PURE FAITH!

[Gillx83]

So far I am a prophet and I have:
Vigor - 20
Mind - 20
End - 8
Str - 11
Dex - 10
Faith - 25
Arcane - 10

All I have are 2 flame spells and 1 healing spell. Without me googling and ruining everything, can someone tell me the area I can go to find some 25 or less faith spells please?

[juicy]

Publicado originalmente por Gillx83:

So is INT better than FAITH in Elden Ring?

it depends on your spells but.

Honestly stick to faith or intelligence.

Not both.

Also, please don't ignore vigor

[Baldurs_Gate_2]

Publicado originalmente por Gillx83:

So is INT better than FAITH in Elden Ring?

It's more versatile and it has better offensive spells i would say. It's ironic, that the early spell "catch flame" is one of the best offensive ones, but with a low range.

Google the incantations no hit run from gino machino, there you can see how strong it is.

[Twisty]

Spoiler free:
Kill the dragon in Limgrave to get it's heart (tough fight when starting, but fun)
Use the Heart at a Dragon Chapel, if you find an NPC named Boc, it's easier to find the chapel.
Explore the North East of Limgrave to find an NPC, he'll ask you to kill a miniboss, return to the NPC, and he will help you out . You may need to progress further in the game before he gives you more info.

Unfortunately, a lot of the better faith spells come from after Margit and the next area.

[Dragonirian]

Did you check the weeping peninsula village in the south but before the wall?

[MundM]

Publicado originalmente por Xengre:

Publicado originalmente por Gillx83:

Ok thanks, ill see if I can find a way... I am so terrible at this game...... LOL but I love it.

Its like a really hot ex who sleeps aroudn but the secks is so good! lol

Don't go straight to Liurnia unless you want to skip Margit. It will deactivate the boss which you may enjoy fighting and it progresses some quest stuff. There is a side path but it has some consequences and is usually used for subsequent playthroughs on new characters to get stuff super fast/early.

Who says that? Margit is there to protect Godrick, the weakest of the Demi Gods, why should he leave?

[Mewsha]

Publicado originalmente por Gillx83:

Ok thanks!

Also, is pure faith decent or is pure INT better?

That's a tricky question.

Most people are going to say that INT is better than Faith, but I just think it's less straightforward.

The reason Faith has a bad reputation is that holy damage is underpowered in this game.

Without spoiling anything, the later areas have enemies that have very high holy resist whereas INT builds only have to deal with a handful of bosses with very high magic resist, and even then there's one spell that still melts with the proper flask mixture. If that doesn't work for some reason, they still have one of the most powerful weapons in the game that scales with INT and inflicts bleed damage, which is something almost every enemy in the game is weak to. They also can get it early in the game.

Pure INT builds are foolproof unless they're intentionally trying to go full caster, and even then it's friendlier due to physick flask tears.

In contrast if you go pure Faith you only have access to two other weapons, and one of them is only found later in the game. These are the only weapons besides seals that pure Faith effectively utilize without specing significantly into another stat.

So Faith builds need to really consider the resistances that their enemies have because there's no easy way out when you're stuck. Luckily you have access to incantations that do various types of damage, and you'll have access to buffs.

I'm also a pure Faith enjoyer, and I love using the Coded Sword because I prefer a straight sword moveset, but Cipher Pata does a lot of DPS too and you can get it earlier. You're very limited there, but eventually you can get another and be able to power stance which does work well. I don't think that's too much of a spoiler.

As for seals you got some options, but the only three I think you should consider for later in the game are Erdtree, Golden Order, and Dragon Communion.

Erdtree is ideal for pure faith builds. If that's the stat you're getting to 80, then that's the seal you should save up for. I think it's best to look to talismans to boost your damage here, and if an enemy is particularly resistant to something, then chances are you're going to have an incantation that's powerful and that they're weak to.

Golden Order works well for builds that want to split Faith and INT. I also think it pairs excellently with the Prince of Death Staff if you still want to be a pure caster, and eventually that staff outscales the best pure INT staff.

Dragon Communion boosts Dragon Communion incantations and scales off of Arcane, but if invest enough for Faith incantations, then your incantation scaling is almost as good as the pure Faith build while also being able to consider more powerful bleed weapons.

The Clawmark Seal boosts Bestial Incantations and also allows you to split Faith and Strength for incantation scaling. Eventually it does fall off to the Erdtree Seal though when it comes to incantation scaling, so if you really like Bestial Incantations, then it's better to offhand the Erdtree Seal and mainhand the Cinquedea, which gives the Bestial Incantation boost when you're hitting the final soft cap.

Finger Seal is fine for early to mid game, but it hits a wall later in the game, even with its upgraded S scaling. The other seals are pretty underwhelming and limiting in my opinion, unless you really end up liking that specific school of incantations and don't want to use anything else.

You can power stance seals as well, but for everything except Dragon Communion incantations I think it feels awful because you don't have the hyper armor that those incantations give. You should have a reliable melee option in your main hand in most cases, even if it's just a dagger.

As you can see there's several different routes you can take with Faith that not a lot of people consider and it's not straightforward. It took the community number crunching and trial and error to figure these things out.

I prefer Faith builds because there's so much variety in them.

[Xengre]

Publicado originalmente por MundM:

Publicado originalmente por Xengre:

Don't go straight to Liurnia unless you want to skip Margit. It will deactivate the boss which you may enjoy fighting and it progresses some quest stuff. There is a side path but it has some consequences and is usually used for subsequent playthroughs on new characters to get stuff super fast/early.

Who says that? Margit is there to protect Godrick, the weakest of the Demi Gods, why should he leave?

If you skip Stormveil and activate a site of graces in Liurnia Lake it despawns Margit and you miss the first encounter with the boss.

Publicado originalmente por Gillx83:

So is INT better than FAITH in Elden Ring?

For typical offensive dmg, yes, but not always.

There are cases where faith will be extremely powerful such as using dragonbreath on bosses (overkill for trash mobs and slow to cast), the pest threads for large bosses basically rips many of them apart, as a supplement via buffs for melee or survivability buffs, healing via prayers and HP regen is more efficient than red flask by far but takes longer to cast, etc.

However, there is absolutely ZERO reason to pick outside of "roleplay" purposes. Almost all of the spells have fairly low stat requirements and higher spells can be reached via a few pieces of equipment, if not just a single talisman/mixed physicks depending on your build. While some spells will obviously scale harder with a bit more of a given stat its not going to be game changing and most of your scaling comes from the catalyst being upgraded.

A difference of 50 faith vs 80 faith isn't going to be some insane difference. A high end Seal of with a high faith build of 80 faith will get around 350 incant scaling at max catalyst upgrade. A 50 faith build will get around 250 incant scaling. Its only a 40% difference and this means it would take an average of 2.5 spells to before it equals 1 free bonus attack on the 80 faith spell, or basically lets just say 3 spells to equal one cast difference. For trash mobs this simply wont happen for hardly any normal mob in the game. For bosses this is a small difference even if the 40% appears big initially. However, this assumed your build was wack and didn't use a better seal. You could use the Golden Order Seal which is Int + Faith scaling and at 45 int / 45 faith would have close to the same incant scaling as the typical high end 80 faith build of around 338 but vastly superior spell options.

For staves there is a bit more of a gap but if your intention is faith build anyways as the core focus then this isn't a loss. There are split scaling staves but you can also just simply use talisman, headgear, runes, or mixed physicks to cover the gap and reach milestones like 80 int easily for the rare case you really want that extra firepower for a hard boss or something.

[Heimdall313]

Get Arcane up to 12. Explore the shoreline west of Church of Elleh, look for a cave. Kill the weak little demi-humans inside, follow the cave all the way.

[Antpile]

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

Publicado originalmente por Gillx83:

Ok thanks!

Also, is pure faith decent or is pure INT better?

Without spoiling anything, the later areas have enemies that have very high holy resist whereas INT builds only have to deal with a handful of bosses with very high magic resist, and even then there's one spell that still melts with the proper flask mixture. If that doesn't work for some reason, they still have one of the most powerful weapons in the game that scales with INT and inflicts bleed damage, which is something almost every enemy in the game is weak to. They also can get it early in the game.

In contrast if you go pure Faith you only have access to two other weapons, and one of them is only found later in the game. These are the only weapons besides seals that pure Faith effectively utilize without specing significantly into another stat.

... What? First, cipher pata is super early and scales better off faith than anything does off int. Also, it is a fist weapon, so if you 2hand it, it splits into two weapons for dual wielding. There's no reason to need 2 of these. Don't forget the new patch also buffed the attack speed AND recovery time of fist attacks, so they are much better than they were.

Second, things being weak to holy damage is kind of irrelevant when you can't even get a spell this early that does holy damage. Fire sling and catch flame are the first. Fire, obviously. Lightning damage will likely come next, whether from normal lightning spells or madness spells. Blood flame damage can be acquired pretty early if you know where to look as well. Technically still fire, but adding in bleed to anything is nice.

Then there is the beast magic if you take out the mariner in northern limgrave.

The only real issue with faith builds if you don't want to skip to liurnia is that flame sling isn't very good against those stupid birds in Storm Veil.

Edit: Also, if you want faith weapon with bleed on it, winged scythe is really easy to get in the weeping peninsula. Takes some stats to use, but so does moonveil and the other int bleed weapons you are talking about.

[Ard Galen]

heads up: this post and the one after may contain small spoilers for spells and weapon, so if you want yourself completely unspoiled better skip them for now. sorry for the inconvenience, op.

Publicado originalmente por Xengre:

Do whichever you want but know that Int is definitely more offensive oriented while faith is more support. There are some okay faith spells but you would ideally supplement it with some melee since it tends to be holy/lightning aligned which some enemies may resist. However, there are some very strong holy spells in some cases like that pest thread thing or the dragon breath spells.

i'm amazed by that statement. faith has by far the broadest range of damage types in the game and is the only way to deal just about any damage type and status there is in the game.
just the dragon spells cover an amazing array of, though costly, highly effective and diverse spells. holy spells, lightning spells, fire spells, with glintstone breath there's even magic damage, pest threads deals physical damage and even the healing spells have some measure of offensive capabilities against very certain enemies, though thats so specific it should never be a factor in decisionmaking while building your character.

on the other side you have INT magic, which is either... uh... magic typed, or in a few cases fire, physical or ice. about 80% of spells deal magic damage though, lightning isn't even in there, let alone holy, and especially in the early game you have basically 2 types of spell: "throw shiny rock" or "swing shiny sword".

that being said, a full faith build is clearly possible, i know for sure because i've done that several times now, but you need to vary your spells quite a bit if you intend to actually deal consistent damage. test out weaknesses, and use your environment to enhance the effect of your spells. sure you can brute force faith as well, but if you actually want to utilize what you're given you have to try out different approaches. in contrast to magic you don't only have to think about the vector, meaning the way the magic comes to the enemy, but also the kind of damage you want to apply.
also, mana. thats kind of an issue, especially early game. faith doesn'T have a lot of good low-mana damage spells aside of catch flame or throw lightning in the early game, and as soon as you get dragon magic you'll have to face the music that your mana is ALWAYS too low to blast your spells out everywhere.
to counter that seek out those small golden trees, you'll find golden seeds at them to enhance your amount of flasks you carry, and shift quite a few to mana. to be honest since you got healing spells you don't need as many on health, anyways.

regarding the melee capabilities, thats always useful, sure, but its not really necessary beyond what is needed to wield certain weapons. there are loads of weapons that scale well with faith, so thats a valid approach to weapon damage, and you shouldn't forget about weapon buffs. those scale with your faith and can turn a basically worthless stick into a decent weapon.

TLDR: full faith is possible and reasonably strong, but suffers from mana issues. don't forget to add health, thats useful for ANY class, and also some spells or spell foci scale well with arcane as well, keep in mind which attributes you focus on and choose your equipment accordingly, then its an effective and fun way to play.

[Ard Galen]

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

The reason Faith has a bad reputation is that holy damage is underpowered in this game.

doesn't matter, incantations have elements for days. want physical? pest threads. want fire? sure, you got one from the start and they keep coming through the game. want lightning? oh god i don't know where to start there are so many

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

Without spoiling anything, the later areas have enemies that have very high holy resist whereas INT builds only have to deal with a handful of bosses with very high magic resist, and even then there's one spell that still melts with the proper flask mixture. If that doesn't work for some reason, they still have one of the most powerful weapons in the game that scales with INT and inflicts bleed damage, which is something almost every enemy in the game is weak to. They also can get it early in the game.

bloodflame is a thing, and it turny any weapon that can be enchanted into a bleed weapon that scales off faith and deals fire damage to boot. while less bosses have high magic resist there are bosses like malenia that keep jumping out of the way while incantations tent to be too fast to evade if applied properly, even throw lightning works on fast bosses like malenia.

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

Pure INT builds are foolproof unless they're intentionally trying to go full caster, and even then it's friendlier due to physick flask tears.

those flasks work on incantations pretty good as well, the "infinite mana for 10 seconds" thing is just chefs kiss if combined with ekzykes decay or something similar and i think there is even an equivalent for terra magica, though i'm not sure on that because i barely used those.

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

In contrast if you go pure Faith you only have access to two other weapons, and one of them is only found later in the game. These are the only weapons besides seals that pure Faith effectively utilize without specing significantly into another stat.

i know where you are coming from, but thats just wrong. i know you mean cipher pata and coded sword, but those are ONLY scaling with faith. black blade, tree sentinel spears, cricuble knight weaponry of any kind, that all scales its damage fairly well with faith and you only need to fill the str and dex requirements, not go beyond them. and yes, especially for the crucible knight stuff or the tree sentinel weapons that may be quite a bit, but the black blade barely requires anything beyond what you'd invest anyways most times, then there's the erdtree dagger, the golden epitaph, the miquellan knights sword, the gargoyle weapons, the golden order greatsword, godslayer weapons, the magma blade, curved greatsword, the envoy horns, staff of the avatar, inquisitors girandole, vykes spear, the winged scythe, giants red braid, magma whip candlestick, erdtree bows and even the sentrys torch and st trinas torch scale with faith.
that was a pointlessly long and still very incomplete list of faith scaling weapons and they cover basically all cathegories, from straight swords and daggers all the way to great spears and gigantic weapons, and as long as you don't intend to go for the really big ones the str requirements are usually reasonably tame.

and after all that being said, there still are weapon enchantments that off itself scale off faith, so thats a way to add faith scaling to any weapon and to even turn an old cane into a reasonably decent weapon, even if for a short duration.

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

So Faith builds need to really consider the resistances that their enemies have because there's no easy way out when you're stuck. Luckily you have access to incantations that do various types of damage, and you'll have access to buffs.

absolutely agree there

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

Dragon Communion boosts Dragon Communion incantations and scales off of Arcane, but if invest enough for Faith incantations, then your incantation scaling is almost as good as the pure Faith build while also being able to consider more powerful bleed weapons.

i skipped a bit because i didn't have to say anything to that before, but here i want to chip in again for a bit. arcane doesn'T only affect bleed. it also boosts poison, frost or other weapon ailments like scarlet rot. there's more than just bleed.

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

The Clawmark Seal boosts Bestial Incantations and also allows you to split Faith and Strength for incantation scaling. Eventually it does fall off to the Erdtree Seal though when it comes to incantation scaling, so if you really like Bestial Incantations, then it's better to offhand the Erdtree Seal and mainhand the Cinquedea, which gives the Bestial Incantation boost when you're hitting the final soft cap.

actually i just recently found the cinqueda and have a question if you're more familiar with it than i am. does the cinqueda bonus stack with the clawmark seals? e.g. if both add X% damage each, do i get 2X% if i wield both or is it like body buffs where only one can apply?

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

You can power stance seals as well, but for everything except Dragon Communion incantations I think it feels awful because you don't have the hyper armor that those incantations give. You should have a reliable melee option in your main hand in most cases, even if it's just a dagger.

quick addition, powerstancing seals is interesting to get a second school boosted. you only have to wear the seal, not use it for the actual incantation to get the boost. for example if you are pure faith and no arcane, the dragon incantation seal is terrible compared to the erdtree one. put the dragonseal in your offhand and your erdtree seal in the main, cast with the main hand and enjoy the best of both.

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

I prefer Faith builds because there's so much variety in them.

i absolutely could not agree more.

[PK_Thunder]

OP, if you haven't yet go get Lightning Strike in Weeping Peninsula. It's down between two cliffs, being held by a scarab. If you find an area getting bombarded by lightning you're in the right place.

Lightning Strike is very good against most bosses because it can hit multiple times. It's what I used in my first playthrough to down Margit at about your level. Bonus to going to Weeping Peninsula is that Flame of Frenzy is down there too, another boss melter.

Weeping Peninsula should be a first stop for any Faith build starting out.

[Mewsha]

Publicado originalmente por Antpile:

Publicado originalmente por Baby Ghoul:

Without spoiling anything, the later areas have enemies that have very high holy resist whereas INT builds only have to deal with a handful of bosses with very high magic resist, and even then there's one spell that still melts with the proper flask mixture. If that doesn't work for some reason, they still have one of the most powerful weapons in the game that scales with INT and inflicts bleed damage, which is something almost every enemy in the game is weak to. They also can get it early in the game.

In contrast if you go pure Faith you only have access to two other weapons, and one of them is only found later in the game. These are the only weapons besides seals that pure Faith effectively utilize without specing significantly into another stat.

... What? First, cipher pata is super early and scales better off faith than anything does off int. Also, it is a fist weapon, so if you 2hand it, it splits into two weapons for dual wielding. There's no reason to need 2 of these. Don't forget the new patch also buffed the attack speed AND recovery time of fist attacks, so they are much better than they were.

Second, things being weak to holy damage is kind of irrelevant when you can't even get a spell this early that does holy damage. Fire sling and catch flame are the first. Fire, obviously. Lightning damage will likely come next, whether from normal lightning spells or madness spells. Blood flame damage can be acquired pretty early if you know where to look as well. Technically still fire, but adding in bleed to anything is nice.

Then there is the beast magic if you take out the mariner in northern limgrave.

The only real issue with faith builds if you don't want to skip to liurnia is that flame sling isn't very good against those stupid birds in Storm Veil.

Edit: Also, if you want faith weapon with bleed on it, winged scythe is really easy to get in the weeping peninsula. Takes some stats to use, but so does moonveil and the other int bleed weapons you are talking about.

1. I already said you can get Cipher Pata earlier. It's literally in that post you chopped off.

2. The Pata and Coded Sword do have A scaling after being upgraded. You're right. I never said otherwise though? Scaling isn't the only thing considered when factoring in how good a weapon is. The fact is that one of the best weapon game, the Moonveil Katana is there for an INT build and it does a lot for a little bit of investment. Most INT builds start Astrologer or Prisoner with 12 and 14 DEX respectively and it's actually beneficial for that weapon to have INT prioritized.

The other reason specifically why INT builds benefit so well from that Katana is its Ash of War that is affected by INT in addition to the bleed. It's just a whole lot of damage for something they don't have to go too far out of their way for and is going for. It starts good with minimum investment and only gets better.

I think the Winged Scythe is excellent for a Faith build, but not for a pure Faith build under level 150. They're focusing on Faith. Look at OP's stats. Vigor, Mind, Faith. You're not going to have a lot of points otherwise, which is why I suggested those two weapons because you don't have to go out of your way either. For anything that's resistant you can rely on your incantations. I just think it's really hard to rely solely on incantations.

3. I didn't say you needed to dual wield? It's an option...

4. Holy damage resistance is relevant because it's why Faith gets a bad reputation. Doing a full caster only build is really difficult in general, and compared to INT builds they can spam their offensive spells better. Azur's Comet with Cerulean Hidden Tear trivializes the majority of boss fights in the game, even if they have hefty magic resist. Incantation users don't really have the luxury of having one go to spell for every single encounter.

You have to learn resistances and what each enemy is weak to in the game.

You guys, I already stressed that there's tons of different incantations you can utilize. I don't know why you're telling me that. I don't know how to make it any clearer?

OP said he wants a pure Faith build. Pure Faith builds are trying to hit the soft cap at 80. That doesn't leave a lot of room for other stats when you're also investing in Vigor to not be one shot and Mind/Endurance to make sure you can keep casting/swinging.

@Ard Galen

There are a lot of weapons that scale with Faith. I agree. I didn't say there wasn't. Those two weapons scale exclusively with Faith. It requires no other stats to be invested anywhere other than Faith. It was made for pure Faith builds.

That doesn't mean other weapons are off limits to you, but you're going to have to sacrifice some Faith points to get them up, and pure Faith builds don't usually want to do that until they're near or at 150. That's when they're going to start looking at other faith scaling weapons because they hit the final soft cap and have some points to spend.

Other weapons that do scale off of Faith usually require more points spent elsewhere. They typically only hit the first soft cap at 40 before it's better to invest points elsewhere. For Maliketh's Black Blade specifically, you're not going to get the most out of it until you're investing significantly into Strength, like 40+.

OP wants a pure Faith build, so I'm assuming they are focusing on incantations. I mentioned the Pata and the Coded Sword not because they're only Faith scaling weapons, but because they scale exclusively off of Faith and require no other stat investments.

If I was going full Faith, I'd rather +10 another weapon and get more bang for my buck as a melee option. He'll have more materials for others later on. There's talismans you can equip like the Sacred Scorpion Charm that can make sure you hit harder even against enemies that are somewhat resistant.

There is actually a list of complete Faith scaling weapons for people that are interested.

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Faith

It's very extensive, however again, scaling is not the only thing to consider and scaling in Elden Ring is rather deceptive more often than not in terms of damage and quality of the weapon. Someone can look at something that has a higher scaling and think that's the best weapon, but that's not where the story ends.

Also, with the Cinquedea it does stack with the Clawmark Seal, but eventually the Clawmark Seal falls off hard to the point where even with an even split in Strength/Faith and the % increase coming from both, the Erdtree Seal with the Cinquedea does more damage at 80. It also combos well with the Beast Sling in both PvE and PvP.

[Plandemics]

Hey man, I'm just running a casual shield/claymore build 20/20 str and 25 faith so far. I cleared Limgrave and just used some healing spells that aren't really needed at all as there are more rest points than actual points of interest xD
So just started with Liurnia and its where it kinda starts to get good with damaging attacks instead of just a cure. You can kinda skip Margrit's castle trough a path and start exploring Liurnia if you wan't. I don't think its immersion breaking tbh just a huge adventure, found me a book somewhere in east liurnia and a turtle

[PK_Thunder]

Oh since weapons were brought up, I'd suggest Halo Scythe. Very low stat requirements, and hits hard at early levels. Well worth the points. Scaling falls off after 40 faith but it's still a damn good weapon overall.