Elden Ring allows players to create any character they can dream up. From weapons, armor, and the character’s appearance, it’s easy to make just about any fictional hero or villain. With so much variety and gameplay options, players can even roleplay as their favorite anime main character, including Guts from Berserk. In this PvE build guide, we’ll show you how to build Guts and explore the Lands Between.
Starting Class
We suggest basing the Guts build off the Vagabond. However, you can use any other class and adjust the stats accordingly. Although, keep in mind that each class begins with stats that cannot go lower than their starting value.
What This Build is For
Strength is the focus for this build as you’ll be relying heavily on your main weapon of the 
Greatsword (Colossal). The goal is to maximize damage output by upgrading the weapon and stats. As Guts purely utilizes his strength, speed, and stamina, this build won’t have incantations, so mind and intelligence won’t be important. Equipping 
Godrick’s Great Rune (Restored) is also beneficial as it raises all stats by 5 when activated. This build will be tailored towards level 150.
Stat Priority
- Strength
- Vigor
- Endurance
- Mind
- Dexterity
- Intelligence
- Faith
- Arcane
Level 150 (Without Great Rune|With Great Rune)
- Strength – 60|65
- Vigor – 60|65
- Endurance – 41|46
- Mind – 16|21
- Dexterity – 16|21
- Intelligence – 9|14
- Faith – 9|14
- Arcane – 7|12
The Build
While you’re free to mix and match as you see fit (and as your current inventory allow), the following weapons and armor are our recommendation for this build:
Weapons
- Greatsword (Colossal)
- This weapon will service this build with its high-strength scaling and the ash of war we’ll be using for this build,
Lion’s Claw.
Throwing Dagger- The throwing dagger is best used to draw in enemies to bring them into melee range.
Pulley Crossbow- Along with the daggers, the crossbow is useful for dealing with enemies who are further away or difficult to reach as the class focused on melee damage.
Talismans
Green Turtle Talisman- Stamina is essential for this build, and this talisman is excellent and helping maintain it.
Carian Filigreed Crest- To compensate for our mind stat being lower than usual, equip this talisman. It reduces the FP cost of skills by 25%.
Radagon’s Soreseal- Guts is incredibly tough and is able to take quite the punishment. To make the build even stronger, this talisman increase Vigor, Endurance, Strength, and Dexterity by 5, but also increases damage taken by 15%.
Armor set
To complete the look, rock the following armor pieces:
How to Use the Build
Equip the Heavy Greatsword in the right-handed slot. Be very careful when using the Ash of War, as the wind-up time leaves you open to attacks. To minimize the likelihood of bosses and enemies interrupting your attacks, it’s best to position yourself off-center, to the left or the right of the enemy. Delayed attacks from bosses are also a great opening, giving a chance for you to strike at the right time.
Rotation + Strategy
- Start by keeping your distance from an enemy, no need to rush in. You can use the crossbow and throwing daggers to bring enemies closer to you.
- Attempt to get some light attacks in, and wait for your opponent to make a mistake and open up.
- Use the Lion’s Claw ash of war when the opportunity presents itself, generally right before your opponent misses an attack (but after you’ve already gotten out of the way).
We hope this guide was helpful! Please feel free to comment down below or check out our other guides.
Okay, to give more constructive criticism than the other comment:
At level 150 you need 60 vigor — 60 is the softcap, and gives you 200 more hp than 50. It might not seem like a lot, but it will be the difference between a crimson flask chug, and a loading screen.
You also don’t really need 80 strength — 80 is a softcap, but it’s the higher one, and only adds ~60 Attack Rating (AR) to your Greatsword compared to 60 strength. Going for 60 strength also frees up another 20 levels, which you can put into vigor, endurance, or mind.
Speaking of mind, you really don’t need more than 20, and you certainly don’t need the Carian Filigreed Crest. With 20 mind, you get just enough FP to cast Lion’s Claw 6 times — more than enough to flatten people, especially if you run 2 blue flasks (with 2 blue flasks, you get 18 casts of Lion’s Claw). You will want to weave in light and heavy attacks too, instead of just relying on Lion’s Claw. You could replace the Crest talisman with a Dragonclaw Greatshield talisman, for more survivability, or Erdtree’s favour, or Crimson talisman, or even the Emerald talisman.
The dagger talisman is an interesting choice, and is viable since this build will cause lots of stagger on bosses; however, I personally would choose to replace it with some of the talismans mentioned above, since survivability is better than +17% damage every now and then.
The armor is solid, but you could also go Maliketh’s armor if you want. Also, make sure to heavy infuse the Greatsword, since that makes it do more damage (I didn’t see this mentioned anywhere)!
Overall, not a bad guide, and very nice and easy to read! With some tweaks, this build can be really good!
Thank you for the detailed feedback Yan! I tend to agree with you re: Vigor, and with the Strength on this build being unnecessarily high. Updating some of our ER builds is on our to-do list, and we’ll certainly keep your suggestions in mind.
I would recommend maybe Radahns or Morgotts rune instead because they have better buffs imo at this level