Elden Ring - How To Break The Game With Magic
YEP, Pretty good. It turns out you can completely break this game with magic. What I think some people don't understand is that the Eldritch Ring is only as hard as you want it to be. There's a spectrum of difficulty baked into the game itself depending on which tools you take advantage of, and this article will show you the easy end of that spectrum through the power of magic.
I'll also go step by step on how you can do this for yourself. In a quick spoiler warning, I'll be showing areas and bosses from these regions of the game. Let's do it.
Quick start guide
First, let's pick an astrologer for our starting class. It by far has the best stat distribution. For a pure intelligence casting build, which is what we're going for, some people might suggest prisoner because it has a better starting spell, but I'll explain why that doesn't matter in a minute.
Next we just dive to the tutorial boss, arrive in limb grave, kick this guy for being a dick and then run over to the side of grace to unlock leveling and our horse. From here we're going to ride south and pick up the morning star from this broken carriage. This is the earliest bleed weapon in the game, and luckily we have enough stats to use it if we two-hand it.
We also want to get one gold pickled foot and an easy one to get is right here on the beach near the start, past this merchant. With these two items, we just need to get to Caleb, and the fastest way to do that is through this teleporter in the bushes next to the third church of America. We'll pop up here and then head south.
You can go around this dragon if you want, but you can also just be brave and run between its legs. Right ahead is Fort Farof, and next to the sight of Grace here is a giant screaming dragon. This is the reason we're here. Just before we kill him, we'll use the foul foot we collected to boost the runes we'll get.
Be careful not to use this too early, though, since it may run out before you finish killing him. Boom, an easy 96, 000 runes within 15 minutes of starting the game. That's enough for a whopping 29 levels. I split it between mind and intelligence, and I got my intelligence up to 40. Keep in mind that this works for any starting class or build if you want a quick start.
Starting spells are good
Two more things to grab While we're here, we'll ride over to the swamp in the center of Kayla to the west of us, and here we can find the meteorite staff, and right next to it we can find the rock sling spell to go with it. This is an incredible starting staff. It can't be leveled, but it doesn't need to be because it already starts with a scale for intelligence.
Making it by far the best pick for the early game, it also boosts damage to gravity spells, which includes rock sling. The last thing we'll need to get us started is the magic glint blade sorcery. This was the starting point for the prisoner class, but we can actually just ride and get it for ourselves in about five minutes if we head back to Lignare.
We can skip the entirety of Stormville Castle by riding along its right edge. There's a path that takes us to Lyarnia with no boss kills necessary. From there, we just need to ride up to the church of vows and speak to the turtle pope by magic glintblade. And we're done in terms of raw power. We are now strong enough to do most of the game already.
That's how strong magic is. The rock sling is fantastic. For example, because it's cheap, it does splash damage and can even break the stances of enemies. For example, the giant dogs and Caleb aren't even a threat anymore. The magic glimp blade is also fantastic for how much damage you can do with an even lower FP cost.
As we just started the game, and looking at the damage we're doing, as you can see, there's a slight delay between the casting itself and when the magic sword shoots out. This can be especially useful for a couple of reasons. First, this enables us to queue up five or six casts for zero stamina costs before the enemy even sees us.
Second, some bosses and enemies are programmed to dodge when you cast spells, but they only dodge for the cast, not when the magic itself comes out, so they dodge five seconds too early and then get hit by all the magic at once. In summary, both of these spells are amazing and already showcase how powerful magic can be, but this is just the beginning.
Collecting components of the build
From here, you're free to take your time and enjoy crushing the early game. The main goal is to level up enough to get to 60 intelligence while collecting a few items along the way.
I want to emphasize that you can do all this while only needing to kill a few bosses. That's part of why I said in my review that this is the most successful soft game you can get so strong. So, early and with minimal fighting, to help speed this process up, I'd recommend grabbing the golden scarab talisman from this cave here in Caled.
Its entrance is a bit hidden on the side of this cliff, but once you've completed it, this talisman gives you a 20 boost to rune gains. If you really want to speed up the process of leveling, grinding these little guys by the dragon on the bridge from earlier is your best bet. You'll get 1300 runes per kill.
Let's skip ahead though, to get the rest of the components for this build. For this part, you do actually have to kill a few bosses, but they're not too bad. Just use a rock sling and they'll break apart incredibly fast. Going up the elevator after that brings us to a chest that gives us the terra magicist spell.
It allows us to create a magic circle on the ground that grants us a 35-foot boost to magic while we're standing in it. Next, just right over to the er tree avatar here on the map again. As you can see, magic glint blade is incredibly good and makes this whole process stupidly easy. After killing him, we get the magic shrouding crack tier, which gives us a 20 boost to magic damage after drinking it.
After that, come to this area on the map and fight the death bird boss. This gets us the red-tailed branch sword talisman, which gives us another 20 boost to damage when our health is low. It's like the red tier stone from past games. They aren't too tough with magic glimp blade because they won't dodge properly.
This gives us access to a chest which gives us Luciat's glintstone. This staff has extra high magic scaling with a trade-off of increased FP costs, but those increased costs won't actually matter. We can also upgrade this to plus six by collecting somber smithing stones. As a reminder, the most reliable way to find these stones is from the mines marked on the map with the orange circles.
