Stat Scaling and Softcaps Discussion

Before we jump into more details on each character stat, you should be aware of how Stats scale and something the community calls softcaps. In ELDEN RING, stats do not increase linearly like in other RPGs. At first, investments in a stat are small, but grow as you put more points into it, until a softcap is reached. A softcap refers to a point where the stat stops gaining as much value as it did previously. In simple terms, your return on investment goes down after you reach the softcap. To better explain this, let’s use Vigor as an example.

Vigor Softcaps

Increasing Vigor up to 40 will provide excellent health increases, resulting in a total of 1450 Health, compared to the 414 Health you would start with at 10 Vigor. However, between 40 and 60 Vigor, you’ll see your gains increase by smaller amounts. To elaborate, going from 39 to 40 Vigor will add 48 Health to your character, while going from 40 to 41 Vigor will only add 26 Health. This is what we’re talking about when we say softcap, because putting more points into Vigor after 40 will give us less health improvement than it did previously; the amount of improvement has been “capped” (or reduced), but not completely.

Vigor has two softcaps to be aware of, at 40 and at 60. Going to 40 Vigor gives us 1450 Health, while going to 60 Vigor grants 1900 Health, and 99 Vigor grants 2100 Health. With this in mind, it’s good to aim to get your Vigor to at least 40 on any character build, and worthwhile to level it up to 60 after you’ve gotten your other stats to where they need to be. We’ll go more in depth into builds later.

Mind Softcaps

Moving onto Mind, the first softcap is all the way at 60, with the largest increases in FP occurring between 35 and 50. However, after 60 it slows down and we only gain 2-3 FP per point.

Mind is primarily useful for Intelligence and Faith builds and will typically get at least 30 Mind to have enough FP to comfortably cast without constantly needing flasks. Melee builds can get by just fine with 10-15 Mind, but going up to 23 would give enough FP to summon the costliest Ashen Spirit Summon in the game and cast some of the most expensive weapon skills multiple times.

Endurance Softcaps

Endurance has two softcaps to be aware of: 50 for Stamina gains and 60 for equipment load gains. You’ll likely never need to go that high on Stamina, however. With the proper talismans you could run some very heavy armor and a colossal weapon with as little at 40 Stamina. The most important thing is to make sure your weight ratio is low enough for you to perform a Normal or Medium Roll. You’ll learn about rolls in the next section.

Your Weight Ratio and Rolling

In ELDEN RING and other Souls games, the percentage of your total equipped gear divided by your total equipment load is what we call your weight ratio. A weight ratio of 29.9% or below will result in a fast roll, a ratio of 30%-69.9% will result in a normal roll, a ratio of 70%-99.9% will result in a heavy roll, and a 100% ratio or beyond will make you over-encumbered, resulting in the inability to dodge or jump and your attacks being slowed.

These weight ratios and their corresponding rolls also dictate the amount of invulnerability frames or “i-frames” you’ll receive when rolling. Someone with a light roll will have a significantly easier time dodging through enemy attacks than someone with a heavy roll. They’ll also cover more distance and recover from the animation faster.

In general, it’s best to always be at a medium roll or below. 69.9% is the magic number you should always keep in mind.

In the example below, we have 34 Endurance along with two talismans which help boost our equipment load, putting us at a ratio of 69.2%, and ensuring we have a Medium load with the specific Endurance and equipment we have on.

Armament Stat Scaling

Now before we jump into our damage stats, let’s talk about the scaling value on your weapons and casting tools, because this will determine how much you get out of your stats. In ELDEN RING, most items will receive a scaling bonus for specific stats on top of whatever their base damage is. This goes S>A>B>C>D>E and a higher tier grade means you’ll get more bonus scaling damage to that item the higher that corresponding stat goes. The scaling of weapons will also increase with the weapons' own level.

Additionally, the scaling on weapons and shields can be modified depending on what Ash of War you attach to them after you’ve acquired the Whetstone Knife, and this can be expanded ever further through the acquisition of Whetblades. There are 5 Whetblades to find throughout the game that will allow you to drastically change the scaling of many weapons, but we’ll discuss those more later.

In the example below, we have two Greatswords, one that is unmodified and one that has been changed to Heavy to increase the STR scaling. For this example, we’re on a character that has 55 STR and 12 DEX, and we’re two-handing our weapon so we receive a 1.5x bonus to our strength putting us close to 83 STR for the purpose of scaling bonuses. (We’ll discuss this bonus more shortly).

We can see the regular Greatsword receives a B in STR and a D in DEX, resulting in a base damage of 401 and bonus damage of 343 from scaling. Meanwhile the Heavy Greatsword has slightly less base damage at 349 and receives no DEX scaling, but gets an A in STR, resulting in 469 bonus damage from our STR stat alone. We end with a total of 744 Attack Power on the normal Greatsword and 819 Attack Power on the Heavy Greatsword.

While two different weapons can both have a B scaling in a stat, that doesn’t mean they’ll see equal bonus damage. In this sense, we can think of Scaling like school grades. If 90 is the cutoff for an A and a 79 is the cutoff for a C, there’s a whole range of B’s going from 80-89. That B at 89 will have more bonus damage than the B at 80.

Strength and Dexterity Softcaps

Moving onto Strength and Dexterity, both these stats have 3 softcaps to keep in mind. These are around 20, 55, and 80. The reason for a wide range is because with all damage stats, the value you’re getting at these softcaps will be based on the scaling of the weapon itself; so something that’s S scaling in DEX will likely see great damage returns all the way up to 80, while something that’s only a B or C in DEX probably will get the majority of its damage by 55 and see minimal returns going higher.

The most important thing is to make sure you have enough stats to meet the weapons requirements as the damage you inflict on enemies is significantly reduced if you don’t. On the note of requirements, your character can receives a 1.5x modifier to Strength when two-handing a weapon.

This is important because that big hammer you want that requires 24 Strength early on can be used with only 16 Strength if you’re two-handing it. Unfortunately, Dexterity does not receive any similar bonus, but it does have a passive effect of increasing cast speed.

Spell Stats and Softcaps

Moving onto our spell stats, Intelligence, Faith, and Arcane all have multiple softcaps depending on if you’re leveling them for weapon scaling or for spell (sorcery/incantation) scaling. For weapon scaling, there are 3 identical softcaps for all three of these stats at 20, 50, and 80.

For spell scaling, Intelligence and Faith have two softcaps at 60 and 80. With Arcane the scaling for spells is much lower, with softcaps at 30 and 45. On the note of spell scaling, it’s important to understand that spells themselves don’t scale off a particular stat at all, the damage of the spell is based on the Sorcery or Incant Scaling your casting tool has.

In the example below, the Incantation Seal scales with Strength and Faith, so in this case our spells will get stronger with more points into those two scaling stats, even though STR isn’t typically related to spell damage. After you hit the required stat minimums for a spell, you want to increase the scaling stat of your spell catalyst to increase a spell's damage.

About our Guest Content Creator

FightinCowboy is a content creator with a focus on detailed walkthroughs for Souls games to help gamers of all levels. He started on YouTube almost 10 years ago and has created Let's Plays and Walkthrough content that have been watched by millions of people around the world.