It’s been two months since Elden Ring was released to widespread critical acclaim and commercial success. As the dust settles, players are still discovering all of the nuances and depth presented in Elden Ring’s character creator. One helpful fan has compiled a list of powerful builds centered around roleplaying with the game’s starting classes.
Elden Ring is FromSoftware’s biggest game to date, featuring a vast open-world and unparalleled character-building mechanics. For new fans of FromSoftware’s Souls-like titles, the task of planning, optimizing, and fleshing out a build can be very intimidating, especially with such a wide range of options available in The Lands Between. While there certainly is no shortage in build guides for Elden Ring, one Redditor has gone the extra mile by making easily digestible class-specific builds with a neat story-telling element to them.
Reddit user Leesinmain1992 posted ten build paths on the Elden Ring subreddit, each one centered around strengthening and roleplaying with the base starting classes. Every class moves through roleplaying stages centered around bits of Elden Ring lore as players progress through the game and grow stronger. For example, the Prisoner starting class goes through the build path of the Elusive Spellthief, starting as a simple Spellblade wielding a rapier and Glintstone Staff at levels 1-50 before becoming a Nightblade at levels 50-100 and finally ascending to the Mageslayer at levels 100-150. Every build path also features stat point allocations for each stage in the player’s journey and a set of recommended spells, talismans, and weapons that fans should pick up along the way.
Many users in the comments have expressed gratitude at Lessinmain1992 for creating such a helpful set of builds for new players while also voicing their opinions on changes that should be made to these characters. Namely, players would prefer to see higher vigor stats for a handful of builds as endgame bosses have the capacity to two-shot or even one-shot players that lack a meaty health bar. Regardless, players will always have the ability to tailor these builds to their liking, and these build guides serve as an excellent starting point for fans embarking on their Elden Ring journey.
Leesinmain1992’s ten builds are excellent choices for a first playthrough of the game and could easily breeze through plenty of Elden Ring’s New Game Plus mode. One of Elden Ring’s best features is how it allows players to take their builds in different directions due to a high level cap and frequent respecs using Larval Tears. For any player starting with one of these build paths, the door is open for creating PvP optimized characters or further expanding upon them as players progress past level 150 in later New Game Plus runs.
Elden Ring is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S