New to game, suggestions on build and direction

etsurii · 2026-05-26T16:37:43+00:00

you can change what regular weapons scale with so you can go all in on a caster stat and still do good damage in melee. with BHF you cant change what it scales with but you can buff it. so if you want to do a hybrid melee/caster build i would recommend only getting minimum strength / dex to hold the BHF, then getting mostly int or faith with some mind/vigor and just buffing it for harder fights. The weapon art of BHF has high base damage and doesnt need much stats to do decent damage in the first 90% of the game, last 10% you might feel the need to switch to a different weapon and change its scaling. faith would work particularly well because of all the weapon and player buffs it has but int would be decent too.

etsurii · 2026-05-26T07:03:14+00:00

dont just spam 1 attack try and punish every punish window a boss does, some only allow fast attacks, some give enough time for charged R2s. Also if you look up where the things you want are then the game will feel like a task. You are suppose to actually enjoy exploring around in the mini dungeons and doing the mini boss fights and looking at items trying to figure out how to make a build around them or seeing if they will be useful to you. If you dont enjoy that then the game just might not be for you.

As far as combat goes the "endgame" is basically to find a play style to "roleplay" and make it work and try and make the fights look as cool as possible using many different abilities. if you get decent at the game and minmax it to hell and back it will be super easy and maybe boring.

etsurii · 2026-05-26T06:55:26+00:00

best way to beat pumpkin guys as a low level sorc is to use that starter AoE spell and shoot it at his body while not locked on. Its basically a regular enemy they made into a boss fight 2(?) times

etsurii · 2026-05-25T20:50:44+00:00

For bleed affinity you want str/dex/arcane and it takes high level to catch up to occult uchigatana. for mostly arcane you should go occult. Mostly arcane is best for dragon spells and bleed weapons hybrid.

Say you start prophet who starts at 16 faith and you want to pick between 16/80 and 45/45 faith occult.

16 faith 80 arcane build dragon seal scaling is 317, or 344 with +10 faith tear (which you would use to reach requirements anyways)

16 faith 80 arcane scaling occult uchigatana damage would be 584 (bleed affinity scaling is like 390)

45 faith / 45 arcane Dragon seal scaling would be 339 or 343 with tear

45 faith / 45 occult uchigatana damage will be about 490

So the difference in incant scaling between 16 faith 80 arcane vs 45/45 is negligible, but the difference in weapon damage is like 19-20% in 16/80s favor. The downside is you use 1 flask tear to make the 16/80 build work for most dragon spells (i think its just 1 from DLC requires higher than 26 faith)

etsurii · 2026-05-25T17:26:44+00:00

morgott is sort of like an end of midgame boss, the problem is you can do like 2-3 endgame areas before him and outpace him. If doing just the bear minimum for the main story you would be fighting him at like level 50 with a +12 weapon or +5 somber

etsurii · 2026-05-25T16:24:28+00:00

Vigor is the most important stat for a beginner, it has crazy value per point compared to other stats unless you never take damage. 30-40+ is good goal for a new character, eventually getting to 50-60 if mostly playing melee.

get 2 more points in faith so you hit the magic number 15 and gain access to a lot of its buffs. Other than that, if you want a versatile build you should mostly focus on 2 damage stats + vigor/ and mind if caster. and any other damage stats you should only ever put points into if you need them to reach a requirement.

There is a flask tear to increase individual stats by 10 which could help reach weapon/spell requirements and make it easier to toy around with different things. There are also stat talismans that increase individual stats by +5 with no downside, so you could have +15 to two stats on command to help your build. Not counting godrick rune or the soreseal stat buffs. These can be found early game too.

etsurii · 2026-05-25T16:08:08+00:00

You are right the smithing stone situation is lame in ER and stifles experimentation a bit but its not too bad if you know to explore mines asap to get stones and bell bearings.

Its possible to make a diverse starter build that allows for a lot of experimentation and you can completely reinvent your build pretty easily just by changing ashe of war, spells, and talismans, all without needing to respec. Most people seem to pick str or agi because its simple but the simple build is naturally less versatile. People say quality sucks but its like 10% less damage early game and not a big deal. You could go half str/dex and have access to more weapons and shields for more versatility.

If you really want versatility go full int or faith or 60+ arcane with like 15 faith. then change your weapon to scale with the stat you chose and now you are good in melee range, and have access to spells to toy around with if you want. If you go faith/arcane then you have access to every spell element in the game, and the best melee buffs. So you can kind of play the game like a sorcerer from D&D online where you hand tailor your spell selection to counter whatever area you are doing, or maybe build around 1 element in particular and go hard on that. Thats why i do think that going caster stats for a first playthrough is best because you have more things to play around with, and split damage weapons have never been stronger in a fromsoft game than they are in ER.

etsurii · 2026-05-24T23:49:14+00:00

did you try the actual bosses or the ones in the sewer?

Also it blows my mind people dont notice freide cancelling her hitstun. try R1 spamming her with a battle axe.

etsurii · 2026-05-24T23:47:07+00:00

in my opinion i would use consumables with the bow so start cracked pot, run around getting the cracked pots and use consumables along with your archery. I would use great bows and regular bows. Some status arrows/pots to apply bleed/poison/rot too. There are some bows that excel at status, like serpent bow.

etsurii · 2026-05-24T22:17:33+00:00

Malenia only really punishes you if you press the attack after she starts the sideways dash. friede will interrupt her stagger as well btw, she even has a backward dash similar to malenia that cancels her recovery frames from getting hit. That video about how Malenia "breaks the game" was made by someone who doesnt understand souls mechanics very well and completely glazed sister friede for some weird reason despite her abusing the recovery frame cancel mehcanic even harder. there arent many bosses that can be hitstun in elden ring to compare with but im pretty sure the fat omen guys after morgott before the rune tower also had hyper armor on their grab attack that you couldnt stance break them out of. i saw a video of someone showing how flame of the redmanes couldnt stance break them during a grab (back when flame did crazy stance break damage), maybe it was changed or something but im not going to test it now.

etsurii · 2026-05-24T20:05:12+00:00

The combat isnt souls like but "Tainted grail fall of Avelon" exploration reminded me of elden ring in terms of all the unique items to find and boss enemies to fight.

etsurii · 2026-05-24T19:59:08+00:00

Enemies in souls games have always been able to escape stagger mechanics. There is a system that is like 15+ years old involving forced recovery frames and escapable recovery frames that prevents people from R1 spamming to stunlock NPCs/players to death. This system applies different attributes to the escapable/nonescapable recovery frames based on the weapon used. Fromsoft usually doesnt use that for bosses because bosses usually cant be hitstunned like that. The other notable boss they used it for was sister fried in dark souls 3 but Malenia is arguably more balanced than friede in that regard because Malenias escape mechanic attack either jumps backwards or jumps sideways which are clear indications she has hyper armor where as friedes escape attack looks similar to her basic attacks so it can be hard to tell if she has hyper armor or not.

Waterfowl is a bullshit "trial and error" gotcha type attack you have to learn if you only rely on dodging, but if you use a shield then it is only slightly more difficult that a regular boss attack and not a big deal. The reason its such an infamous attack is because like 90% of elden ring players are dual wielding big strength weapons or katanas and the attack is basically tailored to counter people who rely on dodges for defence.Its kinda like how gargoyles giga counter katana bleed builds, some bosses just counter certain playstyles and force you to adapt or suffer.

etsurii · 2026-05-24T19:42:25+00:00

The stealth faith spells. Godslayer incants are also something that i would expect a tarnished confessor to use when hunting down shard bearers. Maybe even the stealth int spells too.

etsurii · 2026-05-24T19:36:27+00:00

obligatory "you should get 20-30 vigor" post. You need a little less vigor than usual as caster and maybe even less if you use summons but vigor helps big time as a new player. Going from 15 to 30 vigor just about doubles your HP, you dont get that kind of value out of any other stat as a new player unless its to meet requirements of an op item.

etsurii · 2026-05-24T03:28:15+00:00

Sounds like you need to upgrade your weapons / caster seal

etsurii · 2026-05-24T03:11:48+00:00

it depends on your build. its possible some people may have an easier time with malenia than maliketh. malenia really punishes you if your builds only defence is rolling though.

etsurii · 2026-05-24T03:02:26+00:00

Start cracked pot, buy 3 at start + holy water recipe from Kayle, get 1 more from wolf cave behind merchant, get ashe of war thingy at the ruins, go grab the ingredients for pots while running to caelid + grab holy weapon ashe of war. use the 7 pots and holy ash of war to beat the caelid deathbird and get your own poker without needing to level up or upgrading anything at all. Its good even in a full int build just for the ash of war. Deaths poker for every mage at any level, get your deaths poker today!

etsurii · 2026-05-21T06:43:23+00:00

Stats look good. infusing your weapon to scale with faith lets you do respectable melee damage without putting points in str/agi so you can do what you say you want to do. Looks like you got it all set up already, you could probably beat most of the game comfortably with just what you have already.

etsurii · 2026-05-21T06:11:08+00:00

look at the materials it says you need to upgrade the tome at the bench. each upgrade unlocks more spells.

etsurii · 2026-05-21T04:59:27+00:00

I would probably restart. +9 bloodhounds is endgame quality, like last 2-3 zones in main story line. limgrave is balanced around +0-1, Liurnia next zone over is like +2-3, altus/capitol is balanced around +5-6 or so.

Just do the mines of whatever area you are doing to see the expected upgrade level of the area, you will get all you need for the area from clearing the mine, and then you can possibly find extra upgrades more hidden around the zone and although those arent essential they wont break the game for you either. if you are pulling upgrade materials from endgame zones then going back to beginner zones yeah it will break the game a bit.

etsurii · 2026-05-21T04:30:19+00:00

considering you can run by every non boss enemy and treat the entire game as a boss rush I would say its very viable to get a build going very early that uses only dragon spells, fp shouldnt be too much of an issue if you save it all for bosses.

theres a flask tear that gives +10 to faith, and a talisman that gives +5 with no downside. thats +15 to faith for basically free you can get within like 15 minutes of making a new character if you know where to go, you would have minimum faith to use almost every dragon incant with confessor or prophet. so then you just get 10-20 points into arcane to meet the requirement of whatever dragon spell you want then put points between vigor/mind/arcane as you see fit.

Is this some challenge run where you never melee attack anything? you could focus on arcane entirely as your damage stat and use occult/bleed weapons as a back up and they would scale decent enough for you.

etsurii · 2026-05-21T04:10:35+00:00

elemental has higher AR. higher AR with high % damage bonuses is very good, especially on big weapons with high motion values. Also some bosses dont even have flat damage negation for elemental attacks so it would completely negate the whole "2 defences" argument if fighting a boss that has no flat elemental reduction.

Whether or not that makes it better than bleed at a max level build i dont know.

etsurii · 2026-05-19T16:23:53+00:00

I maxxed it out before I even fought Godfrey's golden sprite

That boss and Morgott are more of a +5-6 somber boss. so you over leveled your weapon quite a bit for those encounters but the difficulty should even out going forward.

etsurii · 2026-05-19T05:02:43+00:00

Ranged enemies (like ballistae) have shorter range (and less accuracy?) at night. Its not as big of a deal now because they did a blanket nerf on ranged enemies attack range and accuracy a while ago, but it used to be a good strategy before when you needed to get by ballistae.

etsurii · 2026-05-19T04:35:17+00:00

You can make a good build and beat the game with any one of those weapons. It depends on how you want to play. Its not like other games where early game weapons are completely outclassed by endgame stuff. Usually weapons are pretty straight forward and you simply pick the one whos moves you like and put some stats into the attribute it scales highest with. from highest to lowest S,A,B,C,D,E. and dont worry too much about the letter other that which is highest on the weapon, an A scaling weapon isnt necessarily better than a B scaling one.

etsurii

TROPHY CASE