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Wandering the Lands Between provides a pleasant feeling to the soul but that pleasant feeling turns into rage when you encounter hordes of enemies and even bosses at every other corner of the map. While everything can kill you almost instantly at the start of Elden Ring, there is really no reason for you to stick there and fight. Instead, you can focus on building exploring the area, and making your character stronger. Elden Ring is a massive game and there are various great builds that you can pull off right from the start of the game, in this article, we will walk you through Elden Ring’s best builds for early and mid-game.

Factors To Consider

Before diving into the build section, there are some factors you need to consider to make your overall experience of the game more enjoyable.

Consider Your Preferred Playstyle: Take a moment to think about whether you like close-quarter melee combat, ranged combat, or maybe both. Depending on your choice, you can find one that can suit your style the best.

Elden Ring Best Build For Early And Mid-Game

Now that you have figured out what playstyle pleases you, we can jump straight to Elden Ring best build for early and mid-game.

Samurai Build

The starting class of Samurai is one of the most balanced and also one of the best. The Samurai starts with good armor, a long bow, a shield (the shield is not that good), and a weapon named Uchigatana. Uchigatana is a katana and is one of the best weapons for the early and mid-game as it comes with the status effect to inflict bleed and the unsheathe ash of war. The bleed status effect takes away a good chunk from the enemy’s overall health bar and the unsheathe ability allows to break their stance and take away even more of their health. Making it one of the strongest builds in Elden Ring in the early game.

As you progress through the game, you will want to make your weapon stronger. Uchigatana can be easily upgraded by smithing stones and we recommend you to upgrade the weapon at least five times. Moreover, you can make the weapon even stronger by going to Fort Haight in the southern region of Limgrave. At the top of the fort, there is a Godrick Knight. Once you have upgraded your Uchigatana, that fight should not be trouble for you, and after defeating him, you will receive the Ash of War: Bloody Slash as a reward.

Now that you have a strong katana along with a long bow that you can use to reduce the number of enemies, you will need to level up your character’s stats. 

For this build, you will mainly need to focus on Dexterity and Vigor to promote your damage output and increase your health pool to survive your encounters in the Lands Between.

Spear and Shield Build

By far one of the best builds to carry you throughout the early game and even clear some aspects of the mid-game. While the spear and shield build is great and uses the block and hit method to drain enemies’ health bars, this build requires a little bit of setting up. The main weapon for this is going to be the Cross Naginata, you can obtain this weapon at the Gale Tunnel in Caelid. The Cross Naginata pairs greatly with the strong shield. For a shield, we recommend using the Brass Shield as it is rather easy to obtain and can provide you with impenetrable defense.

This build provides the perfect balance of both offense and defense. The main form of attack is guard counter, meaning you are going to block the first or maybe two or three attacks of the enemy and then poke them with the Cross Naginata. To turn your defense up a notch, you can apply the Ash of War: Barricade Shield on your shield.

Moreover, equip the Guard Sword Talisman to further increase your guard counter damage. Also, equip the Erdtree’s Favor and Green Turtle Talisman to increase equip load and stamina recovery speed. However, take note that, in this build, you are only going to take on enemies by guard countering not by being totally aggressive or totally defensive, you will need to learn the timing of the attacks of enemies. 

As for stats, you will need 16 strength as it is the required stat to use the Cross Naginata. Later, you can focus on increasing your vigor and dexterity to maximize the damage output.

The Fire God Build

Starting as the Prophet class, this build can be made within a few hours from the very start. To become the Fire God in the Elden Ring you will need to head straight to Caelid to get the Flame, Grant Me Strength spell. If this is your first time in Caelid then we heavily recommend you just run past all the mobs as each and every one of them can kill you with a single hit. While you are in Caelid, you can also grab the Ash of War: Flames of the Redmanes. Once you have them, you can equip a greatsword to boost both fire and physical damage.

Even though the damage is good as it is now, we are going to increase it further by heading to Castle Morne and grabbing the Steel-Wire Torch. The Steel-Wire Torch comes with the fire-breather weapon art, this weapon art is great for crowd controlling and can also be very effective against certain bosses, as this fire stays on the ground for a long period of time, continuously dealing damage to the enemies.

For the final part of this build, we are going to need better incantation and Stormville Castle is the perfect place to find them. In the castle, you can find the Godslayer’s Seal and the Black Flame incantation.

Now that we have all the necessary ingredients, we can put together the whole build. To start, you will need to equip the Flame of the Redmanes on a great sword. This will allow you to break stance often, especially when combined with charged or jump attacks. The Black Flame fireball is going to be your main incantation, it is the incantation that gives you the title of the ‘Fire God’. This incantation does a lot of damage to an enemy over time for a very low FP cost. As for Talisman, we recommend Faithful’s Canvas, Green Turtle, and Erdtree’s Favor.

Overall, it is build focused on faith and strength but make sure to prioritize faith first as the Godslayer’s Seal requires 28 faith. As for strength, we recommend you take the stat around 20 – 25 as you will be doing some close-quarter combat. 

Bleed Build

Starting out as the Warrior class, this class starts out with two Scimitars and we are going to put blood loss on this blade as soon as possible. By going to the Fort Haight and defeating the Godrick Knight, you can obtain the Ash of War, Bloody Slash. After obtaining the Ash of War, we are going to duplicate it by purchasing the Lost Ashes of War from the Isolated Merchant in the South.

After duplicating the Ash of War, you can equip the Ash of War to both of your swords. To make your enemies bleed further, you can also equip another weapon, which is the Reduvia Dagger, this weapon can also be found quite early in the game. The weapon art of Reduvia allows you for decent range attacks while stacking Blood Loss on the enemies. 

As for Talisman, we recommend you go with Winged Sword Insignia, Blessed Dew, and the Green Turtle Talisman; again all three of these Talisman can be found early in the game.

The primary stat for this build is going to be arcane and dexterity, more arcane will allow for more blood loss output and will increase the base dame of Scimitars and Reduvia. After these two, you can focus on increasing endurance as this build requires a lot of jumping and charging attacks.