The Elden Ring DLC requires a good build to defeat the challenging bosses. We have a strength build for you that makes short work of them and is also very flexible.
Strength is one of the most important stats in Elden Ring and weapons that scale with it usually deal a lot of damage. This is especially necessary in the new DLC Shadow of the Erdtree, as the expansion ups the difficulty an notch.
The bosses are significantly stronger than in the main game, so much so that many players are currently criticizing the DLC for this very reason. If you are interested in roaming the Shadowlands with a strength build, we have a good one for you.
Very practical: The following build is extremely flexible when it comes to choosing your weapon. This means that with this skill you can use most of the strength weapons in the game, depending on your preferred play style.
How to level up for this build
What is being leveled? In our featured build, the focus is of course on “strength” as the main attribute. This is because corresponding weapons scale with it, and the higher your strength level, the more damage you deal.
In order to play the build according to our specifications, you should already have reached level 150. This is a good point to start the DLC anyway – so it’s practical if you have a strong build.
How to level up: The skill points for the strength build are distributed as follows:
It’s best to choose the vagabond class to start with. Its even distribution of attributes means it has the best prerequisites for building any build. We’ll now explain why our points were distributed this way. As you can see, most of the points are in strength. You can only skill dexterity up to level 17, which is enough for most strength weapons in the game.
23 points in Arcane are required to use the weapon “Executioner’s Sword of the Marais”. If you don’t want to do that anyway, you can invest these points elsewhere. For example, in more strength, the last “soft cap” of which is 80. Beyond that, further levels in the attribute are hardly worth it.
Weapons for the Strength Build
Which weapons should you use? As I said, that’s the big advantage of this build: the choice is yours. Nevertheless, we want to give you a few tips.
The big advantage of many strength weapons is that they deal a lot of posture damage in a short amount of time. If you inflict enough posture damage in a very short amount of time, your opponent’s posture will break. You can then land a critical hit on the glowing spot and cause an extremely high amount of damage.
The following weapons are suitable for this purpose:
Of course, your weapon should be upgraded to the maximum. But that alone is not enough, you should also have the right selection of war ashes, talismans and a suitable medicinal mixture in your luggage.
War ashes, talismans and medicinal mixtures
Which war ashes are good? To enhance your weapons with talents, you can choose a War Ash. We particularly recommend the following three:
Which talismans should you have? We recommend the following talismans:
If you don’t have any talents in your weapons, you can also exchange the Shard of Alexander with the following alternatives:
Which tears should be in the medicine mixture? We recommend the following combination of tears:
The armor for the build
Which armor should you take? Basically, your build should have enough balance and a good overall weight of your armor. You should reach the minimum balance of 51, otherwise you will be knocked back by the enemies’ attacks.
The actual weight of your armor, however, is relevant when it comes to dodging and stamina consumption. Of course, the heavier your equipment, the more you’ll be lugging around with you, and your load will increase. This will manifest itself in a slow, sluggish roll, for example. So always try to keep at least a medium load so that you can roll fast enough.
If you follow all of this, you can basically wear any armor you want, with the Veteran Set or Radahn’s Set being particularly strong.
With this build you should be able to get through the DLC and of course the main game. Feel free to write us ideas about how you like to play with strong characters. On MeinMMO you can find more guides about Elden Ring and, most recently, the DLC. Here you can find an overview of all guides.