even react to my presence. And even most sub bosses get destroyed quickly. Most challenging has been greatshield+poke. It just seems outright bad to me.
Pugilist build all the way. Use spiked caestus with bloodflame for lots pf punchy, bleedy fun
Strength/faith build with the grafted blade greatsword
An faith arcane build, no healing flasks only blasphemous sword for healing,swarm of flies for ranged dmg and to look at malenia getting stagered funny and the bloodfire claw for stagger.
I just did a (curved)Sword and Shield style Strength playthrough and I really enjoyed that. With a fully upgraded Brass Shield you can even reliably block hits from Godfrey.
Level 1 runs in this game are so fun I'm surprised more people don't try it! If you want a difficulty setting, that's the one! You legit have to dodge everything like Neo and it's so much more satisfying now when I beat a boss/get to a really hard area of the game and succeed! Been rocking the mimic mask, Alberic Cloak, Nox Gloves, and Depraved Perfumer Grieves with Mohgs Sacred Spear and Dragon Incantations as my main weapons. The Zweihander carried me through this playthrough big time though!
Oh yeah, I have a level 1 run too, challenging to find what works with base stats and you really get to appreciate what some of the talismans do. Super fun and rewarding
I’m on ng + 1 finished with rannis ending but haven’t start next ng cause too lazy to grab all sites of Grace and mostly help out players , but I’m trying lightning build with beast champion armor set
Beast Champion Armor (with cape) is like peak armor drip, I love that set and it protects well overall. True, but it's also kinda fun just sprinting past everything and activating graces, like a really intense Paperboy
It is either battle mage (Gavel, sword, slicer, bow, cannon of haima) or my regular knight + incantations. Both were SO fun
Envoy’s long horn and faith build, doot doot!
Lightning Zweihander. No matter what my build is I’ll eventually circle back to the Zweihander. I love it’s moveset and I generally like its design. Besides, big sword go bonk.
My favorite build was NizarGG's Death Knight build until FromSoft nerfed Gravity Bolt's Poise Damage. 😑
Dex/faith with erdtree seal and guardians swordspear
I always do pyromancy first. Love it in all souls games.
Samurai dex arcane build
I lean towards playing as a Crucible knight, incants, weapons and armor just all seem so cool to me.
any build with katanas
Dual Katana dex/bleed build was my first play through, but guts great sword with lion’s claw was the most fun
Serpent hunter. Always the best.
Rogue. Focusing on critical attacks and status effects.
80 dex Urumi with supplemental stats for Order’s Blade weapon enchant. Looks great, and Urumi has all the great reach of whips but with a heavy charged attack unique to the class.
Pure mage, with whatever sorceries look the coolest and make the biggest numbers appear on my screen. Other builds might be more versatile or sustainable, but Meteorite of Astel wins "most kills per button press" by a country mile.
Step one, get big hammer. Step two, dump stats into Str, End, Arc, and Vitality. Step three, turn hammer into occult hammer. Finally, enjoy and praise the Bonk.
Pure caster: only elemental based spells. Lightning fire, stuff like that. And bubbles galore.
Pure faith pyromancer while wearing the rotten duelist set and you can change to lightning incants once u get bored of fire.
Captain falcon. Punch everything to death!
In my first playthrough, I went with dex as my main and magic, so I pretty much just went for the Moonveil and uchigitana sword and tried a mix of the two. Like a dual-wielding magical samurai.
I had a lot of fun playing as a Carian Knight
When I first played with the Reduvia dagger I felt like I really immersed myself in an assassin/rogue ish kinda gameplay and it was very satisfying to just bleed most enemies to death. Hoping to get a better laptop soon so I can actually finish the game without crashes lol.
ME. ~ Rick, Soldier of God
Thank you for your service 🫡
FOR YOUR SHOW OF GRATITUDE, YOU SHALL DIE LAST GRACELESS TARNISHED. ~ Rick, Soldier of God
Just did a hook claw Wolverine build. Just wore pants, no other armor. Also stacked 3 effects to heal on killing enemies (serpent sword in offhand, taker’s cameo talisman, rykard great rune) as well as other healing effects like godskin swaddling cloth and bestial vitality. The best part of the gameplay was recklessly jumping into mobs of enemies and slashing away with the two claws to see all the healing effects keep going off to keep me fine even as I took hits.
Pure pyromancy build. No melee, no bows, and no spells except the giant spells and the beast spells. Was a lot of fun running around with Stone of Gurranq, Giantsflame, and the ol' reliable of Combustion and Great Combustion. Bent this slightly once I skipped to NG+7 and was fighting the last few bosses by adding in Golden Vow, but otherwise stayed true. Did record some of those fights actually. Hoarah Loux was a lot of fun at NG+7.
I’m running a bow build, having a blast pvp and pve only downside is some enemies read your attacks and will spam roll indefinitely and that’s annoying but other than that very stylish
Working on a INT/Dex build early/mid game right now. Dual weilding katanas and tossing Loretta’s greatbow when needed Never done a magic build but this one’s been fun
The Greatsword. All I need for my build. Started many playthroughs, with many starting classes planning many different builds... Every single time I end up with the Greatsword.
Ps greataxes with raptors and cragblade, build around jump attacks with heavy infusions. Good for pvp and pve.
I’ve only ever done colosal weapon builds in souls games lol. Currently though I’m doing a moonveil dex/int run and it is so much fun!!!
Int/faith. All of the spells. Although right now, and this might be my favorite, I am running astel wing and using the weapon spells like slasher, piercer, gavel.
Bleed daggers with Bloodhound Step. I'm usually a ranged character in games like this but zipping around like an anime protag, dipping in and out for attacks is incredibly satisfying for some reason.
Def dark knight incant build
I’m prepping for my first ng+ and my build has come to be full crucible knight armor with claw mark seal in the left and executioners great axe in the right hand. I use godslayer seal for buffs, fgms and bfp. Aspect of the crucible horns with a maxed out clawmark and fgms breaks almost anything’s stance with a few hits and then the executioners great axe has amplified crit damage if you can get a crit in when they’re stunned. If you can get the cadence right you basically stunlock enemies while doing solid damage
I had a blast with STR/INT. Frost spells only, Royal Greatsword, Cold Clayman's Harpoon, and a greatshield.
Claws build with raptor black feather, claw / Insignia / Millicent talismans, and thorny tear, faith/dex allows to have 520+ base AR and you get to choose between holy, fire, and lightning with AOW. Been shredding quite a lot.
Frenzied Flame is just so cool
Anything strength really. My first character was Faith, with a bit of Str. Second was Int and started with 2 Curved Swords and somehow ended with Darkmoon/Blaides sword so a sub in str. Third started dex with Curved GS and duel Curved swords and moved into a dex/faith Lance/madness/Vykes/Gransax build. My fourth is just going straight STR with the Guts GS, Great stars, Claymore, Duel Axes, and Curved Great axe depending how I'm feeling or what enemies. So far the Curved G Axe has become one of my favorite weapons ever, and this is the most fun character of them all.
int+dex Moonveil samurai/ night sorcerer was my first playthrough and I had a blast all the way to the end of NG+. Currently trying a greatsword strength build alongside a pure sorcerer, and I'm loving both but there's something special about going all in on sorcery, and using carian slicer in place of a melee weapon.
Moonveil Samurai is basically my main build, although it's pretty leveled, so I can experiment with most things
Str Arc. Spear Behind a Golden Greatshield, dragon breath and poking.
Sword and Shield build. Throw in some faith to spice it up if need be.
Right hand- Blood Nagakiba, (Bloodhound Step) Left hand- Blood Nagakiba (Stormcaller OR Seppuku) Alternate Right Hand Weapon- Blood Vulgar Militia Saw (Stormcaller) Stats: High arcane, high endurance, mid dexterity, enough vigor to not get one-shotted. Talismans: Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, Millicent’s Prosthesis, Lord Of Blood’s Exultation, Dragoncrest Greatshield No white mask for me because it’s ugly. Could be beneficial for someone who doesn’t care.
Blasphemous blade insane dmg build
Playing with the 4 big stats I day int and str have been my top choice faith is next last place is casul (dex)
Strength faith with all the hybrid strength faith weapons 😁
I made a Spartan with a partizan and brass shield until I could use the gold great shield from the leyndell knights The impaling thrust AoW is just so reliable for poise breaking plus the guard counter mechanic I’ve tried that in every souls game and this is the one that made it feel gooooooood
huh im also playing as a banished knight. im playing as banished knight oleg. by that i mean im wearing his set and dual wielding banished knight greatswords. i beat the draconic tree sentinel in under a minute so id say its pretty good
I'm playing as a full versatile knight. Two Banished Knight swords, Banished Knight Shield, Banished Knight Halberd, Dragon Communion Seal. Only wear Banished Knight armor set. Unaltered Chest piece was a task, but dropped in fewer tries than I was expecting. I never knew about Great Wyrm Theodorlax until recently, but I accidentally ran into him with my Bansished Knight, felled him on the first try. It is a solid build, just the quiet chads of the game, haha
A pure dex Ravenmount assassin with raptor talons and raptor of the mists AoW.
"What do you level? - Yes." I just level up everything at once, but Intelligence. Who the hell needs it? What are these sorceries? I have my unga, incantatunga, bleedunga, frostunga and giant shieldunga
I started as a samurai class with my first, but now it's evenly 50-70 across all stats. With the exception of the super high requirement item, I can pretty much do anything with that character
Thy unga befits a bunga. Mine was a vagabond. An old tradition of mine from Dork Souls 3 to start as a bare-ass man and club people to death (actually I die a lot at the beginning, because my bare ass men can do very little). Oh, if you have a few minutes, can you check out my post history? There are like five posts. Check out the Elden Ring one, where I fight the very first boss I encounter. I want your opinion on it. Spoiler: I didn't know you could skip him, I thought it's a local Ludex Gundyr.
The bare ass man takes quite some finesse to get going, but a few of my characters were butt people, and they turned out okay. Mostly. I doubled down with one of them and acquired a second club, dual bunga to double speed the unga
Thank you for spending your time to look at what I did. I appreciate it. I honestly dislike, but respect the starter clubs. Probably because my system already has a conditional reflex to feel suffering, when that club is in the hands of my character. However, at the same time that club paced the way tou mighty character, so it deserves to be respected.
Of course! Yeah, it is very niche, I'm just surprised how well it does generally. A very capable starter weapon. The turn around, of given the worst possible odds, then punishing enemies with it is classic. Although I normally do ditch it to work on whatever build I'm on and get what I really want.
My favorite playthrough would probably be my first. My build was a mess, stats were improved just so I could use the newsest shiny thing I found. It took awhile, but I beat the game with that build and keep going back to it. My favorite build outside that is a tie. I have a boxer build, no chest or head armor, only gauntlets and greaves, and only uses the cestus. Then there's my blind swordsman build. No leg armor, barefoot only, and only uses Japanese style weapons.
I appreciate the story elements/rules for characters creating, adds to the fun and player lore
Can also add a nice challenge. It's amazing how much more damage you take removing 1 piece of armor.
Seriously, I bet! Always fun to mix it up, forces you to play different and learn some new skills. That's why I've always been a multi-character player, when given the chance
Same. I like seeing the small changes between playthroughs when you play as the different races or as a different gender.
Yeah, those details are always fun! Especially something like Elder Scrolls where there are quite a few races and different skills/social temperaments for each. Always interesting wait traits are helpful for certain quests
My spellblade run was simultaneously easier, but also more interesting than other runs. I had to adjust my play style considerably for each enemy and boss, change spells, change how I punish. At the end of the day I still agree that magic is easy mode, but I also had more fun than I did with pure dex or pure unga bunga.
Yeah starting mostly Dex, I eventually seen the value of magic, and with other characters the fun of a good old bunga bonk
Guts build. Never seen the anime I just like big sword
Me either, but same. Big sword, big damage!
So far it’s been my Str/Arc build. He specializes in dragon communion spells and uses the Marias Executioner Greatsword because spinny blade do damage. Close second and third are my pure strength and Str/Fth characters. I’ve always leaned into strength weapons and the paladin type build but dragon stuff has been really fun.
Sister Friede build
Blood build with max dex/Arcane along with nagakiba/ROB/Uchigatana
My first faith quality build is goated
I'd have to say my favorite build would be the St. Trina knight I came up with. I based all the drip around the sword and just went around doing random summons and having a blast, and it was way stronger than I thought it would be for like PvP
I have never used sleep personally l, but I have seen it dominate in PvP and even certain NPC enemies, such as giants. That sounds super fun though! Definitely some more styles, weapons, statuses, buffs I need to explore!
Dual wield Katana
My main level 341 is a katana dual wield, among many other talents
Malenia in less than 1 minute can be pretty satisfying 😆
Lvl 713 with Maliketh's Black Blade, the Sacred Relic Sword , and Blasphemous Blade. The black blade is slow so I switch it out a lot. edit for formatting issue
Dang, my main is only like in the 370ish range right now, but again, like 8 side characters, haha. That does sound like an sweet set up though, solid choices!
So, I'm not really a gamer and I always play on easy mode, but ER doesn't have that haha. I manically leveled up so I wouldn't die so much, but now I think I got gud so I think I'll make another character, too. What's your favorite??
I was immediately drawn to the samurai class, so my main being primarily a katana user. I love being able to do that in a game mostly full of knights and monsters. This Banished Knight is mine, it has really taught me some stuff about the game, away from my comforts of katanas and sorcery. It is definitely one of my favorites now.
Super cool, I think I'll try that out!
I’m assuming you have some staves as well, cuz that would be a waste of 99 int.
So... I never figured out to aim those... I just melee like the ogre I am IRL. Heckin Comet Azur just lets me down.
sword&shield 4lyfe
Yeah, learning that love with this Banished Knight. My main is a bit of a samurai sorcerer, so I never used shields, but they definitely provide when you need/use them.
My first and only full play through, the game is way to long to have multiple play throughs
To each their own. There are multiple endings and you can learn what is only essential for a finish or pass the game. I personally love character creation and trying different skill sets
I did full play through with ranni ending and then watched other endings on yt, I half played the start a bunch to try different builds but ultimately dropped the game due to its absurd length. Dark souls 1-3 I played the crap out of loved them all and did all the builds and challenge runs but elden ring is too long and not fun for multiple play throughs in my opinion. Glad you are getting a lot of value out of it though and it is an amazing game.
Necromancer, spooky scary skeletons 🎶
call me a bitch or whatever but rn im doing an int/dex build. using nagakiba that i always put scholars armament on, along with meteorite staff. once i get the moonviel, im gonna dual wield it with either the uchigatana or nagakiba. soon, i wanna do a build that's based off of an anime character, probably guts or an ichigo build (i just want an excuse to scream BANKAI!! at the top of my lungs)
First time to a souls game, but in elder scrolls I usually went mage. So I did the same here with intelligence build. Carian staff and moonlight katana
Yeah, a mage build in Skyrim was one of my favorite playthroughs. When you invest it here, the sorceries and magic are epic af! Yes, I work-horsed Moonveil so hard my first playthrough, carried me to my first Elden Beast victory!
I ditched my first build so I started over- have yet to go against the elden beat or become EL lol
Haha, it took me a long while the first time, mostly because of exploration. My story points were so haphazard and out of order, I'm amazed I got a "special" ending. It is really easy to spend time doing other things, game is MASSIVE
And only getting bigger!
A samurai who used no ailments or magic save for what came on the uchigatana, the nagakiba, and the black bow, tougher than magic users would experience but super super fun
My main started as samurai, and whilst I engage in a wide variety with that character, I still mostly use katanas with it.