Being a wizard in Elden Ring is a lovely time if you want to throw moons, launch lasers, and generally be a walking nuclear bomb. But sometimes you want to get your hands on a colossal sword and smack some enemies around. After all, even Gandalf had a sword.

Intelligence/Strength builds are jacks of all trades and masters of death with access to a wide assortment of weapons, armor, and powerful spells. Anything foolish enough to stand in your way will be flattened by the sheer size of your sword – or swords in some cases.

Updated March 16, 2024, by Andrew Scariati: The best Elden Ring Str/Int build combines two polarizing stats: Strength, focusing on raw power, and Intelligence, centered on Magic. To conquer the Shadow of the Erdtree, you'll benefit from these updated Elden Ring Strength/Int builds.

What Is An Intelligence/Strength Build?

The key factor for creating a successful Intelligence/Strength build in Elden Ring is the stat distribution.

Intelligence, while still important, is more of a secondary stat.

The focus is on melee combat, which is backed up with powerful spells. All in all, it's a very flexible playstyle.

Spells are magic affected by your Intelligence stat while Incantations are governed by Faith.

Intelligence/Strength Build – Stats To Aim For

For this Elden Ring Str/Int build, you are pushing Strength as high as you can, while still making sure you are putting enough points in Intelligence, Mind, Vigor, and Endurance.

Settle for 60 Strength as this is the soft cap for Strength gains.

Intelligence is at 45, so you can use plenty of different spells. This will let you pick and choose your favorites.

Most Str/Int builds should aim for 60 Vigor. However, since you are going for a split build, you have to make some sacrifices.

50 Vigor, though 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.

If you find yourself preferring spells, and you run out of FP too quickly, consider grabbing the Cerulean Amber Medallion, which increases your FP significantly.

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 you want to do for this Str/Int build.

Leveling Plan

Spreading your level-ups between so many stats is going to be a pain, especially in the early game. To this end, you'll want to plan out the order you level your stats up.

Try to aim for these general milestones, in the following order:

1. Level Strength to wield a decent weapon that scales with Strength.
   • The Lordsworn's Greatsword requires 16 Strength, and the Iron Greatsword requires 18 Strength, for example.

2. Boost your Intelligence to cast a few spells.
   • 17 Intelligence will gain you access to a wide variety.

3. Pump Vigor up to a respectable point to take on the early-mid game, but balance this with small increases to Strength and Intelligence to keep your damage up.
4. Reach the minimum Strength and Intelligence to be able to wield your endgame weapon.
   • For the Starscourge Greatsword, this is 38 Strength and 15 Intelligence, the latter of which you should already meet.

5. Start leveling Strength and Vigor alternately until you reach 60 and 50, respectively.
6. Finish off by focusing on your Intelligence.

Get your Endurance and Mind levels up as needed.

You'll notice when you start to lag behind the difficulty curve a bit.

Intelligence/Strength – Radahn’s Starscourge Greatsword Build

Overview

This Elden Ring Strength/Int build is all about hitting enemies for massive damage using your favorite colossal swords.

To fit the theme, you are also leaning heavily 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, and easily take them out at range and in close combat.

Not only that, but this Elden Ring Int/Str build has amazing crowd control to add the final cherry on top.

Weapons

• Starscourge Greatsword
• Meteorite Staff

For this build, you are running the Starscourge Greatsword.

This weapon scales at a B-scaling in Strength at max level and comes with a serviceable D-scaling in Intelligence.

When you swing this thing, you are going to take chunks out of your target.

You can even dual-wield two copies of this weapon if you're able to get your hands on them (either via a friend or on New Game Plus), 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, opt for the Meteorite Staff, which

1. Boasts great damage
2. Boosts your Gravity magic
3. Can be found very early in the game.

It’s an all-around great pick, especially for a Str/Int Elden Ring build using less Intelligence than usual.

Main Spells

• Stars Of Ruin
• Carian Retaliation
• Night Comet

You can choose from some of Elden Ring's best sorceries with this Str/Int build, but these big three should provide ample power.

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.

Night Comet is your go-to sorcery, launching a comet at foes, and dealing heavy Magic damage. This spell is incredibly effective for its cost.

The final must-have sorcery (technically an Ash of War) for the build is Carian Retaliation. Your weapon is rather slow, which can make it rather difficult to get into combat without getting a cheeky smack for your efforts.

Carian Retaliation is perfect for absorbing spells cast at you from a distance and converting them into glintblades above your head.

You can use these blades to attack from a distance and catch foes with their guard down.

Talismans

Both the Graven Mass Talisman and Magic Scorpion Charm are fantastic additions to this build as they both increase your magic damage.

Since your Intelligence is quite low, this will help bump your damage up and let you swing higher than you would have otherwise.

The Magic Scorpion Charm also makes your Starscourge Greatsword deal more damage, as it has a split damage profile.

Your 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 your lower investments.

The Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman will offset the reduction to your resistance that comes with the Magic Scorpion Charm.

Feel free to swap this out for the Pearldrake Talisman when needed.

You could push your stats even higher with Heirlooms instead of the Greatshield and Pearldrake Talismans if you feel you don't need the damage reduction.

Armor

• Queen’s Crescent Crown (Optional)

For armor, you want to stack as much Poise and Damage Reduction as you can while maintaining a Medium Roll.

You could also consider equipping the Queen’s Crescent Crown for a slight boost in Intelligence.

This might clash with your drip, however, so be aware of the fashion sacrifice.

Flask Of Wondrous Physick

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

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 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 for those stats lasting three minutes.

For maximum damage output, combining the Intelligence-Knot with Magic-Shrouding is the way to go.

Alternative Intelligence/Strength Builds

1. While the Elden Ring Str/Int build above is specifically for the Starscourge Greatsword, many fantastic weapons scale with Strength and Intelligence in the game, and this build can easily be adapted to suit them.
   • Good examples include the Royal Greatsword, the Troll Knight's Sword, and the Fallingstar Beast Jaw.

2. An alternative to the focus on melee with magic backup would be a focus on magic with a melee backup.
   • To that end, the Dark Moon Greatsword is perfect.
   • To adapt this build to that playstyle, just swap instances of Intelligence with Strength.

3. Similarly, you can easily focus on a different school of magic if the celestial and gravity spells aren't for you.
   • Carian Sorceries are perfect for melee playstyles. They're boosted by the Carian Glintstone Staff and Carian Glintblade Staff, depending on which spells you use. The former boosts the sword-shaped spells, while the latter boosts the passive projectile spells.
   • Glintstone Sorceries are accessible choices, being easy to use and easily found. There are no pieces of equipment that boost all Glintstone Sorceries, so just pick the staff with the highest damage.
   • Cold Sorceries are late-game acquisitions, but very adaptable. Frostbite is a very powerful status to inflict. There aren't any staves that improve Cold Sorceries, but the Snow Witch Hat does.