Input Buffering

Combat in ELDEN RING may seem very challenging at times. One of the major factors that sets ELDEN RING and other Souls games apart from all other games is that they force you to commit to your actions and think about your inputs. Once you press a button to perform an action, for a short time, it will queue and be performed at the next available chance. As a result, when you “panic roll” and press the dodge button several times, you can find yourself rolling directly into a charged attack. In another example, once you hit the heavy attack button, your character is going to attempt to do that heavy attack, and if a fireball is coming your way, you won’t be able to dodge until you’ve finished that attack animation.

Patience is key in ELDEN RING. Looking for opportunities to attack when your enemy has an opening is at the core getting better at the game. To start, let’s take a closer look at the maneuvers available to you.

Running

Running is one the most basic and versatile movement abilities available to you. By holding down the dodge button, your character will move slightly faster at the cost of a small amount of Stamina. This can help you run away from or close the gap on your enemies. In addition, performing an attack during a run will result in a different attack from your normal swing, sometimes with additional range or faster execution.

Jumping

Jumping is a new feature that was added to ELDEN RING that was not available in previous Soulsborne games. While it costs a sizeable amount of Stamina to perform, it also allow you to avoid some attacks and can close gaps on your foes. Attacking while jumping is an effective strategy to add to your arsenal of attacks, since it will increase the amount of stance damage you inflict and can be used with some charged attacks, negating the vulnerability you’d experience charging them on the ground. Additionally, after a jump attack is performed, your character will enter a temporary crouched position, which can also help you avoid some attacks.

Crouch/Sneaking

Pressing the left analog stick in puts your character in a crouching position, which can help you avoid enemy detection. By sneaking up on enemies, you can perform a brutal Backstab in the right situation. Attacking from a crouched position can also change your attack animation, and can be used to your benefit in some situations. Lastly, crouching can make some attacks miss, since your hitbox is smaller while crouched.

Sidestep

When you are locked onto a target, moving left or right will allow you to strafe around them if you are close enough. While not as reliable at avoiding attacks as a dodge, often times, you can avoid thrust attacks by sidestepping them, putting you in the perfect position to punish their attack.

Dodge

Dodging is going to be your main tool of survival in ELDEN RING. While having powerful armor can help mitigate damage, utilizing the i-frames from dodging can allow you to avoid damage completely. This is why it’s so important to have at least a Medium roll for your character. More advanced players will take this a step further by wearing almost no armor to obtain a fast roll, allowing them to effortlessly dodge through attacks. The dodge button can also be pressed while at a standstill to perform a backstep, which has minor i-frames and changes your attack, which we’ll discuss later.

Blocking

Blocking is another useful tool for mitigating damage. This is done by pressing the Guard button (L1 on PS5, LB on Xbox Series S|X) while having a shield equipped in your left hand. While shields are the primary method of blocking, you can also block with weapons that are two-handed to a lesser effectiveness. For shields we have small shields, medium shields, and greatshields. As the tier of the shield goes higher, so does its damage mitigation and guard boost. Below is an example of a small, medium, and greatshield. 

The Guarded Damage Negation increases across the shield categories as does the Guard Boost. The Guard Damage Negation dictates how much of a particular damage type is blocked by the shield. In the case of the Golden Greatshield above, it will block 100% of incoming Physical damage and 60% of incoming fire damage. The Guard Boost represents how much Stamina will be drained when blocking with that shield.

Even though both the Brass Shield and Golden Greatshield have 100% Physical negation, it will cost more Stamina to block attacks with the Brass Shield due to the lower Guard Boost. If you use too much Stamina while blocking and run out, you can leave yourself vulnerable to a critical attack, which should be avoided.

In terms of pure blocking capacity, a Greatshield will perform best, followed by a Medium Shield, and lastly by a Small Shield. Greatshields have the added benefit of causing enemy attacks to bounce off of them more frequently, which provides a safer opportunity to use the Guard Counter. Guard Counters work by hitting your Heavy Attack button (R2 / RT) after blocking an attack; that delivers a slow, yet powerful swing that can stance break enemies and open them up for critical attacks.

While you can perform a Guard Counter after any block, doing so haphazardly may result in you being hit by a follow-up attack from an enemy while you try to do your counter. Due to this, the greater guard boost and “bounce” chance on Greatshields makes them ideal for this technique.

While Greatshields are excellent for blocking, small shields and medium shields have the advantage of being able to parry. Parrying is a timed counter-swing with a shield which can knock away an enemy's weapon and leave them open to a critical attack. Consistently hitting parries will take practice, but is very rewarding for those that choose to master this technique.

Additionally, Small Shields are better at parrying compared to Medium Shields, making them ideal for someone trying to practice this technique. You can even parry with certain weapons in your offhand, like scimitars or fists. A good tip is to watch when the enemies hand begins moving towards you, as parrying too early or too late will result in you being hit, making this a high risk/high reward maneuver.

In conclusion: Greatshields are best for blocking due to their high damage negation and higher guard boost on average, Small Shields are best for parrying and can block in an emergency, and Medium shields are considered the “all-rounder” with decent damage mitigation and the ability to parry.

Critical Attacks

Next we’re going to talk about Critical attacks which we touched on during parries and guard counters. Critical attacks are powerful attacks that can be done after an enemy has been left exposed or had their stance broken. These are performed by pressing the attack button (R1) while being squarely in front of the target, and on larger targets there’s typically a glowing spot you want to position yourself in front of.

Hitting R1 while you’re directly behind an enemy may result in a Backstab, which is another form of a critical hit, although slightly weaker. Backstabs can also be executed mid-combat if you manage to circle around your target and press R1 when you’re squarely behind them.

In general, critical attacks are performed either after a parry or after a stance break. A parry will leave most enemies exposed after a single use and some bosses may also be left exposed after multiple successful parries. Stance breaks on the other hand happen when you’ve done enough damage that it interrupts an enemy and leaves them briefly exposed to a critical attack. The Guard Counter technique causes a large amount of stance damage, as do charged heavy attacks and jumping heavy attacks. A common sign of this is an enemy falling to their knees or slumping over.

Critical attacks are a chance to do massive damage, so whether an enemy is exposed from enough damage over time or a well-timed parry, always make sure to capitalize on those moments of weakness with a well-timed R1.

Attack Types

Moving on, let's talk about the various types of attacks. Most weapons will have a basic moveset that’s done by pressing R1/RB multiple times. This is typically 3-5 attacks with a set pattern that will change depending on the type of weapon that is being used.

Doing a heavy attack (R2/RT) can do one or two attacks depending on your weapons type. These can also be charged by holding the button down, which will change up the animation in many cases on top of causing the heavy attack to hit harder and deal more stance damage.

These two buttons for normal and heavy attacks (R1 & R2) are going to the basis of our attack strategy. Besides using those buttons normally, they can be used while running, jumping, after rolling, after backstepping, or from a crouch. Many attack animations will also change when movement is coupled with the attack in some way. This allows you to mix-up your attacks and keep enemies on their toes, which is especially important in PvP.

Dual-Wielding Weapons

Next we’ll discuss dual-wielding. When you have two weapons of the same type in each of your hands you gain access to a new moveset that involves swinging both weapons simultaneously. While R1/RB will still do your normal attacks, hitting L1/LB will result in swinging both of your weapons. In the clip below you can see the difference between R1/RB attacks with the Straight Swords and L1/LB attacks when using two Straight Swords.

Equipment

Armor

As you explore The Lands Between, you are likely to come across a huge variety of different equipment to help you on your journey. The Armor you find is classified into categories, increasing in defensive quality as the weight increases. Armors cannot be upgraded in the traditional sense, but can be Altered with Tailoring Tools. Altered armors will weigh less than their normal counterparts and will also lose some of the defensive benefit they provide. In some rare cases, they will also lose their unique attributes when Altered. However, if weighing less can help you reach a Medium roll, sometimes the sacrifice is worth the cost.

Poise

Poise is a stat that determines your resistance to stance break or stagger. Heavy armors tend to provide the highest amount of Poise, which allows you to take hits without getting locked into a stagger animation. If you find that enemies are constantly attacking you without giving you the opportunity to respond, increasing your Poise can help you shrug off some of their attacks. As a general rule of thumb, aiming for 70 Poise can make your journey a lot easier when dealing with quick attacking enemies like wolves.

Weapon Types

When we say weapon type, we’re referring to the classification of the weapon itself. Straight Sword, Dagger, Greatsword, Colossal Sword, etc. This descriptor can always be found directly beneath the weapons name as seen in the screenshots below. As long as that term matches, the weapon will gain access to a unique dual-wield moveset when paired with a counterpart.

Weapon Upgrading

Weapon upgrading are split into two categories, requiring either Smithing Stones or Somber Smithing Stones. Basic weapons usually require Smithing Stones, while rare/unique Weapons will need Somber Stones. The upgrading path also differs between the two, with standard weapons going up to +25, and unique weapons only going up to +10. Each upgrade will increase the base damage of your weapon and may also increase the Stat Scaling Grade. While Somber Smithing Stones are usually rarer, it only requires 1 Somber Stone to increase the level of your weapon, while you will need several normal Smithing Stones to increase a regular weapon.

Upgrading your weapon can make a world of difference in how difficult enemies and bosses are in ELDEN RING. If you find a fight taking too long, it might be a good idea to explore for more Smithing Stones to upgrade your weapon before challenging a difficult boss in your way.

Ashes of War, Skills and Unique Skills

Next we’ll talk about Ashes of War, Skills, and Unique Skills. Pressing the skill button (L2) will perform the skill of the equipped right hand weapon. This is the default case, with the exception being if you have a shield in your left hand, since skills like parry and shield bash will take priority.

If you have a shield in your left hand and want your weapon’s ability to still be the default, you can equip the “No Skill” Ash of War onto your shield, or two-hand your weapon to place the shield on your back. Many players will do this to ensure they have a shield available, while still prioritizing their weapons skill.

Ashes of War

Ashes of War allow you to customize your weapon with a supplementary skill of your choosing, further customizing your playstyle. Some weapons come with a pre-set Unique Skill and are locked with those unique skills, but are generally powerful in their own right. As you explore the world of Elden Ring you’ll find many Ashes of War to choose from and each will detail the types of weapons it can be applied to.

To get started on customizing your weapons with Ashes of War, you’ll first need to locate the Whetstone Knife (which can be found somewhere in the Gatefront Ruins). After acquiring the Whetstone Knife you can perform this action at any Site of Grace under the “Ashes of War'' label. As previously mentioned, there’s also five Whetblades that can be found throughout the world and these will allow you a huge variety of affinity customization when selecting the Ash of War for your weapon. This will change the type of damage the weapon can deal along with changing the stats that it receives scaling bonuses from.

After locating the Iron Whetblade, Ashes of War will always allow an affinity of Standard, Heavy, Keen, and Quality. Additionally, elemental-specific Ashes of War will provide affinities for their associated element. With the case below we can see the Flaming Strike Ash of War allows us the aforementioned affinities alongside Fire and Flame Art since this particular Ash of War involves Fire.

By collecting all 5 Whetblades out in the world, players can expect a huge amount of Affinity customizations. A full range of affinities can always be applied to Ashes with a colorless background, but there are some combinations that cannot be made, such as putting Occult affinity on a Frost Ash of War. The full list of available affinities has been detailed below:

• Standard: No Scaling Change
• Heavy: STR Scaling
• Keen: DEX Scaling
• Quality: STR/DEX Split-Scaling
• Magic: INT Scaling
• Fire: STR Scaling
• Flame Art: FTH Scaling
• Lightning: DEX Scaling
• Sacred: FTH Scaling
• Poison: STR/DEX/ARC + Poison Buildup
• Blood: STR/DEX/ARC + Bleed Buildup
• Cold: STR/DEX/INT + Frost Buildup
• Occult: ARC Scaling

Selecting an affinity not only changes the scaling, but also the damage of the weapon itself in some cases. In the example below, we have a Banished Knight’s Greatsword. In one instance Heavy and the other as Fire. While both of these scale with STR, the Heavy variant will have higher scaling.

The heavy variant has 624 Physical, while the flame variant has 353 Physical and 365 Fire. While a new player may see this as 624 vs. 718 for total damage, keep in mind that since a portion of the 2nd sword’s damage is Fire, it will be matched against a 2nd set of defenses when it hits an enemy (Physical Defense and Fire Defense).

Because of this, split-damage weapons may look stronger due to their higher attack power in the character panel, but unless a target happens to be weak to fire the Heavy version will usually perform better in combat. Thankfully we can very easily swap this around at any Site of Grace, so don’t be afraid to change up the element of your weapon to best suit a particular situation!

About our Guest Content Creator

FightinCowboy is a content creator with a focus on detailed walkthroughs for Souls games to help gamers of all levels. He started on YouTube almost 10 years ago and has created Let's Plays and Walkthrough content that have been watched by millions of people around the world.