Elden Ring Stats Explained: Beginner’s Guide

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Reviewed by Ashley Johnson

Once you’ve gotten your bearings in the Lands Between, you’ll probably want to start building up your stats around a specific playstyle. At first glance, the Elden Ring stats menu can be overwhelming. Three columns of lists with associated numbers that likely have little to no meaning? That’s even scarier than the thought of fighting your first Shardbearer!

In this guide, we’re diving into Elden Ring stats explained. We’ll be breaking down each stat and how they impact gameplay in a digestible, beginner-friendly way to help you build your character to be the next Elden Lord.

Let’s get started!

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Elden Ring Stats Guide

Let’s jump into each of the Elden Ring stats, including summaries about each one.

Attribute Points

When opening up the status menu, the first thing you’ll notice at the top left side of the page is your current level, the current number of runes you hold, and the number of runes needed to level up. So far, this is pretty straightforward information. Below this, however, you’ll see the heading “Attribute Points.” This is where things get a bit more complicated.

Leveling Up Your Attributes

Your attributes are your primary stats within Elden Ring. You can increase one of these eight stats by one point per level when you level up at a site of grace. Doing so increases the selected stat and gives you the relevant benefits (which are reflected in the other two columns on the screen).

With this in mind, let’s break down each individual attribute so you have a better idea of what you are specifically affecting when you level one up.

Vigor

The first of these attributes is Vigor, which governs your HP. This is a crucial stat to level up regardless of what build you’re going for so that you can take hits and stay alive. We recommend investing in this stat early on in your adventure so that you can raise your survivability for some of the more difficult encounters you’ll face in the beginning of the game. 

How much should I level up my Vigor?

Typically, once you’ve found your preferred playstyle, you can ease off the HP investments and focus on investing in the stat that governs your primary method of attack. In other words, it’s never a bad idea to invest in Vigor, but in order to optimize your specific build, there will come a point where the diminishing returns of higher level Vigor investment won’t be worth the HP gained. 

Additional Benefits of Vigor

In addition to HP, Vigor also affects your Fire resistance and Immunity. Fire resistance, as the name implies, reduces the damage taken from Fire attacks, while Immunity increases your protection against poison and rot. Both of these stats can be seen in the third column of the status menu under the “Defense Power” and “Body” headings, respectively. 

Mind

Mind is to FP as Vigor is to HP. Most skills, and all Sorceries and Incantations, require you to spend FP to use them. If you’re looking to use any of these tactics, you’ll definitely want to invest in Mind. It’s not a priority right off the bat, mostly because your early-game skills, Sorceries, and Incantations won’t have very high FP costs, but it still may be worthwhile to invest in Mind somewhat to make up for the lower number of flasks you’ll have in the beginning. 

How much should I level up my Mind?

Once you reach a point in the game where you’re encountering skills with higher FP costs, it may be time to level up Mind. You can also mitigate this cost by allocating more flasks to utilize Cerulean Tears, assuming you’ve found enough Golden Seeds and increased your flask charge count.

Additional Benefits of Mind

Mind also affects your Focus stat. The higher your Focus is, the less susceptible you will be to Sleep and Madness. Both of these status conditions can be lethal in combat, so it may be worth investing a few points in Mind simply for better protection against them, but there are options for equipment that can provide you with the same status protection. 

Endurance

Endurance can be a bit complicated, as it affects a few important stats. The first is Stamina — every attack or dodge you perform consumes some of your Stamina. Regardless of the build you’re going for, it helps to level up your Endurance, especially early on. Heavier attacks consume larger chunks of Stamina at a slower rate, while lighter attacks consume less Stamina at a faster rate. 

The other stat Endurance governs is your Equip Load. Every piece of equipment has a set weight value. The heavier your equipment’s total weight affects how effectively you can dodge roll. This is calculated as a fraction of your maximum Equip Load. 

Understanding Equip Load

If the total weight of your equipment is 29.9% or less than your max Equip Load, it is considered a light load and you will have the fastest dodge roll in the game. Conversely, having 70–99.9% of your max Equip Load in equipment weight is considered a heavy load and will cause you to dodge roll slowly. The key is to find a balance between the protection your equipment gives you and its total weight so you can still dodge effectively. We recommend trying to maintain a medium load, which comes in at 30–69.9% of your Equip Load. 

Additional Benefits of Endurance

Robustness is also affected by Endurance. This stat determines your resistance to frostbite and hemorrhage. These are two of the most common status effects you’ll encounter in Elden Ring. With all of these benefits to consider, Endurance is another attribute that you really can’t go wrong investing in. 

Attributes that Affect Damage Output

In the middle column of the status menu, you’ll see the subheading “Attack Power” followed by a list of “R” and “L” Armaments. This table shows the power of the weapons you have equipped in each slot. This table will show you how leveling up a particular attribute will affect the damage output of the weapon in the corresponding slot. This can help give you a preview of the stat changes you are about to make by leveling up. Use it to help guide your decision making when leveling up an attribute.

Strength

Strength is the attribute that governs your ability to wield heavy weapons. It also boosts the Physical damage output of weapons that scale with Strength. The letter grade next to the Strength stat on a particular weapon shows how efficiently that weapon’s damage will scale when leveling up your Strength. Weapons like Greatswords, Colossal Swords, and other large weapons tend to scale primarily with Strength. However, they are not the only weapons to do so.

Additional Benefits of Strength

Strength also governs your physical defense. Your main source of defense will come from your equipped armor, but leveling Strength can still be beneficial even if you are not a Strength-based class should you feel like you need an extra boost of protection. 

Dexterity

Dexterity is the attribute that governs your ability to use faster, more precise weapons. Weapons with a Dexterity focus tend to be lighter weapons like Daggers, Katanas, and most Bows. Take a look at the letter grade next to a weapon’s Dexterity requirement for a better understanding of how well that weapon scales with Dexterity. As Dexterity builds tend to focus on faster attacks at the cost of lower damage per hit, it might look like Dexterity weapons are weaker than Strength-based ones. However, Dexterity weapons can be just as beneficial. They tend to be lighter allowing for a lower equipment weight and faster dodging speed. 

Additional Benefits of Dexterity

In addition to damage scaling with Dexterity weapons, this attribute provides an increase to some useful passive effects. This includes reduced casting time for spells, reduced fall damage, and a harder time being knocked off of your horse. If you are a primarily magic-based class, it is especially useful to level up Dexterity for the increased casting speed. Otherwise, it may be worthwhile to do so if you find yourself frequently taking leaps of faith.

Intelligence

The primary attribute that governs your ability to cast Sorceries is Intelligence. If you are looking to build a Sorcery-based character, then Intelligence is the attribute you’ll want to focus on. Like weapons, Sorceries also have stat requirements in order to use. For the most part, Sorceries scale with Intelligence, but they may also scale with other attributes as well. Pay attention to the ones you would like to use and level up your Intelligence or other attributes accordingly. 

Additional Benefits of Intelligence

Just as it governs offensive Magic, Intelligence also affects your Magic resistance. If you’re playing a Strength or Dexterity-focused character, you will likely be deficient in magic resistance. In this case, it might be worth it to level up your Intelligence just a bit to give you some extra protection, especially if you know you’re heading for an area where enemies use magic attacks, like Raya Lucaria. 

Faith

Like Intelligence is to Sorceries, Faith is to Incantations. Unlike Sorceries, however, some Incantations are used for healing. This means that where a spell would typically scale damage with an attribute, healing Incantations scale health restored with Faith. Even if you are not a fully Faith-based build, if you want to have some extra healing capabilities, you may want to level up your Faith in order to use Incantations like Heal and Great Heal. 

Additional Benefits of Faith

Unlike most other attributes, Faith does not govern any defensive stats. Therefore, it’s not really necessary to focus on leveling up your Faith if you’re not building a Faith-based character unless you want to use a particular Incantation.

Arcane 

Arcane is a weird attribute when compared to the others. It doesn’t govern any specific offensive stat, but it does affect some specific Sorceries and Incantations, and even some weapons. With that in mind, you will have to pay attention to the requirements and damage scaling of the particular weapon or spell you want to use to see if it requires Arcane in order to use.

Additional Benefits of Arcane

Arcane can sort of be seen as a “luck” stat. The main stat it governs is Discovery, which affects how likely an enemy is to drop a certain item on defeat. Arcane also affects your Holy Defense and Vitality. Holy Defense is your resistance to Holy damage usually caused by Incantations. Vitality increases your resistance to Death Blight build up, which can cause instant death. For these niche reasons, Arcane should only really be leveled up if you need it for a specific weapon or spell you are using.

Some Final Tips on Elden Ring Stats

There are a few other stats to pay attention to on the defensive side of things. Under the Defense/Dmg Negation heading, you’ll notice there are three types of physical defense: VS Strike, VS Slash, and VS Pierce. These types of damage each correspond to different types of weapons. Strike is associated with blunt weapons like hammers, Slash with weapons like swords, and Pierce with stabbing weapons like spears. These stats are typically affected by the armor you have equipped. It’s worth keeping an eye on if you notice you’re having difficulty facing a particular type of weapon.

Keep an Eye on Your Poise

One other stat to keep in mind is Poise, which affects your ability to resist being staggered by enemy attacks. Poise has its own invisible HP bar that causes you to be staggered when it hits zero. Wearing heavier armor increases your Poise, but there are other items, equipment, and spells that can affect it as well. Enemies also have their own invisible stagger bar. Take advantage of their Poise by hitting them with Heavy attacks.

Respec-ing Your Character

If you ever find that you aren’t happy with your current build, you can respec your character. Doing so allows you to redistribute your attribute points to better suit your needs. To do this, you will have to have finished Raya Lucaria Academy and beaten the shardbearer boss of the area. After doing so, you can speak to Rennala, located near the Raya Lucaria Grand Library Site of Grace. She can perform a Rebirth which allows you to redistribute your attribute points in exchange for a Larval Tear.

Join the High Ground

Knowledge is the most powerful equipment! Hopefully this guide made the confusing world of Elden Ring stats a little more clear. Let us know if you found this helpful and share any tips you have in the comments down below. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for more Elden Ring content!

Happy Gaming!

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