Being a wizard in Elden Ring is all well and good. Sometimes you want to throw moons, launch lasers, and generally be a walking talking nuclear bomb. But that doesn’t appeal to all people all of the time. Sometimes you want to wrap your hands around a big stonking stick and smack some guys. After all, even Gandalf had a sword.

Related: Elden Ring Build Guide: Strength

Intelligence/Strength builds are a jack of all trades, master of death. You have access to a wide assortment of weapons, armors, and spells, everything foolish enough to stand in your way gets flattened by the sheer scale of your sword - or swords in some cases.

What Is An Intelligence/Strength Build

The key difference between an Intelligence build who dabbles in swords, and an Intelligence build who goes to the gym and gets mighty swole, is the stat distribution. Intelligence, whilst still important, is more of a secondary stat. An Intelligence/Strength build can go toe-to-toe with giants, and down them in a single swing. That doesn’t mean they can’t stay back and launch some spells when needed, of course.

Stats To Aim For

For this build, we are pushing Strength as high as we can, whilst still making sure we are putting enough points in Intelligence, Mind, Vigor, and Endurance. We settled for 60 Strength as this is the soft cap for Strength gains. Intelligence is at 45 so we can use plenty of spells, and still, deal decent damage with said spells.

Builds should try to aim for 60 Vigor, however, since we are going for a split build, we had to make some sacrifices. 50 Vigor, whilst not ideal, is definitely enough to keep you alive. Mind at 20 means you can cast plenty of spells, but you may have to invest more of your flasks into Cerulean to compensate.

Finally, 25 Endurance will give you enough fuel in your tank to swing your swords, cast spells, and still roll. Not only that, you can wear plenty of heavier armor sets, which is what we want to do for this build.

Starscourge Greatsword Build - In Remembrance Of Leonard

Overview

This build is all about hitting enemies really hard with really big swords. To fit the theme, we are also pushing heavy into Gravity and Star magic, which, thankfully, has some of the best spells in the game. You will be able to square up to the strongest enemies in the game, and easily take them out at a range and in close combat. Not only that, but it has amazing crowd control to add that final cherry.

Weapons

• Starscourge Greatsword
• Meteorite Staff

For this build, we are running the Starscourge Greatsword. This weapon scales at a B scaling in Strength when at max level, and comes with a decent enough D scaling in Intelligence. When you swing this thing, you are going to take chunks out of your target. You can even dual wield this weapon, giving you even more damage output.

The Weapon Art is also fantastic, dealing huge amounts of AOE damage and displacing everything in a large area. Nothing is safe when you are carrying this thing.

For staff, we are opting for the Meteorite Staff. This staff does great damage, it boosts our Gravity magic, and it can be found very early. It’s an all-around great pick, especially for a build that is running less Intelligence than usual.

Main Spells

• Stars Of Ruin
• Rock Throw
• Carian Phalanx

We can use all manner of spells with this build, but the big three are Stars Of Ruin, Rock Throw, and Carian Phalanx. Stars Of Ruin is an amazing spell that launches 12 fast-moving, homing and highly damaging projectiles at enemies. It’s quite expensive to cast, but it can be used to great effect against nimble opponents who love to dodge.

Rock Throw is our go-to cantrip. You launch three boulders at enemies and deal heavy PHYSICAL damage. This spell can knock down most enemies in a few casts, invalidating some of the larger enemies in the game. It’s incredibly effective for its cost. The only downside is it can struggle to work in confined locations.

The final must-have spell for the build is Carian Phalanx. Our weapon is rather slow, which can make it rather difficult to get into combat without getting a cheeky smack for your efforts. Carian Phalanx fixes that by launching highly staggering glintstone blades at nearby enemies. This can open enemies up for your melee offensive.

Related: Elden Ring Build Guide: Intelligence

Talismans

• Graven Mass Talisman
• Magic Scorpion Charm
• Erdtree’s Favour
• Dragoncrest Greatshield

We have statted ourselves to take maximum advantage of our Starscourge Greatsword, which gives us a lot of leeway when it comes to our Talismans. You could push your stats even higher with Heirlooms if you wanted, but that isn’t necessarily required.

Both the Graven Mass Talisman and Magic Scorpion Charm are fantastic additions to this build as they both increase our magic damage. Since our Intelligence is quite low, this will help bump our damage up and let us swing higher than we would have otherwise. The Magic Scorpion Charm also makes our Starscourge Greatsword deal more damage, as it has a split damage profile, which is very nice.

Our core resources are a bit low, which makes Erdtree’s Favor invaluable for this build. It increases HP, FP, Stamina, and Equip Load, which more than makes up for our lower investments.

The Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman increases all of our physical resistances, making us much harder to kill. It will also offset the reduction to our resistances that comes with the Magic Scorpion Charm. Feel free to swap this out for the Peardrake Talisman when needed.

Armor

• Queen’s Crescent Crown (Optional)

For armor, we want to stack as much Poise and Damage Reduction as we can whilst still keeping a Medium Roll. You could also consider equipping the Queen’s Crescent Crown for a slight boost in Intelligence. This might clash with your Elden Bling, however.

Flask Of Wondrous Physick

• Cerulean Hidden
• Magic-Shrouding
• Strength-Knot
• Intelligence-Knot

There are all kinds of tears you could mix into your Flask. The Cerulean Hidden Tear will give you infinite FP for 15 seconds, letting you spam your more expensive spells at the start of a scrap. The Magic-Shrouding Tear on the other hand will increase all of your magic damage (including weapons) for three minutes, which is a great buff.

If you want more stats, then the Strength and Intelligence Knots are fantastic as they give you a +10 to your chosen stat for three minutes. For maximum damage output, combining the Intelligence-Knot with Magic-Shrouding is the way to go.

Next: Elden Ring: Complete Guide And Walkthrough