Elden Ring Nagakiba Samurai Build Guide - Blazing Bushido
Apr. 21, 2024Elden Ring Nagakiba Samurai Build Guide – Blazing Bushido
In this Elden RingNagakibaSamuraiBuild Guide, I’m going to be showing you how to play my Blazing Bushido build, or Flammurai build if you will. This is a level 100Samuraibuild, and if you’ve been wondering how to play aSamurainot usingMoonveil, then read on to find out.
A Samurai Build that uses theNagakibaand aGreatbowto take on enemies at range or in close combat.
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First, let’s focus on the weapon I chose for this build, and I chose theNagakibahere. There are a few reasons for this. First, the weapon has an incredibly long reach. It is the longest katana in the game by far, probably almost double the length of most katanas in the game, which gives you a significant advantage when trying to hit difficult-to-hit bosses, wiry ones, etc. It’s also fantastic because the running R2 attack is sort of a slide-and-poke, and giving you that extra range means that you can stay out of harm’s way by rolling backward immediately afterward and keeping your distance from enemies.
Additionally, I really like the charged R2 attack here, as it’s a thrust instead of an overhead slash, so that’s fantastic. I’ve replaced the defaultAsh of Waron it withUnsheathe. I like theUnsheatheability, and if you’ve played at all with the regularUchigatanaorMoonveil, then you’ll know that this is strong. So I’ve set the quality affinity on this weapon with theUnsheatheAsh of War, and there are a couple of reasons for that. First, we want to keep the damage type physical to be able to buff this. If we set it to bleed or fire or magic or some other thing like that, we won’t be able to buff the blade, so keeping it physical is ideal.
The reasons I choseQualityoverKeenwith this build are a couple of reasons. First, the weapon requires about 18Strengthto use anyway, although you can two-hand it for less, but also because we use aGreatbowthat scales off bothStrengthandDexterityabout equally as well, that means it’s going to benefit from both these stats, which is great. Additionally, you gain extra damage. You gain theStrengthscaling, or 1.5 times theStrengthscaling of your weapon when you two-hand, and we’re going to be two-handing this weapon nearly all the time we’re attacking with it, so you’re going to get a little extra damage from that two-handing when you’re because ofStrength, so having someStrengthhere doesn’t hurt at all either.
You can get theNagakibaby killingYuraat the beginning of the game or anytime you see him, or by progressing his quest line to a certain degree. You should be able to progress his quest line far enough at this point in the game to get it if you didn’t kill him. You can do the quest line to get it without killing him if you’d rather do it that way.
The next weapon we’re using for this build is theGreatbowas I just mentioned, and we swap the longbow, if you’re familiar with theSamuraibuild I made earlier, for theGreatbow, and there are a couple of reasons for that. You’re going to meet the requirements forStrengthandDexterityfor it already because of the way you’re set up for this build, so it’s a good candidate for aGreatbow. Even if you’re using some otherGreatbowthat’s not this one, you’re going to meet the requirements because of the quality setup that you have, which is great.
Also, when you useRain of Arrowswith this build, it hits like a freight train, so it’s a very, very good way to deal a lot of damage at range against particularly bigger targets, targets that all the arrows will hit because they kind of scatter around a little bit. And one of the weaknesses of this build is big enemies.
Because they have large hitboxes and dodging is your only defense with this build, trying to pick them off at range before you have to engage them in melee or weaken them from range before you have to engage them in melee is going to help you out tremendously, and this is the way to do it. Also,Great Arrowsare quite expensive and you can’t carry nearly as many of them, so getting every ounce of damage out of every arrow is fantastic, andRain of Arrowsonly uses one arrow per use.
You can use any otherGreatbowfor this build if you want, but the reason I picked this one is it has double D scaling. Some of them only have D scaling and E scaling, and also one of them, one of the unique bow ability on it is not replaceable withRain of Arrows, so I wanted to be able to putRain of Arrowson this, exactly why we picked this bow. You can get theRain of Arrowsskill inCaelid, you got to go get the painting there in the town of sorcery and then go over to theErdtreeand drop over the cliff and get it, so if you’re wondering where that is, you can check out the wiki or you can follow that.
Additionally, if you’re looking for a place to buyGreat Arrows, that’s what I do because I can’t be bothered to farm them at this point in the game, you’re going to find them at theHermit’s Shack, which is in theRoyal Capitalarea.
The last weapon we want for this build is theFinger Seal. We’re going to use this in order to cast two spells, which areBloodflame BladeandFlame, Grant Me Strength. The reason we want this spell instead of theClawmark Sealis because, for some reason on theClawmark Seal, theStrengthdoes not apply to the incantation scaling to increase the damage ofBloodflame Blade.
If it did, it would outperformFinger Seal, but it doesn’t, so if that ever gets changed, you’ll want to switch toClawmark Seal, but for the time being,Finger Sealis the best seal that we meet the requirements for and it’s going to improve the damage ofBloodflame Blade.Flame, Grant Me Strength‘s damage doesn’t increase with any sort of scaling or anything like that, so it doesn’t matter what seal you use for that spell, but if you want to get the most out ofBloodflame Blade, then you’re going to want to use theFinger Seal.
As far as armor goes for this build, you can really use any that you want to use. I like theSamuraiArmor or some of the differentSamuraiArmors in the game. You want to make sure whatever you do that you can still medium roll though, so make sure it’s not too heavy. And I have theMask of Confidencehere because it gives me a little bit ofArcane. You need 10Arcaneto useBloodflame Blade, but if you just put a point or two intoArcaneor if you don’t have enoughArcane, you can put a point or two in there, that’s fine. If you want to use something else instead, but if for some reason you don’t have enoughArcane, using this should get you to where you need to be.
The four talismans I use for this build at this point in the game areRitual Sword Talisman,Blessed Dew Talisman,Arrow’s Sting Talisman, andCarian Filigreed Crest.
TheRitual Sword Talismanis fantastic and it increases your damage by 10% when you’re at full health. This is good for any build that uses bows for instance because you’re trying to pick things off from far away before you ever get hit and you should be at full health most of the time. If you’re playing an archer build and you’re wondering how to increase your damage at this point in the game, go pick up this talisman because that’s going to give you 10% more damage.
Blessed Dew Talismanis there to regenerate health in between encounters to get back up to 100% to further boost your damage by 10%. Sometimes when you’re fighting you take chip damage and it’s too little to use a potion but you want that extra damage increase. So this is there to top you off between encounters and you might want to sub this out for something else in boss fights or something like that.
TheArrow’s Sting Talismanincreases your arrow damage by 10%. Again you’re going to be using a bow with this build as well so getting that extra damage with it is fantastic. You have about 30 arrows before you run out so you’re not going to use it like you would an archer build picking everything off with it but you’re going to use it for hard-to-hit targets or targets that are extremely difficult and you’re going to want to use it withRain of Arrowswhen you have tough enemies that are bigger too.
Lastly, we haveCarian Filigreed Crest. This reduces your skill cost by 25%.Rain of Arrowsis 20 FP by default so that’s going to knock it down to 15 andUnsheatheAbilities is 10 for the R1 and 15 for the R2 so that’s going to knock them down by a few points each and that’s going to allow you to conserve FP to use these abilities more. You don’t have a ton of FP with this build at this point in the game because you simply don’t have the stats for it. When you hit 150 you should have a lot more FP and you can probably swap that out for something like theWarrior’s Jar Shardor something that increases your skill damage but at this point having the FP cost reduction is better.
I don’t use theWinged Sword Insigniawith this build. This talisman increases your attack power by a percentage every so often after you do a certain amount of hits. It’s like every three hits or so and the reason for that is because you simply cannot attack fast enough with this weapon to make it worth it. You are running in and out of combat because of the speed and I feel likeWinged Sword Insigniais much better when you’re dual-wielding weapons that attack quickly than it is with katanas so I don’t recommend using it for this build. Another talisman you could use for this build is theSpear Talisman.
The running R2 attack is actually thrust damage as is the charged R2 attack. Still, you have to hit enemies while they’re in the middle of their attack, and generally speaking with this build you don’t want to be anywhere near an enemy when it’s you know winding through its attack unless you’re finishing it off with a hit. Hence, it’s a bad spot to be in and this should apply to arrows as well if you’re hitting something with an arrow while it’s mid-attack animation because that’s also thrust damage. However, it’s hard to use the bow mid-combat. You want to try and use the bow at the beginning of combat or outside of combat.
Trying to use it inside of combat is rather difficult so this probably isn’t going to happen very often. Another great talisman for this build isLord of Blood’s Exultationwhich increases your attack power by 20% for 20 seconds after a target nearby to you has sufferedBlood Loss. However, you can’t get it at this point in the game. I don’t want to go into spoilers with the story but I feel like that’s an end game item so I didn’t include it in this build but if you see an endgame version of this build it will include that talisman.
So as I mentioned earlier the two spells we use for this build areBloodflame BladeandFlame, Grant Me Strength. These require 10Arcaneand 12FaithforBloodflame Bladeand 15FaithforFlame, Grant Me Strength.Flame, Grant Me Strengthdoesn’t increase in damage no matter what you do. It’s going to give you 20% more physical damage and 20% more fire damage for 30 seconds.
There’s no way to increase that damage so you don’t have to worry about increasing yourFaithit’s one of the reasons we use it for this build because we give ourselves just enoughFaithto be able to use this andBloodflame Bladeso we can increase our damage without having a significant investment inFaith.
This also applies to your bow so if you are planning on shooting things with your bow from outside of combat or you know triggering a fight make sure you buff yourself withFlame, Grant Me Strengthfirst, and then use your bow.Bloodflame Bladeis a fire buff you can use to enchant your weapon which is again a reason that we don’t make our weapon a damage type. We keep it physical so that we can use this spell and it applies 40% of your incantation scaling to your weapon for 60 seconds so it’s about double the length ofFlame, Grant Me Strengthwhich is fantastic but that’s not the only thing that it does.
On top of that it makes it so that your bleed build up continues to build up for a period of time after your attack ends. Normally when you hit an enemy with a weapon that has bleed build up on it they just take as much on their bar you know it fills up as much of their bar as it would and then the second you stop attacking it starts to drain but with this buff on it continues to go up for a position to attack again before it starts draining so it makes it a lot easier to procHemorrhageon enemies ripping off huge chunks of their health and what’s really good about this spell is because it adds fire damage to your weapon and you’re usingFlame, Grant Me Strengthwhich adds physical damage and fire damage that’s actually buffing the fire damage from this as well.
You can add other spells to this build and over time you may add a little bit moreFaithin order to get other buffs likeBlessing’s Boonthat’ll give you a heal over time which will help keep your health topped off which will then allow you to get that 10% damage increase more often but at this point in the game you just don’t have the points for that.
Talking about the stats I have for this build I have 28Vigor, 20Mind, 18Endurance, 40Strength, 40Dexterity, 15Faith, and 12Arcane.
So theVigorI wanted to get as much as I could here I’d like to have more than 28 at this point but you’re definitely going to want to increase this throughout the game to at least 40 or 50 probably by level 50.
We have our damage increased pretty high withStrengthandDexterityso from this point forward playing this build you’re probably going to want to increaseVigorandMinda lot more than you areStrengthandDexterity. That will allow you to use your Bow ability more often and yourUnsheathemore often and cast your spells without chugging pots as much and that’ll free you up to have more health flasks which will keep your health topped off as well.
Enduranceis just enough to use the armor and weapons that we’re using in mid-roll. If you have different armor pieces or slightly different talismans the exact amount ofEnduranceyou need for this might change by a few points so keep that inMindthat that might vary a little bit for you depending on what armor you’re using.
StrengthandDexteritypretty simply increases Bow damage and increases damage for ourNagakibaso we want those to be as high as we can get away with. I have noticed at this point though that there is a bit of a drop-off in damage compared to about level 30-35 points intoStrengthandDexterityso you’ll have to pay attention and see how much damage you’re getting because at some point it’s probably not going to be as worth it as to just crank bigger or something like that.
Faithis at 15 which is exactly enough to useFlame, Grant Me Strengthis why we have it there and 12Arcaneis actually too much you only need 10 for theBloodflame Bladespell but I used a helmet that gave me 3 when I had 9 so I have 12 so you don’t need more than 10 but that’s what it is there.
Just a couple of final tips with this build you can also coat your blade with other things if you use other greases. One of the things that’s great about having a physical damage weapon in this game is being able to be flexible with what you want for instance if you’re playing against something weak to lightning you can useLightning Greaseon your weapon orDragonwound Greaseon it if it’s a dragon so don’t be afraid to use other things as well. Also in the same vein, there are other arrows you can use besides the great arrows that I’m using with this build so you can experiment around with those.
The locations of those are on the wiki I don’t know what they all are off the top of my head but they do various things like magic damage or more damage etc so don’t be afraid to use those as well if the situation calls for them. That pretty much wraps up our Blazing Bushido 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.
