Stats Guide - Dark Souls

In Dark Souls, use Bonfire to level up by spending souls. Since souls can also be used to buy items, this means you can use the currency to do both things. Generally in Dark Souls you don’t need to stress about which stat to choose each time you level up. Usually you finish your build rather quickly since you can level up several times after beating a boss. So, if your build require 30 Strength and 30 Dexterity, don’t stress out too much which one you should level up, because later on you going to have those stats anyway. The exception is weapon stat requirement, some people pump 16 Strength quickly because their favorite weapon requires 16 Strength to use. But don’t worry, when you lack Strength for this new cool weapon you found, you can just pump Strength for the next couple of levels so you will be able to use that weapon in no time.

Generally when you see build online, people like to go for soft cap number, like 50, 40 or 30 (the number is different each stat). Each stat has their soft cap, and when you reach this point, that means if you spend more points into this stat, it will give you less. So, rather than dumping tons of stat to get less value, it’s better to spend it elsewhere.

Here are the stats in Dark Souls:

  • Vitality (soft cap: 30 & 50) - Raise HP, very important, especially since enemy dealt tons of damage in Dark Souls. At least get 30, some people put 50.
  • Attunement (soft cap: 50) - Raise spell slots, very important if you’re a mage. If you are a full-time sorcerer that require tons of spell slots, then level it up to 50 to get maximum spell slots. If not, just use as needed, maybe you feel like your Warrior-Mage require only 4 spell slots, then raise Attunement until you get 4 spell slots. So, you’ll see some arbitrary number on builds, some has 14, 16, 50, depends on how much slots they need.
  • Endurance (soft cap: 40) - Raise stamina, almost as important as Vitality. Especially if you’re a warrior, you need tons of Endurance to use your shield effectively. You’d see a lot of builds put 40 Endurance if they rely on stamina.
  • Strength (soft cap: 20 & 40) - There are 2 kinds of build: Strength, and Dexterity. Almost every build is either of these stats. Focus on this stat if you’re a warrior type. You’ll rarely see people use the soft cap as end points, because if you want to focus on Strength you’d want to get 50 to get the best Weapons/Armors on the game. But, if you don’t want to, just put enough Strength to use your favorite weapons. A lot of weapon require 16 Strength minimum, so you’ll frequently see mage builds that has 16 Strength.
  • Dexterity (soft cap: 20, 40, & 45) - Some weapon scales based on Dexterity instead of Strength, if you want to focus on Dexterity, put 40 of it. But, if you’re a mage and has extra points, you might want to put 45 Dexterity because it will make you cast spells the fastest, either 45 or none at all for a mage.
  • Resistence (soft cap: 30 & 15) - Useless, don’t put any points into this at all! This stat will raise some resistances, mainly poison resistance. But, the resistance it add is negligible, just put some armor that has some resistance rather than spending points into this.
  • Intelligence (soft cap: 40, 45, 50) - It’s like Strength, but for mage instead of warrior. For sorcerer who relies heavily on spells, generally people put 50 into this.
  • Faith (soft cap: 50) - Similar to Intelligence, but for Faith-based magic.

Build Examples

1. SL 124 Sorcerer

Vit: 30
Att: 50
End: 30
Str: 16
Dex: -
Res: -
Int: 50
Fai: -

Right here we have a classic sorcerer build. Right off, we can see it has 50 Attunement, and 50 Intelligence, this is the most important part as a sorcerer: to have maximum spell slots, and maximum damage. The secondary stats are Vitality and Endurance, it is still important, that’s why we have 30 points for them. And finally we have 16 Strength, just enough to wield majority of weapons.

2. SL 50 Pyromancer

Vit: 22
Att: 16
End: 22
Str: -
Dex: -
Res: -
Int: 32
Fai: -

This one is a low-leveled Pytomancer. The most important stat is the Intelligence to boost the damage. Then we have 16 Attunement, remember that early on Attunement give a lot of slots, so just by having 16 Attunement, you’d get some amount of slots. And the last one is 22 Vitality and Endurance. Notice that this character don’t really hit any soft cap due to its wow-level. But, you can get some idea about how do you spent points for lower level characters.

3. SL 120 Warrior

Vit: 45
Att: -
End: 40
Str: 40
Dex: 40
Res: -
Int: -
Fai: -

Classic warrior, Almost every important stat hits that soft cap.

4. SL 100 Rogue

Vit: 40
Att: 14
End: 40
Str: 14
Dex: 45
Res: -
Int: -
Fai: -

Actually this is a Pyromancer, but it leans towards Dexterity more (So I’m just gonna call it a Rogue, deal with it). As we can see, 40 Vitality and 40 Endurance is a good enough balance. 14 Strength for weapon stat requirement, 14 Attunement for some spell slots, and 45 Dex for Dexterity-based weapon and fastest spellcasting speed.

Conclusion

I hope with that explanation and examples, you understand more about Dark Souls stat. I make this guide because when I play RPG games, I always afraid I’d messed up the build and ruining my playthrough, that’s why I start an article series explaining how stat/build works across different RPG games. I wish it’s useful for you, until next article!

References

  • http://darksouls.wikidot.com/stats
  • https://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/top