In this Elden Ring Mage Incantation and Sorcery Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you my Elementalist build. This is a level 150 mage build that uses both incantations and sorceries, being able to do all different damage types so they have something for every situation. If you’ve been wanting to play a caster that can use any spell in the game, then this is the build for you.
Elden Ring Mage Incantation and Sorcery Build Guide – Elementalist
An Intelligence/Faith Build that can cast nearly any spell in the game and only uses ranged magic to destroy enemies.
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Elden Ring Mage Incantation and Sorcery Build Guide – Equipment
First up, let’s focus on the staff and seal we use for this build. We use the Prince of Death’s Staff and the Golden Order Seal.
This is going to give you the best setup possible for this build. And I came to that conclusion doing a lot of testing, and I actually tried to do, like, an Albinauric Staff, Dragon Communion Seal combination to see if increasing Arcane, Intelligence, and Faith in some combination would outperform this combination. But it doesn’t. The Prince of Death’s Staff and the Golden Order Seal will eventually outperform those.
It’s possible that at lower levels, the Albinauric Staff and the Dragon Communion Seal do better. But since I was testing this at about the stats I was going to play this build at, it doesn’t outperform it at this point. If you’re playing a hybrid build or something like that, maybe earlier in the game, like level 100 or lower, you might consider that combination. But it doesn’t work very well for this build compared to what we’re doing.
I tried out the Carian Regal Scepter here too, just to see how it compared to the Prince of Death’s Staff, and it’s almost identical. So you could theoretically use either of these staffs for this point of the game. However, I will note that as soon as you get any more Faith, so if you take this levels higher if you make this build like 160, 170, and you keep increasing Faith, you’re going to outperform it with the Prince of Death’s Staff. So this staff sort of future-proofs your build. That’s not the only reason we use it. For instance, it buffs Ancient Death Rancor and Death Sorceries. Ancient Death Rancor absolutely slaps in this build, which I’m going to showcase. So you want to increase the damage to that. But otherwise, they’re almost exactly identical.
If you lean into the Full Moon Sorceries using something like those spells, then you may want to consider the Carian Regal Scepter for this part of the game. But otherwise, you’re going to go with Prince of Death’s Staff. When it comes to the seal we’re using, Golden Order Seal is second to none. It’s literally going to give you the most performance with this setup, and nothing else really comes close at this point of the game. Earlier on in the game, some of the other seals kind of give it a run for its money like Dragon Communion Seal. But later in the game, it outperforms pretty much everything.
Something really interesting about this is that you get your best bang for your buck at 45 Int and 45 Faith with this seal. You actually get markedly less incantation scaling going from 45 all the way up to 80 AD. Like, it’s astounding how much little you get between 45, and 80 AD. However, the Prince of Death’s Staff really starts to shine after 50 Int and 50 Faith. So you’re going to see, like, the sorceries are a little bit weaker than the incantations at this point of the game. But if you progress this build further, the sorceries are actually going to overtake the incantations in terms of damage.
So after I landed on those two weapons, I did a bunch of testing with different stat values to see, like, what’s going to give me the best bang for my buck.
This is where I figured out that having 75 Int and 45 Faith is the best possible damage setup for this build. As I mentioned, 45, 45 is ideal for the Golden Order Seal. That’s where you’re going to get your best bang for your buck right at that point. However, the Prince of Death’s Staff starts to shine after 50. So the higher up you get one of those stats from 50, the more sorcery scaling you get. And by leaving one at 45 Faith and increasing Intelligence up to 75, you basically don’t lose any incantation scaling at all. It stays exactly the same. But your sorcery scaling continues to rise as you go higher and higher, which is great.
I decided on 70 Intelligence and 50 Faith because that allows you to use every spell in the game. The highest incantations require 50 Faith and the highest sorceries require 70 Intelligence. So if you want to be able to use every spell in the game, you’re going to go 70, 50. If you want max damage, you’re going to go 75, 45. That’s obviously for a level 150 setup. As you progress this build forward, you’re able to increase your Intelligence to 80 and then your Faith up to 80. And you’re going to come out with good damage on both of those. But at 150, that’s about as good as you can do.
I also use the Sacrificial Axe in the offhand for this build in order to give me 4 FP back every time I kill something. We use a lot of FP with this build because we’re casting spells constantly. We do not have a melee weapon with this build. So getting as much FP back as we can is fantastic. This is optional, though. You don’t have to use this. It does increase your equip load by about five and a half. So it can really hurt your equip load and give you weaker armor. But I really feel like it’s beneficial for this build.
When it comes to armor for this build, you can really use anything you want that allows you medium roll. You’re not going to have very protective armor with this because you have no points in Endurance. And I would advise against using a helmet that gives you Intelligence that also reduces something like you’re not going to have a ton of HP with this build.
You’re not going to have a ton of FP with this build. You’re not going to have a ton of stamina with this build. So reducing them lower to get some more damage is not ideal. We’re already skewed heavily to the damage side. So try and use something like the Imp Head, which is what I’m using, that increases your Intelligence, but doesn’t have any downside. It also has fairly good protection and we need a little bit of protection with this build.
Elden Ring Mage Incantation and Sorcery Build Guide – Talismans
When it comes to talismans for this build, I like to use the Ritual Sword Talisman, the Green Turtle Talisman, Marika’s Soreseal, and Primal Glintstone Blade.
The Ritual Sword Talisman increases all of your damage by 10% when you’re at full health. This is going to apply to every spell that you use. So this is just like a flat 10% increase. You just have to make sure you stay at full health. Since you’re playing at range predominantly, this shouldn’t be too hard. And you can always top yourself off if you need to.
Green Turtle Talisman is there because you consume stamina when casting spells, and a lot of times you’re trying to spam as fast as you can. We don’t have any points in Endurance. We don’t have a huge stamina pool. So we need to regain that stamina as quick as possible so we can go back to casting.
Marika’s Soreseal here is kind of the flex spot. You can swap this out for any of the Scorpion Charms instead to get more damage with a specific type of spell. Like if you’re going into a boss fight, you know he’s weak to magic, for instance. You can use that because you know you’re going to be spamming magic spells. That makes sense. But Marika’s Soreseal is great for that situation where you don’t know what damage type you need because it’s going to apply to all your different spell types. It also gives you more Mind, which increases your FP. We’re already a little bit on the low side, which is great. You get Intelligence and Faith out of it, which is perfect for this build.
Additionally, you can use the Ancestral Spirit’s Horn here. If you have enough damage to kill the things that you’re attacking or you have more than enough, consider swapping this in. This will give you FP when you kill enemies. It’ll give you three FP. So combined between the axe and this, you’ll gain more FP. And it’s just really good for this build when you have enough damage to kill things. So try and swap your spells around.
See what will give you the most damage. See what enemies are weak to. Figure out what it is and then find out if you need all the damage from Marika’s Soreseal or one of the Scorpion Charms. Or you can use this instead. If it’s taking you two casts anyway to kill an enemy, then this is better than putting one of those in there.
Lastly, we have Primal Glintstone Blade, which reduces your spell cost by 25% but your HP by 15%. What I originally had was higher Mind and less Vigor. But then when I used this, my health was really low. So what I did instead was pull points out of Mind, dump them into Vigor, then put this on and you actually come out ahead. It costs you less to cast your spells and you have more health by a little bit. So it’s kind of a better way to go. Again, you’re going to be a little bit squishy with this build. You’re a Mage. There’s not a lot we can do about that. But this is going to help with that FP consumption so that you can cast spells at will.
Elden Ring Mage Incantation and Sorcery Build Guide – Spells
Next up, we have Fire and the spells I like to use here are Black Flame and Catch Flame. Black Flame is just a good all around spell. It puts a dot on the enemy based off their max health that does damage. You can charge it up for additional damage. You can usually one-shot a lot of enemies with that charged attack if you catch them off guard.
Catch Flame is really good for melee scenarios where you just don’t have time to cast. The enemy stays up on you and you can’t get away. Catch Flame is effectively your melee weapon with this build. It still does substantial damage at this point of the game, and it’s fast to cast, especially after a dodge roll or while you’re sprinting. So learn to use it when you need it.
I did some testing with Roiling Magma and it seems like Black Flame outperforms it in damage. However, Roiling Magma, if you throw it on the ground, sort of creates this thing that attracts enemies and then explodes throwing magma everywhere. And it does incredible damage when you do this. But it’s not always easy to use mid-combat. If you can use this before you engage in combat, you might be better off than Black Flame if there are a lot of enemies. But otherwise, it’s going to be difficult to do once you’ve already aggroed them.
Naturally, we have Lightning Spear here. This is your good single-target lightning spell. There are lots of other lightning spells that have AoEs to them that I didn’t include in this build, mostly because their cast times are long. When you’re in the thick of combat, you just don’t have time, particularly on some of the later bosses, to get really long cast off. But Lightning Spear is still manageable in most of the cases.
For holy damage spells, probably the best two are Litany of Proper Death and Triple Rings of Light. Litany of Proper Death does like an AoE that does shit tons of damage against the undead. Make sure they can’t resurrect. You don’t have a melee weapon, so that’s really good against them. Triple Rings of Light is like a three-ring that throws out at a modest distance and does pretty good damage. There aren’t a lot of holy damage spells that are really good. So these are the two that I recommend.
When it comes to magic damage, I like Great Glintstone Shard for just regular use. It’s a good long-range attack that deals modest damage. It’s usually pretty good to one-shot regular enemies or two-shot more difficult enemies. It’s just a good one to carry you through the game.
Ancient Death Rancor is just absolutely a beast. You can kill big enemies. I recommend using this. Use it on big enemies and just spam this. It costs so little stamina. You can just keep spamming it and it staggers enemies. It does tons of damage with this build. It’s good. I know a lot of people think the damage is low, but you just watch the gameplay and you’ll see. It is strong.
You can also add other spells to this build like Loretta’s Greatbow if you need some long-range damage. And you’re going to swap in spells and out spells depending on what you’re facing. That’s one of the great things about this build. You can use any spell in the game. So if you get to a point and you’re like, I need some more fire damage. Let me try out these other fire spells and see if they work well. Do it. There’s no downside to it if you have it, you can use it. So it works well. We also obviously have Golden Vow for this build. This is going to boost your damage by 15% and give you protection. Wouldn’t be complete without it.
I didn’t put Flame, Grant Me Strength in with this build because it just has such a short duration. It’s not really feasible to use too much during boss fights. You can use it before a boss fight to give you a little extra damage with fire or physical spells, but only buffs those two damage types. The same with Terra Magica. It’s very hard to use mid-combat. So boosting your magic damage is only really viable, like right at the beginning of the fight, after which point it’s kind of difficult to use. You can add them if you’re doing a fight where you know you’re going to only do physical fire or magic damage, but like just for general use, you’re not going to use them all that often.
Elden Ring Mage Incantation and Sorcery Build Guide – Elementalist: Recommended Attributes Distribution
When it comes to stats for this build, I have 41 Vigor, 25 Mind, 10 Endurance, 12 Strength, 12 Dexterity, 72 Intelligence and 58 Faith and 9 Arcane.
The 41 Vigor is there because you are subtracting some of your health, as I mentioned with the Primal Glintstone Blade, which is going to reduce your health by 15%. So you need to crank it up high in order to reduce the cost of your spells. So instead of putting those points into Mind, you basically put them into Vigor instead in order to use that.
Mind is about as high as we can get it right now. I would love for this to be a lot higher. If you level up this build further, you’re going to want to increase this a lot.
10 Endurance is there because we just don’t need equip load for this build. Having more stamina would be great for casting, but we just don’t have the points for it.
We do not need Strength or Dexterity since we’re not using any melee weapons at all. 72 Intelligence is really only 70, but I have the Imp Head on. And again, as I mentioned, that’s the point where you gain access to all sorceries. 50 Faith is the point where you gain access to all incantations. And I’ve already explained why I have these breakpoints. We do not need Arcane for this build, but if you wanted to use spells like the Dragon Communication spells or other spells that use Arcane, you could add some points in here and take some out of Intelligence or something like that if you wanted to use them.
Elden Ring Mage Incantation and Sorcery Build Guide – Final Tips
A couple of recommendations before I wrap up this build guide. First, test out damage types against enemies. See if you can one-shot them with a spell. If you have to charge it up, charge it. Try different damage types. Try putting in the Fire Scorpion Charm with Black Flame, and see if it will one-shot things. If it still doesn’t, pull it out and use something else like the Ancestral Spirit’s Horn. Try different setups and learn what enemies are weak to. You will learn what enemies are weak to far better with this build than any other build.
Lastly, if you’re going to use the Flask of Wondrous Physick, you probably need to tailor it specifically to what you’re fighting. I personally like the one that regenerates stamina for spells or bosses where I need to spam a spell like Great Glintstone Shard, for instance. If I need to just spam this over and over and over, then having that extra stamina regen is good. Also, increasing your Faith is going to outweigh just about anything at this point in terms of like just every damage type.
However, you could use one of the ones that increase a specific damage type, because usually when you’re facing bosses you’re going to use all magic or all fire, all physical. There is one for each one except physical there. So you could use one of them to increase your damage instead of putting Faith or stamina. Maybe you don’t need stamina. Ancient Death Rancor isn’t super stamina-hungry, so you could get rid of the stamina one in that case. Take the Faith one and take the magic damage and it slaps hard.
That wraps up the Elementalist build, 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.
