Elden Ring Marika's Hammer Build Guide - Gold Breaker

May. 4, 2024

Elden Ring Marika’s Hammer Build Guide – Gold Breaker

In this Elden Ring Marika’s Hammer Guide, I’ll be showing you my Gold Breaker build. This is an NG+ build that focuses on the use of Marika’s Hammer, which is one of the weapons that you will get from defeating the very last boss of Elden Ring.

The Gold Breaker Build is an “NG+” build that utilizesMarika’s Hammer, a weapon you acquire by trading theElden RemembrancewithEniaatRoundtable Holdafter defeating the final boss in Elden Ring. Even though we were hesitant to create a build that focuses on the weapon, we’ve realized that there is much more the hammer weapon can offer and we have come up with a build that players can resort to if they want to useMarika’s Hammer.

We have over 110Elden Ring Buildsnow, for all classes and playstyles. This Build is recommended for all levels.

The weapon we’re using here isMarika’s Hammer. What I really like about this weapon that I didn’t realize at first is that a lot of its damage is physical damage. I’d say about 66% of the damage is physical, so you only have 33% holy damage, which is great. Physical damage, which is a great damage type in this game, is going to offset some of that Holy damage resistance that a lot of early and late game bosses have.

Additionally, Marika’s Hammer has fantastic scaling in terms of potential for multiple playthroughs because it scales with Strength, Dexterity, and Faith. You’re going to be able to increase all three of these attributes and get more damage out of this weapon and its weapon skill as you progress into NG+.

Its weapon skill,Gold Breaker, is what I named this build after. It’s a devastating skill for a couple of reasons. This weapon has a huge AoE radius, so you’ll be able to hit multiple enemies at once. Even if you jump over enemies, you will usually hit them with it. You can just round up enemies, then use this skill on them, killing most of them in one hit, even in NG+. It’s a great weapon for farming, or when you’re outnumbered. Another reason I like is that even if you don’t one-shot enemies, it makes the enemies flinch for a second, so it can give you some breathing room. You can then pull off another Gold Breaker, so you’re not getting constantly hit while trying to cast it as the enemies will flinch. Something that makes this weapon skill deadly is that it has insane hyper armor. Once you leave the ground, you basically cannot be interrupted. I haven’t tested this with every attack, so it’s possible that some attacks will stagger you out of it.

Another thing I love about the weapon skill is that it propels you a good distance forward, so you can start it from a safe distance particularly against bosses or enemies that are aggressive, like theCrucible Knight. By the time they get in range, you’re typically hitting with this. Since this causes them to flinch, you can get another Gold Breaker off. The last thing about this weapon skill is if you connect with Gold Breaker and the weapon itself, it will deal damage. You want to try and land the weapon itself on the enemy when possible as it does about 40 stance damage. All of these things together make Gold Breaker arguably one of the best weapon skills despite it dealing Holy damage.

Theoretically, this weapon could be extremely deadly in PvP if built properly. You can keep chaining this since your enemy will be flinched, and that you can’t be stopped when you use this. You can keep trading damage, as you will come out ahead most of the time.

As for armor, we’ll be using theLeyndell Knight Setbecause it has 51Poise. This is not crucial for the weapon skill, but it’s nice when you’re doing block counters or attacking out in the landscape so that you’re not getting interrupted when you do regular attacks.

For our offhand, I’ll be using theGolden Order Seal, even though we don’t meet the requirements for it. You can use any seal, as we’re only using it to castGolden VowandFlame, Grant Me Strength. This seal weighs nothing, so it’s nice to not add any equip load to the build.

As for the shield, we’ll be using theGolden Greatshieldas it fits the theme of Gold Breaker. You’re going to want to use aGreatshieldbecause you have very high Strength. This allows you to block counter enemies easily, and when combined withAssassin’s Cerulean Dagger, you’re going to get FP back when you do a critical attack after that block counter. This allows you to use Gold Breaker a lot more often, as it costs 26 FP per cast. That is a lot for a weapon skill, so it doesn’t allow you to cast it at will unless you have a way of replenishing your FP.

As mentioned above, Gold Breaker costs a lot of FP, which means you need to find a way to lower its FP cost or find a way to replenish your FP. There are a couple of talismans that can help us with that.Carian Filigreed Crestcuts the FP cost down to 20, whileAssassin’s Cerulean Daggerreplenishes your FP by 15 every time you do a critical hit.

I also haveShard of Alexanderwith this build, as this increases the damage of Gold Breaker. You could useWarrior Jar Shardif you have it as well, but Shard of Alexander is the better of the two. Since we’re in NG+, we should be using Shard of Alexander for min-maxing.

For the last spot, I have theCurved Sword Talismanto increase my block counter damage. I tend to do a lot of block counters with this build, but you can trade this withDragoncrest Greatshield Talismanfor boss fights to give you more protection when you’re not going to be doing nearly as many block counters. This allows you to trade damage, which you do a lot of times with Gold Breaker, and not die.

Our attributes for this build will be: 50Vigor, 25Mind, 31Endurance, 53Strength, 23Dexterity, 25Faith. You don’t need to increase Intelligence and Arcane in this build, so you could disregard these two attributes.

Vigor is at 50 for this build as this is pretty standard for the beginning of an NG+ playthrough. In my opinion, you’ll probably want to increase this to 60 at some point because you will be trading damage with Gold Breaker. As bosses get harder and harder in NG+, they hit harder. You want to make sure that you survive those attacks, so increase your Vigor.

Mind is at 25, but you’ll probably want to increase it to 30 or 35 at some point. You use a lot of FP with this build between Gold Breaker, Golden Vow, and Flame, Grant Me Strength. Even if you don’t buff yourself with Flame, Grant Me Strength often, you will be buffing with Golden Vow regularly since it has a long duration. You’re also going to use Gold Breaker often, so having more FP will allow you to do these things before chugging an FP flask.

31 Endurance is just enough in order to be able to medium roll with the set-up. It will vary depending on which armor you have equipped, or if you’re using a different seal. You don’t have to use the armor and seal I used, so that’s up to you with how much Endurance is required to do a medium roll with your chosen armor and seal.

53 Strength and 23 Dexterity might seem like a weird breakpoint, but I tested it with the respec screen to see what’s the sweet spot for damage. This attribute spread seemed to give me the best in terms of physical damage, as Dexterity drops off at this point while Strength being better. If you’re looking to increase your damage, you’ll probably focus on increasing your Strength, then follow up with Faith, then Dexterity last. Faith has better scaling than Dexterity, but I put a few in there as it performs well at this point.

For Faith, the weapon itself has a 19 Faith requirement so it seemed natural to just take it up to 25 to get more damage out of it and be able to use Golden Vow to buff my offense and defense, as it’s one of the best all-around buffs in the game. It’ll also allow you to use Flame, Grant Me Strength which is good as 66% of your damage is physical, so it’s not bad to use. However, I don’t use Flame, Grant Me Strength unless I’m fighting a boss because it has a very short duration and you’re not getting 100% efficacy out of it. As I mentioned, Faith outperforms Dexterity so you could increase Faith from this point on. I don’t think it’s quite as good as Strength, but it’s not much worse. If you want to make a hybrid spellcaster build, you will probably focus on Strength and Faith exclusively, then useClawmark Sealto increase your incantation damage.

When it comes to yourFlask of Wondrous Physick, you can useHoly-Shrouding Cracked Tear,Strength-knot Crystal Tear, orDexterity-knot Crystal Tear. Any of those is fine, as they’re going to give you kind of the same damage at this point. You can also use Faith-knot Crystal Tear in there if you want.

As for theGreat Runes, you are either going to useGodrick’s Great RuneorRadahn’s Great Rune. Godrick’s Great Rune isn’t bad as you use a lot of attributes for this build. You’ll need points in 6 of the 8 attributes, so that isn’t a bad idea. Radahn’s Great Rune also isn’t bad as you’ll get additional maximum health, stamina, and FP, which are all good for this build.

That’s it for our Gold Breaker 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.