Elden Ring Velvet Sword of St. Trina Build - Swordsman of St. Trina (Shadow of the Erdtree)
Jul. 15, 2024Elden Ring Velvet Sword of St. Trina Build – Swordsman of St. Trina (Shadow of the Erdtree)
In this Elden Ring Sword of St. Trina Guide, I’ll be showing you my Swordsman of St. Trina build. This is a level 150 build that uses the Velvet Sword of St. Trina, which is a new sword from the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. This sword has similar stats to the Sword of St. Trina, but a little bit better overall.
A melee build that utilizes the newEternal Sleepstatus effect on enemies with the Velvet Sword of St. Trina, and theFrostbitestatus effect with the cold-infused Lordsworn’s Straight Sword.
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The main differences between theVelvet Sword of St. Trinaand theSword of St. Trinais that the Velvet Sword does more magic damage, while the regular does more physical damage. The rating of the Velvet Sword of St. Trina is 110 vs. 100 on the Sword of St. Trina, so it’s better for backstabs and critical attacks over the original sword. The Velvet Sword of St. Trina doesEternal Sleepbuild-up instead of Sleep build-up.
Something that’s worth noting aboutSleepandEternal Sleepis that these two status effects share the same build-up bar. For instance, if you attack using the Sword of St. Trina to build-up the Sleep status effect, then use the Velvet Sword of St. Trina to finish the build-up, Eternal Sleep will be triggered instead of the normal Sleep status effect, and vice versa.
Eternal Sleepmakes it so that you can attack the enemy for around 5 seconds before they start waking up. In my testing, if you’re attacking with theVelvet Sword of St. Trinawhile the enemy is asleep, you will still do Eternal Sleep build-up, so they will stay asleep if you attack them. You can only build-up Eternal Sleep on enemies that can be affected by Sleep, such asBlack Knights. I also found out in my testing that the enemies that shake off Sleep will finish their attack chain or any animation before it will take effect.
Another reason we’re using the Velvet Sword of St. Trina is to take advantage of that higher Critical Rating. What can happen sometimes is you can block counter an enemy or a boss, then they go into stance break while having the Sleep status effect on them. Since they haven’t been able to do the animation of the Eternal Sleep, it’s still going to be on them when you get up off the ground from your critical attack. The enemy will then try to shake it off after getting off of the ground, giving you a couple more seconds to do a heavy attack or backstab depending on the boss.
If you’re using the regular Sleep status effect, you will remove the Sleep status from them when they stand up, which will not give you extra time to attack. This then means thatEternal Sleepworks better thanSleep, even on enemies that can shake it off.
However, the major problem with the Sleep status effect is that a lot of enemies are immune to it. So, what I’ve done with this build is that you could use another weapon on enemies, although you can use this weapon 100% of the time.
The weapon you could alternate with would be a cold-infusedLordsworn’s Straight Swordalong with theAsh of War: Square Off, which fits the Block Counter theme of this build. It has a very similar scaling to the Velvet Sword of St. Trina, so you are still going to have an optimal damage output with it when you swap back and forth between these weapons. When I’m out on the landscape, I’m using the Lordsworn’s Straight Sword because most enemies aren’t going to trigger sleep before dying, so there’s no real reason to use sleep on regular enemies. If you’re having a hard time guessing which enemies and bosses are immune to sleep, you may check out theElden Ring Wikifor enemy information.
For my off-hand, I will be using theCrossed-Tree Towershield. It doesn’t really matter which Towershield orGreatshieldyou’ll be using, as we’ll be using this for Guard Counters, which is what Greatshields are generally good at.
Armor-wise, you can use whichever armor you think would fit in with this build. I’m using three pieces of theScaled Setalong with theSt. Trina’s Blossomfor my headgear to complete the St. Trina theme here. You don’t have to use this headgear, as it isn’t a very protective helmet. It does give you increased FP to use spells or weapon skills. The weapon skill FP cost isn’t an issue in this build, as we don’t use it that often. You just want to makae sure that you are wearing armor that gives 51 Poise or higher, so you don’t get interrupted during Block Counters.
One more thing I would like to note for the equipment is thatMists of Eternal Sleepseems to do about 70 Eternal Sleep build-up with the spray. If you connect with the Velvet Sword of St. Trina, you get an extra 42. Theoretically, adding it all up would be 112 Eternal Sleep build-up, while adding 15 more Eternal Sleep build-up on your weapon for around 30 seconds. You don’t really need to use the weapon skill while your weapon is buffed because two R1 attacks is going to give you the same amount of Sleep build-up.
The talismans for this build are:Two-Headed Turtle Talisman,Blade of Mercy,Dagger Talisman, andSt. Trina’s Smile.
We’re using theTwo-Headed Turtle Talismanas we’re playing as a Block Counter build, and we attack a lot with this build, so you really can’t have too much stamina or stamina recovery. When bosses are super aggressive attacking into your shield constantly, you’re going to need stamina to block, attack, and do block counters. Getting that stamina to continuously recover quickly is important.
TheBlade of Mercyis going to increase your damage for a good amount of time after doing a Critical Strike on an enemy. If you backstab, stance break, or parry an enemy, then going for a critical strike, you are going to boost your damage. Since we’re going for block counters and stance breaks on bosses regardless of which sword we’re using, having this talisman equipped works out really well.
I’m also using theDagger Talisman, as it is good for adding critical damage. When you Stance Break an enemy, you can get more damage off of it with the Dagger Talisman. Both of the weapons we’re using can Stance Break easily because we’re going for Block Counters and Square Off, so you will be doing critical damage fairly often. Alternatively, you could use theCurved Sword Talismanfor more Block Counter damage. Both of these talismans are viable options.
Another talisman that you will use when you are trying to set Sleep on a boss, or a difficult enemy isSt. Trina’s Smile. This will increase your attack power by 20% for about 30 seconds. This, however, is very situational, so you’ll probably swap this out in boss fights because you won’t need it there. You’ll usually swap it out for Crusade Insignia to deal more damage when you’re out on the landscape.
Other talismans you can for this build areMillicent’s Prosthesisor theRotten Winged Sword Insignia. You tend to do a lot of attacks with this build quickly. Even R1 attacks one-handed tend to build up your attack power quickly, and this weapon scales predominantly with Dexterity. So having the extra Dexterity from Millicent’s Prosthesis is good to have.
For this build, at level 153, I have: 55Vigor, 24Mind, 37Endurance, 30Strength, 50Dexterity, 20Intelligence, 7Faith, and 9Arcane. You can disregard the 7 Faith and 9 Arcane, as these stats are only there because of my starting class. You don’t need any Faith or Arcane for this build at all.
55 Vigor is there in order to not die and trade hits. For Mind, we have 24 here because you don’t really need a lot of Mind for this build. You’re using your weapon skill periodically, and neither one of these are expensive, so you won’t be needing more than 24 Mind. 37 Endurance is for us to still be able to do a medium roll with the equipment that we’re wearing.
I also have 30 Strength, 50 Dexterity, and 20 Intelligence. This is right around the highest attack rating with these stats that I could get with 100 points invested. If you take five points out of Strength and put it into Dexterity, you’ll have one more attack rating. However, putting it into Strength instead makes us able to use a Towershield orGreatshieldmore easily. Intelligence and Strength doesn’t have great scaling, so Dexterity is the best-scaling out of all the three stats. Eventually, you’ll want to increase Strength and Intelligence to get more damage out of this weapon.
For theFlask of Wondrous Physick, I use theOpaline Hardtearfor extra protection, and theGreenburst Crystal Tearfor stamina recovery as you can’t have enough stamina recovery for this build.Thorny Cracked Tearis also not bad for repeated attacks to get your attack power up which depends on how aggressively you are playing.
You can also use theDeflecting Hardtearif you’re good with your block timing. If you block just right before getting hit, it’s going to give you extra Guard Boost and increase your Block Counter damage.
As for the Great Runes, you’ll want to useRadahn’s Great Runefor the extra health and stamina, orMorgott’s Great Rune for that extra heal. Either of these would be good for this build.
Lastly, if you want to dual wield both theVelvet Sword of St. Trinaand theSword of St. Trina, it’s totally viable to do that. You can build up attack power quickly if you’re using talismans such asRotten Winged Sword InsigniaorMillicent’s Prosthesis. However, you might sometimes trigger the regularSleepstatus effect instead of Eternal Sleep when dual wielding. I also tried dual wielding with the cold-infusedLordsworn’s Straight Sword, but I just didn’t apply enough Frostbite or Sleep.
That’s it for our Swordsman of St. Trina 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.
