Elden Ring Cragblade Build Guide - Tower Knight

Apr. 14, 2024

Elden Ring Cragblade Build Guide – Tower Knight

In thisElden Ring Hammer CragbladeBuild. I’m going to be showing you myTower Knightbuild, which is a build I specifically designed to be able to tackleShadow of The Erdtreecontent in June. So if you’ve been wondering, like, what’s a good build that I can take intoShadow of Erdtree, you might want to watch on for some helpful tips.

The Tower Knight (Strength build) is an all-game build that takes place after level 150. If you’ve been looking for a hammer build that can consistently break the stance of any and every enemy then you might want to check this build-out. This build utilizes theMorning Starhammer weapon and theCragbladeAsh of War to easily break the stance or “stance break” against enemies.

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In this build, we focus on utilizing aHammer, specifically theMorningstar, for its exceptional capabilities. Let’s delve into the reasoning behind this choice.Hammersboast 36 Stance damage both on their charged heavy attack and theirBlock Counters. Why is thisStancedamage figure crucial, you might ask? Let me enlighten you.

A lot of bosses inElden Ringhave 80Stance. That means if you do 80Stancedamage to them in a short period of time, they’re going toStance Break, and that’s going to allow you to go in for a critical attack or hit them a couple times, or a combination of both, getting in some free damage. And also, when theirStance broken, they’re not hitting you, which is very important when you’re fighting tough bosses.

You might be thinking that’s great, but 36 multiplied by two is 72Stancedamage. That’s not 80. This is whereCragbladecomes in.Cragbladeis going to increase the amount ofStancedamage that your weapon does, besides adding extra damage to the weapon, so that when you do your charged heavy attack with yourHammeror you do aBlock Counterwith yourHammer, you’re going to do 40Stancedamage, allowing you toStance Breakmost bosses in two hits.

It should be pointed out that it’s very important that theBlock Counteralso does 40Stancedamage because this allows you to do a charged R2 or a charged heavy attack, block, and then do aBlock CounterandStance Breakan enemy that quickly. If you have a weapon that has highStancedamage on the charged heavy but also doesn’t have it on theBlock Counter, then when you go toBlock Counter, you’re not going toStance Breakthem, and you’ll still have to strike them another time.Hammersdon’t have this problem, and because they’re such light weapons, they’re easier to build around.

Suppose you have a very heavy weapon, like agreat hammeror acolossalhammer, and you’re trying to use a great shield to doBlock Counters. In that case, you’re going to have a lot of weight on your character, and it’s very hard to build that early on in the game.

By having a weapon that is very light, like theMorning Star, that only weighs 5, you’re able to use that great shield and still not have to worry as much about your equipment weight.

The general strategy then is that you’re going to buff withCragbladeas you move around the landscape to boost your damage. You don’t really need to worry too much aboutStancedamage on the landscape because you’ll have enough withBlock Countersand charged heavy attacks to do just fine without that buff, but the extra damage will be nice for you.

Cragbladebuffs physical damage, so we’ve gone with the heavy infusion here in order to make sure all of our damage on theMorning Staris heavy. And so when you go into a boss fight, particularly, you’re going to make sure you want to buff withCragbladeso that you get to that 40 mark, and then you’re going to go do a charged heavy attack very quickly, as quick as you can, and then use aBlock CountertoStance Breakthem. And if you can’tBlock Counterthem because they’re a big enemy or whatever, then you’re going to try and just use charged heavy attacks to knock them down, and then maybe attack them a few times before getting a critical hit.

The reason that I chose theMorning Starfor this build is because it has a nativebleedbuildup on hit. Now you don’t have to choose theMorning Star, you can do this with anyHammerin the game. The principles of it are fundamentally the same, so that doesn’t matter, but the reason I chose it is for thatbleedbuildup. Thisbleedbuildup does not trigger on regular enemies on the landscape hardly ever.

However, particularly if you’re playing this build from the very beginning of the game when you don’t have a fully upgraded weapon,bleedis going to play more of a role because you’re going to have to hit enemies more times before they die, particularly bosses, which means that you’re more likely to triggerblood loss. And that blood loss can help you get through a boss more quickly, even if you only trigger it one time. It doesn’t change the fundamental way we play this build, but it sort of augments it by giving you periodichemorrhagetriggers on some bosses. And that’s just good to have.

The two things you want going into theElden RingDLC are status effects andStancedamage, and this build has both. So if you’re playing this build from the very beginning of the game, you’re going to want to get a hammer quickly. There are a lot of early-game hammers.Morning Starcan be gotten inWeeping Peninsula, so you can go get that right away. The next thing you’re going to want to get is a great shield.

I’m using theManor Towershieldfor this build, which is kind of the namesake of the build. You can get this inStormveil Castle, which isn’t too far. You don’t actually have to defeat any bosses besidesMorgottto get this shield. So once you’ve defeated him, you can just run through the castle and go pick it up without having to fight anything else if you don’t want to.

What I really like about this great shield, it has very good guard boost for how early you can get it into the game, which allows you to doBlock Countersvery effectively because great shields have extra hardness compared to medium shields, which means a lot of enemies rebuff off their attacks, giving you a better opening forBlock Counters, just making them more easy for you to do.

It does weigh a considerable amount, however, at 16 and it needs 30Strength, which is one of the reasons that I think hammers are really good in this game, is that they weigh so little on average, it allows you to use agreat shieldwith them and still get thoseBlock Counters and thatStancedamage that you would get from a much heavier weapon and still be able to use a great shield easily.

TheAsh of War: Cragbladeis found inCaelid, it’s a ways intoCaelid. It’s actually close toRedmane Castle, but you don’t actually have to fight anything to go get it. There’s aTeardrop Scarabover there that you just need to kill doesn’t even attack you, so you just run up to it, when you find it, kill it, get thisAsh of War, and then you have it. It’s just a long ride really to go get it, so it doesn’t take you very long to put this build together.

The Knight setis located inRoundtable Hold, you can buy it there once you have the runes. So the fundamentals of this build can come together very, very quickly.

The Talismans that I’m using for this build, most of them can be found quite early on. I have theGreen Turtle Talismanfor stamina recovery, that way you can block and attack without having to worry too much about your stamina, otherwise you might have stamina issues.

We have theAxe Talismanhere, that further increases your charged heavy attack damage, we do a lot of those in this game, so that’s a good damage increase there. We have theCurved Sword Talisman, which increases your block counter damage. All of these talismans can be found very, very early on in the game. And what’s great too is if you defeatMorgottand go in and get thatManor Towershield, when you defeat him, you’re going to gain another Talisman slot.

So you’ll have two Talisman slots when you put this build together, and from the very beginning of the game, which will be good. So theGreatshield Talismanis in my last slot, and this further increases the guard boost of your shield, making it so that you lose less stamina when you block. And we really don’t have to have this for this build, it just kind of makes it so that really whenever you block, you don’t have any trouble with stamina.

You won’t really anyway with this shield, but this just puts it even further into that category where you can block and attack and block and counter, and you never really run out of stamina with this build, which is quite nice. If you want, you could replace this with something likeRitual Sword Talismanto further increase your damage, since you don’t tend to get hit very often with this build because you are blocking and block countering so much.

But sometimes you do trade in boss fights because you have to play aggressively to getstance breaks, so I find that during boss fights, something like this is better, or maybe even theDragoncrest Greatshield Talismanto further increase your protection.

When it comes to attributes for this build, we have 50Vigor, 25Mind, 30Endurance, we’re all the way up at 80Strength, we have 12Dexterity, and basically you don’t need anyIntelligence,Faith, orArcanefor this build.

Maybe at some point in Journey 2 or Journey 3, you might add some. But the idea here is that you have enough health that you can trade hits and be aggressive in boss fights. You will take some damage in boss fights just because of the nature of this build, so you need enough health to survive that. Mind is not super important for this build, you can get away with less Mind than 25, and you could probably drop this down to 20.

I typically set it at this when I’m testing builds. But the reason for that is all that you’re doing is buffing withCragblade, which isn’t super expensive, and frankly, you don’t need it all the time. You probably only need it for the harder enemies, so you don’t really tend to go through a lot of FP flasks with this build, and you can skew your flasks more heavily to the HP side of things generally.

Enduranceis up at 30 because you want a lot of Stamina in order to be able to block, attack, and block counter. You also need to wear at least a 51 poise armor set, which theKnight setis, in order to be able to medium roll and not fat roll around all over the place. You are also carrying a great shield, so that adds a lot of weight to this build.

SoEnduranceis good here because of the Stamina it provides you, and the equip weight. You need both of those things for this build. I haveStrengthall the way up at 80 here to increase the amount of damage we do with our melee attacks. We’re not two-handing here, we are one-handing, so 80 can benefit you.

Dexterityis at 12 because of my class. I don’t think theMorningstarneeds that muchdexterity, you could actually have lower. Your dexterity will probably depend on what class you begin with, and also whathammeryou decide to use, because some of them can use more or lessdexterity.

However, it doesn’t overrideExalted FleshorFlame, Grant Me Strength, so those are both good to have. For theFlask of Wondrous Physick, you can go a couple of ways. You can use the one that increases your charged attack damage, that’s great, you’re going to be using that strategy on bosses, so that’s definitely a plus.

You can go for extra stamina or stamina recovery, and you can also go for extra poise damage if you want to try and like break bosses that have more than 80Stancefaster. And then when it comes togreat runesfor this build, I thinkRadahn’sis easily the best choice here, just because it gives you stamina, FP, and HP.

You don’t really need FP for this build, but stamina and HP are both really good to have for this build.Godrick’sis not bad, but you really only need 4 stats for this build, so it’s probably wasted compared to something likeRadahn’s. And then lastly, again, you can use any hammer you want for this build.

I just like theMorning Starfor the occasionalhemorrhagetrigger on bosses, particularly if you’re playing this game or playing this build from the very beginning of the game. That will happen more regularly, but you don’t have to use that hammer, you can use any one that you prefer.

So that wraps up ourTower Knightbuild, I hope you guys enjoyed this one. This is a very simple, straightforward build that’s extremely effective. I know that we made theNoble Swordsmanbuild recently that has fantasticStance Breaks, and that also is a build I would highly recommend forShadow of The Erdtree. But this build has a lot more protection than that build, because you can just walk up to stuff,Block Countereasily with a great shield, and I like it.

Stay tuned for moreElden Ringcontent as we continue the hype train towardShadow of The Erdtree. We are going to have more build guides, we’re going to finish up our weapon guides, working on someAsh of Warguides. We also have some ranking lists coming, I believe. As always, let us know if you have questions or other tips in the comments below. We have a ton more builds coming forElden RingandShadow of the Erdtreeso stay tuned for those. If you need help finding the spells, items, or equipment in this build, and securing some personal objectives, make sure to check theElden Ring Map.

Castielle

Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.