Welcome to the Elden Ring Iron Greatsword Build Guide, where I’ll be introducing you to my Hellfire Herald build—a level 100 adaptation of the Champion build. If you’ve been curious about mastering the art of dual-wielding greatswords at approximately level 100, then read on to discover the secrets of this formidable build.

Elden Ring Iron Greatsword Build Guide – Hellfire Herald

A Dual-Wielding Greatsword Build that flattens enemies with Jump Attacks while using both Fire and Holy Damage.

• Class: Any
• Flask Spread: Split between FP & HP
• Weapon: Iron Greatsword x2
• Shield: None
• Armor: Raptor’s Black Feathers & the heaviest you can wear and still med roll 
• Primary Stats: Faith & Vigor  
• Secondary Stats: Endurance
• Skills: Royal Knight’s Resolve x2
• Spells: Golden Vow, Flame, Grant Me Strength, Blessing’s Boon, Lightning Spear

We have over 110 Elden Ring builds. Each one is meticulously crafted to offer unique playstyles, strategies, and experiences, ensuring there’s something for every adventurer in the Lands Between. Whether you seek the raw power of heavy weapons, the finesse of spellcasting, or the versatility of hybrid builds, our collection has you covered. Explore the depths of the game’s mechanics and unleash your full potential with our diverse array of builds.

Beginner Builds	Level 50 Builds	Level 100 Builds	Level 150 Builds	Level 150-200 Builds	All Game Builds
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Elden Ring Iron Greatsword Build Guide – Equipment

First off, let’s talk about the weapons we’re wielding for this Build. We’ve swapped out our Claymore and Lordsworn’s Greatsword for two Iron Greatswords because they are arguably one of the best in the greatswords department. They dish out the most damage in nearly every scenario where a greatsword is involved. Plus, they can seamlessly replace the Ash of War with this build. So, those are the two key reasons behind our weapon choice.

Now, getting your hands on these is a bit hard. You’ll have to farm the Leonine Misbegottens in the Royal Capital area. There’s a stretch where two of them lurk, albeit not very close together. It’s a bit of a grind, taking roughly an hour or two. That’s how long it took me to nab a pair.

Next up, you’ll need the Red-Hot Whetblade—a crucial item for infusing fire and flame affinity into your weapons, which we’ll be utilizing for this build. You can find it in Redmane Castle. It’s not particularly hard to locate, and you can check the wiki for its exact whereabouts.

You’ll also require the Sanctified Whetblade, tucked away in the Royal Capital‘s Fortified Manor on the upper floor. Like its fiery counterpart, it’s fairly straightforward to find. Both of these blades allow you to imbue your weapons with lightning or sacred status affinities, which you’ll switch between depending on your opponent.

Now, the Ash of War we’re after is the Royal Knight’s Resolve—an upgraded version of Determination that buffs your damage by 80% for just 15 FP on your next swing. You’ll find it in Volcano Manor. Since you’ll need one for each greatsword, you’ll have to duplicate it using a Lost Ash of War at the blacksmith.

Once you’ve gathered all these essentials, slot the Royal Knight’s Resolve Ashes onto both greatswords and set them with either both flame or both sacred, depending on the situation. For example, in fire-resistant areas like the Volcano, opt for sacred to maximize your damage output.

We’ve chosen the Flame Art affinity over fire simply because it yields better damage results. You can test both affinities in your build, but from my trials, Flame Art consistently outperformed fire. Additionally, I experimented with the heavy versions of these weapons and pumping my strength to match my faith. However, the damage output paled in comparison to what I achieved with flame or sacred and an equal amount of faith. So, sticking with the faith route not only boosts your natural damage but also grants access to spells that further enhance your damage potential.

When it comes to Sacred Seals, which one you use isn’t super important. You don’t even really need to upgrade it with this build if you don’t want. The reason for that is because Blessing’s Boon, Flame, Grant Me Strength, and Golden Vow don’t increase in potency based on the incantation scaling or upgrades or faith. So they’re not going to get any stronger no matter what you do.

It really comes down to what other incantations you want to use with this build. For instance, Lightning Spear seems to work extremely well. So using the Gravel Stone Seal will buff the damage of that. So it’s not a bad choice. It also has scaling. But if you find yourself using other incantations like fire ones or something like that, you may want to use a different seal that’s better for those.

When it comes to armor, you really want to use the heaviest you got. The one exception is the Raptor’s Black Feathers. We’re going to wear that on our chest because that increases your jump attack damage by 10%. We do a lot of jump attacks with this build, so that’s great. And the other three pieces can be the absolute heaviest that you can get away with and still medium roll.

You really want as much protection with this build because part of playing this build is super aggressive. You want to shrug off attacks and keep on swinging through them and you’re going to have a huge health pool. So you should be able to do this. You just need to make sure you get as much protection as you possibly can.

Elden Ring Iron Greatsword Build Guide – Talismans

The four talismans I use for this Elden Ring Iron Greatsword build are the Great-Jar’s Arsenal, Green Turtle Talisman, Dragoncrest Shield Talisman Plus One, and the Claw Talisman.

Great-Jar’s Arsenal is there to increase our equip load. As I mentioned, you want to get as much protection as possible and this gives you plus 20% to your equip load, whatever your equip load value is, which is going to be substantial because you’re going to have a lot of points and endurance. So you’re going to get like 17 or 18 equip load out of this probably which is a lot.

Green Turtle Talisman is a staple of just about every one of my builds. Regenerating stamina quickly benefits almost every play style in the game. And that’s no exception here, which is why we have it.

The Dragoncrest Shield Talisman Plus One increases your physical protection by a substantial amount. It’s like a little over 10% and that’s going to get you to like 40-45% physical protection when you’re buffed with Golden Vow, which means you’re going to be taking about half the damage from every physical attack that hits you, which is like a huge reduction in damage. And that’s going to allow you to jump attack through a lot of attacks and take damage and trade blows and just finish enemies off quickly. You’ll obviously want to swap out the Dragon Crest Shield Plus Two when you get it, but at this point in the game, I think you’ll probably only have Plus One.

The Claw Talisman boosts your jump attack damage by 15%. This does stack with the chest armor, the Raptor’s Black Feathers Armor. So you’re going to get even more damage out of jump attacks and you want to be trying to do jump attacks just about every opportunity you can.

Elden Ring Iron Greatsword Build Guide – Spells and Gameplay

The spells I use for this Iron Greatsword build are Flame, Grant Me Strength, Golden Vow, Blessing’s Boon, and Lightning Spear. You can of course use any other spells you want for this build, but the magic is not the focal point of this build. They’re really there to buff your melee combat style, except Lightning Spear, which is just there for, you know, situations where picking off an enemy from afar is easier than facing them head-on.

Flame, Grant Me Strength is particularly great because it boosts your physical and fire damage by about 20%. So when you’re using the flame versions of your iron greatswords, you’re boosting both the physical and flame damage.

Golden Vow provides a total damage boost of 15% and adds 5% damage mitigation to your already high mitigations, putting you in the range of about 45% or so. What’s great about this version compared to the one in the Champion build is that it lasts for 90 seconds, so you don’t need to use it as often.

Blessing’s Boon heals you over time, which is useful before diving into a group of enemies or a boss fight, providing health regen over the course of a fight.

The general approach with this Iron Greatsword build is to buff with Golden Vow while exploring, maintaining high damage and mitigation, and swiftly dispatching enemies with jump attacks. If your health drops to about two-thirds, use Blessing’s Boon to heal, reserving your healing flask for when you truly need it. Use Lightning Spear as necessary.

For tougher enemies or boss fights, buff with Flame, Grant Me Strength in addition to the others for an extra edge. You can swap between sacred and flame affinities at sites of grace depending on the situation. However, ensure you keep the same damage type equipped for both weapons, as it maximizes the effectiveness of buffs like Flame, Grant Me Strength. Prioritize flame over holy infusion whenever possible, as it tends to benefit you more.

Elden Ring Iron Greatsword Build Guide – Recommended Attributes

My stats for this Elden Ring Iron Greatsword build look like 40 Vigor, 22 Mind, 34 Endurance, 18 Strength, 12 Dexterity, 9 Intelligence, 35 Faith, and 9 Arcane.

• We prioritize Vigor at 40 because you’ll be absorbing hits while maintaining the ability to withstand them. With this playstyle, where you often initiate combat, high Vigor is essential.
• Consider increasing Mind to around 25 or 30 to accommodate the substantial FP costs of buffs and abilities like Royal Knight’s Resolve.
• With 34 Endurance, we optimize equip load for heavy armor while ensuring we don’t exceed our needs.
• 18 Strength is sufficient to wield the greatswords one-handed, as pumping more strength doesn’t offer significant benefits over prioritizing Faith for this build.
• Dexterity is kept at the minimum requirement of 10, and excess points are avoided.
• Faith serves a dual purpose: enhancing weapon damage and meeting requirements for abilities like Golden Vow and Blessings Boon. While you don’t need as much Faith as we have to meet these requirements, having around 24-25 allows for increased weapon damage and amplifies the effectiveness of offensive incantations if desired.
• No points are allocated to Arcane for this build.

That wraps up our Hellfire Herald build. As always, let us know if you have questions or other tips in the comments below. We have a ton more builds coming for Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree so stay tuned for those. If you need help finding the spells, items, or equipment in this build, and securing some personal objectives, make sure to check the Elden Ring Map.