As an RPG, Elden Ring has a unique system of calculating attributes into weapon and spell damage scaling. It’s usually a good idea to keep all your stats as high as possible, but Elden Ring encourages players to spread their stats out more. The stats have a set soft cap, and investing in an attribute beyond its soft cap brings diminishing returns, which means that the damage bonus given to weapons, spells, and miracles won't be as significant.

Despite the addition of soft caps, some weapons and spells have attribute requirements beyond the cap. Other attributes like Vigor, Mind, Endurance and Arcane also have their respective soft caps and diminishing returns. The best Elden Ring builds have one thing in common: a split allocation of levels between 3 to 4 stats. This article will chart each stat’s soft caps and when you should allocate them to other attributes.

Vigor

This stat is vital (pun intended) to your character’s survival in Elden Ring as it governs your HP value. This, however, does not mean that you allocate every single point to this attribute. Past the 40 point mark, you won’t get as much HP up until 60, where HP gains become miniscule.

Endurance

Endurance determines your stamina capacity and equipment weight load. This stat is important for dodge rolling quickly with heavy weapons and armor. Its soft caps are 15, 30, and 50, though the diminishing returns aren’t noticeable before reaching 50.

Mind

 

Your Focus bar relies on this stat to cast Ashes of War, sorceries and incantations. This stat’s soft cap starts at 50 up to 60.

Strength

Strength determines your ability to wield heavy weapons. This stat starts seeing slightly reduced returns past 20. Beyond 50, bonuses become increasingly difficult at 60 and stop at 80. Note that two-handing heavy weapons will halve the strength requirement and drastically increase the overall damage you will deal.

Dexterity

Dexterity governs all curved swords, daggers, claws, and katanas. It also determines your casting speed for spells and the amount of fall damage you receive. It shares the same breakpoints as Strength, starting at 20 to 50 and ending at 80. Unlike Strength, there is no way to manipulate weapon stat requirements.

Intelligence

This attribute scales with sorceries and certain magic-based weapons, as well as increasing magical resistance. For sorceries, they have a generous soft cap of 60 and plateaus at 80, whereas weapons start at 20, drop at 50 and end at 80.

Faith

 

Incantations and holy weapons scale with Faith. Much like Intelligence, the breakpoints for spells and weapons are completely different. Catalyst and spell soft caps start at 60 up to 80. Similarly, weapons see diminishing AP returns from 20, 50, and 80.

Arcane

Despite its name, Arcane dictates status effect (e.g., poison, madness, bleed, and sleep) scaling, item discovery, death resistance, and weapons with Arcane scaling. Its weapon soft caps function like other stats (20, 50, and 80), but its status buildup breakpoints differ. Arcane status scaling begins at 40, with 45 being the ideal stat for everything. 60 is the final softcap, as the status effect buildup does not increase beyond that point. As for the discovery stat, it increases by one point per allocation, meaning it has no soft cap.

It’s easy to put points into Strength or Dexterity and realize that the +5 AP increase isn't as valuable as a +30 increase to HP. You may feel like you’ve pigeonholes yourself into a build you don’t like, but once you understand how levelling up works in Elden Ring, your runs will feel smoother. Respect your stats, and the path to Elden Lord will become a smooth journey