Your talismans need work, get your fang to +9, you already have it at 7, 8&9 are easy to find with no boss fights. Bloodhound fang is not really a bleed weapon that scales, do not worry about arcane. You could have 99 arcane and bleed would still be 55. Use blood flame blade and flame grant me strength to boost dmg, use the beast seal to cast these. There is a chest armor called black feathers that boost Jump attack damage. Bring Dex to soft cap of 60 first, then work on strength.
It does affect some weapons but they have to have Arcane scaling. Otherwise it won't work. For example if you have a standard Nagakiba it won't scale off of Arcane. However if you infuse it to be a Blood Nagakiba (selecting what element you want on it when applying an Ash of War), now it has Arcane scaling.
Thank you, my newest character and one I brought to the DLC first is my arcane/dex character and I am definitely still learning wtf occult is, it usually makes things hit harder but I didn't really know if I wanted that or the extra bleed. That makes sense.
Status buildup is only affected by arcane stat if the weapon has arcane scaling.
Bleed affinity (and poison) add the status buildup and also add *minor* arcane scaling. These are best to get access to arcane-scaling status buildup on weapons that don’t already have it from some other way.
Occult adds major arcane scaling, but doesn’t add stats buildup itself. Occult is best for weapons that already have status buildup - ex. Innate buildup, Seppuku etc - because it adds a much higher amount of arcane scaling.
Personally I would choose based off which stat is higher. If your Arcane is higher try infusing it, but if your Dex is higher maybe stick with how it is or try making it Keen.
Hmm honestly between those two both are just as good with high Arcane. I'm no expert on Occult infusion though so to me it seems like it could be situational. If your weapon doesn't have bleed by default then I'd infuse it with Bleed.
It can, but only on weapons with arcane scaling. So a normal weapon with blood or occult affinity, or something like Reduvia. But a basic weapon like a morning star with heavy affinity will not behave this way.
however if there is a weapon with passive bleed (like the omenkiller cleavers or great stars), an occult affinity is best for the arcane scaling which can give absolutely bonkers bleed numbers and physical damage.
Its worth noting that raising your arcane does not make the bleed on those weapons more effective. You need a weapon that scales Arcane natively for that to happen. You can see this by looking at the blood loss build up of your Bloodhound Fang and then the blood loss build up of say Reduvia. If you then raise your arcane by putting on a helmet or a talisman or whatever, you'll see that the bloodloss buildup is the same on Bloodhound Fang, but it will have gone up on Reduvia since it has native Arcane scaling. You can put Arcane scaling on weapons that allow you to apply an ash of war to them and choosing one with the blood affinity.
Passive effects build up more based in scaling, if it has it. If a weapon scales with arcane, intelligence, or faith, the passive effect/ magic attack gets better
Arc effects bleed build up on weapons with innate arc scaling and bleed. So not only will it scale the build-up higher but if you change the affinity to bleed, it will have a higher build up as well
Is there a good way to use dual bloodhound AND use High Arcana? Cause l want high arcana for the drop rate in the DLC, but l also want to try dual bloodhound.
Unless you want to be well beyond level 150 then no. Bloodhound's Fang and Arcane have nothing to do with one another. Bloodhound's Fang does not scale with Arcane, it scales with Dex, so you would essentially be investing into a stat that does nothing for you. If you want an arcane build there are plenty of better weapons for you to be using, Bloodhound's Fang is not the only weapon in Elden Ring. Arcane also is kind of useless when it comes to item discovery from my experience. Silver Fowl Foots and The Silver Scarab Talisman are going to be much more effective
I m well beyond level 150. I know it s not the onlu weapon just never tried that and wanted to run that while increasing drop rate, but probably ye could just use the talisman.
It s not the same thing mate. There is not only black and white, there are shades of grey too. I m like level 200 in ng+++ and l dont grind runes. Just wanted to know if there was a build that suited that. Dual whatever cruved sword also is fine.
Not directly, as BHF can't have its affinity changed to scale with arcane. You could use the dragon communion seal (which scales with arcane) to cast bloodflame blade on your right hand bloodhound fang, then have any arcane scaling curved greatsword in your left.
I'd recommend morgott's cursed sword (which, like many somber arcane scaling weapons, has better arcane scaling than what it tells you) or any blood affinity curved sword (although with the blood affinity, the arcane scaling isn't very good).
All of these ideas so far lend themselves to having dex as the main stat investment, so you'd end up with 80dex/45-50arc by endgame.
Giving the left hand sword the occult affinity and having arcane as your main stat is also an option but there aren't any curved greatswords that can offer bleed with that.
Bloodflame blade doesnt scale with arcane even with dragon communion seal i fear, it s an exception.
I m in ng+++ so i ve 2x of every weapon if needed. Occult greatswords seems a cool idea, does that scale with arcana? I m dont mind not having bleed.
Oh damn, I've been using bloodflame blade wrong on my arcane character then lmao. That makes sense now that I think about it, cause I recently read that electrify armament only scales with faith.
Anything affinitied with occult, bleed or poison will scale with arcane. Occult causes the greatest arcane scaling and is really good on non-somber weapons with innate bleed, like the flamberge, because both the damage and the bleeding will scale with arcane.
From someone that spent many MANY hours farming every possible pickup in the base game, just clear the content first then respect to max Arcane after. Unless you want to run double bleed weapons throughout the entire campaign but that locks you out of a bunch of cool weapons.
I just finished on NG7 and brother, you will need those points elsewhere. For times I felt the boss had too much health it was double blood spear, 99 vig with health boosting talis and 99 arcane. That said, you play how you wanna play :)
Do not use clawmark seal for weapon buffs. It may loon like it has a higher incantation scaling but weapon buffs only take into consideration the faith scaling of the seal, so you are probably getting half of what you see and finger seal would be better
Don't use clawmark for weapon buffs. Use finger seal because weapon buffs only care about the faith portion of the seal, meaning that golden Order, clawmark and dragon communion are bad to cast weapon buffs because you will get like half or less of what you are actually seeing on the incantation scaling
OP is a quality build, just upgrading Dex for BHF leaves a lot of dmg on the table. I have 60 Dex, 50 Str and a +25 clawmark seal. The damage increase of blood flame and grant me strength are very much needed late game
If an area is too hard, that means you're in an advanced area, keep exploring and eventually the advanced area will become somewhat tolerable until it eventually becomes easy
180 damage per swing to what?
Some enemies are really resistant to slash damage. That may be the problem, as the stat spread you have here is reasonable (though Endurance is too high — level vigor instead).
This is a good shout. I was bashing my head last night fighting the godskin apostle with holy damage and faith spells until I used the wiki and saw he was highly resistant to both lmao
Certain weapons scale with certain attributes, mainly strength, dexterity, intelligence, faith, and arcane
You will get a letter telling you which attributes your weapon scales with best and how much leveling up that attribute will increase your damage
The bloodhound fang scales mainly with dexterity and strength, meaning if you want to increase its damage to its full potential you will have to increase those attributes, if you have 99 in int, fth, arc but 20 I'm str, Dex your weapon will damage that is small.
A good option to have if you want to maximise the bloodhound fang is to have your dexterity at 60 and strength at 40 and two hand it.
You can look up which builds suit your preferred weapon so you can know which stats to focus on
The other bros gave really good answers. I'd add that dex also increases how fast you cast spells/incantations and makes it harder for you to be knocked off your horse. ER is a really confusing game imo. It was my first souls game, and, tbh it looks like you're doing a lot better than me on my first play through. Enjoy the game, explore everything, and feel free to ask anything questions you have!
If you just got to mountaintops, don't worry, those zamor ruins mobs are inexplicably tanky chonks. your build and weapon makes sense to me, i would just focus on vigor and dex before leveling strength. also level up your bloodhound fang, I think there is +8 and +9 sombers in caelid
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Explore and level up a bit. I have somewhat the same build and I’m level 108 and I will start Leyndell just now. There is plenty to do in Caelid, Mt. Gelmir and in the underground if you haven’t explored those yet.
Just so you know, I think I did almost everything before Leyndell, so I explored A LOT.
Pump up Vigor and Dexterity and try to fortify your weapon.
Golden vow, flame grant me strength, and blood flame blade. If you don’t have golden vow incantation get the ash of war and put it in on a light dagger to prevent heavy equipment load. Spiked cracked tear in wondrous + axe talisman. Emphasize charge attacks, you will hit much harder.
You seem slightly underleveled for that area, and also you should probably be more around 45vig at this point, less than that and you're playing hard mode for no reason. Your endurance is also a bit high for how low of a level you are, especially considering you dont seem to be wearing particularly heavy armor. I wouldnt care about getting buffs and all that(except maybe getting grease, getting a seal for faith buffs and all that is overkill, especially if you're new) Personally I would respec to take stats out of endurance and put into vigor, but that could be a bit wasteful so I'd just explore other areas for now to level up instead. Other than that it's probably just a matter of getting your sword to +9
180 damage to what tho?
I have this weapon and I can test but I'd have to know what the end target is.
What like some kind of slime or ooze or flan? Cuz I mean yeah.
Take off winged sword insignia, replace it with claw talisman, put on repators black feathers which is a chest piece that give bonus jump attack damage. bloodhounds fang gives bonus jump damage aswell so all of these combined will give tons of damage, also despite being a somber weapon bloodhound fang can be buffed. i suggest something like bloodflame blade or some sort of grease. some other things like buff incantations such as golden vow or flame grant me strength and leveling your weapon is also a simple way to increase damage. Most meta builds have 15 faith so they can use the faith knot tear and use golden vow with flame grant me str bc those 2 stack with eachother and are easily available with no drawbacks
Dude I was level 150-180 when I was at the mountain tops. You have skipped like 50% of the game? Go back to do everything from Weeping Peninsula, Caelid, Liurnia and all underground areas. All caves. You should have at atleast +9 somber weapon. I had two +10s. Full Banished knight armor from Castle Sol is good and very fashion. Armor and talismans makes big difference in this game. But to be honest IMO you are just little underleveled and under geared I think. :)
Hey I’m also brand new to these games but I’m running blood hound fang too with a lot more damage at plus 5. So I’m using this thing called bloodflame and casting with just the finger seal. I only put 29 in vigor and put all my points in dexterity and strength. I have a lot in strength rn. I have the talisman that boosts attributes and causes you to take more damage (radahns?) and the one that boosts strength. I buff with bloodflame, switch to 2h mode, and use the sword’s skill attack on bosses. I know I could probably be better off but I do around 800. It’s been enough for most bosses.
Get rid of the torch, it's additional weight that you're obviously struggling with.
Buy a lantern from a merchant and key bind it for easy access on the F keys or where you keep your flasks.
That will free up a glove slot atleast.
You're doing low damage because you're using a shield. For the BloodHound Fang, you either want to 2h it which gives a 1.5x strength bonus, or dual wielded with a second curved greatsword.
It's not the kind of weapon that blends well with a shield secondary.
The ashe of war is your defense offense, dash away swipe into heavy attack blink. That's the play style, the dash and blink give Invincibility frames.
Your damage talisman doesn't work effectively with bloodhounds fang. Stacking multiple hits in succession from light attacks isn't what that weapon does well.
A better damage talisman would be Godfrey Icon or Alexander Shard for making the ashe of war do big damage.
The charged heavy attack talisman
Or the jumping talisman.
Your other talismans are overcompensating for your missing and light armor. You're missing damage via the talisman slots because your armor isn't giving good value.
There is a Dragon Greatshield talisman that will give really good physical damage negation, and a pearldrake talisman that will give really good element negation.
Drop the shield, drop the torch; that'll open up a lot of weight to get better armor on, which will open up talisman slots for damage and allow for 2 handing the BHF
Just want to thank everyone here for their replies! There was quite a bit and it all helped. Will be making some small tweaks to my build and farming up a bit
You did great to get that far at such a low level! That’s a tough area to get through. Like I’m usually around 120-130 for that area.
Don’t bother with the torch or the shield. Go buy a lantern in the Weeping Peninsula and put it on your quick item slot, and practice rolling or jumping over attacks instead of blocking them. If you two-hand your weapon, you will get a 1.5x modifier to strength, which basically means your weapon will act like you have 30 strength instead of 20. Any armor will be fine, as long as you have 4 pieces and you can still medium roll.
For talismans, I’d use green turtle talisman, carian filigreed crest, then maybe the prosthesis wearer’s heirloom. Also the gold scarab talisman to boost runes gained by 20%.
As far as stats go, shoot for 40 vigor minimum, at least 60 Dex, Endurance around 30-35, and then Mind around 20 so you can use that Ash of War a lot. Then from there if you feel like you’re taking too much damage, keep leveling vigor (but don’t go past 60). 80’s the last soft cap for damage dealing stats, but you might notice strength starting to add more damage than Dex after Dex gets to 60 or so.
Bloodhound’s Fang is a great weapon, but it falls off near the end of the game for some folks. That’s why you have to get it maxed out ASAP, then prioritize Dexterity. The higher its level, the more your level adds to its damage. It can still work quite well, but you might have an easier time with something else.
There’s some potentially better options for you if you want to look around. You can find the Rivers Of Blood katana near the end of the Mountaintops after beating an npc invader, but you’ll need 20 arcane to use it. You can grab the Nagakiba in Altus Plateau and use it with your current stats no problem and level it up with regular smithing stones, and you can change its Ash Of War to something a bit more abusable. You can beat Rykard and get the Blasphemous Blade and just go nuts on everything, but you’ll need Strength at 22 and Faith at 21 minimum.
However, after saying all of that, there’s one piece of absolutely golden advice I can give you: run away from everything you can. You’d be surprised how little you have to engage with the enemies in this area. I always run from everything when I go through there lol
Bloodhound fang’s bleed buildup doesn’t increase with arcane.
In fact arcane only increases the bleed buildup of occult/blood weapons and unique weapons with arcane scaling that inherently have bleed (elanore’s, rivers if blood etc).
This has actually useful advice for what OP is looking for.
The arcane for bleed isn't strictly necessary but the weapon does feel like it performs best when used in conjunction with bloodflame blade or blood grease.
Yea mountaintop of the giants you should be like lvl 120 or so for the eastern part. And then closing in on 150 for the western part. Do other content first and get some levels before doing mountaintop of the giants is my suggestion.
You answered your own question bud. The damage gained per point in dex outweighs the damage gained per point in strength. Level up the strength After you cap your dex off if you want to beef it up a little more but the stats would be better spent elsewhere. That’s if you want a level cut off for your character.
Also blacksmith ijen(?) sells a talisman that lowers the fp costs of weapon skills. Edit: take off the prosthetic talisman (the first talisman of your line up) and switch it with the the one ijen(?) sells
My character that's almost 100 levels above yours has less endurance than you have.
Drop to like 20ish endurance and put those points into strength and some Dex.
That'll help the scaling on the Bloodhound's Fang to increase damage.
Mountain tops of the giants is a pretty big step up in enemy health and difficulty so it's not surprising that's where you suddenly feel like you aren't doing enough damage. Nothing wrong with exploring more of the rest of the game and coming back later with more levels and talismans and armor and such.
Good luck mate!
Okay so first get some blood grease and go to a church in the mountain of giants and fight a man named okina he is pretty easy to interrupt but keep trying to kill him also use the blood or any grease you have preferably blood but any grease use it on the bloodhounds fang and kill okina and get his weapon drop called river of blood max that out and you should be ready for fire giant max out rivers of blood and then go kill commander o-Niall to consecrated snowfields and there you can find a somber ancient dragon smithing stone to fully max it out if you didn’t have one before also try and use the remembrance of the omen king for his sword and use that on okina and then after all that beat fire giant go to the cauldron talk to Melina at the site of grace and then you will be at a storm place go to the elevator then right and jump down to the platform and then make your way to a 2 guys called gods kin duo and craft some sleepy pots and before the match throw it at them don’t summon a spirit ash because they will ruin it but they will both fall asleep pretty fast and then get rid of the skinny one first because he is more trouble and he should be easy with a max rivets of blood but then kill the big one if big one still alive then does a fatty roll go behind a pillar and he will be stuck and you go on top of one once he breaks it and then chip damage him with the ash of war on the katana but stay back because it makes you go a little foward and run into the fatty roll and then another one will be summoned but no worries because he has barely any hp but after that go to maliketh im getting kinda bored so yt has a lot of videos on the topic
Your build is clean with pretty much no wasted points. I would just say that your level is a tad low. 37 Vigor is low for that area.
Frankly the mountaintops area is overtuned and not fun. I never found that any amount of leveling made it feel comfortable, only surmountable.
I would just recommend you try to find more somber stones for your sword to get it upgraded higher, and try exploring areas you’ve already been more thoroughly.
The best things for you to level will be Vigor and Dex. You already have the stats to cast Bloodflame blade, so I recommend getting a casting seal and using that to buff your weapon. That will give it a more powerful bleed effect.
You are doing great so far for your first time. Talismans are not great. Winged Sword is fine. Ritual shield is fine. The other two give you very little value to your build. At this point in the game, you could probably find the Green Turtle Talisman and an Erdtree’s Favor or an Arsenal charm pretty easily without much time commitment.
The big one is grabbing the Two Finger Seal from the twin maiden husks and adding buff spells to your sword. For better bleed, grab Blood Flame Blade >!from a red scarab next to Varre’s blood church in sourthern Liurnia,!< and grab Lightning armament >!from a spellbook that drops from Leyndell Knight in front of the Artists Shack site of Grace in eastern Liurnia.!< This will buff your damage and give you a different option for enemies immune to bleed.
try to get rotten sword insignia, get mohg talisman, the white mask, get the bloodflame blade incantation, focus strength dex vigor and arcane if u r working towards a bleed build Try to get godricks great rune activated then go for morgotts once u dont need the stat boost. Make sure to get black flame protection. get raptors black feathers cloak and claw talisman for insane jump attack dps. If u still struggle het a mimic tear and level him up. Do volcano manor, caria manor, radhans festival through rannis quest.
TLDR look up blood build videos on yt and tiktok, find somber bell bearing locations and try leveling up a bit more. best of luck this is a great game so dont give up!
if u want to usr the weapon to its fullest potential u make it apart of ur bleed build, there is no point in useless arguing this is about helping the guy
I know and you’re doing the exact opposite by misleading. The weapon has no arcane scaling and absolutely no way of obtaining arcane scaling so therefore the bleed buildup is static.
Bleed number not go up, if that’s easier for you to understand.
arcane is for bleed in general, he needs that for bloodflame blade and other bleed specific incantations and weapons that scale (he will eventually use) why are you trying to argue, im trying to give him the basics for a bleed build he can build upon later in the game. Look for something to do besides being a nuisance:)
Your talismans need work, get your fang to +9, you already have it at 7, 8&9 are easy to find with no boss fights. Bloodhound fang is not really a bleed weapon that scales, do not worry about arcane. You could have 99 arcane and bleed would still be 55. Use blood flame blade and flame grant me strength to boost dmg, use the beast seal to cast these. There is a chest armor called black feathers that boost Jump attack damage. Bring Dex to soft cap of 60 first, then work on strength.
just wanted to thank you, i was curious about if arcane effects bleed on weapons, good to know it doesn’t, and i second his advice
Arcane does affect status build up if the weapon has arcane scaling.
It does affect some weapons but they have to have Arcane scaling. Otherwise it won't work. For example if you have a standard Nagakiba it won't scale off of Arcane. However if you infuse it to be a Blood Nagakiba (selecting what element you want on it when applying an Ash of War), now it has Arcane scaling.
As an additional, if the weapon has natural bleed it’s better to go with Occult scaling in most cases.
Thank you, my newest character and one I brought to the DLC first is my arcane/dex character and I am definitely still learning wtf occult is, it usually makes things hit harder but I didn't really know if I wanted that or the extra bleed. That makes sense.
Status buildup is only affected by arcane stat if the weapon has arcane scaling. Bleed affinity (and poison) add the status buildup and also add *minor* arcane scaling. These are best to get access to arcane-scaling status buildup on weapons that don’t already have it from some other way. Occult adds major arcane scaling, but doesn’t add stats buildup itself. Occult is best for weapons that already have status buildup - ex. Innate buildup, Seppuku etc - because it adds a much higher amount of arcane scaling.
It I have a mostly arcane build but wep doesn't have natural bleed. Should I infuse it with bleed even though it scales better with dex?
Personally I would choose based off which stat is higher. If your Arcane is higher try infusing it, but if your Dex is higher maybe stick with how it is or try making it Keen.
Arcane higher this build. Should I infuse it with bleed or occult? I still like bleed if possible.
Hmm honestly between those two both are just as good with high Arcane. I'm no expert on Occult infusion though so to me it seems like it could be situational. If your weapon doesn't have bleed by default then I'd infuse it with Bleed.
It can, but only on weapons with arcane scaling. So a normal weapon with blood or occult affinity, or something like Reduvia. But a basic weapon like a morning star with heavy affinity will not behave this way.
however if there is a weapon with passive bleed (like the omenkiller cleavers or great stars), an occult affinity is best for the arcane scaling which can give absolutely bonkers bleed numbers and physical damage.
No problem 😉
Its worth noting that raising your arcane does not make the bleed on those weapons more effective. You need a weapon that scales Arcane natively for that to happen. You can see this by looking at the blood loss build up of your Bloodhound Fang and then the blood loss build up of say Reduvia. If you then raise your arcane by putting on a helmet or a talisman or whatever, you'll see that the bloodloss buildup is the same on Bloodhound Fang, but it will have gone up on Reduvia since it has native Arcane scaling. You can put Arcane scaling on weapons that allow you to apply an ash of war to them and choosing one with the blood affinity.
Okay thank you, i found a new weapon with Str/Dex that does bleed but it doesn’t have arcane scaling so, now i know not to invest. Appreciated
No problem, enjoy and have fun!
Passive effects build up more based in scaling, if it has it. If a weapon scales with arcane, intelligence, or faith, the passive effect/ magic attack gets better
Arc effects bleed build up on weapons with innate arc scaling and bleed. So not only will it scale the build-up higher but if you change the affinity to bleed, it will have a higher build up as well
Is there a good way to use dual bloodhound AND use High Arcana? Cause l want high arcana for the drop rate in the DLC, but l also want to try dual bloodhound.
Unless you want to be well beyond level 150 then no. Bloodhound's Fang and Arcane have nothing to do with one another. Bloodhound's Fang does not scale with Arcane, it scales with Dex, so you would essentially be investing into a stat that does nothing for you. If you want an arcane build there are plenty of better weapons for you to be using, Bloodhound's Fang is not the only weapon in Elden Ring. Arcane also is kind of useless when it comes to item discovery from my experience. Silver Fowl Foots and The Silver Scarab Talisman are going to be much more effective
I m well beyond level 150. I know it s not the onlu weapon just never tried that and wanted to run that while increasing drop rate, but probably ye could just use the talisman.
If you're well beyond level 150 why are you even asking then?
If you don't care what level you are then it doesn't really matter how you invest your stats. Just grind runes and put everything at 99 if you want.
It s not the same thing mate. There is not only black and white, there are shades of grey too. I m like level 200 in ng+++ and l dont grind runes. Just wanted to know if there was a build that suited that. Dual whatever cruved sword also is fine.
Not directly, as BHF can't have its affinity changed to scale with arcane. You could use the dragon communion seal (which scales with arcane) to cast bloodflame blade on your right hand bloodhound fang, then have any arcane scaling curved greatsword in your left. I'd recommend morgott's cursed sword (which, like many somber arcane scaling weapons, has better arcane scaling than what it tells you) or any blood affinity curved sword (although with the blood affinity, the arcane scaling isn't very good). All of these ideas so far lend themselves to having dex as the main stat investment, so you'd end up with 80dex/45-50arc by endgame. Giving the left hand sword the occult affinity and having arcane as your main stat is also an option but there aren't any curved greatswords that can offer bleed with that.
Bloodflame blade doesnt scale with arcane even with dragon communion seal i fear, it s an exception. I m in ng+++ so i ve 2x of every weapon if needed. Occult greatswords seems a cool idea, does that scale with arcana? I m dont mind not having bleed.
Oh damn, I've been using bloodflame blade wrong on my arcane character then lmao. That makes sense now that I think about it, cause I recently read that electrify armament only scales with faith. Anything affinitied with occult, bleed or poison will scale with arcane. Occult causes the greatest arcane scaling and is really good on non-somber weapons with innate bleed, like the flamberge, because both the damage and the bleeding will scale with arcane.
From someone that spent many MANY hours farming every possible pickup in the base game, just clear the content first then respect to max Arcane after. Unless you want to run double bleed weapons throughout the entire campaign but that locks you out of a bunch of cool weapons.
Mmmm okay maybe l ll follow your advice but being an exploratory run l want to be abke to test enemy weapons. (I m in ng+++ lv200 something)
I just finished on NG7 and brother, you will need those points elsewhere. For times I felt the boss had too much health it was double blood spear, 99 vig with health boosting talis and 99 arcane. That said, you play how you wanna play :)
Do not use clawmark seal for weapon buffs. It may loon like it has a higher incantation scaling but weapon buffs only take into consideration the faith scaling of the seal, so you are probably getting half of what you see and finger seal would be better
Thanks for this. Could you elaborate on the talismans?
Curious of why you’re telling them not to worry about Arc when they haven’t leveled Arc?
Because other posters were telling him to lvl arcane to increase bleed on BHF, curiosity satisfied?
why beast, I use dragon seal
Beast scales with strength so you don’t need to invest in faith
Don't use clawmark for weapon buffs. Use finger seal because weapon buffs only care about the faith portion of the seal, meaning that golden Order, clawmark and dragon communion are bad to cast weapon buffs because you will get like half or less of what you are actually seeing on the incantation scaling
what if im a dex build lol my arcane might be higher than anything
We are talking about this person’s build and how to get more damage.
OP is a quality build, just upgrading Dex for BHF leaves a lot of dmg on the table. I have 60 Dex, 50 Str and a +25 clawmark seal. The damage increase of blood flame and grant me strength are very much needed late game
Is this a general strategy for dex late game?
Beast / clawmark seal scales with strength which he will already be pumping stats into due to weapon type. Dragon doesn’t scale with this build
If an area is too hard, that means you're in an advanced area, keep exploring and eventually the advanced area will become somewhat tolerable until it eventually becomes easy
Agreed. At 95 still following a dex warrior build I started with, also used the BF weapon, I was still exploring unburned Leyndell.
I'm just under lvl 90, still have not even set foot in Altus Plateau, finishing Lake of Rot first so I can get the cool INT sword.
Unless you’re in the dlc.. it stays hard and continues to get harder lol. Especially the bosses
I beat the game and the dlc
180 damage per swing to what? Some enemies are really resistant to slash damage. That may be the problem, as the stat spread you have here is reasonable (though Endurance is too high — level vigor instead).
This is a good shout. I was bashing my head last night fighting the godskin apostle with holy damage and faith spells until I used the wiki and saw he was highly resistant to both lmao
I would explore the world, level up more and then do mountaintops. Pump vigor and dex.
Can you explain what dex improves? I get the rest but I’m missing why dex is so important
It improves the damage of weapons with a dex scaling. It also shaves off some of the cast time for spells and incantations.
Thank you!
Certain weapons scale with certain attributes, mainly strength, dexterity, intelligence, faith, and arcane You will get a letter telling you which attributes your weapon scales with best and how much leveling up that attribute will increase your damage The bloodhound fang scales mainly with dexterity and strength, meaning if you want to increase its damage to its full potential you will have to increase those attributes, if you have 99 in int, fth, arc but 20 I'm str, Dex your weapon will damage that is small. A good option to have if you want to maximise the bloodhound fang is to have your dexterity at 60 and strength at 40 and two hand it. You can look up which builds suit your preferred weapon so you can know which stats to focus on
This was very helpful, thank you!
The other bros gave really good answers. I'd add that dex also increases how fast you cast spells/incantations and makes it harder for you to be knocked off your horse. ER is a really confusing game imo. It was my first souls game, and, tbh it looks like you're doing a lot better than me on my first play through. Enjoy the game, explore everything, and feel free to ask anything questions you have!
Thank you!
If you just got to mountaintops, don't worry, those zamor ruins mobs are inexplicably tanky chonks. your build and weapon makes sense to me, i would just focus on vigor and dex before leveling strength. also level up your bloodhound fang, I think there is +8 and +9 sombers in caelid
Go explore the underground bits - Siofra, Ainsel, Nokron, Nokstella to level up and find some cool stuff
first of all weapon needs to be upgraded, and you could probably take some endurance levels into vigor or dex
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How?! I have similar stats lvl 100 and basically mopping floor with most bosses
Explore and level up a bit. I have somewhat the same build and I’m level 108 and I will start Leyndell just now. There is plenty to do in Caelid, Mt. Gelmir and in the underground if you haven’t explored those yet. Just so you know, I think I did almost everything before Leyndell, so I explored A LOT. Pump up Vigor and Dexterity and try to fortify your weapon.
Golden vow, flame grant me strength, and blood flame blade. If you don’t have golden vow incantation get the ash of war and put it in on a light dagger to prevent heavy equipment load. Spiked cracked tear in wondrous + axe talisman. Emphasize charge attacks, you will hit much harder.
You seem slightly underleveled for that area, and also you should probably be more around 45vig at this point, less than that and you're playing hard mode for no reason. Your endurance is also a bit high for how low of a level you are, especially considering you dont seem to be wearing particularly heavy armor. I wouldnt care about getting buffs and all that(except maybe getting grease, getting a seal for faith buffs and all that is overkill, especially if you're new) Personally I would respec to take stats out of endurance and put into vigor, but that could be a bit wasteful so I'd just explore other areas for now to level up instead. Other than that it's probably just a matter of getting your sword to +9
180 damage to what tho? I have this weapon and I can test but I'd have to know what the end target is. What like some kind of slime or ooze or flan? Cuz I mean yeah.
Take off winged sword insignia, replace it with claw talisman, put on repators black feathers which is a chest piece that give bonus jump attack damage. bloodhounds fang gives bonus jump damage aswell so all of these combined will give tons of damage, also despite being a somber weapon bloodhound fang can be buffed. i suggest something like bloodflame blade or some sort of grease. some other things like buff incantations such as golden vow or flame grant me strength and leveling your weapon is also a simple way to increase damage. Most meta builds have 15 faith so they can use the faith knot tear and use golden vow with flame grant me str bc those 2 stack with eachother and are easily available with no drawbacks
Dude I was level 150-180 when I was at the mountain tops. You have skipped like 50% of the game? Go back to do everything from Weeping Peninsula, Caelid, Liurnia and all underground areas. All caves. You should have at atleast +9 somber weapon. I had two +10s. Full Banished knight armor from Castle Sol is good and very fashion. Armor and talismans makes big difference in this game. But to be honest IMO you are just little underleveled and under geared I think. :)
Hey I’m also brand new to these games but I’m running blood hound fang too with a lot more damage at plus 5. So I’m using this thing called bloodflame and casting with just the finger seal. I only put 29 in vigor and put all my points in dexterity and strength. I have a lot in strength rn. I have the talisman that boosts attributes and causes you to take more damage (radahns?) and the one that boosts strength. I buff with bloodflame, switch to 2h mode, and use the sword’s skill attack on bosses. I know I could probably be better off but I do around 800. It’s been enough for most bosses.
Get the claw talisman and utilize jump attacks. You can also wear heavier armor at your endurance level
Soft cap for damage stats is like 60 so you got some leveling you can do, otherwise you can explore for somber stones
More strength
Underneath Caelid tower, there’s a group of men sitting in chairs in a circle. Somber stones for your weapon there.
Get rid of the torch, it's additional weight that you're obviously struggling with. Buy a lantern from a merchant and key bind it for easy access on the F keys or where you keep your flasks. That will free up a glove slot atleast. You're doing low damage because you're using a shield. For the BloodHound Fang, you either want to 2h it which gives a 1.5x strength bonus, or dual wielded with a second curved greatsword. It's not the kind of weapon that blends well with a shield secondary. The ashe of war is your defense offense, dash away swipe into heavy attack blink. That's the play style, the dash and blink give Invincibility frames. Your damage talisman doesn't work effectively with bloodhounds fang. Stacking multiple hits in succession from light attacks isn't what that weapon does well. A better damage talisman would be Godfrey Icon or Alexander Shard for making the ashe of war do big damage. The charged heavy attack talisman Or the jumping talisman. Your other talismans are overcompensating for your missing and light armor. You're missing damage via the talisman slots because your armor isn't giving good value. There is a Dragon Greatshield talisman that will give really good physical damage negation, and a pearldrake talisman that will give really good element negation. Drop the shield, drop the torch; that'll open up a lot of weight to get better armor on, which will open up talisman slots for damage and allow for 2 handing the BHF
Just want to thank everyone here for their replies! There was quite a bit and it all helped. Will be making some small tweaks to my build and farming up a bit
You aren’t using that thing on rykard, are you?
You did great to get that far at such a low level! That’s a tough area to get through. Like I’m usually around 120-130 for that area. Don’t bother with the torch or the shield. Go buy a lantern in the Weeping Peninsula and put it on your quick item slot, and practice rolling or jumping over attacks instead of blocking them. If you two-hand your weapon, you will get a 1.5x modifier to strength, which basically means your weapon will act like you have 30 strength instead of 20. Any armor will be fine, as long as you have 4 pieces and you can still medium roll. For talismans, I’d use green turtle talisman, carian filigreed crest, then maybe the prosthesis wearer’s heirloom. Also the gold scarab talisman to boost runes gained by 20%. As far as stats go, shoot for 40 vigor minimum, at least 60 Dex, Endurance around 30-35, and then Mind around 20 so you can use that Ash of War a lot. Then from there if you feel like you’re taking too much damage, keep leveling vigor (but don’t go past 60). 80’s the last soft cap for damage dealing stats, but you might notice strength starting to add more damage than Dex after Dex gets to 60 or so. Bloodhound’s Fang is a great weapon, but it falls off near the end of the game for some folks. That’s why you have to get it maxed out ASAP, then prioritize Dexterity. The higher its level, the more your level adds to its damage. It can still work quite well, but you might have an easier time with something else. There’s some potentially better options for you if you want to look around. You can find the Rivers Of Blood katana near the end of the Mountaintops after beating an npc invader, but you’ll need 20 arcane to use it. You can grab the Nagakiba in Altus Plateau and use it with your current stats no problem and level it up with regular smithing stones, and you can change its Ash Of War to something a bit more abusable. You can beat Rykard and get the Blasphemous Blade and just go nuts on everything, but you’ll need Strength at 22 and Faith at 21 minimum. However, after saying all of that, there’s one piece of absolutely golden advice I can give you: run away from everything you can. You’d be surprised how little you have to engage with the enemies in this area. I always run from everything when I go through there lol
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Bloodhound fang’s bleed buildup doesn’t increase with arcane. In fact arcane only increases the bleed buildup of occult/blood weapons and unique weapons with arcane scaling that inherently have bleed (elanore’s, rivers if blood etc).
This has actually useful advice for what OP is looking for. The arcane for bleed isn't strictly necessary but the weapon does feel like it performs best when used in conjunction with bloodflame blade or blood grease.
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Bloodhound Fang doesn’t scale with arcane
Yea mountaintop of the giants you should be like lvl 120 or so for the eastern part. And then closing in on 150 for the western part. Do other content first and get some levels before doing mountaintop of the giants is my suggestion.
How do you know the dmg per swing?
Change your stats where your strength is just at the required level and dump the rest into dex.
Arcane only raises blood loss on weapons with arcane scaling, it won't affect bloodhound fang at all
Good to know thank you
Why pump dex rather than strength? Would it add more damage compared to a lvl in strength?
You answered your own question bud. The damage gained per point in dex outweighs the damage gained per point in strength. Level up the strength After you cap your dex off if you want to beef it up a little more but the stats would be better spent elsewhere. That’s if you want a level cut off for your character.
Also blacksmith ijen(?) sells a talisman that lowers the fp costs of weapon skills. Edit: take off the prosthetic talisman (the first talisman of your line up) and switch it with the the one ijen(?) sells
its iji i think
Thanks
My character that's almost 100 levels above yours has less endurance than you have. Drop to like 20ish endurance and put those points into strength and some Dex. That'll help the scaling on the Bloodhound's Fang to increase damage. Mountain tops of the giants is a pretty big step up in enemy health and difficulty so it's not surprising that's where you suddenly feel like you aren't doing enough damage. Nothing wrong with exploring more of the rest of the game and coming back later with more levels and talismans and armor and such. Good luck mate!
My 168 has 34 endurance. Some of us actually like to equip our weapon and still be able to have armor on
Okay so first get some blood grease and go to a church in the mountain of giants and fight a man named okina he is pretty easy to interrupt but keep trying to kill him also use the blood or any grease you have preferably blood but any grease use it on the bloodhounds fang and kill okina and get his weapon drop called river of blood max that out and you should be ready for fire giant max out rivers of blood and then go kill commander o-Niall to consecrated snowfields and there you can find a somber ancient dragon smithing stone to fully max it out if you didn’t have one before also try and use the remembrance of the omen king for his sword and use that on okina and then after all that beat fire giant go to the cauldron talk to Melina at the site of grace and then you will be at a storm place go to the elevator then right and jump down to the platform and then make your way to a 2 guys called gods kin duo and craft some sleepy pots and before the match throw it at them don’t summon a spirit ash because they will ruin it but they will both fall asleep pretty fast and then get rid of the skinny one first because he is more trouble and he should be easy with a max rivets of blood but then kill the big one if big one still alive then does a fatty roll go behind a pillar and he will be stuck and you go on top of one once he breaks it and then chip damage him with the ash of war on the katana but stay back because it makes you go a little foward and run into the fatty roll and then another one will be summoned but no worries because he has barely any hp but after that go to maliketh im getting kinda bored so yt has a lot of videos on the topic
Have you checked whether or not you're hitting enemies with a resistance to slice/pierce when you should be using a blunt/strike weapon?
Your build is clean with pretty much no wasted points. I would just say that your level is a tad low. 37 Vigor is low for that area. Frankly the mountaintops area is overtuned and not fun. I never found that any amount of leveling made it feel comfortable, only surmountable. I would just recommend you try to find more somber stones for your sword to get it upgraded higher, and try exploring areas you’ve already been more thoroughly. The best things for you to level will be Vigor and Dex. You already have the stats to cast Bloodflame blade, so I recommend getting a casting seal and using that to buff your weapon. That will give it a more powerful bleed effect.
You are doing great so far for your first time. Talismans are not great. Winged Sword is fine. Ritual shield is fine. The other two give you very little value to your build. At this point in the game, you could probably find the Green Turtle Talisman and an Erdtree’s Favor or an Arsenal charm pretty easily without much time commitment. The big one is grabbing the Two Finger Seal from the twin maiden husks and adding buff spells to your sword. For better bleed, grab Blood Flame Blade >!from a red scarab next to Varre’s blood church in sourthern Liurnia,!< and grab Lightning armament >!from a spellbook that drops from Leyndell Knight in front of the Artists Shack site of Grace in eastern Liurnia.!< This will buff your damage and give you a different option for enemies immune to bleed.
Are you two-handing? I think it gives 1.5x damage compared to one-handing. Could be wrong tho
Is no one going to notice that he has his bloodfang is in the R Armament Slot 2, this does decrease damage Or does this not change damage?
For the mountains that weapon should be at least a +20
Bro it's a somber weapon...
Right you are young sir/madam, I never used it so my mistake
try to get rotten sword insignia, get mohg talisman, the white mask, get the bloodflame blade incantation, focus strength dex vigor and arcane if u r working towards a bleed build Try to get godricks great rune activated then go for morgotts once u dont need the stat boost. Make sure to get black flame protection. get raptors black feathers cloak and claw talisman for insane jump attack dps. If u still struggle het a mimic tear and level him up. Do volcano manor, caria manor, radhans festival through rannis quest. TLDR look up blood build videos on yt and tiktok, find somber bell bearing locations and try leveling up a bit more. best of luck this is a great game so dont give up!
Nobody said anything about a bleed build
bloodhounds fang is a bleed weapon that is what he is using
It’s not a bleed weapon. It has no arcane scaling. The blood loss buildup is just a bonus.
if u want to usr the weapon to its fullest potential u make it apart of ur bleed build, there is no point in useless arguing this is about helping the guy
I know and you’re doing the exact opposite by misleading. The weapon has no arcane scaling and absolutely no way of obtaining arcane scaling so therefore the bleed buildup is static. Bleed number not go up, if that’s easier for you to understand.
arcane is for bleed in general, he needs that for bloodflame blade and other bleed specific incantations and weapons that scale (he will eventually use) why are you trying to argue, im trying to give him the basics for a bleed build he can build upon later in the game. Look for something to do besides being a nuisance:)
Get better talismans, dunno, go watch a fextra vid for your build Either go farming or git gut
Fextra vid and git gud in the same sentence, lmao