Best Elden Ring Builds For Beginners - Top 5 Early Game Builds 

Builds: eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Builds CLASS STATS ON WIKI: eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Classes 💖 Become a Fextralife VIP fextralife.com/Be-a-vip/

Thank you. I couldn't smash that like fast enough. SO many builds in this game are like.. "go here.. grab this.. then do this.. and now you are OP..." and they seem to forget that it only works if you've put 1000+ hours into learning the game and enemy mechanics. 99% of new players are gonna spend hours getting killed by the enemies at Gatefront ruins.

I love that this video is builds for beginners, not "how to be crazy OP early". Part of the fun of FromSoft games is trying stuff and dying and discovering what you like.

Love the resurgence of Elden Ring content, I'm always looking for my next build, thanks Fextra!

Also for beginners, I recommend going through the Cave of Knowledge right at the beginning. It’s the game’s tutorial and will get you an easy 600 runes and let you buy the crafting kit immediately.

One little tip - as mage starter just go in ruins on Agheel lake and use trap chest to teleport in Caelid just after you get maunt so you can get staff and rock spell like in 5 minute.

There's also a second uchigatana in Limgrave, it's near the warmaster's shack but before the bridge with a head basher on it. Go into the dungeon that is full of skeletons and in there you'll find it sitting on a ledge near the lever that opens the dungeon boss area. This is my fav way to dual wield blood weapons early as Samurai!😁

Honestly with dlc on the way soon there’s no better time than now to see these amazing videos again! Great content!! 🤘🏽

Glad you're back to Elden Ring content! Video idea: how to PVP--not necessarily builds or gameplay, but just an overview of the mechanics. I recently started playing online and found there's not an authoritative/comprehensive source on how PVP works. For instance, - how matchmaking scales off of rune and weapon level - arenas and their play options - invasion cool-down timers (or lack thereof) - when multiplayer items reset; for example, you have to reactivate the taunter's tongue after each fast-travel, but the cipher rings persist after death - your summoning sign will disappear after you leave the area, but unsure of the radius - a lot of your builds include a great rune recommendation, so it could be helpful to show how easy it actually is to get rune arcs - etc At the same time I recognize PVP isn't this channel's focus. Just an idea

Sent this to a friend that tried a couple times since the game came out and just couldn’t get over the initial learning curve. She’s pumped to see this because it might be enough to get her started. Kudos.

If you're truly beginning for the first time, the thing is, don't worry too much about builds. The game is vast and you'll find tons and tons of different weapons and spells, just use all of them until you find something you feel really comfortable about, then you can start to think about a build. Just please constantly level your vigor every opportunity you can, it'll literally save your life throughout your game

Barely started playing yesterday had a bit of trouble stumbled into the margit boss fight and i was stumped and your video popped up on my recommended thank you

Awesome video. My 1st playthrough was a samurai that turned into a Sanguine Samurai and with the mimic tear spirit ash made fighting Malenia so much easier. Until they nerfed Rivers of Blood. 2nd playthrough went with the Bloody Ballerina build with the Bloody Helice. Though I'm currently going through a Blaidd Royal Greatsword build now and naturally choosing the Age of Stars ending.

Oh, the timing on this is perfect. I just picked it up this morning via the Steam Sale. 🙂 Thanks! 👍

This is a great beginner video. Setting up 5 great builds that don't require friends dropping you weapons or running to kill Greyoll is gonna be super helpful to actual new players.

Love your videos! I recently started my second run (a new one, no NG+) and personally I go for getting at least one or two weapons of each category that scale with dex. I find it a little more fun changing weapons and playstyles every so often!

Great vid for beginners, although figuring it out for yourself is very fun. Note: there's a TON of cheap stones you can buy early in the game too. Smithing Stone 1, 3 x 200 runes ea. Merchant by first Mariner. SS1, 3 x 200. Merchant North of fort Haight/East of sleeping rune bear SS1, 3 x 200. Merchant by beach (sells the short bow) SS1, 3 x 200. Merchant in middle of Weeping Peninsula. Also SS2, 1 x 400. SS2, 3 x 400. Isolated merchant.

Thank you! Just want to start my second ER run and didn't know what to go for. First run was with shield and Golden Halberd so i don't want another shield run. I''m starting with the Bloodblade Build. A more aggressive playstyle might be fun.

Probably the game I have played the most ever, always been a souls fan but the diversity of builds you can use in Elden ring makes it feel like a brand new game every time you start. Ng+22 as of this comment. lol

Was just thinking about a new run, perfect timing! Top 5 builds going into the dlc next??

Really solid beginner builds. I think I tried all of them at one point or another thanks to your videos, and they are super effective!

That was my first mage build in that game. Got the meteorite staff and rock sling early as possible and got me thru half the game. Then switch to night comer with staff of loss of band and the other best staff on the right.

Great beginner guide honestly. The biggest tip in this game is research a bunch of builds and figure out what interests you. Gives u a goal to achieve and a direction other than the main path. Which is very vague and confusing for beginners. Also u won't feel completely weak and get discouraged early on.

I’m a new player from the winter sale. Thanks for all the good advice!

Bought the game for my brother without knowing it was his first Souls game. Christmas was...... interesting 😅. Told him to sub to your channel immediately and to use your Wiki like a bible.

I did a variant on the curved bleed swords build on first playthrough and I forget how to “power stance” but if you do your jump L1 (or L2 gosh I can’t remember specifics) becomes a upward then downward cross slash with each sword. So 4 hits in a short time frame. There are talismans for increased jumping attack damage for this and it wrecks and prices bleed regularly even on non bosses. Late game tasimans that increase damage output after a bleed proc take it to absurd levels of damage. Wouldn’t recommend using it for entire game though as only jump L1 is a boring play style. Lol. Love your videos and glad I found em for my resurgence into the lands between. (I did 1.8 runs through already, I loaded up and cleared my data to start fresh)

As a beginner to Souls games I found the Halberd a good starting weapon as it feeds in to Strength builds early on where there are a lot of options. Second play through i found Intelligence build with the Moonveil + Comet of Azur very fun plus with Rock fling and glint stone magic very easy to smash enemies with. Didn't have to cadt any spirit summons with this build so very strong throughout the game.

It’s insane that I’ve been watching all of your year old videos to find a build I liked, but I knew they’d be a bit dated since all of the updates since then. Then you upload this! Perfect timing! 😂

I really like the early game builds he released back in 2022. This video just kind of touches on them a little bit, but if anyone is interested in learning more he has a playlist for early game builds and all game builds

Subbed just got the game today, this is the best guide i've seen, cant figure out if i wanna run samurai or paladin :)

This is a great video for new players to just learn like the "vocabulary" of the game. Like, all other elden ring info will make more sense to them after watching this I think.

Buddy and I have been playing seamless coop. This is great thanks!

the power stance greatsword build u made way back got me to enjoy soulslikes, the poise damage you get just pouncing at fools is INSANE and if u add cragblade to one of them, its gaaaaame over

This video came the right time!I started playing elden ring again and I love it

thank u so much it was very helpful paladin build here i come 🙌🙌🙌🙌

Hi man, i love ur videos about begginer, lvls 50, 100 and 150 builds but personally think that we - new palyers might need some kind of build development path explanation video like: if you play samurai you can either switch to moonveil or go physical etc.

straight flames bro this helped me out alot i hope you get far in life man

Glad you’re still making videos for this game 🎉

Thanks for this guide, just started Elden ring this weekend

I love that youre making Elden Ring videos again. Almost makes me want to jump back in for a 4th playthrough. Almost. Cant wait for DLC

Another Great early game build is getting the great stars hammer and the prayerful strike AOW. Relatively light hammer. Has native bleed. Prayerful strike adds holy damage which is kinda poop. But the AOW heals for 25 or 33% i cant remember. Really fun and strong for newbies

I got Elden Ring on the winter sale. Way to go algorithm. I am playing dual wield daggers with reduvia on the main hand and occult great knife on the other hand. Stacking arcane and I’m loving it.

My first build was using the dragonmaw and other dragon incantations and just chomping everything. Used dragonmaw trough the entire game. It was the most fun i had in a souls game. Dragon incantations are awesome

Great guide fextralife i may try mage and keep it up

Amazing video, you said the sale is making people buy the game but for me it's your videos that make me want to buy it! I'd love to see a lightning (arcane or faith i'm not sure?) early build! I've always taught that the lightning spear looked cool. Maybe a full caster and a hybrid to have options?

glad i started this game now rather than when it came out. just got past margit and i'm loving the game so far, it's so fun. didn't have to deal with the early days performance issues either which is a bonus. planning to finish the game at least once by the time the DLC comes out so i can have fun playing that too

The best class to choose if you are a complete newbie is the confessor class, no contest. If you are not used to the controls it is better to play defensively with a shield in your left hand. Buy the no skill ash to remove parry or any other skill from your shield. Square off is the default skill for most straight swords, it is a way better skill than sacred blade and even unsheathe on uchi. If you are using uchigatana it is better to swap out unsheathe for spinning slash, it is a multi hit ash which helps build up bleed but it is also good when you are surrounded because it spins 360 ..it also does decent stagger.. Lastly, I do not recommend playing a pure mage build at the beginning of the game because you are going to run out of hp and mp flasks and some enemy's are too aggressive or too tanky for it to work well. Pure mage becomes more viable in the mid to late game.

I finally started playing Elden Ring a couple days ago, after getting the game for Christmas. So far I’ve played about 20 hours, split between a bandit and a samurai. Took a few hours messing around and learning the subtle differences from other Soulsborne games I’ve played (which is primarily Bloodborne and a bit of Sekiro). There’s a ton of stuff to learn about this game, and without guides like this, I would definitely miss a lot of quality of life info that makes a game like Elden Ring more satisfying than frustration-inducing 😁

Dude I could, and do, watch your build videos all day! Where that hammer weapon type video though?

I just picked the game back up again. Fextralife's videos helped me so much my first playthrough. Now I'm trying out the samurai class. :p Question: if I kill Yura early to get the nagakiba, will i lose out on the ability to get the ronin set?

I think this might've been left off for the Samurai build, but for new players: Hemorrhage is BY FAR the strongest effect in the game. It's so strong that FromSoft has absolutely nuked it into the ground since launch and it's STILL the strongest effect. Katana builds are incredibly popular because of this and are among the easiest beginner builds to play.

Bloodhound's Fang build is good newbie one too.

I can´t believe you didn´t mention the Claymore when pointing out upgrades over the Lordsworn Greatsword. You´ll gonna make the trip down the Weeping Peninsula, anyways, for the Sacred Tears to boost your flasks. So just get into the castle and pick up the Claymore, instead of farming anything. Can be done immediately, you can even sneak in after you killed ther dogs if you don´t want to fight the horde of misbegotten. It has a thrust heavy which is nice - and even takes one point LESS Dex to wield... Oh, and worth the mention: You can get the recipe for silver pickles (+ dropchance) early on and easily get silver flies for it, too - doesn´t work always, but usually cuts down on farming time a lot !

That's cool. Thank you. But would be nice to cover good shield and armor as well as weapon as focusing on the later results in lots of dodging, which if you are bad at it results still in dying a lot...

Hello thank you for this guide I love the blood blade build so far. I'm using the bandit's curved swords. I was wondering is this build viable for the later game? After I level up my Vigor and Endurance, should I start juicing Dex and Arcane? Or should I respec to one of the later game builds on your website?

This is good. I haven’t played in a while and I don’t know the rebalance since the latest 1.1 patch. I need to get back to speed before the DLC drops

If u are on pc, u can use the seamless coop mod and also the boost discovery mod to farm for gear. Wherever or whatever u are fighting it drops everything in their loot pool on the first kill.

Great vid! You should create a series on these builds and how you progress them throughout the game. Such as a mid game update.

Great video as always. I just wanna mention something for the Samurai build: The Nagakiba with "Double Slash" is basically the only weapon you need for the entire game (if you don't get bored by it). You can get "Double Slash" in Caelid, which might seem far, but most players nowadays go to Dragonbarrow really quickly anyway, to kill Greyoll. Because of this "Sellia, Town of Sorcery" is not that difficulty to get to and taking the detour is very very much worth it. For a 20 minute time investment you get "Rivers of Blood", but objectively better, before you even really get going with the game. A Blood Nagakiba with Double Slash has a lot more range and more bleed buildup without having to invest in Arcane, while costing 6 FP, as compared to 17 on "Corpse Piler". And it does stance damage, which Rivers of Blood does not.

I would add to the end of the mage build, to have people if they can kill it kill the death bird on the weeping peninsula, to get the Sacrificial Axe, off hand it for some FP regen.

damn, I can't wait to get back into this game with the dlc

I quit playing after a week after buying it when it came out & started playing it again. Trying things out that I never did & exploring more. I'm happy Elden Ring is coming back in popularity.

lovd these. makes me wanna play again

Would love a build video for the ending. Like the dark moon ending with heavy intelligence. The frenzy flame, ending with waky fire incantations. Thing like that. Kinda theme the build based from the intended ending.

I think 1 talisman tip is for melee, get the radagon soreseal in Caelid in fort faroth, and for int and faith get Marikas scarseal for those extra early stats.

It’s impressive that Elden Ring beginner videos is still relevant content. A salute to FromSoft

Wish I saw this before I started. I made a strength build with vagabond because people were telling me that was the best for someone who had never played a souls game before but I wish I was a spellcaster. I'm planning to respec I'm in the academy now

A good universal Talisman you can get early in the game if you've picked up a Stonesword Key is the one in the Summonwater Village that increases Stamina recovery speed. Universally good for any class and build early in the game, but it does cost a Stonesword Key which you might not have or want to spend that early on.

The build I personally almost always use for the early game is: - +0 Lordsworn's Greatsword+Sacred Blade -Axe Talisman - charged attack and +10str physic flask tears It takes no farming, no smithing stone or rune spending and everything is on the way while I pick up the physic flask and the first Dectus half.

So I been playing this and absolutely loving the bloodblade, and was curious does this transition into one of the other builds or do I just pump dex and maybe some vigor? Site makes it look like it adapts to blade dragon at lvl 50 and was curious

Farming for that Noble’s sword is worth it imo. The reach is so good!! Also I recommend going with a sword stone key instead - there’s so many golden seeds

For the Storm Blade build, you can get the Claymore inside the castle on the weeping penninsula. I litrally beat every boss with it so you can keep it and invest in it.

You should have mentioned about getting the second katana early on and dual wielding katanas for even more damage and bleeding enemies and bosses faster

This video is the best confirmation dlc is coming next month. TY.

I actually think besides these great choices, a dual-wielding greatsword build is probably the most straightforward one in the game while not sacrificing on power at all. I started as a similar build to the "perfect paladin" one here, but realized that a greatsword does more damage than a straight sword, and TWO greatswords deal double the damage. Just use jumping attacks on enemies and whatever ash of war you want, it's too easy when you 1-hit regular mobs and need literally 7 jumps to take down bosses. Also, Fire or Lightning infusions are the best to use for the first 150-200 levels of the game, even if you don't boost both stats just look at the ~25% AR boost you get when applying it. Anyone who thinks split damage types gets resisted more than one is misinformed, you can test it yourself using the dps number on enemies' healthbars, 99% or more of the enemies in the game take more damage from split scaling weapons.

I’m glad that this game is getting some attention again. Hopefully the DLC is properly announced in February.

Nagakiba has Unsheathe by default, you jsut have to remove the Piercing Fang AoW btw

Am I crazy that I want to choose confessor pure for his armor 😅? Also is it possible to be paladin but without a shield and use a great axe/ claymore instead of straight sword ??

for the mage build: you can actually take a shortcut to caelid by using the teleport chest at the ruin inside the limgrave lake

Doing a NG since my first 2 playthroughs were faith and int. What is a good early game greatsword for the second build that's better than the one featured in the video? There has to be something similar to sword of night and flame for this build right?

as beginer i used play with mage build.. since i afraid when enemy near me, then start using samurai after that.. i like it

for a mage build i think prisoner is better since they start with magic glintblade which will be able to easily kill enemies with shields or front defenses like pumpkin heads, just spam magic glintblade and let the enemy come to you and those spells will delay fire and hit the enemy in the back while youre just kitting backwards. prisoner also starts with higher dex and str which lets you equip moonveil or darkmoon greatsword easier later on or just being able to equip better shields and weapons in general

keep up the good work G

Claymore is amazing for Beginners. So is the Large Club. Both can be obtained very early without fighting.

So overwhelming I’m still confused😭

First of all i like to provide a strength build that you can either play shielded as a tank or weilding a big weapon two handed. Starting as vagabond Should be easier for the majority of new players. Hero can be better if you know 100% what weapons you want to use. Good early strength weapons you can look up at the elden Ring wiki are: zweihsnder, mace, broadsword, iron cleaver, morning star and the bastard sword (among others) a fun strategy against bosses is to use a teo banded weapon with the warcry ash of war. Buff yourself and use the special charged R2 (heavy attacks) enough armor for 51 poise like the one in shop of roundtable hold make a big difference. Your weapon get a strength modifier of 50% when you use thrm two handed. That's why you only need 13 strength to weild the zweihander. I can't stress enough how important vigor is. Putting points into it makes a night and day difference. Also don't stress aboutbskill point spread too much since you will be able to respecc multiple times (look up larval tear). Good luck tarnished! Best of luck to all the new players! One more thing i like to add is ehen you look up builds pay attention to the rime they were made. Release Elden Ring played very different from current Elden Ring.. weapons like hsmmers and axes are totally viable!

Me dabbling in everything. Got a mace, the blood hound blade and the bloody dagger. A shield the spell stick and finger thing on the other and heavy armor.

I love your videos they help me a lot to learn the game ❤

The artwork for these thumbnails is really awesome, is there anywhere we can see all of them? Who is the artist?

In the stormblade build you said that any other greatsword is better than the lordsworn greatsword, is the claymore a good upgrade from that? Is the game beatable with just the claymore?

Awesome guide, thank you! I'm going Storm Blade but I'm a bit confused. I've got the ash of war and everything else, however I don't know if I should level up into Str or Dex? Or do I just choose which one I want? Thx!

I needed this, finally i can play on ps4 pro!

thank you!

Any kind of upgrade to the perfect paladin clawmark seal at endgame/new game +?

Great Epee is very long and very strong making it fantastic with StormBlade. Don't need to change weapons.

Beat the game 2 years ago on an Xbox series s I got because there were no ps5 available using bloodhound step with dual wield katanas now I’m buying the ps5 edition and preparing for dlc and I basically forget or need a refresher on what to do

Good video, but its criminal that you didn't mention the Claymore for the Stormblade build.

I rarely use shields in ANY soulslike l... especially this one cuz of the power stancing with 2 of the same kind of weapon... i just created a new character yesterday after doin 3 playthroughs on my first one... im tryin for a mage this time, but it's not going so well lol... i just got the bhf, and am about to go for 2 bandits curved sword so i can blast through yhe game n get runes for some int lol

No mention of Impaling Thrust? It has one of the top Stance damage modifiers in the game, incredible reach, low FP cost and attack speed, can be put on most weapons. You get it very early in the game, or even instantly if you pick Prisoner as your starting class. Picking up the Lordsworn Greatsword, getting 11 Str so you can 2-hand it and putting Impaling Thrust on it is already a stance breaking build. Later on, when you pick up other weapons, AoWs, spells, etc., you can still use IT on a weapon other than a dagger or thrusting sword to stance break enemies, then proceed to use other damaging skills and spells instead of doing a critical hit. It even matches up well against the Glintblade Phalanx AoW from Rogier's Rapier, when you consider attack speed, usage convenience and FP cost.

I'm leaning towards Paladin or Spell Caster. But the caster seems a bit spammy & uses just 2-3 different spells. Does this improve later on in the game? 💭