Elden Ring Serpentbone Blade Build Guide – Serpent Samurai

Elden Ring Serpentbone Blade Build Guide – Equipment

The weapons we use for this Serpentbone Blade build are the Serpentbone Blade and the Uchigatana, and there are a couple of reasons for that. The Serpentbone Blade has poison buildup on it natively, and it has decent Dexterity scaling with higher base damage than the Uchigatana when it’s set to Dexterity scaling.

However, the real reason to use this weapon is because of its unique R2 and charged R2 attacks that do a Double Slash, and then if you press it again, it does another Double Slash. The regular Uchigatana and other katanas do not have this feature, and it’s the best reason to use this katana other than the higher base damage, particularly if you’re going to use a poison setup.

Now, what’s interesting about this R2-slash-slash combo is that it helps you use talismans that build up your attack power when you hit repeatedly, which is good. Also, if you’re two-handing it, when you do it, you can do this back-to-back, and if you use the charged R2, it’ll stagger an enemy just like charged R2 with an Uchigatana would do, but you’ve hit four times instead of two, which is good for getting that attack power buildup, as I mentioned.

If you wanted to min-max this Serpentbone Blade build perfectly, you would probably have two Uchigatanas that had poison on them. This would allow you to set bleeding more often, but since we’re not focused on bleeding with this build and we’re focused on poison, we’re using that Serpentbone Blade, and we’re focusing on building up that poison to gain the attack bonuses from the Mushroom Crown and the Kindred of Rot’s Exultation to get that extra 30%, plus the hits back-to-back-to-back to stack up attack power.

In my opinion, what makes this Serpentbone Blade build so good is the versatility of it. When you’re dual-wielding, you can either R2 or charged R2 for the unique R2 attack. You can press L2 to use Double Slash, go into that quickly, depending on the situation, or you can hit L1 to go into a dual-wield combo. So you have a lot of options, and it allows you to get the right attacks for the right situation.

For instance, when I’m fighting difficult enemies that don’t stagger very easily, I will use the Serpentbone Blade single-handed, and I will use the charged R2 attack to hit them once, kind of stunning them for a brief second, and then hitting them again with the charged R2. That should stagger them, and then you can get a critical attack.

I like to use this on enemies like Banished Knights or other enemies that don’t stagger and one-charged R2, or that don’t stagger easily from repeated strikes. If you’re outnumbered, the double-slash ability is good for hitting into groups of enemies, or maybe you’re attacking an enemy and another enemy is arrowed onto you, switching to them and finishing your L2 double-slash combo can take them out even if they’re not directly in front of you. Once you kill that first enemy, the camera will lock onto the next one, and by pressing L2, your character will turn and swing into that enemy, that combo is really fast, so that gives you really good options.

By dual-wielding, the L1 combo allows you to build up poison quickly because you have higher poison buildup on the Uchigatana, and that also builds up your attack power through the Millicent’s Prosthesis and Winged Sword insignia even faster. If you happen to have the Rotten Winged Sword insignia, then that’s even better for this build if you can get someone to drop you one, or if you’re in New Game Plus.

Also by dual-wielding, having that Uchigatana in the left hand, you’re also able to put another Ash of War on it, like something like Poison Moth Flight that was buffed in 1.04 that’s actually faster now. Its damage is pretty good with this build, especially if you are able to get your attack power up from repeated strikes, set that poison, switch to one-handing your Uchigatana, and then press L2 to get that off and then go back to dual-wield. That’s really good.

Another thing that I like to do is use the Wakizashi in my offhand instead of the Uchigatana, and that’s because it not only allows you to do the same moveset even though it’s a dagger, but you can put parry on this. So this gives you the option to parry while you’re dual-wielding, and then when you’re two-handing the Serpentbone Blade, you can still do that nice charge R2 combo if you want, or you can go into Double Slash if you need it, or you can go back to dual-wielding really quick and go into a dual-wield combo, or parry. That gives you four different options that you can switch back and forth really quickly.

And like I said, if you have the Uchigatana in your left hand and the Wakizashi in your left hand, you can swap back and forth between these as necessary if you just up your equip load a little bit, which isn’t much. Again, you would infuse the Uchigatana or Wakizashi with poison to add poison to these attacks to help you build up poison faster when you’re dual-wielding.

When it comes to armor, I’m using the Mushroom Crown. This is to get that extra 10% attack power when you set poison on something, and that includes yourself. Again, you can use the Raw Meat Dumpling to do this to yourself if an enemy is poison-immune to keep triggering this effect. You can cleanse it and then re-trigger it, etc., which is a great way to do this if necessary.

Beyond that, I just have a mix of very heavy armor pieces, the heaviest you can get away with, however much Endurance you want to put in, in order to have very high poise and protection. This will allow you to finish your combo if you get hit while you’re mid it, or to finish your Double Slash if you get hit while you’re mid it and not get staggered out of it, and will allow you to trade damage and still get off good damage, which is great.

Elden Ring Serpentbone Blade Build Guide – Talismans

As far as talismans go, I have Shard of Alexander, Winged Sword insignia, or Rotten Winged Sword insignia if you can get someone to give it to you, Kindred of Rot’s Exultation, and Millicent’s Prosthesis.

So Rotten Winged Sword insignia and Millicent’s Prosthesis work the same way. They increase your attack power with multiple hits. You’ve got several ways to do that with this build. Using the R2 function gives you two hits each time you press it or charge R2, which is great. Double Slash hits, I think, six attacks if you do the full combo. And then you have dual wield, which obviously hits faster than a single R1, R1 spam would do. So you’ve got a lot of ways to build that up.

Kindred of Rot’s Exultation works like Mushroom Crown, but it gives you 20% attack power for 20 seconds, and this is great. You’re going to be trying to set poison on that pretty often. Shard of Alexander will just increase the damage of Double Slash when you use it. This one is kind of optional. You can swap this one around if you find you’re not using Double Slash as much. It really depends on the situation.

I like to switch this for the Dagger Talisman sometimes when I’m working on using charged R2 to stagger enemies and then critically strike them. But it’s really up to you, and you can swap that around for other things too, like maybe the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman, or Ritual Sword Talisman if you want more damage.

It’s your flexible spot, and you can put whatever you want in there. So again, what I really love about this build is the amount of flexibility it has. If you have the Wakizashi equipped, you can do parry. If they have the Uchigatana equipped, you can get a poison moth flight in there if you have a poisoned enemy. You can dual wield attack into enemies.

You can use the charge R2 attack to stagger enemies. Make sure that you are two-handing the Serpentbone when you do that to get max stagger damage. Otherwise, you’ll do a little bit less when you’re one-handing. And you can use Double Slash, which doesn’t matter if you’re two-handing Serpentbone or one-handing it, because it counts as the same damage either way, so that’s not important.

But basically what I’ll do is I usually run around two-handing Serpentbone and go into that charged R2 combo, or go into Double Slash as needed. And then if I find an enemy that needs more than that to finish it off, I’ll probably go something like dual wield and try and build up really high damage on it really quickly. Or I’ll try and parry it with the Wakizashi if it’s an enemy that you can parry. One of the great things about this build is that it’s super durable because you have high armor and you have good poise, so you don’t get staggered constantly. And you don’t have any buffs. There are literally no buffs with this Serpentbone Blade build.

The buffs become on you as you attack. So you don’t have any spells or like that. A lot of the builds I’ve made have lots of buffs to them. Golden Vow is one of the best spells, if not the best spell all around in the game because so many builds can take advantage of it no matter what they’re doing. And getting attack and defense is really good. But this one, you don’t have to worry about buffing. So if you like playing builds where you don’t have to worry about buffing and you have a lot more variety than something like the Venomous Blood Blade build that we made where basically you’re just doing L1 attacks over and over trying to get your attack power up and set bleeding and poison. This one gives you a bit more variety than that.

Elden Ring Serpentbone Blade Build Guide – Recommended Attributes Distribution

When it comes to attributes for this build, I have 50 Vigor, 24 Mind, 36 Endurance, 12 Strength, 80 Dexterity, 9 Intelligence, 14 Faith, and 9 Arcane.

• So Vigor is pretty self-explanatory. It’s very high, you have very good armor, and you’re going to be trading damage with this build. It’s an aggressive build like some of the builds I’ve made. So trading damage isn’t bad, and having high Vigor allows you to do that and not die.
• 24 Mind is there because you don’t have any buffs with this build. Double Slash is relatively inexpensive. Poison Moth Flight is inexpensive. You don’t need a lot of FP because you don’t spend a lot. So you could probably even get away with 20 Mind if you want, but you’re not going to use a ton of FP for this build. So it’s not something you need to invest much in.
• 36 Endurance is there because we’re using very heavy armor, and we need that stamina. We chew through stamina with this build, and we want to wear heavy enough armor that we get our poise up by about 56 or so so that we can withstand most attacks once and keep swinging through them. And this will allow you to still medium roll and have that heavy armor. This stat will fluctuate a bit depending on the armor that you’re using, whether you decide to add the dagger to your left hand as well as the Uchigatana or not. So it depends on what your setup is.
• 12 Strength is there because of my class. We don’t need Strength at all really for this build. And 80 Dexterity is there because both the Serpentbone Blade and the Uchigatana poison scale very well with Dexterity. This gives us very good high damage that is then impacted by those attack power increases from setting the poison and repeated strikes, which is great. We don’t need Intelligence, Faith, or Arcane at all for this build. Those stats are purely based on the confessor class that I’m playing.

Unfortunately, the Serpentbone Blade doesn’t have Arcane scaling on it to increase the poison buildup that it has and its damage, as the Rivers of Blood does for bleeding. It makes it harder to set poison with that weapon, which is one of the reasons that we’re kind of forced to dual wield because even using Double Slash 66 per hit in Double Slash times five or six is still not as much as dual wielding, particularly when the Uchigatana has better poison scaling or poison status effect infliction. So if it had Arcane scaling, then you could put some points that we’re putting into Dexterity into Arcane to increase the damage of both of these weapons and increase their poison buildup, which would make this more effective.

But because it doesn’t have that kind of force to go the Dexterity route and because you need to put poison on the Uchigatana to help build that poison up when you’re dual-wielding, it doesn’t scale as well with Dexterity as it would if you were playing Keen.

Elden Ring Serpentbone Blade Build Guide – Final Tips

A couple of final tips as well. The Axe Talisman actually increases the charged attack damage of your R2, which is great if you’re using it a lot for this build. So you may want to swap that out with the Shard of Alexander if you find you’re using that more than Double Slash. Again, the benefit of the charged R2 is that it staggers far more than Double Slash. Double Slash does almost no stagger damage. So if you’re trying to stagger a boss or an enemy, that charged R2 is the way to go.

Lastly, if you’re using the Flask of Wondrous Physick, using the one that increases your attack power the more you strike is very good because that’s kind of the premise of this build. Also the Greenburst Crystal Tear is good for this build because you need stamina recovery. Double Slash chews through your stamina even with high Endurance, and so do dual-wielding attacks, even though it’s a little bit better mana-efficiently than Double Slash is. So getting that stamina recovery to be very high will help you in boss fights.

That’s it for the Serpent Samurai 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.