Elden Ring Starscourge Greatsword Build Guide - Starscourge
May. 1, 2024Elden Ring Starscourge Greatsword Build Guide – Starscourge
In this Elden Ring Starscourge Greatsword Guide, I’ll be showing you my Starscourge build. This is an NG+ build that focuses on the use of the Starscourge Greatsword, and sort of cosplays General Radahn a bit.
A Strength Build that uses the Starscourge Greatsword and its devastating weapon skill: Starcaller Cry.
We have over 110Elden Ring Buildsnow, for all classes and playstyles. This Build is recommended for Level 150-200.
I decided to make this as an NG+ build becauseStarscourge Greatswordhas a high requirement – 38 STR, 12 DEX, and 15 INT, while having a weight of 20. If you’re going to use General Radahn Set for you armor, it’s also a heavy armor set. The weapon skill,Starcaller Cry, costs 20 FP to use the shout and another 20 to use the default attack. Not only do you need Vigor, but you also need Mind, Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. That spreads out your stats way too thin, and that’s with not having Endurance at all. You need a lot of attribute points to make this build function.
TheStarscourge Greatswordis a pairedColossal Weapon, which is one of the few paired weapons in this game. A paired weapon only takes up one weapon slot, but it’ll dual wield once you use it two-handed. This allows you to do jump attacks very easily with colossal weapons as you’ll have a lower equip load than when you are dual wielding. This frees up your offhand slot in order to use another weapon that has some sort of benefit to you.
For our offhand, we’ll be using aSacrificial Axein order to get our FP back. The FP cost of this weapon skill is so tremendous, so we’re doing whatever we can to get that FP back. Having the Starscourge Greatsword allows us to slot this on our offhand and gain the bonus of the Sacrificial Sword without ever using it.
Starscourge Greatsword has an okay damage. I’m not going to say it has the highest damage in the game, but the weapon skill is fantastic. It has a huge AoE radius, which usually staggers enemies when it grabs them. It then pulls the enemies towards you, and that’s when you do the follow-up with L2. This deals a huge amount of physical and magic damage, though it’s mostly physical damage. It matches the attack power of your weapon, and it deals about 60-70% physical, 30-40% magic damage depending on the shout in the attack.
There are a couple of ways to increase the damage of the weapon skill. Primarily, theShard of Alexander, which increases the damage we have here. Another way is to use theRoar Medallion, which only impacts the first part of the weapon skill. If you also use theHighland Axeinstead of the Sacrificial Axe in our offhand, it will also increase the damage of the first part of the weapon skill. However, I find that the damage of the shout is so low, that increasing it would not be significant.
At the beginning of an NG+ playthrough, it’s possible to one-shot enemies with the weapon skill even without the Roar Medallion. However, as you progress further into the game, you’re going to need to use the Roar Medallion. You can use it for a stretch of the game, but I don’t recommend using it for all of NG+.
I use theRotten Winged Sword InsigniaandMillicent’s Prosthesisfor this build. You won’t have both of this at this point in the game unless someone drops you one, which is fine. If not, you can use theWinged Sword Insigniain place of the Rotten Winged Sword Insignia.
The reason for this is that when you shout and hit a bunch of enemies, it triggers these talismans which then increases your attack power, which then increases the damage of your follow-up attack. Your attack power is going to skyrocket if you use it on multiple enemies. It’s a better way to get you further into NG+. You’re going to have to finish enemies off with the follow-up attack, as you aren’t going to kill them with the shout. When you hit multiple enemies, your damage can go up to 3,000 damage. That’s almost a 50% damage increase, compared to having a tiny damage boost from Roar Medallion.
In my last talisman slot isGreat-Jar’s Arsenal. This allows you to do a medium roll with the amount of Endurance we have. We have 40 Endurance, which is actually 2 points more than what is required to do a medium roll with our equipment. We’ll be increasing our Endurance later on for a reason, but this is what will allow you to use a medium roll.
The way I play this Starscourge Greatsword build is that I just use regular attacks or jump attacks on trash mobs. I’ll sometimes run around, aggro a bunch of enemies, try to group them up, then useStarcaller Cryto finish them off quickly. You don’t have to be careful with this build compared to other ones, as you don’t have to pick things off one by one.
If you’re fighting a difficult enemy or a boss, depending on how aggressive they are, I start out with a Starcaller Cry when they’re just on the edge of the AoE. By the time that they get to me, I’m already doing the follow-up attack. That way, if they have a heavy attack, I wouldn’t be staggered out of the spell. In some cases, it can be quite difficult against certain enemies in order to get that follow-up attack off.
You can also do jump attacks effectively on bosses. It isn’t a lot of damage, but it will actually trigger Winged Sword Insignia, Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, and Millicent’s Prosthesis. It’ll boost your damage by about 100 attack power, and another follow-up attack will boost it by another 100 or 200 attack power. Your damage actually builds up a lot quicker than you would think.
When it comes to the attributes for this Starscourge Greatsword build, I have: 50Vigor, 30Mind, 40Endurance, 70Strength, 22Dexterity, 16Intelligence, 7Faith, and 9Arcane. You don’t need any Faith or Arcane for this build, so you can disregard these attributes.
50 Vigor is enough at this point. You’re going to want to increase this to 60 as you progress through NG+, but you have good armor with this build. You’re not trying to trade damage as much as it might seem with this build because you’re trying to attack enemies first before they can hit you. You’re going to have that extra Poise in case they do, but you’re not really trying to trade hits.
30 Mind is there because Starcaller Cry is very expensive. We don’t haveCarian Filigreed Cresthere because this is a talisman-hungry build. There just isn’t a slot available for it, otherwise that would be helpful to reduce some of the FP cost that we need. You’re going to need a lot of Mind as you progress through NG+, so you probably want to increase it to 35 or even 40. It doesn’t really need to go too much higher at this point because you can recover with flasks, and you can make it to checkpoints with that amount of FP.
We have 40 Endurance here, which is 2 more points than what you need to do a medium roll. At some point, your damage is going to cap out on your weapon, and a good way to increase it is by removing Great-Jar’s Arsenal then puttingClaw Talismanto further increase your jump attack damage. It’ll give you a 15% increase, so you need to get your Endurance up a bit higher, probably at around 50 so you can remove Great-Jar’s Arsenal and still do a medium roll.
70 Strength is there because we need a lot of STR. This weapon scales best with STR in order to increase its damage. At 22 DEX, after 50 STR, DEX actually outperforms STR, but STR keeps outperforming DEX all the way up to 80. You’ll continue increasing your DEX to 50 once you get to 80 STR. After that, you can increase your Intelligence to 50. This will probably happen when you’re in NG++, but at this point, you don’t really need a lot more damage. INT is the worst of the three attributes that scale with this weapon, so you should be increasing it last.
If you’re using theFlask of Wondrous Physick, I recommend using theMagic-Shrouding Cracked Tearto increase your magic damage. You don’t deal 100% magic damage, so it’s not as effective as it would be in some builds, but it’s going to give you a good amount of damage. If you don’t want that one, you can either slotDexterity-knot Crystal TearorIntelligence-knot Crystal Tearto boost your damage, since I don’t see the point of boosting your Strength after it reaches 80.
Another tear I want to recommend is theGreenburst Crystal Tear. This is a stamina-hungry build, even with as much stamina as we have. We have 40 Endurance, but your stamina is still going to run out fast. You want it to come back quickly, particularly in boss fights where you’re spamming Starcaller Cry.
Lastly, for your Great Runes,Godrick’s Great Runeis the perfect rune for you here. You’re using 6 of the 8 attributes, and it will help alleviate some of that pressure on you. It’ll also increase your damage with the additional attributes.
That’s it for our Starscourge Greatsword 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.
