Elden Ring Death Sorcery Build Guide - Death Mage

Apr. 21, 2024

Elden Ring Death Sorcery Build Guide – Death Mage

In this Elden Ring Death Sorcery Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you myDeath Magebuild. This is a NG+ build that’s an evolution of the Death Knight build, or the Deathblade build, that focuses on the use of death spells.

The reason that I made this build a NG+ build is not only to show you the evolution of this build, and how it progresses into NG+, but also to finally be able to actually use thePrince of Death’s staffmore effectively than something like theCarian Regal Scepter, because the sorcery scaling actually surpasses theCarian Regal Scepter, but not until you have extremely high stats

Note that this build has been updated for the 1.07 version of the game.

A mage build that focuses on the use of Death Sorceries and the Prince of Death Staff.

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Focusing on thePrince of Death’s staffhere, the sorcery scaling on this staff is the highest in the game if you hit 80 in bothFaithandIntelligence, but if you have 80Intelligence, you have 373 sorcery scaling with theCarian Regal Scepter. You need 80Intelligenceand 58Faithin order to have 374 sorcery scaling with thePrince of Death’s staff. That is a lot.

ThePrince of Death’s staffgets more and more effective after it passes the 50 breakpoint, so you don’t get very good scaling with thePrince of Death’s staffat lower attributes, but as you get further and further past 50, you get better and better sorcery scaling, and it’s better to take one attribute higher than the other early on as you’re leveling up, because again, as you get above that 50 point, you start getting more and more sorcery scaling for each point spent, regardless of whether it’sFaithorIntelligence.

So you want to take one stat higher if you can, and then bring up the other one afterward. So in summary, there’s no real reason to use thePrince of Death’s staffunless you reach this point, because you’d be better off casting with theCarian Regal Scepterat 80Intelligenceand putting thePrince of Death’s staffin your left hand and getting the 10% damage boost to death sorceries and casting with theCarian Regal Scepterthan you would be casting with thePrince of Death’s staffuntil you reach this point.

And that is an incredible stat investment to reach, which is again why this is a NG+ build, because you still have to have mine and you still have to haveVigor, etc. So that’s a lot of attribute points to spend. Now you’ll probably notice that I’m at 74Intelligenceand 58Faithif you’re looking over my stats, and that’s because if you use theTwinsage Glintstone Crown, which gives you 6Intelligence, you’ll hit that 80 mark and that frees up 6 levels for you.

And since levels come a lot slower at this point, that’s a lot of levels to gain and I recommend using that if you don’t care about fashion. I on the other hand care about fashion and it’s all about fashion with this build, so I’m a little bit lower and it would be better for me to use theCarian Regal Scepterat this point, but I’m okay taking a little hit to my damage to look a little bit fashionably better. If you’re just talking about min-maxing, you would use theTwinsage Glintstone Crownhere to free up 6 levels.

Besides that, we were using theSword of Night and Flame, no surprise here, we used this in our other build and we don’t really, we’re not really building around this weapon in this build. We’re focusing more on the magic, which is why this is aDeath Magebuild, than we are some sort of hybrid where we’re using theSword of Night and Flameand spells as much.

Before I was using theAncient Death Rancorto set up theNight Cometability of this weapon, but in this build, I’m just focusing on casting spells effectively and using theSword of Night and Flamesporadically or when I need a melee becauseRancorcallandAncient Death Rancorare terrible point blank. They fly over the target, hit the ground, trying to come back to get them and you need a way to attack effectively and since you’re not using theCarian Regal Scepter, which had Spinning Weapon, which was very, very good in close range, you need some sort of melee capability and that’s where theSword of Night and Flamecomes in here.

We are also using theGolden Order Sealhere. We didn’t upgrade it because there’s no real point. The spells that I’m using with it are justGolden VowandFlame, Grant Me Strength. That’s to further increase the damage of your spells and give you more protectionFlame, Grant Me Strengthis here because we do have one fire spell in this build that we’re using and that’s for using it when enemies are weak to fire or maybe resistant to magic to give you another damage type, but it’s only going to affect that spell or when you’re attacking in melee, so you’re not going to use it all that often.

So what I’ve done for my fashion here with my armor is I’m usingFia’s armor set, which is just the hood and her body piece, and then I put the Spellblade set as my gloves and legs and that gives me an extra 4% damage roughly to theNight Cometability ofSword of Night and Flame. Again, we’re not building for that specifically, but I thought why not add some damage to it? You cannot see these armor pieces underneath those two other armor pieces anyway, so why not get the extra damage if you’re going to do that? You can use whatever you want here, maybe heavier armor for more protection if you’d like, but I thought that was a great use of those pieces.

So when it comes to the talismans I’m using for this build, I have theDragoncrest Greatshield Talisman, I have theGraven-Mass Talisman, I have theMagic Scorpion CharmandFire Scorpion Charms, and I haveRitual Sword Talisman.

TheDragoncrest Greatshield Talismanjust gives you better protection, physical protection. We have very light armor with this setup and that’ll allow you to take some hits in NG+ and not die. I really, really like this talisman. If you’re comfortable at dodging and you’re not worried about getting hit, you can swap this out for something else likeShard of Alexanderif you want, because you will be using the abilities of theSword of Night and Flameperiodically. But I honestly like the extra protection. I do make mistakes and this helps keep me alive.

TheGraven-Mass Talismanis going to increase the damage of your spells. This includes Rancor,Ancient Death Rancor, andRykard’s Rancor, so they’re all going to get boosted by that. AndMagic Scorpion Charmis the one that I usually default to, becauseRancorcallandAncient Death Rancorare both magic damage and I likeNight Cometbetter than the other ability of theSword of Night and Flame. And it’ll also add damage to your regular attacks with your weapons, since it does some magic damage, though not a lot. You can swap this to theFire Scorpion Charmwhen you’re usingRykard’s Rancorin order to boost the damage of that.

Finally, theRitual Sword Talismannot only increases the damage of your spells when you’re at full health, but your regular attacks and theSword of Night and Flame‘s abilities as well. So this is an all-around good one as long as you can keep your health topped off. And as I mentioned,Shard of Alexanderis good if you plan to use the weapon ability ofSword of Night and Flameor either of their abilities regularly. There are some fights where it just makes more sense, and you can use those there if you want. Swap out something for that if you want. MaybeDragoncrest Greatshield Talismanor whatever.

Let’s move on to the spells of this build. We haveRancorcall,Ancient Death Rancor, andExplosive Ghostflame, as well as a new one,Rykard’s Rancor. All of the death spells were buffed with patch 1.07, andRancorcallandAncient Death Rancorhave had their FP costs reduced, as well as the tracking on their skulls track further or longer. So this means they’re going to be even more effective in combat, and they weren’t super expensive to begin with, just making them even more deadly.

So you’re going to be usingRancorcallto basically take out the trash enemies in the game. This spell now costs 12 FP, which is ridiculously cheap, and you can usually one-shot most enemies with it, and if you charge it, you can absolutely one-shot them. So you’re going to be using this as it’s more mana efficient, and you don’t have a ton of FP at this point in the game, the way the build is set up. So that’s what you’re going to use on regular enemies.

Ancient Death Rancoris for more challenging enemies and for bosses. It does more damage, it does more stagger buildup, meaning that you can stagger enemies easily with it. If you lock onto an enemy that has like a body part, for instance like a dragon’s head or something like that, you can easily stagger them with repeated casts of this if you can get them. Trolls or something like that is another option, or like the giant, fire giant, is another good one. But you’re going to use this for that if you’re standing inside the Terra Magicka when you’re casting this spell, you’re absolutely going to deal tons of damage, and again, you can charge this for extra damage as well.

Explosive Ghostflamehas been seriously buffed in this patch. It was actually not initially in myDeath Magebuild because it wasn’t super effective, but now the initial frostbite buildup has increased from 50 to 130 with the explosion, and the frostbite buildup has increased from 20 to 30 in particular. While enemies are standing in the fire, as well as the damage of the spell has been increased, the stamina damage done to enemies guarding has increased, the residual ghost flame area on the ground has increased the range, and the damage detection time of the lingering ghost flame has been reduced, meaning that the ticks in the ghost flame tick faster, resulting in more damage.

That makes this spell super, super viable now. It’s great in packs of enemies or under dragons or big enemies, near big enemies where you’re going to get that explosion and then follow-up ticks while they’re standing inside it. Things like theGodskin Duocome to mind where you can hit one of them and the other one can be standing in the fire. Just a strong spell. Now the downside to it is that it has a rather long cast time. You can’t use it very, very easily in a lot of scenarios. It’s going to be very, very situational, but it’s going to give you a good AOE option that’s absolutely deadly.

Rykard’s Rancoris a new addition here. This actually does fire damage whereasExplosive Ghostflamedoes magic damage, and so doesDeath RancorandRancorcall. It’s a good fire damage option for this build because maybe some enemies resist magic or maybe some enemies are just weak to fire. It’s really good on big targets or like theErdtreesthat are weak to fire. And what it does is it just casts like a trail of a skull that goes forward and then it ticks explosions where that skull trail has been after a bit of a delay.

You can just spam this so that the explosions just keep stacking. And it’s a very good option for AOE if you’re not going to useExplosive Ghostflameor you don’t have time to castExplosive Ghostflame. This can be cast from horseback as well whereasExplosive Ghostflamecannot. And it just gives you another good option. If you’re using this one though, you can also useFlame, Grant Me Strengthto further boost its damage and you can swap out theMagic Scorpion Charmfor theFire Scorpion Charmif a particular fight calls for it.

Besides these, we haveTerra Magicato boost our magic damage. Usually, you cast this at the beginning of a fight or before you aggro a tough enemy in the field so that when you’re spamming spells likeAncient Death Rancor, it’s going to hit even harder. You haveGolden Vowwith this build also. There’s no reason not to use it. You meet the requirements for it. That’s going to boost your damage and your defenses, which is great. And as I mentioned,Flame, Grant Me Strengthis there to buffRykard’s Rancorwhen you’re using it, but it can also buff the damage of yourSword of Night and Flameas well.

Another thing I want to mention is that theSword of Night and Flamewas buffed in this patch as well. So its damage is much higher now. So that’s even more effective in this build. I decided not to incorporateTibia’s Summonsinto this build after doing testing, even though it was also buffed in the patch. And that’s really because I couldn’t make it effective. It would seem like it would be a great option against turtling enemies, enemies that hide behind a shield because a lot of them come from behind allowing you to hit them in the back.

However, enemies just block it anyway. The direction doesn’t seem to matter there. And if enemies move even the slightest bit forward while you’re using it, it misses 90% of the time and it has a very long cast time as well. So it’s just not that good, even with its buff. So unless they increase the cast speed of this, so you can get it off more quickly, or unless the actual summons move quicker to the target, I don’t see this being viable in many builds.

So for my stats for this build at level 166, I have 41Vigor, 30Mind, 9Endurance, 12Strength, 12Dexterity, 74Intelligence, 58Faith, and 9Arcane.

Then when you get a NG+, there isn’t really a lot of ways to increase your damage because between 80 and 99, you simply don’t gain that much scaling on your sorcery or your incantation scaling.

You’re a sorcerer in particular and you’re not playingFaith, you don’t usually have access toGolden VoworFlame, Grant Me Strength. So you don’t even have those buffs. So there isn’t any way for you to get more damage. But with this build, you’re going to continue to increase your damage throughout NG+, which is fantastic.

And just a couple of final tips before I wrap up this build guide, you can use twoSwords of Night and Flame. And you’ll probably see some of that or I’ve seen some of that in the gameplay that I’m showing here because of the NG+ you can get a second one by going to carry a manner pretty quickly and grabbing one and then upgrading it. You’ll be able to dual-wield two of these if you want. And it’s an absolute blast to do. It’s not part of the mage build specifically, but I just wanted to illustrate that you can do this. And if you want to throw it onto your build, there’s no reason really you can’t have it and just use it in certain circumstances.

But I do want to say that if you’re going to use dual wields with this weapon, you should use the Rotten Winged Sword Insignia or Winged Sword Insignia and Millicent’s Prosthesis to get that attack power charge up as you hit over and over, which will just really increase the damage of these weapons. You can easily get over like 1100 attack rating with two straight swords each, which is absolutely incredible. So if you want to play that way, you can. I just wanted to mention that here. It’s not necessarily how I’m playing in this build because it’s more mage-focused, but you absolutely can do that in NG+ if you want.

If you’re using theFlask of Wondrous Physickhere, I recommend using either theMagic-Shrouding Cracked Tearby default or theGreenburst Crystal Tearfor stamina recovery. Or you can use like both magic and fire and that will increase in your tears and that will increase your regular attack damage because you do both those damage types on your weapon. It’ll allow you to use either one of the weapon skills effectively or any either of your spells records rank or does fire damage. So you could switch back and forth as necessary. Well, that buffs up and not have to worry about like, oh, I didn’t have my flask set correctly. So that’s another good option.

If you’re using a great rune, I recommend usingGodrick’s Great Runebecause this is a very stat-hungry build or usingRadahn’s Great Runebecause once you hit the certain breakpoints for these weapons, like you don’t need any moreStrength,Dexterity,EnduranceorArcane. So half the attributes kind of be wasted. I mean, you get some more melee damage out ofStrengthandDexterity, but it’s not a super big deal. ButRadahn’sgives you more FP, more health, more stamina. All those things are effective for this build. So either of those are good choices. That’s it for this build, 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.