Elden Ring Crystal Sorceries Mage Build Guide

Elden Ring Crystal Mage Build Guide – Equipment

The staff that you’re going to use is a huge part of playing a mage. There are various points in the game where different staffs outperform others, where you don’t generally have infinite upgrade materials until end of the game. So picking the right one is important.

What I did for this guide is that I went ahead and set my Intelligence to 70, took off all my equipment, and upgraded every single staff to 25 that you can get at this point in the game. That is a single Intelligence scaling staff. I wasn’t interested in staffs that scale with intelligence and arcane or intelligence and faith because we’re not using them for this build. So I got every single one that you can use at this point in the game. That’s not what I would consider endgame.

I upgraded it to max and tested it at level 75. And I’m going to run you through my findings so you can understand what you want to shoot for. Keep in mind that because in this build we actually have 52 Intelligence, the results might be slightly different in terms of which staff is best. However, since you’re going to be aiming for about 70 Intelligence at endgame with this build, then you’ll know what to aim for when you get there.

The single most powerful staff you can use at 70 Intelligence fully maxed out is Lusat’s Glintstone Staff. This will outperform every other staff except for the staff of loss when it’s using invisibility sorceries in every scenario. That means it will outperform Carian Regal Scepter and every other staff that’s even boosting its own school of magic when you’re casting those spells. So if you want maximum damage for a single attribute in terms of intelligence staff, this is the one to use.

The downside to this is that the damage that it deals is not 50% more compared to the Carian Regal Scepter, which is basically the runner-up here. It only does about, I want to say, 10 to 15% more damage than that staff at a cost of 50% FP. So if you really need damage, it’s definitely something you can use. But I don’t recommend using it like as you go through a level or dungeons or anything like that, as it’s going to drain your FP rapidly and you’re going to have FP management issues.

As previously mentioned, FP management is a huge part of playing a mage. You don’t want to run out of flasks between checkpoints and then be doing nothing or be ineffective. So this is not something I recommend using as you go through levels and things, but you may want to consider using it in boss fights where you’re trying to burn something down quickly. It just really depends. It’s not personally a staff that I like to use, but you can use it if you really want the damage.

Keep in Mind that the further you progress into the game and the more you increase your Mind, your FP pool is going to grow. And then this is going to become less and less of an issue. And you might actually get to a point where it doesn’t matter.

In second place is the Carian Regal Scepter. It’s about 10% lower than Lusat’s on average, and it’s probably the best staff if you’re mixing all kinds of sorceries together as it’s going to give you the best overall performance. However, it requires 60 Intelligence to use, so you won’t be able to use it at this point of the game unless you’re really going glass cannon.

It does lose out to other staves that are using magic from the school that they buff. For instance, if a staff boosts invisibility sorcery like the Staff of Loss, it will actually outperform the Carian Regal Scepter when casting those spells, but only those spells. And this is, of course, true for the other schools as well. So if you plan to sort of specialize in one school like Glintblade Sorceries, for instance, because there are a lot of those, you may want to use the staff that buffs those.

This basically left me with two options at this point of the game because I don’t like using Lusat’s Glintstone Staff and we can’t get the Carian Regal Scepter. So the next two best staffs, which are basically a tie, are the Academy Glintstone Staff and the Crystal Staff.

The Academy Glintstone Staff doesn’t boost any sorceries at all. It just has very good damage in general. But the Crystal Staff does about the same damage as it, maybe just slightly one hair more for regular spells. But it also boosts crystal sorceries, which I really happen to like in this build. So that’s why I chose this staff.

The two crystal spells I actually use in this build are Crystal Torrent and Crystal Release. Crystal Torrent is sort of like a channel that you hold down, kind of like Comet Azur that just keeps shooting crystals out. And it is an absolute beast. It’s an absolute boss melter. And if you’re playing in co-op or you can get the drop on a boss and set up for it ahead of time, you can absolutely shred their health bar before they even get a chance to respond.

Crystal Release is kind of like a shotgun blast in front of you with a bunch of projectiles and hits in a really wide area and deals really good damage. And it’s really good against big enemies like Gargoyles or any sort of big enemy like the big dragons or the big worm type enemies. It absolutely melts them because it hits them with all the projectiles or most of them whenever you use it. And you can charge this up for increased damage as well, which is great.

I also use the Jellyfish Shield with this build. You probably saw this in the Battle Mage build. This is because it buffs all your damage by 20% while you have the buff up, which lasts about 30 seconds and costs 9 FP, which is great. It does require some Strength and Dexterity investment, which kind of sucks. But it also gives you an option to block, which is good. It’s a great shield, so it has pretty decent stability. And getting that buff up is going to help keep your damage up all the time. And it’s fast animation compared to some of the other buffs in the game, allowing you to do it mid-combat rather easily.

Elden Ring Crystal Mage Build Guide – Talismans

When it comes to talismans, I have the Ritual Sword Talisman, the Magic Scorpion Charm, the Dragoncrest Shield Talisman, and Godfrey Icon. I already explained the Ritual Sword Talisman.

This just gives you an extra 10% damage while your health is full. This applies to all your spells, which is great. So you want to try and keep your health full when you can. Magic Scorpion Charm is going to buff the damage of all your spells by about 10%, but it’s going to reduce your resistances, making it a little bit squishier, which kind of sucks.

 Dragoncrest Shield Talisman plus one is there in order to give you more protection. You have almost no physical protection if you don’t use this. I just felt it was too squishy. So I added this here. If you want maximum damage, you can replace this with something like Raven School Talisman to increase your sorcery damage. But I like the little extra protection here, and it allows you to get away with light armor and still gain some decent physical protection.

And lastly is Godfrey Icon, which increases the damage of your charged spells by about 15%. There are a lot of charged spells in this build, so you take advantage of that all the time.

Elden Ring Crystal Mage Build Guide – Spells

The first spell we use in this build is Glintstone Pebble. No surprise here. The reason that we use this is because it’s very mana-efficient. You don’t need it all the time, but sometimes you need to pick off some weaker enemies and using seven FP to do it instead of like 12 or 15 or 19 or whatever. It’s just a good way to conserve FP. Again, as your Mind gets higher and higher, this becomes less of an issue. But it’s good to have at this point in the game.

I also like it over Swift Glintstone Shard because Swift Glintstone Shard, although it casts faster, has very short range. And as a pure mage, I like to stay as far away from my enemies as possible. Next up is Great Glintstone Shard. This was buffed in 1.03 and making the speed of it faster and the distance further, which was a big improvement because it was almost unusable the way it was.

This is what I default to out on the landscape and when I’m traveling around exploring areas, because it does more damage, about 40% or so more than Glintstone Pebble. And it costs a bit more FP, but getting that extra 40% damage or so in one cast is great. And that’ll usually allow you to one shot like regular enemies.

Next up, we have Comet, which is kind of like the king of these sort of projectile spells. It’s why we need 52 Intelligence in order to use this spell. It deals good damage, has a good range, and you can charge it for even further range and to make it deal more damage and pierce enemies. However, it’s not extremely mana efficient, so you only want to use it when you need to shell out a lot of damage in a hurry or when you’re trying to pick something off that’s kind of far away that Glintstone Pebble just won’t cut it.

Glintstone Cometshard is actually much more FP efficient than Comet, and I can see why people would be tempted to use it. But generally what I have found is because the damage between Glintstone Cometshard and Great Glintstone Shard is kind of similar, it’s a little bit more for Glintstone Cometshard, that I end up, if I can kill something in two Great Glintstone Shards, it ends up being about two Glintstone Cometshards as well. 

But because Comet is a bit more damaged than that, even sometimes I can kill something in one Comet or two Great Glintstone Shards. And since Comet is basically just a little over double Great Glintstone Shard, I’m not really losing out too much FP there. Whereas if you’re using two Glintstone Comet Shards, that’s 38 FP, and that is not very mana efficient at all.

Additionally, we use Terra Magica over this build. It’s not something you’ll use very often. You’ll use it probably most in co-op situations or where you’re setting yourself up to go through a boss fight, or maybe an area where you have to range down a lot of enemies in a particular time. But it does have its uses and it increases your magic damage by 35% for 30 seconds, which is great.

Next up is Shattering Crystal, and this is sort of the shotgun spell that I mentioned earlier. I think I accidentally called it Crystal Release, but this is the one I was referring to. It hits in a big AoE in front of you. It’s really good against big enemies, and it’s good in groups too. Like if you’re trying to range down a group of enemies, it has quite a good spread. So it’s a good AoE ability, and you don’t have too many AoE spells with this build. So you’ll definitely want to use this when you’re AoEing.

Crystal Torrent is your channel ability that just shreds. Again, it works really well in co-op situations or situations where you have time to prepare before a boss, like out on the field or maybe right when you walk through a boss fog while it’s walking toward you. We also have Rock’s Length with this build. This is our one physical damage spell. It’s great for situations where something is magic-resistant, and it also does good stagger damage.

So if you have an enemy that you can lock onto the head of, this will knock them down very quickly, like dragons or something like that. Or a golem, if you can lock onto their ankles, that’s their weak spot. It’ll knock them down. So make sure when you know that you can lock onto like a head or a weak spot of an enemy that you’re using this ability to knock things down. And lastly, I have Roiling Magma here, which is a fire spell that kind of flings a projectile that deals decent fire damage.

And again, it’s really here for bosses that are magic-resistant. You don’t want to get into a boss fight and just be completely useless. So you’re going to use this against like the Erdtree type enemies. These guys are very weak to fire, so it’s good against them. And one particular interesting thing about this, if you actually hit the ground instead of the target, it’ll sort of put like a projectile thing down there that like times and then explodes and puts magma all over the ground. And enemies seem to be lured towards it.

So when you’re using it generally, it can’t always be helped. But you want to try and aim for the ground if you can.

Elden Ring Crystal Mage Build Guide – Recommended Attributes Distribution

When it comes to attributes for this build, I have 27 Vigor, 35 Mind, 10 Endurance, 20 Strength, 14 Dexterity, 52 Intelligence, 14 Faith and 9 Arcane.

27 Vigor is much lower than I’d like. And as you improve this build and you go higher and higher towards 150, you’re going to want to get this up to at least 40 or 50. It’s basically as much points as I could put here.

 You could probably pull some out of Mind if you want to put them there, if you feel like you’re getting one shot. But I feel like if you do that, you’re going to have issues. So that’s why I put the Dragoncrest Shield Talisman in there to help give you some resistances so that you don’t die as easily. Mind is there in order to cast spells that will as you get spells that are stronger and better, they cast more FP And you’re going to want to be able to use them and not worry about your FP pool. 35 Mind is a really good spot. In my opinion, you have lots of FP to cast with, and because you’re going to have more blue flasks than red ones, you shouldn’t have any FP issues at all.

 We have 10 Endurance here, and admittedly, I would like to have more, not only for casting stamina, but equip load so that you can have better armor. But we just don’t have the points right now. 20 Strength is there to be able to meet the requirements of the Jellyfish Shield. So that’s why we have that. You definitely don’t want any more points than that. And same for Dexterity. It has a required a minimum of 14 points. So that’s why those are there.

You can actually use Radagon’s Soreseal here if you want to sacrifice a bit of damage on your character in order to get your Vigor and your Endurance up a bit in order to meet those points for Strength and Dexterity without having to invest points here. That might free up some more points to dump into Vigor if you want or put into Intelligence. I didn’t put it there because I feel like I really like the talismans that I have kind of attached to those ones. But it is an option if you want to do that.

Intelligence is 52 in order to meet the requirements for Comet, as I mentioned. And it’ll also increase your spell damage a lot. So you’re going to hit  hard at this point of the game. Faith needs to be at least 12 for a roiling magma for this build. It doesn’t need to be any higher than that. So if you have a different class than me, I started as a Confessor. You actually have a couple more points there that you can put into Vigor, which is good. And Arcane is completely irrelevant for this build.

 One thing that you could do as well, if you don’t like using the Jellyfish Shield, is that instead of putting points into Strength and Dexterity, you could put them into Faith in order to get Golden Vow. You don’t even have to upgrade a seal in order to cast this because it doesn’t affect the damage or the damage mitigation. So that’s a way to get 15% more damage and some protection. It’ll be a little bit less damage than the Jellyfish Shield, but you’ll have to buff less often and you won’t have to carry that shield around, which would be freeing up some equip weight. So if you’d rather do that than swap out the Jellyfish Shield, grab a seal instead and put some points into Faith.

That will also give you access to some spells that require Faith and Intelligence. One last tip before I wrap up this guide, you’re going to want to make sure to pop your Flask of Wondrous Physick before fighting a boss or a tough enemy. And you’re going to want to make sure you have the Magic-Shrouding Cracked Tear in there and Cerulean Hidden Tear. This is going to increase your magic damage by 30% for three minutes, which is great.

It’ll also eliminate all FP consumption for 10 seconds. So get your buffs up, walk through the fog, pop this potion and then use Crystal Torrent to absolutely nuke bosses because it consumes no FP for 10 seconds. And you can just hold it down that whole time as long as you have an opening. That wraps up this 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 and Shadow of the Erdtree so 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 the Elden Ring Map.