Elden Ring Clayman's Harpoon Build Guide - Frost Knight

May. 7, 2024

Elden Ring Clayman’s Harpoon Build Guide – Frost Knight

In this Elden Ring Frost Guide, I’ll be showing you my Frost Knight build. This is a tanky warrior build that can cast a few spells which does incredible damage at melee and at range.

The Frost Knight Build is a melee focused Build that uses the Ice Spear Ash of War to deal Magic Damage at range, and to set the Frostbite Status Effect reliably on enemies.

We have over 110Elden Ring Buildsnow, for all classes and playstyles. This build is recommended for level 100.

The weapon that I chose for this build isClayman’s Harpoon, and there are a couple of reasons for that. First, it does both physical and magic damage. We need a lot of magic damage for this build because we have things that buff magic damage. Additionally, you can slot whatever Ash of War you want on it. This might be the only or one of the only weapons in the game that has physical and magic damage on it that allows you to change the Ash of War. Lastly, if you don’t choose either cold or magic damage, you can also buff this with something like Scholar’s Armaments if that’s something you want to do, further increasing the magic damage.

The Ash of War that I chose for this build isIce Spear, and that’s because it does incredible magic damage at range and it helps build up theFrostbitestatus effect. It outperformsGlintstone Icecrag. I originally wanted to use frost spells for this build, but this Ash of War outperforms that spell so much, there was no need to use Glintstone Icecrag, so I went with Ice Spear. Additionally, you can set the cold or magic affinities when you use this to further increase magic damage and provide Frostbite build-up when you’re attacking with it regularly. You can put it on Heavy scaling, as it has pretty good Strength scaling if you go on that route, then buff it with Scholar’s Armaments. You can go any of those three directions, but I generally go with cold, then sometimes swap it out for magic if I’m fighting an enemy that can’t be affected by Frostbite.

The shield that I use for this build isCarian Knight’s Shieldbecause it has an Intelligence requirement, so this fits the build nicely. It doesn’t have a very high Strength and Dexterity requirement and has excellent magic damage mitigation. One of the things with this build is that we buff our shield to give us more resistances. You can get nearly 100% magic damage mitigation with this shield. You could just block magic attacks like they’re nothing, which is great. Additionally, if you outfit this shield withCarian Retaliation, it hits like an absolute freight truck.

The staff that I use for this Elden Ring Clayman’s Harpoon build is theCarian Glintblade Staffbecause I useMagic GlintbladeandGreatblade Phalanxwith this build. This staff can be any staff that you like as long as it will benefit the spells that you decide to use. It’s not super important for this build because you don’t use magic a lot except to really buff yourself. This is more of a melee build that uses Ice Spear at range instead of spells.

I useHaima Glintstone Crownfor this build in order to get a couple of points in Strength and Intelligence at the cost of 10% maximum FP reduction, which isn’t that big of a deal. If you’re using theBrass Shield, this will help you meet those requirements. The added Strength contributes to your melee and ability damage, while Intelligence does the same for spell damage if you’re using spells. For the rest of the armor, I’m usingCuckoo Knight Set. If you use the chest, legs, and gloves for this, you’ll look just like how my character does.

The four talismans I use for this Clayman’s Harpoon build are:Magic Scorpion Charm,Carian Filigreed Crest,Greatshield Talisman, andCurved Sword Talisman.

Magic Scorpion Charmsimply increases your magic damage by 12% but increases the physical damage you take by 10%. We deal a lot of damage with this build, and your weapon mostly deals magic damage so it greatly benefits from using this.

Carian Filigreed Crestis there to reduce the cost of Ice Spear from 15 FP down to 12 FP. You absolutely spam this when you’re running around the landscape and in boss fights. Reducing the cost is going to save you quite a bit of FP later on in the game. When you have higher Mind, you’ll probably want to replace this with Alexander Shard to further increase Ice Spear’s damage. Right now, we don’t have as much FP as we want, so we’re going to use this.

Greatshield Talismanreduces the stamina damage you take while blocking by 20%. That will make it so that when you’re usingCarian Knight’s Shield, your stamina while blocking won’t be consumed immediately. Your shield will almost be like aGreatshield, which is fantastic.

Curved Sword Talismanis there for block counters. With all the boosts to your Guard Boost, you will probably be looking to block attacks, so having this talisman will be beneficial for this build. Ice Spear does a lot of stagger damage, so if you hit an enemy with it then you do a block counter, you will usually stagger the enemy immediately.

There are other good talismans that this build can use. You could useGreen Turtle Talismanto give you increased stamina recovery, because you’re blocking a lot with this build. You can also useRitual Sword Talismanto give you a 10% damage increase whenever you’re at full health. Another option isSpear Talisman, as it’ll give you additional damage when counterattacking with your weapon. You’re going to attack enemies when they’re attacking, as you can block with your shield.

The two spells you need for this Elden Ring Clayman’s Harpoon build are:Scholar’s ShieldandTerra Magica. Scholar’s Shield increases the resistances of your shield, as well as adding Guard Boost to it. This spell lasts for one minute, so it’s a good replacement for Barricade Shield if you’re playing an INT built which is why we slot it here. It has a long cast time, so it’s very situational. You’ll use this before going into a boss fight, but it might be hard to cast it during a boss fight.

Terra Magicais also very situational. You can cast this outside of a boss fog, walk through it, then spamIce Spearfor extra damage. Your regular attacks will also deal extra damage while you’re standing in it. It works better in co-op, as you can put it down in the middle of a boss fight then just stand in there. One of the great things about this build is that you are tanky when you haveScholar’s Shieldup on your shield, so you can stay inside Terra Magica’s area and just keep fighting the boss and have a significant increase to your damage output. You have so much Guard Boost so you can keep blocking their attacks.

I also like to useMagic Glintbladefor this build. This gives me a staple ranged option that has a bit more range than Ice Spear. Ice Spear’s range is probably mid-tier, so it’s not going to hit something really far away unlike Magic Glintblade.

I also useCarian Phalanx, but it isn’t super useful because it costs so much FP. You’ll probably use this more at endgame. What’s really good about this is for the stagger. You can throw this up before fighting an enemy, then using Ice Spear on them. When these two attacks hit at the same time, you will almost always stagger the enemy. It doesn’t have to hit exactly at the same time, but in a short interval. Carian Phalanx will be used to build up stagger faster in scenarios where you have time to pre-cast this spell.

Any other spells you want for this build are completely up to you. As I mentioned,Glintstone Icecragjust didn’t do anything comparable to the Ice Spear, which is why I didn’t use it.Adula’s Moonbladeis another one you can add to this build to have some sort of AoE.

Generally, the way this Elden Ring Clayman’s Harpoon build works is that you’re going to run around the landscape or dungeons, then using Ice Spear on enemies, which will one-shot most of the time. For difficult enemies, you’re going to soften them up with Ice Spear, then block counter them to finish them off or to stagger them. In order to do this effectively, I like to keep no skill in my offhand. You can useCarian Retaliationif you want as it can stagger enemies when you parry a projectile. You can one-shot bosses if you can step back, grab their projectile, then fling it back at them.

The attributes we have for this build are: 40Vigor, 25Mind, 17Endurance, 14Strength, 12Dexterity, 52Intelligence, 14Faith, and 9Arcane. Dexterity, Faith, and Arcane are at that number because of the class I chose. You don’t need to increase these attributes, so you can disregard these. If you choose a magic-oriented class, your attribute spread will be better.

40 Vigor is there because you are in melee range constantly with this build. You’re going to get hit, especially when you’re using Ice Spear in close range sometimes in order to just spam it. You can probably get away with 35 here because you have kind of a tanky set-up.

25 Mind is there because you’re going to spam Ice Spear. You’re also going to lose 10% of your maximum FP with Haima Glintstone Crown. You don’t cast a lot of spells with this build, as it’s just Ice Spear most of the time. It’s only 12 FP per cast, which isn’t terrible. If you remove 5 points from Vigor, you can increase Mind and it wouldn’t be a problem.

17 Endurance is there because that’s the exact equip load that we need in order to stay under the 70% threshold for medium roll. If you use the exact set-up I use, 17 Endurance is all you need.

14 Strength is mostly there because of the class I chose at the end of the game. Two of those points are from the helmet. This doesn’t need to be this high. However, if you do get it to 16 STR, you can use Brass Shield for this build which has a better Guard Boost, but worse magic protection.

72 Intelligence is there in order to increase the damage we do with our weapon, as well as Ice Spear because it scales off of Intelligence. Also, it increases the damage of all our spells. If you do end up going for the Cold affinity with this build, which is what I do, you’ll notice that you get C-scaling in Intelligence and Strength. Eventually, the damage from Intelligence will probably drop off, so you’ll want to increase Strength in order to increase your physical damage as well as Ice Spear’s damage. If you choose to progress this build forward, you’ll want to start putting points in Strength in order to increase your damage and allow you to use a better shield.

If you’re going into a boss fight, you’re going to want to use yourFlask of Wondrous Physick. For this flask, you want to use theMagic-Shrouding Cracked Tearto increase your magic damage, as well as Stonebarb Cracked Tear to increase your Poise damage. Ice Spear does incredible Poise damage, and using Stonebarb Cracked Tear reduces the amount of hits it would take to stagger a boss.

That’s it for our Frost 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.