Elden Ring: Leveling up and distributing attributes – here’s how

One of the most important core elements in Elden Ring is leveling up your character and distributing attributes. The right skill can make all the difference in boss fights and save you a lot of frustration.

Elden Ring – unlock levelling up through Melina

In Elden Ring, you don’t level up from the beginning. Although you meet Melina at the very beginning of the game, it still takes a while before she teaches you how to increase your character’s attributes.

• After you have finished the tutorial, you will arrive in Limgrave. Follow the road there, you will pass the church of Elleh. Here you can unlock a mercy point. Caution: Try to avoid the great knight including horse, as this is an enormous challenge, especially at the beginning of the game.

• When you continue to follow the paved path, run straight towards a ruin. Turn left before the entrance to the ruin and run along the edge to avoid the enemies.

• Optionally, you can also try your hand at the enemies in the ruin. Note, however, that if you die, you will be resurrected at the final mercy point and will have to walk the path again.

• If you have walked along the left edge of the ruin, the grace point “Before the Gate” should now catch your eye. Activate this and rest. Now a cutscene will play where Melina visits you at the mercy point and offers her help. You accept this and are promptly rewarded with the level mechanic and a trusty mount.

• From now on, if you want to level your character, you can only do so by resting at mercy points.

Elden Ring – this is what the attributes

Once you have unlocked leveling up in Elden Ring, you will be confronted with a variety of attributes that all do something different.

• Each of the eight attributes has an effect on your character’s play style and strengths. They also determine which weapons you can use and how effective they are in combat. Which of the attributes you should level always depends on which play style you want to pursue. Special attention should also be paid to the soft caps in Elden Ring.

• By using power, you increase the number of health points. In addition, Force affects fire resistance and immunity to negative status effects such as poison.

• Spirit determines how many FP your character has available. FP are needed to cast spells or summon spirit ashes. In addition to this, spirit also increases the focus value. Focus reduces the effectiveness of sleep and madness on your character.

• Condition determines how much stamina is available to you. Attacks or other moves such as dodge rolls consume a certain amount of stamina. The value also increases your character’s robustness and maximum carrying capacity. It is especially important if your character wears heavy equipment, as the weight of the equipment affects the agility.

• Strength is needed if you want to use heavy weapons. Each weapon in Elden Ring usually has certain attribute values that your character must meet in order to carry the weapon. In addition, the value affects the effectiveness of weapons that scale with Strength and increases the character’s physical defence.

• Skill affects the damage you deal with skill-based weapons and the effectiveness of scaling those weapons. The value is also interesting for spellcasting players, as it reduces the casting time of your spells. The increase also reduces your fall damage and the likelihood of being thrown from your mount.

• Arcanic energy affects the frequency with which you find items on defeated enemies. It also increases your character’s vitality value. This protects you from instant death due to the Blight Debuff. Arcane energy also increases your defence against Holy damage and affects the casting of some spells and incantations.

• Faith is required to perform incantations and to carry the weapons that enable summoning in the first place. As with other attributes, faith affects the scaling of faith-based weapons and thus their effectiveness.

• Wisdom is the value needed for the other school of magic, namely spells. It also increases your defence against magical attacks and is a prerequisite for carrying wands and other weapons with which you cast spells.