Elden Ring Dragon Priest Guide: Prophet Build for Beginners
Mar. 7, 2024Elden Ring Dragon Priest Guide: Prophet Build for Beginners
This Elden Ring Prophet Guide covers a fun build for players who’ve always wanted to be Dragons in a Souls-like game. This Elden Ring Prophet Build features fire-based magic and powerful AOE attacks that will almost literally melt any enemy barring your way.
The Dragon Priest is a Faith-casting build that focuses a bit on the fire side of things. It’s a build that will have you become devastatingly powerful especially for really early on in the game, while being flexible enough to still wield a weapon while mainly using offensive Incantations to deal damage.
We have over 110Elden Ring Buildsnow, for all classes and playstyles. This Dragon Priest build is recommended for beginner players.
If you’re playing this Elden Ring Prophet Build, you’re going to want to be either theProphetorConfessorclass. Prophet is probably the more ideal of the two because it begins the game withCatch Flame, which is very crucial. It also begins with a little bit moreArcanethan Confessor. You need a little bit of Arcane for this build in order to useDragon Incantationsat the beginning of the game or near the beginning of the game. If you’re already playing a Confessor, you can still sort of opt into this, even if it’s not the way you were going initially but end up liking what you see and want to play it. However, you’ll need to get toRoundtable Holdin order to get Catch Flame if you want to use thatspell.
Things you will need to put this build together are theFinger Seal, which you begin the game with, the Catch Flame spell which you’ll have if you’re a Prophet and you still need to acquire if you’re a Confessor, and you also want theDragonfireSpell. In order to get the Dragonfire spell, you’ll need to defeatAgheel, the Flying Dragonin thelake, and then go to theChurch of Dragon Communionto exchange it for theDragon Heartthat you get for slaying him.
To make this build even more potent, you don’t really need to use any melee weapons or anything like that, but you are going to upgrade your seal to +3 as soon as you can. The best way to do that is to get thestonesfrom the trolls up onStormhill. If you have them smash the stone statue there, you’ll get a bunch right away and then you can head into the tunnel area and farm them there. There may be six in there that you can just pick up from the walls that should be enough to get you to +3 right away.
Additionally, if you kill thebossin the Limgrave Tunnels there, you’ll get theRoar Medallion. ThisTalismanincreases the effectiveness of breath attacks which Dragonfire is. Initially, this wouldn’t work on the dragon abilities, but as of Patch 1.09, it’s been adjusted to give the buff to all the breath-relatedDragon Communion Incantations. So, definitely get this Talisman to boost Dragonfire’s damage even further.
The other piece of equipment that you can get and replace your Finger Seal with is theDragon Communion Seal. This seal actually buffs Dragon Communion Spells so the incantations you learn from dragon communion are gonna be stronger when you use it. This thing actually scales with both Arcane andFaith, which is fantastic because you actually will need more and more Arcane in order to use more and more dragon attacks. So, if you’re going to go into the general pyromancy Faith line, you probably don’t need this, but if you want to lean heavily into the dragon attacks then you want to pick this up.
This can be found inFringefolk Hero’s Grave, and in order to get in there you’ll need 2 stone’s word keys so you might want to begin the game of theStone Swordkey. And as soon as you get another one, head down there. It’s kind of a tough area really early in the game, so I recommend maybe getting a few levels and then going down to get the Seal. You need to go all the way down where there’s a section where you can either go down or up. If you go up, there’ll be a spectral variant of aBanished Knightthere and if you defeat him, he’ll drop the seal for you.
For this build, I like to use a torch in my offhand. You could use aShieldif you want as well, or you can have both swap between them as necessary. However, there’s a really nice torch in theCastle Mornearea that has anabilitythat allows you to breathe fire, called theSteel-Wire Torchwhich just works really well with this build. You can maybe have Catch Flame in one hand and the torch in the other. It’s interesting to note that the Roar Medallion does not impact its ability’s effectiveness, despite it literally being a breath action.
Lastly, you’ll also want to be on the lookout for some betterArmorwith this setup. The Prophet’s armor is not very good. The Confessor has a little bit better armor but you can definitely wear better armor and you should be on the lookout for something that gives you a bit more defense and survivability. Just make sure you can medium roll still, but definitely try and get some better armor as soon as you can.
Thestatyou want to focus on when you start going for this build isMind. This is a very FP-hungry build. You chew through it. Using Catch Flame costs a whopping 10 FP per cast. That means that you’re probably going to be getting about seven to eight casts of this before you’re going to need to chug a pot, and that’s not very many. So you’re going to want to skew your flasks to the FP side of things of course, but then you’re going to want to pump Mind. I like to get to 20, this gives you 100 FP which allows for 10 casts of Catch Flame or three casts of Dragonfire. Once you have cranked your Mind up and you’ve acquired Dragonfire, you’ll need to put two points into Arcane in order to meet the requirements to use it, so do that real quick.
Once you have 20 Mind and 12 Arcane, you’re going to want to start crankingFaithup to further boost the damage of these abilities. Your damage is just going to keep going higher and higher the more you upgrade your seal, and the more you crank up your Faith, you don’t even need to use a weapon anymore as long as you manage your flasks well. If you’re using the Dragon Communion Seal though, you’ll want to lead with Arcane instead of Faith.
On a side note, you should also be collecting yourGolden Seeds– you can look for the locations of those on thewiki. You need them in order to increase the number of flasks you have so you don’t have to rest as frequently to replenish your FP, because again, this is a very FP-hungry build and you’re going to chew right through it.
So, as aforementioned, the two main spells you’re going to use are Catch Flame and Dragonfire. Dragonfire is a massive AOE that just absolutely wipes out packs of enemies. It’s really strong, and what’s really crazy about it is you could just hold the button down and move back and forth on your screen and just direct the fire where you want it to go while repositioning yourself, and it’ll just keep spewing fire for as long as you have FP. This is again one of the reasons why we increase our FP through our MInd stat, so you can just hold that button down just drain all your FP into an enemy or boss.
What I really like about this build is that it just has incredibly high damage from the very beginning of the game. One of the things you’ll realize about these two spells is that you don’t even need to increase your Faith near the beginning of the game in order for them to hit really hard. The only real limitation you have is the amount of FP you have. You want to drain your FP bar as fast as you can on hard enemies and then use your pots to just replenish it afterward. That is the best strategy and the same is true with Catch Flame. You can just walk up to a boss and just spam the hell out of this Spell and you’ll absolutely melt bosses or enemies. Also, if you’re using Catch Flame, you can roll and then cast it very very quickly, not unlike the way the Archer Build I made which rolls and then shoots in succession very quickly. So, get in the habit of sprinting and casting which also happens fairly quickly, or rolling and casting that ability as a way to begin unleashing your spams.
This Dragon Priest build is also exceptionally good for farming. It just allows you to wipe out lots of enemies really quickly. Perhaps they have an armor set, weapon, craft materials, or anything really that you want, you can just take out five to six packs of enemies at a time with it. This exponentially increases the speed at which you farm these enemies – you just walk up to a herd and melt them real quick with Dragonfire, pick up everything they drop, go rest to reload, and then do it again. So, if you’re someone who likes farming, this might be a great build for you.
One other tip is you’ll probably want to pick up theLightning StrikeIncantationat some point. This is located in theWeeping Peninsula– you can check ourInteractive Mapon thewikifor its exactlocation. Basically, this will allow you to use lightning damage on enemies that you know are resistant to fire, and it just gives you another spell in your arsenal.
You will need another memory slot for it, butOridy’s Riseis located not too far from where Lightning Strike is – you can also find it in thewiki. If you get inside there, you’ll get amemory stonewhich will open up another memory slot for you to allow you to slot in your new Lightning Strike.
Lastly, if you do want to use meleeweaponsto supplement this build, which you’re perfectly capable of doing, there are a couple of goodAshes of Warthat you can get in the easternLimgravearea for enhancing them. These are theGolden Vowand theSacred BladeAshes of War. One of them buffs your group’s defenses and attack which is probably not as good but it does give you something that you can use, and the other, Sacred Blade, allows you to shoot a projectile which seems like it would be more optimal for this build. Make sure you pick up either one of these, they’re pretty easy to get really quickly in the game. Again, you can check the Interactive Map on the wiki for their exact locations in eastern Limgrave.
So that’s it for our Dragon Priest build! 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. Again, if you need help finding items 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.
how ru supposed to have quickstep if the seal and torch dont accept ashes of war?
