Daggers are one of the many weapon types you can equip in Elden Ring. Though they lack the reach of a spear or sword they pack a serious punch if utilized correctly.
A dagger might not have the range but it more than makes up for that limitation with its attack speed. In this guide, we will cover the best possible builds for daggers in Elden Ring.
Bleeding Dagger Build
For this build, you should follow this setup
- Flask Spread: HP
- Weapon: Dual-wield Reduvia Dagger / Bloodstained Dagger
- Shield: None
- Armor: Silver Tear Mask or White Mask, any armor
- Stats: Arcane and Dexterity (Primary), Vigor and Endurance (Secondary)
- Talisman: Radagon’s Soreseal, Twinblade Talisman, Rotten Winged Insignia, Lord of Blood’s Exultation
- Skills: Ash of War: Bloody Slash
Dagger Bleed/Rot Build
For this build, you should follow this setup
- Flask Spread: HP
- Weapon: Reduvia Dagger and Scorpion Stinger
- Shield: None
- Armor: Silver Tear Mask or White Mask, any armor
- Stats: Arcane, Dexterity and Strength (Primary), Vigor, Endurance and Mind (Secondary)
- Talisman: Twinblade Talisman, Rotten Winged Insignia, Lord of Blood’s Exultation, Kindred of Rot’s Exultation
- Skills: Ash of War: Bloody Slash and Repeating Thrust
Dagger Faith Build
For this build, use the following setup:
- Flask Spread: HP
- Weapon: Erdsteel Dagger and Erdtree Seal
- Shield: None
- Armor: White Reed Set (Okina Mask)
- Stats: Faith and Vigor (primary) Dexterity and Endurance (secondary)
- Talisman: Winged Sword Insignia, Shard of Alexander
- Skills: Ash of War: Flaming Strike and/or Repeating Thrust
Dagger Arcane Build
For an Arcane Dagger build, use the following setup:
- Flask Spread: HP
- Weapon: Dual-wield Reduvia Dagger
- Shield: None
- Armor: Any Lightweight set (Black Knife Set)
- Stats: Arcane and Vigor (primary) Dexterity and Endurance (secondary)
- Talisman: Winged Sword Insignia, Arsenal Charm
- Skills: Ash of War: Reduvia Blood Blade
Best Stats for Dagger Builds in Elden Ring
You will invest most of your points on Arcane, Dexterity and Strength for both of your weapons to deal damage. For survivability, you will invest a bit of your points in Endurance, Vigor and Mind to use special attacks and equip the armor you want.
- Vigor: 40
- Mind: 25
- Endurance: 20
- Strength: 25
- Dexterity: 30
- Arcane: 52
Best Weapons for Dagger builds
For the Bleed and Arcane build, you will dual wield 2 Reduvia Daggers because of their high bloodloss build up which procs pretty quick compared to any other bleeding weapon in the game.
If you are having issue fighting in close range, you can always rely on your Ash of War: Bloody Slash which can deal with the range problems. The Bloody Slash can also proc bleed so it is ideal for this build.
For the Dagger Bleed/Rot Build, you will equip Reduvia Dagger and Scorpion’s Stinger. Scorpion Stinger has rot as a passive which performs really well for chipping away damage on an enemy. Apart from you can always rely on your Reduvia Dagger for high damage scaling.
Scorpion Stinger has Repeating Thrust as a special attack which attacks foes with multiple thrusting attack in short period of time. This is ideal for the Rot Buildup which will then high chipping damage for a short period of time.
For a faith build, make use of both the Erdsteel Dagger and the Erdtree Seal as both of these weapons primarily scale with Faith.
Best Armor for Dagger Builds
For all builds, you can use whatever you like. However, you will have to use either Silver Tear Mask or White Mask to gain some additional bonuses.
Silver Tear Mask increases your Arcane stats reducing your attack power and White Mask increases your attack power whenever there is bloodloss nearby.
Best Talismans for Dagger Builds
For the Dagger Bleed Build, you will use Radagon’s Soreseal, Twinblade Talisman, Rotten Winged Insignia and Lord of Blood’s Exultation.
Radagon’s Soreseal will increase couple of your base stats by 5 but you will take significantly higher damage. Since you will focus on attacks rather than defense, this is an ideal talisman for this build.
Twinblade Talisman will increase the attack power of your final chain attack. You can either use jump attacks or just do simple attacks which will proc this talisman quickly and easily due to the daggers speed.
Rotten Winged Insignia will increase your attack power with successive attacks. Daggers are really quick despite its range issues.
Lord of Blood’s Exultation will increase your attack power whenever there is bloodloss close to you. Since you will be relying mostly on bloodloss, this will increase your attack significantly.
For the Dagger Bleed/Rot Build, you will use the same setup as the previous one to deal damage.
If you want to switch out Radagon’s Soreseal, you can use Kindred of Rot’s Exultation. Your Scorpion Stinger will proc rot on your enemy which will then increase your attack power.
For the Faith Build, you’ll use Winged Sword Insignia, which raises your attack power with every single strike along with the Shard of Alexander which allows you to boost the attack power of your skills by 15%, and lastly, for the Arcane Build, use the Winged Sword Insignia once again along with the Arsenal Charm which grants you the ability to carry additional load.
Is a Dagger build viable in Elden Ring?
All builds are viable in Elden Ring if you know how to properly utilize them. Some are harder than others as they require more skill to use effectively and Dagger builds are one of them. Daggers require you to be up close and personal with your foes which leaves little room for error.
Most bosses can be quite difficult to defeat using Dagger builds as their AOE tends to be quite wide and devastating, since stealth isn’t effective in all scenarios this further exacerbates using this build effectively. We recommend pairing a Dagger build with a bow and/or magic so you have something to fall back on.
