Elden Ring Butchering Knife Build Guide - Vampiric Knight
May. 4, 2024Elden Ring Butchering Knife Build Guide – Vampiric Knight
In this Elden Ring Butchering Knife guide, I’ll be showing you my Vampiric Knight build. This is an NG+ build focused on regaining health per swing, as well as using other items that help keep your health topped off making you very difficult to kill. You can use this build in your first playthrough, but you won’t get everything for it until about halfway through the game.
A melee build that focuses on out healing damage taken while shredding enemies to death with the Butchering Knife.
We have over 110Elden Ring Buildsnow, for all classes and playstyles. This Build is recommended for Level 150-200.
The first thing we’ll be talking about is the weapon for this Elden Ring Butchering Knife build. We’re using theButchering Knife, which is aGreataxe. It looks like a giant sword, but the claim to fame of this weapon is that it allows you to regain 1% of your max HP when you hit an enemy with a swing. Even though that might not seem a lot because if your max HP is at 1,500, that’s only 15 HP. However, when you add all the other factors together that gives us HP back, it really starts to add up.
When it comes to the Ash of War affinities on this weapon, I am usingWild Strikesand set it to the Keen affinity. Keen affinity is great here as most Greataxes have very high STR requirements, making it kind of moot to put points into Dexterity with a Butchering Knife that only has a requirement of 16 STR. The shield we’re using for this build needs 22 STR anyway, so Keen actually comes out to be the higher damage than Heavy with this weapon, which is why we went with Keen.
Wild Strikesis an exceptionally good weapon skill. With this Butchering Knife build, the more you swing with it, you regain more health. The R1 and R2 attacks can be absolutely devastating, as well as helping you do AoE damage on enemies. It can also help Stance Break enemies with the R2, particularly on difficult enemies such asCrucible Knightsor even bosses.
You can obtain the Butchering Knife by defeatingAnastasia Tarnished-Eaternear theShaded Castle, so this is later on in the game. You could probably beeline it if you just went and picked up the two halves of the medallion, went up the lift, then ran straight there. It doesn’t have to take a long time to get this if you know where to go, but if you’re playing normally, it’s going to be at around half of the game or so before you get this weapon.
Next up, we’re usingIcon Shieldin our offhand for a couple of reasons. First, it’s aGreatshield, allowing you to do block counters more easily because of the hardness of the shield, as enemies rebuff off of it with their attacks more often, allowing you to get a follow-up counterattack much more easily. Second, using this regains 3HP over time, so between that and theBlessed Dew Talisman, we’re going to have +5 HP regen constantly with this build. Icon Shield also has a 22 STR requirement, which means we only need six more points than the Butchering Knife’s requirement anyway. Even though we’re set to Keen on the Butchering Knife, we’re not wasting as many points into Strength as we could.
When it comes to armor, it’s not super important what you use as long as you’re aiming to get that 51 Poise breakpoint so you can tank a hit. Here, I have a couple ofHoslow’sarmor with theGreathelmand one other piece in order to hit that 51 Poise breakpoint. Whatever you want to use here will be totally fine, as long as you get the required 51 Poise.
Also, if you’re usingMimic Tearhere,Deathbed Dressis not a bad choice. The reason for this is that it slowly replenishes the HP of your Mimic Tear when it is nearby. Also, since your Mimic Tier will have this equipped when summoned, you will also have +2 health regen when you’re near your Mimic Tear. This can work really well if you plan to stay near your Mimic Tear.
Another option for your armor would be theRoyal Remains Set. This gives you 2 HP per second per piece equipped, You can probably equip three pieces of this, then one heavier piece in order to hit 51Poise. It only works until 18-20% of your max HP, then it stops. This helps in situations wherein you’re in danger. However, when you’re in a dangerous situation, you would usually use a health pot, so I feel like this armor isn’t really necessary for this build. If you like using your Mimic Tear, you can use this armor set as it takes way less damage than you, so the health regen adds up on your Mimic Tear.
I have two set-ups for this Elden Ring Butchering Knife build’s talismans. I have theRitual Sword Talismanwhich increases your damage when you’re at max health. With this build, we’re trying to stay at max health all the time, so we’ll benefit from using this talisman. I also have theBlessed Dew Talisman to give you HP over time. We also have Shard of Alexanderto increase the damage of your Wild Strikes. We also haveTaker’s Cameoin order to give you more health when you defeat an enemy. This is my landscape set-up, as this is what I use whenever I’m doing a dungeon or going around the landscape. This will help us keep our HP topped up all the time, and also to increase our damage.
However, when you go into boss fights, you are rarely able to stay at max HP most of the time, even with this set-up. You won’t be at full HP unless you’re a god-tier player. So, what I do in this case is I swap out Taker’s Cameo and Ritual Sword Talisman forRotten Winged Sword InsigniaandDragoncrest Greatshield Talisman. You don’t need to take Taker’s Cameo in a boss fight because you don’t kill enemies, which makes it useless in boss fights. Replacing it with Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman will give you more protection, which is great for boss fights. Rotten Winged Sword Insignia will boost your damage as you strike with Wild Strikes and use your R1 and R2 attacks. This replaces Ritual Sword Talisman, as it gives you a damage boost in a different way. Instead of staying at max health, you’re going to get it from hitting repeatedly, which is the strategy you’re going for when fighting bosses.
What I like about this Butchering Knife build is that the damage is relatively good. Butchering Knife doesn’t have the highest attack rating compared to a lot of the weapons in this game. But when you can just sit there, hold L2 with Wild Strike, have a lot of stamina, it deals incredible damage. You have very high Poise, which means you can’t be interrupted when attacking. You’re also regaining health each time you attack an enemy. It even works on multiple enemies at the same time, which works exceptionally well.
Also, this is a blast playing this build if you’re someone who enjoys using theMimic Tearbecause they gain so much health with this. Your Mimic Tear gains so much health with this, so they rarely die. It’ll keep using Wild Strikes to help regenerate health, and with all the equipment you have, your Mimic Tear will almost be unkillable. Take note that Taker’s Cameo doesn’t heal them, as it’ll heal you instead if they kill an enemy.
The attributes that I have for this build are: 51Vigor, 25Mind, 31Endurance, 22Strength, 80Dexterity, 16Intelligence, 7Faith, and 9Arcane. You can completely disregard Intelligence, Faith, and Arcane for this build as we don’t need any. I have 16 INT because I started as anAstrologer. That isn’t optimal, as you don’t need the attributes that an Astrologer has. If you start out as a different class, you will have a much better attribute spread.
51 Vigor is there because having high health for this build is good. Butchering Knife gives you HP back based on your max HP, so the higher that is, the more you gain back. Getting this up to 60 will be a priority for you, because you don’t need to increase damage at this point.
25 Mind is great for this build. I wouldn’t go too much higher than this, as you don’t use a lot of FP when you’re using Wild Strikes, unless you use a follow-up R1 or R2. A lot of times, you don’t need to do the follow-up attack so you’re not going to use a lot of FP. I have 10 health flasks and 4 FP flasks, and that’s plenty between checkpoints. You don’t need to increase Mind at all past 25.
Endurance is at 31 in order for us to be able to use all the equipment and still be able to do a medium roll. Also, this will help when using Wild Strikes repeatedly so that we don’t run out of stamina. If you want to have better protection, it’s not a bad idea to increase Endurance. Better protection will also apply to your Mimic Tear, which will help keep it alive.
22 Strength is simply there to meet the requirement for Butchering Knife and the Icon Shield. It’s kind of wasted in this build damage-sense, because we have Keen scaling with Butchering Knife.
As mentioned above, we scale Butchering Knife with Dexterity as Keen scaling gives you the most damage at this point. We’ll have 80 DEX for that, but its damage drops off after that point. If you go to Quality infusion on the Butchering Knife, it will outperform Keen. However, even at 50 STR and DEX, you’re still getting about 50 left points than you are in Keen. It’s a lot of investment to get a little bit more damage, so I think it’s not something that you should go for right away. You’re better off focusing on getting your Vigor and Endurance up a bit.
When it comes toFlask of Wondrous Physick, I like usingGreenburst Crystal Tearbecause you consume a lot of stamina with this build. I also like usingThorny Cracked Tearas it increases our damage with successive hits, which is the strategy we’ll be using for boss fights. With all the other equipment and buffs in this build, this allows you to shred bosses, so it’s a good addition here.
ForGreat Runes, I prefer to useRykard’s Great Rune, as this gives you health back when you kill an enemy. You could also go forMalenia’s Great Runewhich gives you HP when you receive damage. However, some Great Runes like Malenia’s is only available for a very small part of the game, so it’s gone when you go into NG+. Rykard’s Great Rune will be available much sooner in the game, so you can use it. You can useGodrick’s Great Runeearly on, then swap over to Rykard’s. It doesn’t take you that long to get, maybe around 10-15 hours in NG+. If you’re using the Mimic Tear, they won’t benefit from the Great Runes, so don’t expect your mimic to get increased performance from these.
That’s it for our Vampiric Knight Build Guide! As always, let us know if you have questions or other tips in the comments below. We have a ton more builds coming for Elden Ring andShadow of the Erdtreeso stay tuned for those. If you need help finding items, and securing some personal objectives, make sure to check theElden Ring Map. Happy building!
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
