In this Elden Ring Moonveil Katana Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you my Moonveil Samurai build, version 2.0. This is the 100 version of this build. If you aren’t familiar with that build, the Moonveil Samurai takes advantage of the weapon art of Moonveil, Transient Moonlight, specifically the L2R2 ability that has huge stagger potential to stagger tough enemies and bosses to do critical strikes, that we then replenish our FP cost from, from one of the talismans that we use.
By using Assassin’s Cerulean Dagger and Carian Filigreed Crest, we’re able to reduce the cost of this ability, and then refund it when using it on weaker enemies, and then maintain our FP somewhat better against tougher enemies where it requires multiple casts of Transient Moonlight. However, in this iteration of the build, I’ve added a second katana with its own weapon art that has huge stagger potential to make staggering enemies even easier and to make boss fights go faster.
Elden Ring Moonveil Katana Build Guide – Moonveil Shinobi
A melee-mage Build that uses Transient Moonlight and Glintblade Phalanx to stagger enemies and to set both Hemorrhage and Frostbite on them.
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Elden Ring Moonveil Katana Build Guide – Equipment, Skills, and Spells
The Moonveil Katana scales with Dexterity and Intelligence, and when you reach max upgrade, it’s going to scale at B with those, which is relatively good. We also use a cold-infused or magic-infused Uchigatana for this. I generally default to cold because I like setting the Frostbite status effect on enemies and bosses, but some enemies can’t be frostbitten, and you might swap that out for magic if you’re like, I don’t know, fighting Gargoyles or something like that to get a little bit extra damage. The cold infusion of the Uchigatana has B and C scaling in Dexterity and Intelligence, which isn’t quite as good as Moonveil, but it’s still pretty good.
On top of that, it allows you to set the Frostbite status effect, and it has bleed buildup just like the Moonveil Katana, so when you’re dual wielding these and attacking with L1, you’re going to be bleeding up the build meter a lot faster. Because you can’t use the weapon art or skill of the second weapon, the weapon in your offhand when you’re dual-wielding two weapons at the same time, it became important to find a weapon art that we could use that would still be effective when we swap back to dual wielding, and that’s why I decided on Glintblade Phalanx.
Glintblade Phalanx, the Ash of War, has huge stagger potential. You’ll probably have seen this in my Spellblade video as we use that in that build. But what’s great about it is when you combine this with Transient Moonlight, you’re going to get two hits of Transient Moonlight since it does about the same stagger damage of Transient Moonlight at the same time. So if something staggers in two Transient Moonlights, it’s going to go down instantly, or maybe it takes three, and then you only have to do one more instead of trying to get off two more before it staggers.
What I love about Glintblade Phalanx as well is that you can cast it and it stays out when you swap back to dual wielding, and it stays there for a very long time, so you can pre-cast it anytime you’re going to face a tough enemy, and it just stays out and it benefits you. Additionally, it’s also a weapon skill, so it benefits from Carian Filigreed Crest, unlike the spell, and the spell doesn’t have the stagger damage, which is why we use the weapon art. Also, if you add something to this build later on, like Shard of Alexander to increase your weapon skill damage, it’ll increase the damage of this as well, so that’s a double win.
Beyond this, you can use a staff in your offhand to cast some spells. One of the weaknesses of this build is range, so getting yourself something like Great Glintstone Shard would be good, or Glintstone Pebble, or anything with range. Loretta’s Greatbow is a good option as well for those scenarios where you do need a little bit extra range on top of what you have. What staff you use isn’t particularly important here, and will be affected slightly by what spells you select, but generally speaking, at this point in the game, the Academy Glintstone Staff is probably going to be the best-performing one for you if you’re just casting all different types of spells.
I would also like to note that you can use the Horn Bow for this build if you want, as this weapon does both magic and physical damage at range, and you can use Dwelling Arrows to increase your magic damage, and when you combine this with Terra Magica, which you can drop on the ground, you’ll deal even more damage. However, it doesn’t deal as much damage as a pure archer-type setup would, because you’re not going to be using talismans that benefit, like arrows and things like that, but it is an option if you would like to keep that bow.
The armor that you use for this build isn’t super important as long as you can still mid-roll, and using a helmet that has Intelligence on it is probably a good idea though, to increase the damage with any spells that you use, and to increase the damage with both of your katanas.
Elden Ring Moonveil Katana Build Guide – Talismans
When it comes to talismans for this build, I have the Green Turtle Talisman, the Magic Scorpion Charm, Assassin’s Cerulean Dagger, and Carian Filigreed Crest.
Green Turtle Talisman there is because you chew through stamina with this build, using Transient Moonlight and also attacking with Dual Wield, you’re going to run through your stamina very fast, and you want it to come back very, very quickly, particularly after you stagger an enemy because you’re going to want your stamina bar to fill up very, very quickly, so you can go to town with Dual Wield attacks.
The Magic Scorpion Charm is there to increase your damage with magic attacks. Both Moonveil and the Cold Uchigatana or Magic Uchigatana are going to have significant magic damage to them, so boosting this is fantastic.
This of course will also increase the damage of any magic spells you use that deal magic damage as well. Assassin’s Cerulean Dagger will give you 15 FP back any time you critically strike an enemy. This is after you stagger them, or when you backstab them, or if you parry and then riposte them. This is very good to have for this build because you use a lot of FP with your skills, but then getting it back allows you to keep using them so that you don’t have to worry so much about FP management.
Lastly, we have Carian Filigreed Crest, which reduces the cost of your weapon skills by 25%. This affects Transient Moonlight, and it affects Glintblade Phalanx, and it also affects Mighty Shot if you’re using that on a bow or Enchanted Shot.
If you’re using those three skills, that’s going to reduce the cost of all of them, which is a pretty good bang for your buck. As you approach level 150 for this build, you’ll probably pull out Carian Filigreed Crest and replace it with Shard of Alexander to increase the damage of all three of these abilities when you have more Mind and FP, where FP isn’t as much of an issue. So typically the way this build works is you’re going to be running around the landscape attacking with your dual-wield attacks, and you’re going to be throwing up Glintblade Phalanx and attacking with Transient Moonlight on more difficult enemies, or you’re just going to be using Transient Moonlight on enemies that are close to you in order to stagger them or interrupt their attacks as necessary, getting in those critical attacks to restore your FP so that you can keep using them when necessary.
What I like to do in a build that I did in the previous iteration of Moonveil is that when I stagger a boss with this build, instead of instantly going in for the critical strike to get FP back, I like to go ham with my dual-wield attacks in order to not only build up the bleed bar but also to set the Frostbite status effect, ripping off even more health and debuffing the enemy even more. You can generally deal way more damage doing this than doing a critical attack, and in some cases, if you’re very astute and you get your timing well, you can actually do quite a bit of damage and pull off a critical attack as well.
However, I wouldn’t worry so much about the critical attacks on bosses because you’ll simply outperform the damage doing dual-wield attacks as fast as you can, and this is one of the reasons we have the Green Turtle Talisman for this build, because you’re usually going to be very low on stamina when an enemy or boss gets staggered, and you want it to replenish while they’re sort of falling down so that when you get up to them, you can start swinging and you don’t have to wait for your stamina to regenerate very long.
If you’re using a bow, you can pick enemies off at range, or you can use Great Glintstone Shard to can’t reach enemies. It’s a great backup for when you need a little bit of range maybe to thin things out. And you can use the L2R1 ability of Moonveil as well to AoE enemies down at a pretty good range. The spells you use for this build aren’t super important. I have Terra Magica in here because you can drop it on the ground and it’ll stay there for 30 seconds, boosting your magic damage by 35%.
This includes what you’ll do with melee or spells, so it’s great to put down if you know you’re going to be fighting in a certain area, like in the middle of a boss arena, and you can stagger a boss inside of it. So when you go into doing that dual-wield combo, if you’re standing on top of it, you’re going to be shredding them. It’s not something you use all the time, but it’s still good to have regardless.
Elden Ring Moonveil Katana Build Guide – Recommended Attributes and Tips
As far as stats go for this build, I have 40 Vigor, 26 Mind, 20 Endurance, 12 Strength, 18 Dexterity, 40 Intelligence, 14 Faith, and 9 Arcane.
The Vigor is there to help keep you alive. You’re not gonna be wearing the heaviest armor in the world with this build, and you’re also trading blows and you’re gonna gamble a lot trying to get off those L2-R2 attacks because getting that stagger, even if you get hit in the middle of it, is still worth it.
26 Mind is there to give you a decent FP pool. You will get FP back from the Assassin’s Cerulean Dagger, however, you want an FP pool there so when you’re in boss fights or things like that, you don’t have to worry about running out of FP quickly and trying to pot in the middle of those fights because you generally trade damage sometimes with this build, and you don’t have to try and heal and then try and FP flask in the middle of that fight because you want to play very, very aggressively and you don’t want the enemy or boss’s stagger meter to clear while you’re potting. So you want to stay on top of them and you want to have enough FP to finish the job.
Endurance is there not for equip load, but believe it or not, because you need stamina for this build. Stamina is one of the major issues with this build because when you’re dual wielding, you just chew through your stamina, and when you stagger a boss, you’re typically low on stamina as it is, so trying to get off a huge dual wield combo is hard to do without a good amount of stamina. In fact, this will probably go up as you get closer to 150 just to give you more stamina to play around with.12 Strength is there because we really don’t need Strength for this build and just meets the minimum requirements for weapons and such.
Dexterity, we have 18 points here. This is the minimum requirement for Moonmail, so you can’t have less than that, what’s great about this stat is both the Uchigatana and Moonveil will have B scaling at max level for this, so as you approach 150, you’ll start putting more and more points into this as you notice that the damage increase you’ll get from Intelligence starts to slow down, so there’s a lot of room to grow in this build for damage, whereas some builds only have one stat that scales well and you’ll start to cap out as you get higher and higher. That’s not the case with this build.
As you get to maybe 50 Intelligence or so, you’ll probably start putting more points into Dexterity to increase the physical damage of this build.
Intelligence is at 40 because this is about as much as I felt like we could spare at this point. This increases the damage with both your katanas and spell damage, so it’s just a good all-around stat for this build. You can get away with lower Intelligence here compared to some other builds that rely on it that are hybrid melee mage type builds, mostly because you’re going for staggers and you’re hitting an enemy that can’t do anything afterward, so you’re getting a lot of your damage when the enemy is just laying there compared to regular attacks.
Additionally, you’ll get a lot of damage out of the Hemorrhage status effect and the Frostbite status effect. That’s about 30% HP of a boss’s health right there, so you’re not necessarily relying on raw damage for this build. Faith and Arcane are both completely irrelevant for this build. Neither of these weapons has Arcane scaling, so their bleed build-up and frost build-up is not going to increase with Arcane, and Faith is simply there because of the class I selected. You don’t need any Faith for this build, so if you picked a different class, your stats here will look a little bit different, and you’ll probably have more stats in other places.
Faith and Arcane are both completely irrelevant for this build. Neither of these weapons has Arcane scaling, so their bleed build-up and frost build-up is not going to increase with Arcane, and Faith is simply there because of the class I selected. You don’t need any Faith for this build, so if you picked a different class, your stats here will look a little bit different, and you’ll probably have more stats in other places.
And one last tip for this build is that when you’re going to a boss fight or a tough enemy, you want to use your Flask of Wondrous Physick, and you want to use the Magic-Shrouding Cracked Tear in order to increase your magic damage for a few minutes, as well as the Stonebarb Cracked Tear, which increases your poise damage for a very short amount of time. I think it’s like 30 seconds. This will help you stagger bosses very, very quickly and will make these boss fights go really fast. When you throw up the Glintblade Phalanx, and then you use Transient Moonlight a lot of times with this up, you can just stagger them like bang. As soon as you walk in the door, then you can get your combo off, back away, throw up Glintblade Phalanx again, repeat this combo, and the fight will be over in 20 seconds or less, a lot of the time, making this extremely powerful.
Stay tuned for more Elden Ring builds. 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.
