Many players gravitate to the Knight class for its robust defenses and strong tanking abilities. In a game like Dark Souls being able to take hits from powerful bosses and wade into groups of enemies is immensely satisfying and often necessary to survive.

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If you’re looking to dive back into the game or finally power through to New Game+ then picking a strong Knight build is highly recommended. Here are some builds that are fun while still being feasible or are outright powerful.

Updated March 6, 2022 by Ryan Bamsey: While Elden Ring is definitely the game of the moment, the Dark Souls series is still as good as it always was. We've taken another look at this article and added more details for these knightly builds, including the minimum stats you'd need to be able to wield everything and roll comfortably without things like rings and buffs taken into account. If you want to lower those ridiculous Endurance expectations, go get Havel's Ring! We've also recommended which starting class would easiest be able to reach those stats, with stats like vitality and buffs not included in the calculation.

10 Knight Solaire

  • Minimum Stats: 12 Strength, 12 Dex, 23 Endurance, 12 Attunement, 30 Faith
  • Recommended Starting Class: Cleric

Solaire of Astora has been the source of many memes since he appeared in Dark Souls and makes for a fun and surprisingly effective character to roleplay. The key to the Knight Solaire build is having high levels of faith, vitality, and endurance.

For gear, you’ll obviously want Armor of the Sun with the Iron Helm, Bracelet, and Leggings, the Sunlight Shield, and the Sunlight Straight Sword. What really brings this build together is the Great Heal spell for sustainability and Great Lightning Spear for ranged attacks. You might not tank hits as well as other builds, but you’ll look much more fabulous.

9 Elite Falchion Knight

  • Minimum Stats: 9 Strength, 13 Dexterity, 27 Endurance
  • Recommended Starting Class: Warrior

For those looking to embrace the traditional look and feel of the Knight class, an Elite Falchion Knight build can be a nice change of pace. For stats focus on a healthy mix of vitality, endurance, and strength with bare-bones in everything else.

The Elite Knight Armor set will provide decent durability while maintaining that classic knight appearance and the Falchion coupled with the Balder Shield is surprisingly effective. It’s a standard sword and board build that doesn’t require unique items or gear to get the job done.

8 The Dark Knight

a knight wielding an axe
  • Minimum Stats: 36 Strength, 18 Dexterity, 66 Endurance
  • Recommended Starting Class: Warrior

This is a popular roleplay build and for good reason, it looks awesome and it can be very effective if you’re fairly experienced with the game and have decent skills. The Dark Knight requires high levels of strength and a ton of endurance to be able to roll properly.

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For equipment, don the Black Knight Armor set and wield a Black Knight Greataxe with the Black Knight Shield. The bleed and fire resistance is handy in a lot of areas, but you’ll still need decent skills at dodging and blocking to survive many boss encounters which is why it ranks a bit lower.

7 Stone Knight

  • Minimum Stats: 48 Strength, 10 Dexterity, 98 Endurance
  • Recommended Starting Class: Bandit

The Stone Knight build embraces the tanky aspects of the knight and makes the character an impenetrable stone wall. You’ll want most of your points in vitality with a decent amount in strength and just enough in everything else to wield what you need.

For gear, you want the Guardian’s Armor set and the Stone Greataxe. It’s a straightforward tank build that will make you look and feel like a stone juggernaut when properly leveled. Getting to that point can be a little tough due to how massively heavy the Guardian set is, but once set up, you’ll breeze through many encounters.

6 Silver Swiss Army

  • Minimum Stats: 14 Strength, 22 Dexterity, 50 Endurance
  • Recommended Starting Class: Warrior

This build roleplay’s as the Silver Knights but does so in a way that leaves the player adaptable and capable of handling any combat scenario. High vitality with a little bit of strength, dexterity, and endurance is key.

Silver Knight Armor is a must for this build, along with a Silver Knight Straight Sword or Spear, with a Dragonslayer Greatbow as a backup. These three weapons allow you to slash enemies up close, keep them at bay with a spear, or snipe from a distance with a bow. Unfortunately, you won't get any of this gear until Anor Londo, but it’s a fun midgame and endgame build.

5 Havel Knight

  • Minimum Stats: 40 Strength, 36 Endurance
  • Recommended Starting Class: Bandit

The last roleplay build is the Havel’s Knight build and arguably it’s the strongest. You’ll want lots of endurance with decent levels of strength and vitality. You’re going to be slow, but, with your tank-like nature, it won't matter too much.

Equip the awesome Havel Armor set with the Havel Greatshield and Dragon Tooth, along with Havel’s Ring and then something useful like Ring of Favor and Protection. It’ll take a while to swing that large weapon and move around so there’s a lot of timing and patience involved.

4 Cult Cleric Regen

  • Minimum Stats: 24 Strength, 13 Dexterity, 18 Faith
  • Recommended Starting Class: Cleric

This build is mostly PVE focused and will be satisfying for some and incredibly annoying for others. The Cult Cleric Regen build focuses on a large health pool through high levels of vitality and endurance while waiting for passive health regeneration to recover during and after battles. Basically you’ll take a lot of hits and your health will slowly fill up as you fight.

Server gives health regeneration per hit, but you’ll want to imbue it with lightning to nudge DPS up a little. Sanctus Shield gives one HP per second, Ring of the Evil Eye gives HP for kills, and Mask of the Mother gives a whopping 10 percent max health boost. All other gear is optional, though finding ways to increase damage is recommended to shorten what will be lengthy fights.

3 Chaos Spartan

  • Minimum Stats: 24 Strength, 15 Dexterity
  • Recommended Starting Class: Warrior

This is a quirky build that steps away from traditional knight tanking and has you dodging and positioning for fights. It does well in PVE and is great in PVP if invading Lost Izalith, Blighttown, or Demon Ruins.

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You'll want to have both the Pike and the Shotel imbued with chaos and upgraded and equipped. Sunlight Maggot or Egg Head with Hollow Solider Waistcloth for armor. You’ll need humanity at all times to be effective so you’ll need to do some grinding to keep humanity up, but it works in PVP by pretending to be a roleplay build to cause the opponent to drop their guard.

2 Thank Tank

  • Minimum Stats: 12 Strength, 10 Dexterity, 48 Endurance
  • Recommended Starting Class: Bandit

The best tank build on this list is the Thank Tank build. Get vitality and endurance as high as possible with minimal points in everything else. The name of the game is to shrug off heavy blows while dealing impressive damage.

Your ideal gear is Black Iron Armor with Demon's Spear as your main weapon. Until that point use whatever you can, such as Stone Knight Armor. Because of these late-game requirements, it’s not very beginner-friendly, but it is powerful in both PvE and PvP.

1 Everlast Knight

  • Minimum Stats for Gargoyle Tail Axe and Elite Knight Set: 14 Strength, 14 Dexterity, 24 Endurance
  • Minimum Stats for Dragon Greatsword and Black Knight Set: 50 Strength, 10 Dexterity, 70 Endurance
  • Minimum Stats for Dragon Greatsword and Great Lord Set: 50 Strength, 10 Dexterity, 38 Endurance
  • Recommended Starting Class: Bandit

Perhaps the best knight build is the Everlast Knight. It focuses on high strength, endurance, and vitality with faith at least to 12 to use the Heal miracle. You’ll feel effective at the beginning, midgame, endgame, and well into New Game +

Ideal gear is Black Knight Armor with Dragon Greatsword, it’s viable earlier on with the Gargoyle Tail Axe or the powerful Drake Sword and Elite Knight Set. If pursuing New Game+ you’ll want to trade Black Knight Armor for Great Lord Armor. This build makes Smough much less annoying and can survive much of whatever New Game+ throws at you. PvP, on the other hand, is a mixed bag and will depend on how skilled you are at fighting other players.

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