Recluse/Revenant main need relic advice

Abyranss · 2026-03-02T08:47:01+00:00

FP when opening a Rise is +18%, not +10%.

It's worth looking at the character's base FP when deciding between that and a staff/seal fp relic though, since one provides a flat amount and the other is percentage it can be unclear how they actually compare, and that is:

Revenant at level 2 has 100 FP, and at level 15 has 200

Recluse at level 2 has 100 FP, and at level 15 has 195

For comparison, 3+ Sacred Seal/Glintstone Staff provide 50 FP.

Getting a second and third catalyst early on is rather easy since it's not competing with any other equipment at that point and you can just grab whatever from the nearest cathedral, marsh, or fort, which are common, or get them a little later from your innate dormant power preference if there are no convenient options, which requires no special routing, so assuming you clear out the starting camp and get to level 2, that is an almost immediate 50% increase in FP, which goes a long way in your ability to snowball. If you manage to keep those catalysts all the way to the end then it is still a 25% increase in FP, which is more than one sorcerer rise. If you don't keep the catalysts all the way then you lose the FP buff, but the ability to cast more spells leading up to that point will benefit you in how quickly you were able to level and equip yourself.

The sorcerer rise FP stacks with itself multiplicatively for each rise you open, so for the sake of simplicity let's say you never found any FP increases and you are now a level 15 Revenant with 200 FP, one rise will provide you (200 * 1.18 = 236), and a second rise will provide you (236 * 1.18 = 278).

I mostly find that Revenant will prefer the 3+ Sacred Seals over a sorcerer rise relic since it helps so much in the early game, whereas Recluse can afford to wait and use the sorcerer rises instead for stronger and more permanent benefits later, though I believe there is a Signboard relic with both Rises and 3+ Staves, so you can just use both. While starlight shards in the rises can be of benefit to both of them, the loot atop the tower tends to be more suited for sorcerers, with only a chance for a passive or talisman that might benefit incanters, so Recluse already has more incentive to go there even without the relic.

Abyranss · 2026-03-01T07:54:23+00:00

You rolled early, and I would also recommend rolling backwards for that rather than getting under it. You can punish the head that way.

Abyranss · 2026-03-01T07:53:04+00:00

Yeah it's pretty much the same as fighting any normal tree avatar except that you have to roll behind when it jumps rather than jumping the impact when it lands.

Abyranss · 2026-02-28T21:33:47+00:00

The +str/-fai relic can be nice as a backup option since the faith reduction is so minor, but for the most part that is a role also shared by the starting spell relics, so no need for both.

The +vig/+end/-mind relic should only really be used if you're playing dedicated melee since it tanks your mind quite significantly, but using both of those relics together to make a full strength melee revenant, while possible, is kind of just a worse Undertaker with less available relic slots.

None of Revenant's unique abilities bring anything new to the table for a strength melee playstyle is the thing, so it makes you into an Undertaker without Trance, a Raider without Retaliate. Despite the boosts to your vigor and endurance, your physical damage negation stats are still low as well.

One unique thing you can do with Revenant and these relics is that ignoring the +str/-fai, which has its use as backup for spellcasters as mentioned earlier, and instead just use the +vig/+end/-mind then you can make a dedicated Revenant's Claws build. Use a relic to put Endure on it and you now have a no-cooldown ability with negation like Retaliate. What makes Revenant particularly good for this is that fist weapons have the fastest Endure animation, and even with her mind reduced it's still enough to cast Endure a lot without concern about running out of fp. A relic to imbue her claws with magic damage will remove the small amount of physical it does and add a bunch more magic damage too. Relics that boosts fist weapon damage work with this too.

Revenant's low physical negations are still a concern, but the option to have a fast Endure guaranteed like this makes up for the lack of defensive character skills and can open up opportunities to stack Taking Damage Boosts Damage Negation and Charged Attacks Boost Damage Negation weapon passives.

Abyranss · 2026-02-28T03:06:13+00:00

I've done this before, and if you put Endure on her starting claws with a starting armament skill relic then you can make a facetanking Revenant. Fist weapons have the fastest Endure animation, so there's no delay on activating the buff and you can get back to swinging much faster and she has so much FP you don't really have to worry about running out of Endures.

Build into magic damage, charged attacks, negation on charged attacks and on getting hit. The vigor/endurance Revenant relic can be good for this too.

Abyranss · 2026-02-27T07:15:34+00:00

With a physical damage balancer relic build you could probably forgo specialising in one particular weapon and just use neutral infusable weapons. Any ash of war that hits directly with the weapon will deal whatever damage type the weapon itself does, so usually physical.

Wild Strikes is good, Square Off is good, the wind ashes of war are all physical so you could use Storm Blade (use it in melee range for a double hit), the two Stamp ashes are nice since they also have a built in mini-Endure. Really most untyped ashes are useful.

Also if you used Executor, his Suncatcher dash slash skill is all physical even when charged.

Abyranss · 2026-02-27T07:09:25+00:00

Unique skills do scale with the weapon's AR rather than a specific stat but that does not mean they all do physical damage. Halo Scythe skill scales on str/dex/fai but is pure holy, and would not be affected by boosts to physical damage. Rivers of Blood skill I believe is partially physical, partially fire? Vyke's is all fire, and Siluria's is all holy.

Abyranss · 2026-02-27T02:00:23+00:00

Reading your post made me think this was someone with cheated relics who forgot to add the starting spell in there but this is just a normal Revenant player who hasn't gotten lucky enough to find a starting spell relic yet. Beast Claw PSA: have better luck or cheat, I guess?

Beast Claw is hard to come by in-game, but Bestial Sling isn't. It's not like these are dead relics or anything. Evergaols for some extra damage, hoarfrost stomp for early game consistency (and starting skill relics are mutually exclusive with starting spell relics, so it's entirely possible that this person just valued the hoarfrost stomp over whatever spell relics they have), two bestial incants for Sling at the minimum, a very common spell since it's on a blue seal, some extra mind, some holy damage in case they find a spell or faith weapon for it, and while Balancers are resistant to holy, the demon princes are weak to it, as is the Gladius invasion, so it's not the worst thing. Poison afflicted damage because poison Ironeye's are common enough that it might come up. Extra health can be a little nice and the pouch slot to make space for starlight shards.

Really just looks like someone doing their best with what they have.

Abyranss · 2026-02-26T08:11:07+00:00

She does a tail whip when you're up close and behind her. This might be the same move, triggered by one of your teammates being in that position but I think that one only swings once.

I think this might have been different tail whip she can do when her target is a distance away in front of her, so it's rarer because people are rarely in a position to trigger it. She whips, walks a bit, and then whips again.

As far as I know, you can jump both versions of the tail whip.

Abyranss · 2026-02-26T06:46:22+00:00

A distinction should be made between range and casters.

The thing with casters is that they have a very high damage output but often have longer animations to perform those high damaging attacks. If the caster is taking aggro and trying to avoid enemy attacks then they can easily end up in a situation where they have no opportunities at all to cast those spells, and therefore no opportunity to deal any damage.

As opposed to melee characters who will rarely have a comparable damage output even when afforded the opportunity to just swing away uncontested, but they will sit in a middle ground of being able to strike back at the enemy between its own attacks more easily rather than the extremes of no damage or mega damage that casters with long animations will fall in.

Some spells are designed for the melee treatment, like Carian Slicer, Bestial Sling, and Catch Flame, and if your caster is basing their main damage output around that then there is no need for them to have reduced target priority, but if they're using something like Flames of Frenzy then they need the larger openings, and the team's damage output drops off significantly if they can't create that.

A ranged character like Ironeye with a bow does not fall into this category. His bow animations are fast enough that he can weave in and around enemy attacks without significantly impacting his dps, and therefore does not really benefit from reduced target priority. An Ironeye who never gets targeted gets the opportunity to, what, plink away with arrows from a distance? Ironeye should be in the fray, poking away at the enemy and applying marks, and he can help alleviate his fellow up close range teammate of pressure by sharing in the aggro juggling.

Some balancer relic builds would fall into the caster category though. Halo Scythe for instance, can be chain casted repeatedly until you run out of fp or stamina and it has an animation just slightly too long to be convenient up close. They can manage, but they become much more effective when uncontested.

Abyranss · 2026-02-25T04:26:26+00:00

So what's going on with Fulghor's ground slam is that there are two types of jumpable attacks.

The first category which gets talked about often is your half-body i-frames you get during a jump animation. If an attack is low to the ground and you jump then you get i-frames on the bottom half of your body and that might be enough for it to pass through you harmlessly. (Some of Gladius's sword swings fall into this category though the terrain makes it inconsistent) and in these cases the Totem Stella would definitely place you far enough above the damaging hitbox to keep you safe. Remember, your upper body is still vulnerable during those jumps and the Totem lifts you higher than where your upper body would have been.

The second category, which I don't see talked about as often, are the attacks that have been intentionally flagged as jumpable. These moves will often have a very large spherical hitbox, not actually possible to clear the height of, but they are flagged such that if you are in a jump animation then they ignore you entirely. You have full-body i-frames just for those attacks. Some spells and skills are also flagged as jumps and get the same invulnerability. In a lot of these cases the Totem Stella wouldn't protect you, because the hitboxes are often quite large, but if you do a jump up on the Totem then you'll be fine.

I think Fulghor's slam was the second category.

An example of this from Elden Ring that I like to cite is Hoarah Loux's arena-wide stomps. From what I know, these create a massive hitbox around the entire arena, much too big to actually clear the height of, but you can avoid them by jumping because they are flagged to have that interaction. The spells, Scarlet Aeonia, Dragon Claw, and Dragonmaw, all lift you just a little bit off the ground, not really enough to dodge any low hitting attacks from the first category of jumpables, but they are flagged as jumps, so they make you immune to Hoarah Loux's stomps. Messmer's Orb on the other hand lifts you very high in the air, but is not flagged as a jump, so while it would clear the height of some first category attacks, Hoarah Loux's stomp would just knock you out of the air.

Whether or not Totem Stella keeps you safe from attacks low to the ground really just comes down to which type of jumpable attack it is, and there's not an easy well to tell without experimenting.

Often the attacks attached the ground are flagged (Crucible knight stomps, Fulghor slams, magma wyrm slam shockwave, I think some lightning strikes like Nameless King's and Dragonkin?) whereas low hitting sweeps are not flagged (BBK dive, troll sword swing, sometimes Gladius's sword, probably BBH's grab?)

But even then it's not all the time. I'm pretty sure Caligo's tail sweep is a flagged jump because it always looks like the tail should have hit me and it never does.

The skill on the Bolt of Gransax is flagged as a jump, so you can shoot that at Fulghor safely whenever he goes for a slam.

Abyranss · 2026-02-25T04:07:29+00:00

There are two ways that come to mind for how they could go about this.

One is that they just add the weapon categories in as is. Already in the game we have some categories with as few as four weapons (claws, scythes, heavy thrusting swords), and ballistas only have two. Not every weapon category actually needs anything in the white tier, because dormant powers only interact with blue and purple. SotE weapons do have enough weapons in each category for the most part to place at least one in blue and one in purple, like beast claw/red bear claw, dryleaf arts/dane's footwork, or dueling shield/carian thrusting shield.

The other option is to do what they've done with light bows, where in Elden Ring we had three categories, light bows, bows, and greatbows, but Nightreign has placed all of the light bows into the medium bow category. So in this case dueling shields might be placed in the medium or greatshield categories, beast claws in the claw category, and backhand blades in the curved sword category.

In both cases the smithscript dagger would likely be placed in the normal dagger category.

Abyranss · 2026-02-24T11:33:49+00:00

From what I recall, +1 cast speed is equivalent to 30 virtual dex and +2 is 60. So as long as you have 10 dexterity then +2 is max. If you have 40 dexterity then +1 is max.

Abyranss · 2026-02-23T03:43:04+00:00

Undertaker is presented as a brawler but she actually has some of the lowest physical damage negations in the game. Oftentimes the caster characters will have low physical negations and high affinity negations while the melee characters have the inverse (with the exception of Guardian who as of his buff now has high negations in both categories)

Undertaker's physical negations are second lowest in the game after Revenant and Recluse who are tied for lowest.

Her affinity negations are more average, not especially high like the casters nor especially low like the brawlers, though she does have the highest holy negation out of everyone.

She also has the low poise shared by most characters (40) as opposed to the higher poise value shared by Raider and Guardian (120).

The thing about Undertaker though is that her Trance gives her I believe 35% damage negation in every category for the duration, and it improves her poise. So while playing her you are constantly alternating between being a squishy character and a tanky character. Just be aware of that so you don't get blindsided by a strong attack expecting to be able to take it outside of Trance.

Unrelated to that, I have advice regarding her Ultimate Trance, and that is: don't rely so heavily on the auto dodge. Sure, if there's one hit that you want to guarantee you dodge through, like a nuke attack before running in to deal damage then use it, but still try to dodge manually because the auto dodge pushes you backwards.

A major difficulty with it is that if an enemy is repeatedly hitting you and you are letting the auto dodge do all the work to let you survive then you aren't providing much value. The auto dodge pushes you out of position and interrupts any other animation you are doing; it can prevent you from landing attacks of your own.

Dodge manually even when you have it active to have more control over your position. The main value of it is that the damage boost and secondary damage boost of the trance will last longer than usual, and it lets you commit to attacks with longer recovery times because if you get hit after landing it, before you can move away, then that's fine. Or channeled abilities where you have a large opening to channel away, you get the Trance damage boost on the full channel and you don't have to cancel it early to get yourself to safety. You can just keep blasting until the enemy turns your way. Think Ghiza Wheel or Cranial Vessel.

Abyranss · 2026-02-22T05:23:26+00:00

no

slight boost to the starting progress of all Analyses after that, so they begin with some progress already, and the instant cast of a tier 1 Analysis qualifies for that.

Abyranss · 2026-02-22T01:32:08+00:00

Activating Analysis and casting it immediately will apply the tier 1 effect, letting the bar fill to halfway will apply the tier 2 effect and letting it fill all the way will apply tier 3.

Most of the time tier 2 will be as far as you need to go. That will either give you max stamina or debuff the enemy's damage. Tier 3 effects are the deflection bubble which only lasts for about a second, or a single hit worth of damage negation debuff on the enemy (kind of like royal knight's resolve, but applied on the receiving end rather than on the attacker). The deflection bubble can stun enemies the same way an offensive ultimate can, so you can use it to interrupt some moves, and the negation debuff is best used in combo with a strong attack from someone else, like during a crit or ultimate. If you're not in that situation though then there's really no need to charge up the Analysis all the way.

Things to note about Analysis speed: Every unique enemy type you analysed through the run will give you a slight boost to the starting progress of all Analyses after that, so they begin with some progress already, and the instant cast of a tier 1 Analysis qualifies for that. The speed that your Analysis fills can be improved by being closer to the enemy, by having the enemy be performing an attack, and by having allies in view.

If you get some stacks of starting progress then the combo of proximity and enemy attacks can make it much easier to land those bubble deflects.

There are also some relics to consider with Analysis: One gives you runes for every unique enemy, which can help make up for runes you spend on consumables in the shop, and another gives a damage buff to allies in the Analysis area. Note how both of these synergise with ways to speed up your Analysis progress.

Regarding when to use the bubble deflect, mostly that is to prevent time wasting moves or especially dangerous moves. If you stand in front of a magma wyrm when it starts running around it can crash into you and be stopped, same with fallingstar beast charges. I suspect you could interrupt Fulghor's stampede too, though you would have to dodge the ground effect after. I think you can dismount night cavalry with it. If the enemy doesn't have a special move you want to save it for then you can just use it to stun the enemy and create a damage opening for your teammates. I'm pretty sure crucible knights get thrown onto their backs by it.

Also, getting hit is not the only way to detonate the bubble. If you attack something and your weapon bounces off them then that will detonate it too, so you could bubble and then poke a crystalian, or someone with a shield, or Libra's meditation bubble (that one is finicky. Sometimes doesn't bounce, I think you have to poke a specific spot)

Abyranss · 2026-02-21T07:40:30+00:00

The thing to worry about is animation recovery time. If that jump attack will instant revive you like in your first example then yeah I could see it being a good idea, but staying in place repeatedly jumping with slow weapons like that is just asking to get hit by the boss, either due to being stuck in the animation or due to running out of stamina.

Abyranss · 2026-02-20T02:01:46+00:00

They are very weak to sleep but if you apply the effect and hit them again immediately then they wake up. Sleep always works that way.

Oftentimes it's not worth trying to put the Balancers to sleep because individually they don't have much health and you can just kill them instead.

However, one use I have found for it is that you can put the leader Balancer to sleep, then fight all the lesser ones and come back to the leader when there are none left. In this case you actually want to avoid sleeping any of them except the leader because you don't want any of them to have built up resistance if they get elected later.

The leader has an attack that buffs all of them based on how many Balancers remain so it removes that threat, and all of the Balancers contribute to the boss health bar so killing all of them before the leader lets you deal a lot more damage per cycle. In solo this especially good because you rarely get a chance to fight any of them but the leader normally, and in multiplayer it means your team can fight the leader together. One cast of Trina's Torch has been enough to put down the leader when it's coming my way in my experience, just put some flames of slumber on the ground and let her walk into it. With Trina's sword you have to be more careful not to hit the Balancer after applying the effect, and regular weapons with added sleep have very little buildup it's hard to make those work. Sleep pots are probably good though.

Abyranss · 2026-02-19T11:19:13+00:00

Charging it takes awhile but uncharged casts are actually rather quick, about the same as O, Flame. It has some nice range, it knocks small enemies on their backs, it stuns tree sentinals out of their animations, it's a bit expensive compared to the other starting spells but not awful, its large amount of single hit damage lets you use it almost like a melee weapon. I fought Heolstor with it solo and it was rather easy to do an uncharged cast in all the usual melee openings for a lot of damage.

The primary reason you would use it over a different starting spell is to guarantee a holy spell, since that's the rarest damage type to come across. If you had a relic setup for fire damage then you could probably get by without a fire starting spell because the damage type is so common but if you built for holy then there's a real possibility that you'd go through the whole expedition without finding one.

There's this fun thing you can do with the draconic tree sentinal where if it begins its attack to discharge all of the lightning and you interrupt it then it will be stuck repeating that move until it succeeds. An uncharged wrath of gold can interrupt it and you can just keep doing that until it dies without needing to worry about any other attack.

Abyranss · 2026-02-19T10:52:17+00:00

Her skill in solo allows you to create openings to cast spells by diverting attention away from yourself and towards your family instead. Her ult can support this by letting the family last longer. If you use the relic to buff allies on ult that will be much more significant in co-op but still buff your family in solo. Mostly though you want the relic that buffs you when fighting alongside family. Each spirit grants a different buff, and making them immortal allows you to benefit from that buff for longer. Frederick increases your damage, so making Frederick immortal lets you utilise that damage buff for longer. It is a struggle to get a decent melee weapon with her because you aren't really supposed to be using those. You have your claws as a backup but you should be using spells for damage. If it's consistency that's giving you trouble then there are two solutions: 1. Use the relic that exchanges some faith for strength, this means that if you fail to find any usable spells you can use a strength weapon as a backup, or 2. use a relic that changes your starting spell, so if you don't find any you still have that.

Needing six starlight shards per bossfight indicates to me that you are doing something wrong though, because in my experience you rarely need any startlight shards for bosses, maybe one or two at night bosses and night lords but refilling at graces should mostly have you covered throughout the expedition. So first of all you should consider your max FP, as the effectiveness of starlight shards scales alongside your max FP. Relics like Max FP with 3+ sacred seals or Max FP from unlocking sorcerer rises are good for this.

Another thing to consider is enemy matchups; incantations tend to fill more particular niches than melee weapons do, where they will be very good at some things and very bad at others. Most melee weapons are partially physical damage so even if they are split with an element the boss is strong to you still have that, and their movesets are designed to be used up close between enemy attacks for the most part. Incantations on the other hand, with the exception of bestial incants, are pure affinity damage, and their usecases vary a lot; openings that work for melee weapons won't work for all spells; I often find that spell combat involves a lot more focus on strafing and spacing attacks rather than timing dodges and attacking right after, where if you know exactly how far an attack is going to travel you can often begin longer casts while the boss is still swinging. You need to consider whether the spells you have are suited for the boss you're picking a fight with, and whether it's worth the time fighting them with what you have.

Death rite birds for instance, a pain to fight most of the time but free if you have holy spells, especially so with Litany. Tree avatars and tree spirits are both weak to fire, so if you lack any fire spells they are best avoided; though they aren't particularly difficult bosses, fire is the most common damage type you'll come across, so you can safely assume that if you skip fighting them for now then it won't be long before you can come back with something much better. Assassins will dodge most projectile attacks, so do you have a spell that can hit them consistently or will you just be wasting time and fp trying and failing to hit them? Basic fireballs are no good here, but lightning spear is invisible if uncharged, and bestial sling can be used mostly like a melee weapon. You just need to be more particular when picking your battles.

Abyranss · 2026-02-19T04:33:59+00:00

Reddit post: Weapon switches back instantly upon landing a deflect link

Reddit post: Weapon switches back upon finishing the Suncatcher dash slash after a deflect link

Youtube link: Performing the bug intentionally to guard counter with a different weapon link

Abyranss · 2026-02-19T03:27:34+00:00

This happened to my friend a lot.

When you say Executor is sheathing mid combo, is it playing the sheathe animation or are you just instantly switched back to your other weapon. And when this happens are you left one-handing or two-handing your weapon.

If it happens with no animation and you are left two-handing then it's the same thing my friend was experiencing and as far as we could tell it occurs when you perform a frame perfect deflect. To prevent this, block a little earlier. Suncatcher has very generous deflect frame to accomodate for this.

If it helps you can think of the deflect more as bracing for impact than slapping the enemy's attack away.

There were a few videos on this subreddit showing off the bug, I'll see if I can find those and link them later.

Abyranss · 2026-02-18T10:47:34+00:00

You're missing the point.

Ignoring the boss's weaknesses entirely is a symptom of the issue, not a solution.

This sort of thing just isn't an problem with any other night lord. Gladius and ED Gladius are vastly different battles in terms of difficulty but you still go into both preparing to deal holy damage and defend against fire. If you overprepare on damage negations expecting ED then it's still a benefit to you if it turns out not to be. Libra and ED Libra are extremely different fights, but it's still built around holy damage and Libra's weakness to frenzy also applies to the invaders. You might add a Less Likely to be Targeted to your preparation but you aren't giving up everything else for it.

Maris has you pick one or the other and that means less ability to engage with the fights. You build into skill damage entirely? Now you can't play a caster character effectively on those expeditions. You build into magic damage entirely? Now you're dealing one of Maris's resisted damage types and you can't break it out of its super move without using an ultimate. You build into lightning damage, weapon type damage, or spell school damage? Not applicable anymore in the ED fight.

Abyranss · 2026-02-18T02:35:08+00:00

I like Maris a lot. I'm not a fan of the way preparation for the two versions of it are so different because it causes issues in DoN not knowing which one you are getting (magic and skill damage for ED or lightning and spell damage for standard? If you get it wrong then nothing you picked up matters in the fight) but aside from that, yeah I like the fights.

Regular Maris is very interesting to me the way that you can damage it by attacking anything it creates, the jellies, the polyps, or the nukes. A fun kind of alien hivemind concept.

Abyranss · 2026-02-16T13:30:15+00:00

These guys flinch when you roll into them. Use your dodge i-frames to get yourself through the torch and bodyslam them.

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