homepage Forums Land & Armor Combat Tactical Simulations - General Let's talk Elden Ring

I essentially used a "tank" build in Elden Ring so strength will be key there but yes, there were several weapons that I used that scaled damage with higher dexterity and strength,. The katanas especially synergize very well with high dexterity and strength.

Oh, and the rune rewards most definitely go up when you defeat stronger foes. The higher the risk for death, the higher the reward.

All weapons scale off both strength and dex as far as I can see, but are rated higher in one stat or the other (perhaps there are some that are even?)

So assuming the player has identified a specific weapon to focus on, it would result in more damage to invest in the stat that weapon scales higher with (unless some are even?)

Like the Uchigatana I am using scales better on dex.

So for a player to spread the two stats evenly made me wonder what about Frank's specific setup caused him to go that route. There are affinities, and infusions, and stuff like this can reverse how the weapons work, like making a katana heavy or keen. He looks to have been dual wielding some curved greatswords?

It's too early for me to know which weapon I will end up with, there are some good katanas yet to come. And I know I can respec at some point. But you really have to suit the build to the weapon and its effects. Like I'm using bleed so that means I should pump arcane to build it up. Other katanas and their effects might need intelligence or faith.

Then there's the matter of dual-wielding or two-handed, or even board and sword but you cannot do that with a katana, it's unbecoming quite frankly

I've found just the one I started with so I've been two-handed, dropping the shield shortly after starting. From what I've read this is a difficult choice. Dual-wield can do more damage, but the real advantage is how you can cycle effects. Evidently carrying something like frost and fire blades can be extra effective as they keep hitting alternately, but I don't know much about that yet. Two-handed however is much better at breaking poise and opening the target up, breaking stance, or so it is said. It's too early to really worry about it since I don't have two katanas yet, but I like to roadmap out the build a little.

Building a synergy between your character choices and the weapons you use is interesting.

Good post DBond but I wanted to mention that there are some melee weapons that don't scale with dexterity such as great axes and great hammers. Those scale almost exclusively with strength.

#%&*$# it DBond, you are tempting me to reinstall!

If there's a build or weapon you wanted to try but never did, yeah, why not?

If I do reinstall, I think I'll convert my character from tanky warrior to powerful mage. I've never tried the magic spells in Elden Ring. I've only used incantations in a handful of situations.

That's about as good a reason as I can think of. And now for something completely different....

Derek, I usually go the "quality" build i.e. strenght/dexterity route in those games. It allows me to test and use different kind of stuff along my way ingame.

In Elden Ring I ended up with a tanky character who is running heavy armor and can switch from shield + spear/ sword to double greatswords depending on the situation. Plus I always have a ranged weapon on my character.

Also started with samurai in my first playthrough and used double katana for awhile. But when I got the Bloodhound´ s Fang curved greatsword in that first area you´re in right now it was my weapon of choice all the way to the end. The weapon skill of that sword is amazing!

Honestly that's what I expected. That such a build would allow seamless swapping of weapons. I saw the quality and standard options in ashes of war, but yet to find a keen one, which I think is best for how I am building my character. Evidently a night cavalry boss along the road in Limgrave drops one, but I tried fighting him but lost. I'm having a problem with locking on to my foe, and then as I run around the lock switches to some other enemy nearby without command. I'm thinking of giving controller a try.

Man, those night cavalry bosses gave me the heebee jeebees when I was a rookie ER player.

If you end up liking and finishing the base game I highly recommend you get Shadow of the Erdtree. The enemies are tougher but there are also some unique items you can find which increase the damage output of your weapons.

Yeah, I might pick up the DLC. Let's see how the main game goes. Is the DLC save game compatible. Can I use it any time during an existing run or does it need a new game?

Got a question for you fellows. How should I use magic when I don't plan to invest in it? Are there some spells or incantations or similar I should be looking to use? One of the NPCs at Roundtable offers to teach incantations I think. What are these? Are there good, useful options for a dex bleed melee build?

The DLC fully integrates into the base game and you can keep using your same character and save games.


Don't bother using magic unless you are going to invest points into the intelligence category. Intelligence is the primary determinant to how effective magic spells are. There are a ton of different incantations though that you can learn and they have different requirements. Some use more FP than others and some require x-amount of points in certain categories like Arcane. Some incantations are simple like increasing your HP temporarily while others do more complex things like adding black flame effects to your weapon.

Thanks. I'll be putting points in to Arcane since I plan to sharpen up my bleed. So an Arcane incantation, if those exist haha, is what I need to look for. Something that would give a reliable, low cost boost to combat or survival.

I found the shack with the NPC that sells ashes, so picked up two Keen options. Going Keen changed my Uchigatana's scaling ratings from D/D to E/B (STR/DEX). Displayed damage before applying the ashes was 141 (33) and afterwards was 129 (50). So if I understand it, before the ashes it was doing 174 damage, and after making the weapon Keen it is 179. So that is just a difference of 5, which isn't much. But this is scaling, right? So I expect as I pump dex the gains will be increasing. I'm at 12 STR and 22 DEX at the mo.

What I don't get is this. When applying Keen, the scaling is -1 to strength and +1 to dexterity (which is why they changed to E/B and dex skipped over C?). Quality however is +1 to both. What's the drawback, why would you go keen over quality? I would get the same +1 to dex either way, but I guess it comes down to the fact that ashes only work with certain weapon classes, and are also tied to specific skills. You can't thrust with a axe for example.

Maybe Keen (and all affinities) become more specialized and powerful later and it will be obvious why Keen has advantages over Quality in a dex build

The two ashes I bought were a spin and a thrust move. Unsheathe comes with the class weapon, and is really strong. But it's costly until I can get Mind up. When I put one of the other ashes on the weapon I lose access to Unsheathe right? Not permanently, I can just remove the current ash. But what I mean is can I use both the spinning strike and unsheathe together? I would guess not but I'd hate to be missing out on this versatility.

You ask some great questions DBond and admittedly, I would need to reinstall the game and check for myself because I'm a bit unsure on the details about how Keen works.


The one definitive answer I can give you concerns the use of ashes on weapons. You can only have one active ash applied to a weapon at a time. The world of the "lands in between" does not allow double-dipping.

No worries PM, I'm figuring it out. Level 33 now, and I've cleared a handful of dungeons, mini bosses.

Had a look on the interweb to see how I could get a second Katana and picked up the Uchigatana so I have a +4 in right hand a +3 in left hand at the moment. I lose parry with this, but the move set is cool.

It became clear pretty early that vigor is the thing to focus on in the early stages, so that's what I've done.

I went to roundtable to see what options I have for incantations. Some of them have an arcane requirement, but all have faith, and I can't afford to be putting points in to this. So the question I have is this.... do these incantations scale off the stats? For example, even with my low stats, I can use Urgent Heal. Does Urgent Heal restore more the higher your stats are? Or do you just have to meet the requirements and it always heals the same amount regardless of where your faith and arcane numbers are?

The incantations do indeed scale the higher your faith/arcane rating is. A high faith rating also helps with any weapons that deal "Holy" damage such as the Golden Halberd.

I would have thought so, thanks. So yeah, doesn't make much sense to pursue those at this point then. I don't have a seal anyway

In the mid-30s I decided it was time to give Margit a go, but before I did so I thought I should upgrade my spirit ashes. I only had the wolves and jellysfish, and used the wolves more. So I looked up how to do this, and it involves completing Roderika's fetch quest, which means getting in to Stormveil. Took the back way and as soon as I started off I got called out by a huge dude I was hoping would just offer a word of warning or something, but instead it turned out to be Margit. I was expecting him at the end of a long slog through the castle like a proper boss haha, and now I was just here to get the memento for Roderika, don't you know. But the fight was won on first attempt..

Kept going to reach the rampart tower grace, which was near the objective according to what I read. Fought my way up, dying once or twice as things were exploding a lot. Then I walked through the door that has that black knight in it and he smoked me in seconds flat. Dropped 5000 runes in there and went back, tried to sneak over to my runes and he detected me and killed me again, but just after I had reached my runes, so here's round three. This time I thought I would sneak in and get a backstab on him, but he detected me and killed me in seconds flat. So now the runes are gone for good so I did it a fourth time and this time I was ticked off and barely beat that dude and turns out a key I needed to keep going was in there, so that's the way it goes.

Now I could upgrade spirit ashes after a bit of matchmaking back at Roundtable. But then I was torn over which of my summons would be best to blow my mats on. So I got some opinions off the net and did the Mariner fight, which was easy on Torrent I gotta say, and that gives the skeleton militia ashes which are really good as they keep respawning, or I suppose, re-animating. So I upgraded this.

Things are rounding in to shape. I'm probably making better progress than I thought I would at this stage. Still using mouse and keyboard

Those black knights at Stornveil Castle are a force to be reckoned with because most players are still relatively low level when they first attempt to complete that area. And yes, losing runes permanently is one of the worst feelings when you are low level. It happened to me a few times.

Is there more than one? Banished Knight is actually what they are called, I believe.

I'm up to level 42 and have cleared most of Limgrave and Weeping Peninsula.

It's sort of addictive, grinding out runes for another level. You could level up in this game without killing anything and that's sort of surprising.

Honestly my only real issue is that Elden Ring doesn't like if I have any peripherals hooked up. Having my racing gear hooked up makes the character spin and walk on his own. So to play I must unhook that each time. That got old fast. I wish there was an 'ignore controllers' setting. Is there?

What was your impression of that massive walking mausoleum in Weeping Peninsula?