Everything about an Elden Ring build comes back to eight attributes. They decide your health, your stamina, your damage, and which weapons and spells you can even use. Understanding what each one does — and, just as importantly, when it stops being worth investing in — is the foundation of every good plan you will make in the build planner.
This guide runs through all eight attributes in the order they appear in game, explaining what each governs and how much you typically want. Think of it as a map of where your rune levels can go and what you get in return.
Vigor: your survival stat
Vigor determines your maximum HP, and it is the single most important attribute for almost every build. It also improves fire resistance and immunity (resistance to poison and rot). No amount of damage matters if a boss deletes half your health bar in one hit, so Vigor is where most players go wrong by under-investing.
A reliable target is 40 Vigor by the midgame, pushing toward 50 or 60 for tougher content. Returns stay strong up to the first major breakpoint and then taper, so 60 is a sensible practical ceiling for most characters.
Mind and Endurance: the utility pair
Mind sets your FP pool, the resource that powers weapon skills, sorceries and incantations. A pure melee build that rarely uses skills can leave Mind low; a dedicated caster wants it high. A commonly cited convenience point is 38 Mind, which lines up neatly with a full focus flask refill for many casters.
Endurance controls stamina, which fuels attacks, dodges and blocks, and raises your maximum equip load, which decides how much gear you can wear before your roll slows down. How much Endurance you need depends on your armour and weapon weight; the equip load guide shows the roll thresholds you are budgeting against.
Strength and Dexterity: the physical scalers
Strength powers heavy armaments and slightly improves physical defence. Its signature quirk is two-handing: wielding a weapon with both hands multiplies your effective Strength by 1.5, so a two-handed build can meet high Strength requirements at a lower actual stat. That makes Strength unusually efficient for colossal weapons.
Dexterity powers faster weapons, reduces casting time for spells, cuts fall damage, and stops you being thrown off your mount as easily. Many katanas, curved swords and thrusting weapons scale primarily with Dexterity. Builds that split the two evenly are called quality builds, covered in the hybrid builds guide.
How requirements differ from scaling
Two numbers matter for any weapon: its requirement and its scaling. The requirement is the minimum stat needed to wield it without penalty; scaling is how much extra damage each further point adds. You can meet a requirement and stop, or keep investing for scaling. Knowing which you are doing prevents wasted points.
Intelligence, Faith and Arcane: the magic stats
Intelligence powers sorceries and their staves, and scales a family of Intelligence weapons. Faith powers incantations and sacred seals, and scales Faith weapons. Both work the same way in planning terms: raise the stat to meet your spell requirements, then keep going for scaling if casting is your main damage source. The Intelligence and Faith guides go deeper on each.
Arcane is the most misunderstood attribute. It raises item discovery, boosts the scaling of certain weapons, and — crucially — increases the buildup of status effects like bleed and poison on many weapons. That makes it central to status builds even when it is not your primary damage stat, as the Arcane build guide explains.
Putting the eight together
A build is just a priority order across these eight. Casters lead with their casting stat and Mind; melee builds lead with Strength or Dexterity; status builds weave Arcane into the mix. Everyone needs Vigor, most need some Endurance, and Mind scales with how spell-heavy you are. The art is deciding where to stop on each, which is exactly what soft caps govern.
Before you finalise any spread, read the soft caps guide so you know where each attribute's returns flatten. Then build the spread in the planner and let it show you the rune level and cost of your choices.
Reading a weapon or spell's stat needs
Every armament and spell lists two kinds of stat information: requirements and scaling. A requirement is a gate — the minimum stat to use the item without a damage penalty. Scaling, shown as letter grades, tells you how much extra damage each further point in a stat adds. A weapon can require modest stats yet scale beautifully with one of them, which is the profile you want for a damage stat.
When planning, separate these two ideas cleanly. Invest to meet the requirements of everything you carry, then invest further only in the stat that scales your main source of damage. Points that meet a requirement you have already cleared, or that scale a stat your gear does not use, are wasted — the exact thing good planning avoids.
Building a stat priority list
A helpful exercise is to write your attributes in priority order before you touch the planner. For a typical melee build that might read: Vigor to a safe floor, main damage stat to its soft cap, Endurance for armour and stamina, Mind for any skills, everything else at base. A caster reorders it to lead with the casting stat and Mind. The order is the build; the numbers just fill it in.
With that list in hand, the planner becomes a place to test and refine rather than to guess. You already know where the points should go; you are only confirming the rune level and adjusting the exact values. That clarity is the whole benefit of understanding the eight attributes before you start allocating.
Plan this build for real
Load these numbers into the free planner and watch your rune level, rune cost and roll type update as you go.
Open the build planner