Elden Ring Berserker Guide: Vagabond Build for Beginners

Elden Ring Class Choices for the Berserker Build

The two Classes you can use to make this build are Vagabond and Hero. I personally chose Vagabond – it doesn’t really matter too much which you choose, your stat spreads are not going to be that much different. You’re still going to have to put some points here and there. It is worth noting that the Vagabond has more Dexterity to start with so you’ll be dual-wielding faster and getting your Weapon requirements faster, but you could do either of these classes.

Elden Ring Berserker Build Equipment

Once you begin the game, the first thing that you’re going to want to do is go pick up the Lordsworn’s Greatsword. This is in the Gatefront Ruins, in the chest there on the back of a carriage. Make sure you grab the Whetstone Knife in the ruins there as well, down the steps. That way you can easily put an Ash of War on the weapon if you want.

For your other weapon, you need to pick up the Claymore which is located in Castle Morne. This is an item that you don’t even have to kill anything to get – you just go into Castle Morne and run by the enemies there to the left of the pyre mound. Go into the doorway there on the right side and on the left immediately through that doorway is a chest. It’s got the Claymore inside so now you can dual-wield Greatswords and you’re really starting to pack a punch.

Upgrading Your Greatswords

You’re going to want to get these upgraded right away. Again there is the statue up there on Stormhill that, if you get the trolls to destroy, has up to six upgrade materials in it. The Limgrave Tunnels as well have a lot of upgrade materials, so go ahead and get those. If you need more, because you’re going to want to upgrade both of these weapons, you can farm the soldiers at the Gatefront Ruins. They drop them but it’s a pretty low drop rate. Even if you kill the whole camp you usually get about one maybe, but that still is a way you can farm some early on if you’re having trouble getting them. Remember that some merchants have these as well, so you might be able to buy some.

Berserker Build Talismans of Choice

• Erdtree’s Favor
• Claw Talisman

For Talismans, you’re going to want to pick up the Erdtree’s Favor this is located in Fringefolk Hero’s Grave which is where that gargoyle statue is right at the beginning of the game with that kind of white fog there. If you have 2 Stonesword Keys – if you took one as your Keepsake, you can go down there immediately after you get a second one. If you took a Golden Seed, which is what I usually recommend taking for the extra flask, you’ll need to find two. These aren’t hard to find – they’re all over the place, and you don’t even have to kill some enemies. If you go up the hill in Stormhill there’s one right next to the NPC up there. You can just pick up and go in there so that’s really easy to get.

You want to go down there and there’s going to be an area where the ramp narrows as you’re going down, where you can fall off the other side to your death. If you look carefully as you approach it, you can drop right over the lip there’s sort of a hidden area down there. If you make your way down, you’ll find the Erdtree’s Favor lying on the ground. It’s guarded by two really tough enemies, so I don’t suggest trying to fight them. Just run by them, pick it up – die if you have to (make sure you don’t have any runes on you when you go down there), and then you’ll have this really good Talisman that boosts your health, Stamina, and your equipment load. In terms of sequence, you can technically get this Talisman first before you even get your Claymore to get these boosts a little earlier.

The other Talisman that is really good for this build is called the Claw Talisman, but you’re not going to get it until later on. I’m just going to mention it here because it should be something you strive for eventually and it’s not too far into the game. This Talisman enhances your jump attacks, you do jump attacks with this build all the time. In fact, if you’re not jumping attacking, you’re not doing this build right. It is devastating to jump attack with two weapons. So, get the Claw Talisman when you can. It’s located in Stormveil Castle and its exact location can be found on the wiki.

Elden Ring Berserker Build Attribute Recommendations

Talking about Attributes, in terms of Strength and Dexterity, you initially want just enough in order to meet the requirements for the Claymore. You should actually have the Dexterity requirement for that and the Lordsworn’s Greatsword by default so all you really need to do now is get to 16 Strength pretty quick, and you’ll be able to use both of these weapons at the same time no problem. Once you’ve done that, I like to get my Vigor up to 15 first quickly and then start cranking Endurance.

Endurance is not only going to give you more Stamina which is great because you’re jumping around, rolling around, and attacking with two huge weapons that chew up Stamina. It also increases your equip weight allowing you to use heavier armor which is going to protect you because this is a very aggressive build, and you’re going to trade damage a lot of times with this build in order to speed up fights, which is fine. You’ll want to make sure you reduce the amount of damage you take and you also want to be able to medium roll, because if you are in that heavy roll range, you’re going to fat roll which isn’t ideal so make sure that you increase your Endurance so that you can wear heavy armor, wield both weapons, and still medium roll.

Eventually, you’re going to want to get Vigor up to 20 and Endurance up to 20. At that point, you can start cranking Strength up to maximize your damage and really go to town as a Berserker.

Berserker Build Core Attributes:

• Get the required Strength and Dexterity points for wielding your Greatswords
• Get Vigor and Endurance to 20 for optimal health, stamina, and equip load
• Put everything into Strength for maximum Berserker damage

Elden Ring Berserker Build Gameplay

So the way this build works is that when you’re dual-wielding these weapons you’re using the L1 button to attack with both at the same time. They attack slightly slower than you would if you hit R1, which makes you swing with only your right-hand weapon. There are scenarios where you may want to swing faster, like if you’re fighting dogs or a very fast enemy, like those little in guys in the catacombs that comes after you (Imps). You might need to swing quickly so he doesn’t stagger you before you swing, and that’s a scenario where you might use R1.

Most of the time, however, you’re going to be using L1 in order to hit with both weapons at the same time, which is what really makes the damage of the build sing. Beyond that, jumping attacks are what make this build really work, and you’re going to want to jump and use L1 constantly. You can one-shot many enemies by doing it – just jump-L1 from one enemy to the next. You’ll be hopping all over the screen, and it’s quite fun. You’re going to play very aggressively with this build.

What’s really great is, when you’re fighting bosses and stuff and you close the distance and jump in, you don’t necessarily have to wait for bosses to swing. You can start fights sometimes and actually bring the fight to them by jump-attacking and then reacting to what they do by rolling away or repositioning. A lot of times, they’ll swing horizontally when you jump and they’ll go right underneath you, allowing you to land on them and attack them, which is great. And sometimes you can get another attack off, but you just need to watch and pay attention to what they do.

Elden Ring Berserker Build Advanced Tips

Utilize Greases

One good tip for this build is that you can actually buff your weapons with Greases. There are a lot of greases you can find all over the game, and you can craft them as you pick up items. The recipes for them are on the Armorer’s Cookbooks. Armorer’s Cookbook (1) is located where the bandit mercenary camp is, near Gatefront Ruins – just go over to Stormhill a little ways and you’ll find the bandits running around there and the cookbook is in their camp. That allows you to craft Fire Grease which you can buff your weapon with with additional fire damage and increase your damage output.

Optimizing Ashes of War

Another really great thing about this build is that you have complete freedom to choose whichever Ashes of War you want to put on. There are so many different Ashes of War you can choose from, but make sure you put it on your right-hand weapon. That way when you hit L2, you’ll use it. War Cry is really good for boosting your damage, but just keep in mind that if you use it you can’t use Fire Grease together with it. I personally really like Quickstep – I find that I don’t need it all the time but it’s really nice to have, particularly on tough boss fights where you can just dodge out of the way, attack, then dodge out of the way again, and attack. With Quickstep, it’s really fun. And if you happen to PVP, I imagine this would be absolutely devastating as well – you just troll people with a Quickstep. It costs almost no FP, and you also don’t need any FP flasks for this build. You’re going to go like 95% health or 100% health with zero FP flasks for this build.

You can also actually change the scaling on these weapons with your Ashes of War and use the ‘Heavy’ versions that scale better with strength than the ‘Standard’ that they start with. So, change them to Heavy eventually, but early on if you change them to heavy you’ll actually do less damage so there’s no reason to change them from standard at the beginning of the game.

Berserking with your Mount

Lastly, this build works exceptionally well on horseback. The Claymore has just a fantastic moveset on horseback. It’s really easy to hit enemies and has really large hitboxes. You’re going to find that mounted combat on horseback is very easy with this build.

So that’s my Berserker Build! It is absolutely devastating – if you like Strength-based bills you should definitely give it a try. Dual-wielding these weapons is quite strong in the early-game, and these are two weapons you can do it with. As always, let us know what you think in the comments below. If you need help finding items, and securing some personal objectives, make sure to check the Elden Ring Map.