Elden Ring offers you 10 classes to choose from at the beginning of the game. Although this is not particularly decisive in the long term, it can have a significant impact on the gaming experience, especially at the beginning. We, therefore, tell you which player type should choose which class.
The class selection in Elden Ring works a little differently than it is known from other RPGs. Since you can level up as often as you like and distribute new skills freely, there are basically no limits to your builds in the long term.
In Elden Ring, you can flexibly and adaptably build your character the way you want over the course of the game. For example, if you start out as a wizard and discover an impressive two-handed sword in play, all you have to do is invest enough points in strength before you can actually use the weapon.
That's why the classes in Elden Ring mainly play a role in the first few hours of the game. But especially if you are a beginner, these first few hours can be crucial given the high level of difficulty of the Elden Ring.
That's why we recommend the 10 classes here, depending on your level of experience.
- By beginners, we mean players who might be trying out a FromSoftware game for the first time with Elden Ring. This also applies to players who want to get started as easily as possible.
- By advanced players we mean people who have already played a Soulsborne game and have a good understanding of their strengths as a player.
- For us, experts are real Soulsborne professionals who know the mechanics of these tough players in detail.
This article is intended to help you discover the right class for you.
Here's how attributes work in Elden Ring:
Your skills in Elden Ring are divided into 8 attributes that affect various properties and can be increased through level-ups. These are:
- Vigor (Vitality): Affects life points, fire resistance, and poison immunity.
- Mind: Affects FP (mana) and focus-related resistance. Important for magic and sorcery builds.
- Endurance: Determines your character's endurance and increases physical defense. High stamina helps with dodging and blocking.
- Strength: Necessary to use heavy weapons. Also increases the maximum gear load.
- Dexterity: Required to wield advanced weapons. Reduces the casting time of spells, mitigates fall damage, and makes you more stable on the horse.
- Intelligence (Wisdom): Increases the casting power of intelligence-scaling spells and improves magic resistance. Also lets you use spells more often.
- Faith: Required to perform invocations. It also amplifies invocations that scale with faith.
- Arcane (Arcane Energy): Affects death resistance and certain spells and incantations.
Elden Ring - The best classes for beginners
In the beginner classes, we put a lot of emphasis on flexibility and the long-term usefulness of the starting equipment.
Tips for these classes: You can't go wrong with the beginner classes. The default equipment of these classes is traditionally among the strongest weapons and spells, even in endgame. In addition, the classes here have such balanced values that you can easily try out several builds.
We recommend the following classes for Soulsborne beginners:
Samurai - Balanced stats, awesome starter weapon
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| samurai |
Main Attributes:
Level: 9
Vigor: 12
Mind: 11
Endurance: 13
Strength: 12
Dexterity: 15
Intelligence: 9
Faith: 8
Arcane: 8th
What do you have to consider in this class? The Samurai is an excellent choice for almost every player in Elden Ring. This class starts with an uchigatana, traditionally one of the strongest and most flexible weapons in any Soulsborne.
A samurai starts with a bow and classic samurai armor. This makes the class atop all-rounder that relies primarily on physical attacks.
Prophet – Good offensively and defensively thanks to fire spells and healing magic
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| prophet |
Main Attributes:
Level: 7
Vigor: 10
Mind: 14
Endurance: 8
Strength: 12
Dexterity: 8
Intelligence: 7
Faith: 16
Arcane: 11
What do you have to consider in this class? Anyone who has already played Dark Souls should be familiar with the miracle and pyromancy spells. In Elden Ring, these spells are called "invocations."
The prophet starts with a spear and relies on these invocations. In addition to powerful fire spells, invocations also include supporting healing invocations, but also powerful dragon invocations.
This makes the class very flexible despite its lower vitality, making it a good choice for newcomers.
Confessor - Very versatile starting gear
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| confessor |
Main Attributes:
Level: 10
Vigor: 10
Mind: 13
Endurance: 10
Strength: 12
Dexterity: 12
Intelligence: 9
Faith: 14
Arcane: 9
What do you have to consider in this class? Similar to the Prophet, the Confessor offers instant access to invocations. However, with his sword and shield, he is better suited for new players who want to place a lot of emphasis on melee combat. These attributes also offer very balanced stats, making them good in many situations.
Confessors start with a spell that muffles footsteps and reduces fall damage. This should make moving through dangerous areas a lot easier if you can sneak silently.
Vagabond – Versatile in the long term
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| rover |
Main Attributes:
Level: 9
Vigor: 15
Mind: 10
Endurance: 11
Strength: 14
Dexterity: 13
Intelligence: 9
Faith: 9
Arcane: 7
What do you have to consider in this class? The Drifter is primarily a melee fighter. With its long sword, halberd, and shield, this class starts with a variety of long-term gear.
So this is kind of an all-around class with medium armor. Thanks to its attributes, you can easily control almost any build with the vagabond.
Elden Ring – The best-advanced classes
The advanced classes clearly serve a special niche to start with than the beginner classes. Here you need to know what you want to specialize in to start with. Otherwise, the first hours of play can be more frustrating than with a more versatile class choice.
Tips for these classes: Once you know what playstyle you want to go for, choose the appropriate class from the following.
Also important for these classes are the rune bows. These replace mechanics like humanity or embers known from Dark Souls. These rune bows also increase life, FP or mana, and stamina again. In addition, there is another big bonus on all attributes. But you lose those bonuses when you die.
So it's easier than ever to get the build you want early on, making class choices even less meaningful. However, if you die often, you will soon run out of rune bows – and the build will be gone.
We recommend the following classes for experienced Soulsborne players:
Hero - Strong but slow starting weapon
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| hero |
Main Attributes:
Level: 7
Vigor: 14
Mind: 9
Endurance: 12
Strength: 16
Dexterity: 9
Intelligence: 7
Faith: 8
Arcane: 11
What do you have to consider in this class? The hero relies fully on his war axe, which is both a curse and a blessing. This basic weapon is very strong, but also significantly slower and thus more difficult to use than, for example, the Drifter's longsword.
In addition, the comparatively light armor makes the hero agile, but also vulnerable. Choose the hero if you like aggression and evasive maneuvers.
Warrior - Agility without defense
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| warrior |
Main Attributes:
Level: 9
Vigor: 15
Mind: 10
Endurance: 11
Strength: 14
Dexterity: 13
Intelligence: 9
Faith: 9
Arcane: 7
What do you have to consider in this class? The warrior is a fast and agile melee class that starts with 2 scimitars. You can either use these together, in one hand each or combine them with the buckler. This shield doesn't offer good protection, but it does an excellent job of parrying attacks.
Thus, the warrior is a class that relies heavily on mobility and parrying maneuvers but has almost no defensive options. If you have good timing, you will be happy with this class.
You can use the parry maneuver to counter a surprising number of powerful attacks. Even from enemies that are significantly larger. However, it is difficult to figure out which attacks are parryable and which cannot be countered.
When finding out you will need at least a lot of healing potions. It's worth it, though, because counterattacks are particularly powerful attacks.
Prisoner - Hybrid class with a risky weapon
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| prisoners |
Main Attributes:
Level: 9
Vigor: 11
Mind: 12
Endurance: 11
Strength: 11
Dexterity: 14
Intelligence: 14
Faith: 6
Arcane: 9
What do you have to consider in this class? The prisoner has already excited the fans in the run-up to his story. It's kind of a hybrid class that uses a sword and a projectile spell.
However, both the Sword and the Shield of the Prisoner are better for advanced players than for beginners. The sword primarily thrusts forward, which is a major disadvantage against groups, and the prisoner's shield is also more suitable for parrying than for blocking.
After all, he has a high Wisdom value and can therefore cast a few spells. This gives him another option that only the astrologer offers besides him.
The prisoner is therefore a good choice for players who want to play a mechanically more demanding hybrid class with a cool backstory and also want to try out spells.
Bandit - The treacherous class for extreme situations
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| bandit |
Main Attributes:
Level: 5
Vigor: 10
Mind: 11
Endurance: 10
Strength: 9
Dexterity: 13
Intelligence: 9
Faith: 8
Arcane: 14
What do you have to consider in this class? The Bandit is one of the most mechanically demanding classes in the game, thanks to its starting gear. With a small knife and bow, the bandit can only do extreme close-ranged or long-range combat. The knife causes enemies to bleed and allows a special evasive maneuver with the special ability.
This class is perfect for people who want to live out the role of an assassin and enjoy fast-paced melee action.
However, you always take a high risk, because if you are hit by an attack, you are quite defenseless on the road. So you should be good at dodging.
Astrologer - The best class for magic fans
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| astrologer |
Main Attributes:
Level: 6
Vigor: 9
Mind: 15
Endurance: 9
Strength: 8
Dexterity: 12
Intelligence: 16
Faith: 7
Arcane: 9
The Astrologer is the caster class in Elden Ring. She starts with a few simple spells and a matching wand. Compared to the other FromSoftware titles, spells and magic play a bigger role in Elden Ring.
Such a build used to be largely optional, but the significantly increased selection of spells speaks for the greater importance and flexibility of such a class.
So spells are powerful in the game but demanding. To be strong as an astrologer, you need to position yourself well and use your resources well.
You also always have to think about the time it takes to cast a spell and allow it to land. In addition, your spell slots are limited, especially at the beginning. So you can only use a few spells at first until you unlock more slots.
You get these mainly in the course of the main story of Elden Ring, but also in special and secret places in the open world. There are also retailers who occasionally sell a necklace that unlocks another slot for you.
Elden Ring - The best class for experts
For experts in Soulsborne games, only one class really comes into question: the beggar.
Tips for this class: In addition to the tips we'll share below, Expert players should keep an eye on the charms. These replace the rings from Dark Souls but affect your builds even more.
A few selected talismans significantly improve a whole group of attributes. Of these talismans, there are also weak and improved variants. Weak versions give 3 points on a variety of attributes.
With an improved version, you get about 5 bonus points each for strength, dexterity, endurance, and vitality, with another the same for wisdom, faith, arcane energy, and spirit.
The catch is that you take more damage with each talisman. So you have a lot more leeway with your builds with them, but you also take a clear risk.
It is precisely this trade-off that defines the beggar as a class, so it's a great combination.
Here is a little overview of the beggar.
Beggar - Greatest risk, the greatest opportunity
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| beggar |
Main Attributes:
Level: 1
Vigor: 10
Mind: 10
Endurance: 10
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 10
Intelligence: 10
Faith: 10
Arcane: 10
What do you have to consider in this class? The beggar is the only class that starts with fully balanced attributes. It's also the only class that starts at level 1. The equipment is also puny: you start completely without armor and only with a primitive club.
But it is precisely this lack of distinctive attributes that make the class so popular. You are completely free and flexible in the builds and the choice of weapons, so you can build a character according to your own taste. In addition, only the beggar allows the impressive level 1 runs that the best Soulsborne players put down.
The class is therefore not for beginners. But if you want the greatest possible flexibility in Elden Ring, you can't avoid the beggar.
These are our recommendations for the classes in Elden Ring, broken down by experience level. Do you agree with this choice? And which class do you want to start with? Let us know in the comments.
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