Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple Build Guide – Dark Knight

In this Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple Guide, I’ll be showing you my Dark Knight build. This is a level 150 Intelligence build that uses both melee and ranged attacks to take out enemies from any distance.

Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple Build Guide – Dark Knight

An Intelligence Build that power stances Greatswords to great effect, dealing high magic and physical damage in melee and at range.

We have over 110 Elden Ring Builds now, for all classes and playstyles. This build is recommended for level 150.

Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple Build – Equipment

The weapon we’ll be using on our right hand is Helphen’s Steeple. This is a Greatsword that does physical and magical damage. This scales predominantly with Intelliegence and a little bit of Strength. It has incredible magic damage which is good. Its weapon skill, Ruinous Ghostflame, adds a small amount of magic damage for 30 seconds while also building up Frostbite. When we pair this with the Dark Moon Greatsword, which also has this ability, it does magic damage and it also builds up Frostbite. You’re able to set the Frostbite status effect easily with these two weapons if you’re attacking with them in rapid succession.

One of the things I like about Ruinous Ghostflame is that the buff is very quick to cast, unlike Moonlight Greatsword which has a longer cast animation. You can cast Ruinous Ghostflame very easily in a fight, so you should try to keep this up 100% of the time. This is one of the reasons we keep it in our right hand, so that we can buff faster while we’re in combat. Moonlight Greatsword’s duration is at 60 seconds, which is the same as Ruinous Ghostflame. You can buff yourself with Ruinous Ghostflame after it expires while you’re in combat, as its cast time is very short. As for Moonlight Greatsword, it would be hard to pull it off, particularly if you’re fighting aggressive bosses. However, it’s not necessary to buff yourself with Moonlight Greatsword in order to get the Frostbite status effect, as long as you keep up Ruinous Ghostflame to have Frostbite on both weapons.

Additionally, we use the Staff of Loss in order to cast Night Shard and Night Comet. This staff boosts both of those sorceries by 30%, making it outperform other staves such as the Carian Regal Scepter. It’s going to do the most damage if you have the same amount of Intelligence for both staves. This also gives you a good amount of range damage as well as the melee damage that you have with the two Greatswords.

Another spell you can use with this Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple build is Terra Magica, which will increase your magic damage by 35% for 30 seconds if you stay inside it. This is really good if you’re going to range enemies down, or if you know you’re going to be fighting in a specific spot. It’s hard to use because it has a long cast animation, so this is something that you’ll probably pre-place before fighting a difficult enemy.

When it comes to armor, I’m using the Night’s Cavalry Set. I’ve altered the helm there and there’s two reasons for that. It gives really good protection, although it’s not the best protection in the game. It has substantial protection, and it also looks pretty awesome. If you’re playing a Dark Knight build, you should be looking like a Dark Knight. This armor fits that theme, along with the Night spells.

Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple Build – Talismans

The talismans we’ll be using for this Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple build are: Claw Talisman in our flex spot, Magic Scorpion Charm, Great-Jar’s Arsenal, and Primal Glintstone Blade.

I like to do a lot of jump attacks with these weapons, so you can use the Claw Talisman for this build. For specific sections of the game, I find that the Claw Talisman is one that I swap in and out depending on what I’m facing because you can do a jump attack on a lot of enemies, usually killing them in one attack. Sometimes, if you’re facing a difficult enemy that’s hard to do a jump attack on, maybe you’ll swap it out for something else like Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman in order to have more physical damage mitigation. You could also swap it out for Graven-Mass Talisman to increase your sorcery damage if you’re going to go through a stretch where you will rely on Night Comet or Night Shard. This can be good for boss fights where it’s easier at range.

Magic Scorpion Charm increases your damage with magic abilities, spells, or even regular attacks by 12%, which is great for this build. We have two Greatswords that deal both physical and magic damage, so it’s going to benefit that. However, it will increase the physical damage that we’ll take by 10%. If you don’t have the Magic Scorpion Charm, Ritual Sword Talisman is not a bad option.

Great-Jar’s Arsenal is there to give us more equip load. We’re wearing very heavy armor, carrying two Greatswords and a Staff, so we need the equip load in order to do a medium roll.

Lastly, we have the Primal Glintstone Blade. This reduces the FP cost of Night Comet by 25%, so it will go from 24 FP down to 18 FP, which is fantastic. You’re going to want to use this spell a lot, and 24 FP costs a lot considering we don’t have that much Mind because we’re not a pure caster build. This makes it a little bit easier. Keep in mind that this reduces your max health by 15%, and this is one of the reasons we have so much Vigor with this build in order to take hits and still be alive. However, you might want to swap this out for Green Turtle Talisman during boss fights where you need a little bit of health and stamina. Our spells and regular attacks consume a good amount of stamina, so you want to take all the increase in stamina or stamina recovery that you can get.

Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple Build – Gameplay

This is an extremely versatile Helphen’s Steeple build. You’ll probably find that when you’re facing bosses and tough enemies, you’re changing up your playstyle on the fly. Maybe you’ll run in with the dual Greatswords, and go in for jump attacks. The boss will then back away, so you’ll cast Night Comet. This build plays back and forth between the Greatswords and your spells, so it’s kind of a dynamic playstyle. It can be hard to master, specifically if you don’t know the enemies and their moveset that well. It will take a little bit to learn how to play this build, but it’s an absolute blast to play once you get it down.

Additionally, having the flexibility of doing jump attacks, regular attacks, and casting spells gives you a lot of things that you can do. You can handle a lot of different kinds of situations, and you can even add other spells in this build too. You have around 70 Intelligence with it, so spells are going to hit really hard. You could add Loretta’s Greatbow in here for even more range, although it’s not going to perform as good as if you’re using Carian Regal Scepter, as you’re using the Staff of Loss for that. It’ll still hit fairly hard, so you can add other spells if you want.

Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple Build – Attributes

The attributes for this Helphen’s Steeple build are: 50 Vigor, 30 Mind, 24 Endurance, 20 Strength, 12 Dexterity, 70 Intelligence, 14 Faith, and 9 Arcane. We won’t be needing any Dexterity, Faith, and Arcane for this build. These are the number on the attributes because of the class I started out with, so you can disregard these attributes. If you’re playing as a class that doesn’t have these attributes, you will have a better attribute spread. You can allocate those points towards Intelligence, up to 80. You don’t want to get too much higher than that.

50 Vigor is there because you are playing a melee-ranged hybrid character. You’re going to be in melee range, so you want to be able to take hits. When you do jump attacks with weapons, you will usually trade damage with enemies, so you want to be able to survive that and be able to heal.

30 Mind is there because you go through a lot of FP from casting all these spells and using some buffs on your weapons occasionally, so you want a decent-sized FP pool. You don’t really need much more than this because you can just allocate more FP flasks if you need them, but this is a good spot to be in.

24 Endurance is exactly enough to be able to dual wield both of Greatswords and Staff, wear the heavy armor, and still be able to do a medium roll. If you use a different armor which could be lighter or heavier, the points here will vary.

20 Strength is there to meet the requirements of the weapons. The highest requirement is 19 Strength, but I just put one extra point into it since I wanted to round it off.

70 Intelligence is there to increase the damage with our weapons and spells. The reason we don’t really increase Strength that much is because it doesn’t benefit the spells even though it benefits the weapons. We want to benefit both spells and weapons with our attributes, even if it has diminishing returns after 50 Intelligence for the weapon. It’s still going to boost spell damage, which is great, so you get the most bang for your buck out of Intelligence.

Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple Build – Final Tips

Remember to always re-buff yourself with Ruinous Ghostflame every 60 seconds while you’re in a battle. It’s not that hard to do once you get it down. The animation is rather short, so you can pull this off pretty easily in order to help you get that Frostbite build-up because it’ll deal like 10% of the enemy’s HP. It also makes you deal more damage against it.

I wouldn’t recommend trying to refresh your Moonlight Greatsword while fighting a boss, as it’s just too hard to swap to that offhand weapon and cast it. One thing you can do is to cast it before going into combat for a tough fight or a boss. Even if you have your Staff out in your right hand, Moonlight Greatsword’s buff will still remain. It lasts for 60 seconds, so it’s a good amount of time.

The reason that we use Helphen’s Steeple and Dark Moon Greatsword instead of an Iron Greatsword with a Cold infusion is because the magic damage is lower on average. You’re going to get higher magic damage with both of these weapons, and they have good INT scaling compared to other Greatswords. If you want to use an Iron Greatsword with a Cold infusion with a different Ash of War, you absolutely can do that. Keep in mind that the regular attacks aren’t going to be as effective as they would be with this set-up.

Lastly, if you’re using the Flask of Wondrous Physick with this Elden Ring Helphen’s Steeple build, I like using Greenburst Crystal Tear to increase your stamina recovery. You chew threw stamina with this build if you’re spamming Night Comet or jump attacks, so this is one way of dealing with that. You also want to put Magic-Shrouding Cracked Tear here to further increase your magic damage for three minutes. Most boss fights last about three minutes, or even less, if you’re doing them properly. You should be able to complete the fight before this wears off, which is good. Your regular attacks and spells use magic, so that’s going to benefit your whole build.

That’s it for our Dark Knight 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 items, and securing some personal objectives, make sure to check the Elden Ring Map. Happy building!