Elden Ring Magma Wyrm's Scalesword Build Guide - Drake Knight (NG+ Guide)

Apr. 11, 2024

Elden Ring Magma Wyrm’s Scalesword Build Guide – Drake Knight (NG+ Guide)

In this Elden RingMagma Wyrm’s ScaleswordBuild Guide, I’m going to show you myDrake Knightbuild, which is a NG+ build that focuses on the use of theMagma Wyrm’s Scale Swordand its weapon ability,Magma Guillotine.

A Strength/Faith Build that focuses on the use of the Magma Wyrm’s Scalesword and its weapon skill Magma Guillotine.

We have over 110 builds for Elden Ring. This build is recommended for NG+

The reason I decided to make this a NG+ build instead of a regular game build is because it’s very stat-hungry. The weapon itself requires 24Strength, 15Dexterity, and 18Faith. It’s rather heavy, weighing 15. You need FP, costs 20 FP to default to use this weapon ability, plus 10 for the follow-up attack, which means you’re going to need points inMind. You’re gonna need points inVigor. So you need a hefty stat spread. You could probably make this build around 100 plus, maybe 120, and barely get it together. But I think it’ll just play better in NG+ with having everything put together from the start, including things likeShard of Alexanderand theDrake Knightset, which are found at the very end of the game.

So first of all, let’s focus onMagma Wyrm’s Scalesword. This is aCurved Greatswordweighing 15, which is heavy for acurved Greatsword. It’s the second heaviest of all of them. You can find it not too far into the game in theRuin-Strewn Precipice, which is near theAltus Plateauarea. Not very hard to get to or very far into the game. So you can get this weapon rather early on, but it’s probably going to take you a while before you can at least have some decent stats to use with it. Some of the things I like about this weapon are first, the attack rating on it is pretty high. I am not exaggerating here. It’s about 900 or so unbuffed with this build. And then when you’re fully buffed, it’s about 1350.

That is a staggering attack rating for a weapon that weighs 15. That’s higher than a lot ofColossal Weapons. That’s higher than a lot ofColossal Swords. So you’re getting a lot of damage here for relatively good weight. Also, the attack speed on this weapon, particularly when you’re two-handed, is fast. It attacks much faster than you would think. So it allows you to get off attacks while enemies are winding up and you’re getting that damage on them while they’re trying to hit you, increasing your damage by even more. It’s just really solid. A couple of other things about this weapon, the R2 and Charged R2 attacks have hyper armor on them, meaning that you can usually withstand a regular attack and still get it off.

Even with light armor or medium armor, equip load or not a lot of poise. I’m not using an armor set here that has a lot of poise and I can still get these off on regular enemies and that’s great. You can get off of charged R2s very easily with this build. And if you used an armor that had higher poise, this would be even easier to do. The reason I didn’t pick an armor with higher poise for this build is because, frankly, I don’t use R2 that much. It’s quite usable. It’s just I don’t find that I need it. R1 takes care of most regular enemies andMagma Guillotinetakes care of the rest.

Another thing to note is that the jump attack animation with R2 does a similar type of animation to the R2 attack where you grab the sword in two hands and plunge it into the ground. I don’t like this because it shortens the reach of the sword considerably. The R2 has the same problem, which makes it less useful than it would be if it still had that good reach of the weapon. SoMagma Guillotineis an ability that where you sort of crouch down, jump up into the air, and land and hit the enemy if you hit them for damage and then put Magma all over the ground that then hits them and you can do a follow up for another attack. And it uses a lot of stamina. It’s not super FP expensive and it’s devastating.

This ability does both fire and physical damage and it scales with all three stats, strength, dexterity, and faith. WithStrengthandDexterityincreasing its physical damage and faith increasing its fire damage. One of the things that makes this attack particularly deadly besides the damage it does, which is nuts, is the fact that it does have some hyper armor to it. Meaning that if you can get into the air, then you’re unstoppable with this attack pretty much. You’re going to land it through almost every attack a boss can do.

Not everyone. I don’t want to say everyone, but you can land it through so many attacks that the strategy is to just go into a fight, hit L2, hit L2, and then hit L2 and it’s pretty much over at that point. If you buff, there isn’t any real craziness involved because it just poises through their attacks, hits them, and then you kind of back up if you can get the second attack off and then you just leap in again and it’s over pretty quickly.

Another thing that I like too is that when you use this ability, you duck down before you leap. So a lot of times, if you’re fighting tough bosses that have horizontal sweeps, you’ll duck under these attacks and then leap into the air, which is great. Particularly if you’re using them right next to them or something. I think out of all the NG+ builds I’ve made, and there are some powerful ones,Pyromancerparticularly, the last build I did was fast at killing bosses. This might be even faster than that. Bosses were going down in 10 to 20 seconds in most cases, it’s fantastic.

And the last thing I like about this weapon too is because the weapon skill scales off all three stats and you have decent scaling andStrengthandFaithand okay scaling and dexterity, you’re going to be able to keep increasing the damage of this weapon through NG+ and into NG++. So it’s definitely a future-proof weapon. It’s going to keep getting more and more damage through NG+ and NG++. So you’re never going to plateau for a while in terms of damage. So it’s going to be able to do those very effectively. Besides this weapon, I also have theClawmark Sealbecause this is aStrength-Faithbuild.

The sweet spot for that is 45, which we’re rather close to. So you can use spells with this build. I primarily use it forGolden VowandFlame, Grant Me Strength. I haven’t even upgraded it here because I’m just using it for those buffs. I don’t find it necessary to use spells, but if you wanted to, you could use them okay with this setup. As you progress further and further into NG+ and NG++, incantations are just going to get less effective with thisClawmark Sealbecause it’s not the best seal to begin with in terms of spell-casting damage. So you’re going to find that it’s going to get harder to cast spells. I don’t recommend it, but you can if you want.

Beyond that, I am using theDrake Knight Armor set, which is the namesake of this build. And what I like about this armor, besides its appearance, is that it looks like a dragon or a drake. It has wings on the back and you’re using theMagma Wyrm’s Scalesword, which looks like a dragon’s jaw. So it has this Dragon Drake theme to this build. I didn’t call it aDragon Knight. We have that build already. So we went withDrake Knightfor the name of the armor.

You can use whatever armor you want for this build. Arguably theRaptor’s Black Featherswould allow you to get more jump attack damage. You do some jump attacks with this build, although it’s not the focus. But higher protection and better armor is going to give you more protection. So you could use heavier armor as long as you can medium roll.

When it comes to the talismans, I haveDragoncrest Greatshield Talismanfor more protection. This is again one of my favorite ones. I use this in so many builds.Shard of Alexanderto further boostMagma Guillotine’sdamage.Carian Filigreed Crestis there to reduce the cost of it. You can probably get rid of this at some point in NG+, because as you put more points intoMind, you’re going to gain enough that you FP that you don’t need to use this anymore. This is one you’ll probably be able to get rid of eventually at some point in NG+. But for now, we’re using it to help ease our FP costs.

We also are usingGolden Vow, which is very expensive. So you don’t have as much FP as you want normally, because you’re buffing with that constantly. And we also have theFire Scorpion Charmto increase our fire damage. The weapon attacks from this do mostly physical damage, as does the weapon skillMagma Guillotine. But we want as much damage as possible. And you’re going to take a little bit more damage from using this.

But we have theDragoncrest Greatshield, which helps offset that a little bit. So obviously, you’re going to useGolden VowandFlame, Grant Me Strengthwhen you’re in boss fights. But primarily, you’re just going to useGolden Vow, which will just increase your damage with attacks and your weapon skill and also give you some more defense, which is good. So you’re going to want to keep that up pretty much all the time that you’re fighting.

When it comes to the attributes for this build, I have 50Vigor, 30Mind, 22Endurance, 55Strength, 15Dexterity, 16Intelligence, 40Faith, and 9Arcane.

You don’t need anyIntelligenceorArcanefor this build. So disregard those. I started as anAstrologer. You’re probably tired of hearing this. This is the same save file. So just disregard those. You don’t need any of those. If you’re going with any other class, likeConfessoror anything else, you’re going to be in better shape.

50Vigoris enough for this part of the game. You have theDragoncrest Greatshield, decent armor, as well asGolden Vow. So your protection is pretty good. And I would increase this to 60 as you progress through NG+.Mindis at 30 here for you to useGolden Vowconstantly and still get offMagma Guillotineand its follow-up attack often, as often as you want them.

If you have less than this, then you’re going to struggle with taking pots. You’re going to have to pot more often than you want. You can get away with 25 if you want to put points somewhere else and just pot more often. That’s up to you. But I would recommend as you go through NG+, increasing this to 35 or 40. That would allow you to dump theCarian Filigree Crestand slot something else there, likeRitual Sword Talismanor any other talisman that you like, likeGreen TurtleTalisman.

22Enduranceis there to give you enough equip load to medium roll. But you’re going to want to take this up higher becauseMagma Guillotineis a stamina-hungry weapon skill. And to getMagma Guillotinein a follow-up attack andMagma Guillotinein a follow-up attack, which is usually enough to kill most bosses or difficult enemies, you’re going to need more stamina than we have now.

So it’s the stamina you want from this more than theEndurance, but you can upgrade your armor as you get moreEnduranceand keep that medium equip load if you want. But I would probably take this up to 30 somewhere in NG+, to be able to pull off back-to-backMagma Guillotineswith their follow-up attacks. 55 is the first soft cap for the damage for this weapon. It starts to drop off a bit here after 55, which is why we broke there. At this point, I’m focusing on increasingFaithup to about 50 or so to get more damage, particularly fire damage as well.

And then from that point onward, you’re probably going to increaseDexterityor so to 50. And then you’ll takeStrengthand thenFaithup to 80 each. So you have a long way to go in terms of damage attributes here. You got 25 more inStrength, 35 more inDexterity, and 40 more inFaith. That’s at least NG++, probably the end of NG++ before you start to reach the full potential of this weapon.

Just a couple of tips before I wrap up this build guide. If you’re using theFlask of Wondrous Physick, you want theFlame-shrouding Cracked Tear. This will increase your fire damage with your attacks and your weapon skill. Again, you don’t do 100% fire damage. You do about 30 to 40%. So you’re not going to get total efficacy out of this, but it’s still a great way to increase your damage. Alternatively, you could add something likeFaiththere orStrengthto further increase your damage if you want. But I find fire is about the same damage-wise, so I use that. And besides that, you can use theGreenburst Crystal Tearto give you Stamina Recovery.

Again, theMagma Guillotineis very stamina-hungry, so getting your stamina back quickly so you can keep using it is essential. And when it comes togreat runes,Godrick’sis the rune of choice here. You needVigorandMind,Endurance,Strength,Dexterity, andFaith. Six of the eight attributes. So getting an extra five in each of those is absolutely fantastic. That’s it for theDrake Knightbuild. 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.