Which stats should you level up in Elden Ring? Attributes and stats, explained

While properly leveling your stats is only one part of making a build in Elden Ring, putting points in the right places is essential to your survival and success — especially in the early parts of a playthrough. Elden Ring also made some major adjustments to how stats function, changing where soft and hard caps are, which stats do what, and adding tons of equipable items that alter them in positive ways. Today, we’ll look at all the stats you can level in Elden Ring and talk about which are the best for your build.

Related: How to level up your character in Elden Ring

The best stats to level up in Elden Ring

There are eight stats in Elden Ring, and depending on the kind of build you’re making, you’ll usually only need to focus on four of them.

• Vigor: Probably the most important stat in all of Elden Ring, Vigor’s primary purpose is to increase your maximum health, as well as augment your flat damage resistance. Because your damage stats (Strength, Dexterity, etc.) don’t start heavily affecting your damage output until you upgrade those weapons, leveling Vigor early will keep you alive longer. Always try to reach no less than 40-50 Vigor at level 70, and always aim for 60 at level 80 and up.
• Mind: The Mind stat’s primary purpose is to increase your Focus Points, as well as provide a slight increase to your flat defenses. As all Ashes of War require some FP to use, you’ll want around 10 Mind for most melee-focused builds. If you’re a caster of Sorceries or Miracles, however, 20-25 Mind is a good starting point, and you should test how much you need based on the spells you’re casting.
• Endurance: Endurance serves three purposes. It’s essential to increase your total Stamina (used to take most combat-focused actions like running, dodging, and attacking) and increase your Equip Load (how much gear you can equip and still be mobile). It also increases your Robustness, which makes it harder for status afflictions to affect you (but also makes them take longer to go away once active). If you’re building for a chonky armor-clad knight, you’ll want at least 20 Endurance. For lighter builds, you can do with much less.
• Strength: If you want to swing around the big weapons, you need Strength. Its main purpose is to increase the damage of, and allow you to wield, Strength-based weapons. You don’t need quite as much as you might think, because two-handing a weapon applies an invisible 1.5x modifier to your Strength, letting you use something with both hands you can with just one. 40-50 Strength should be your minimum with all your buffs active.
• Dexterity: The Dexterity stat is almost identical to Strength in usage, lacking only the hidden 1.5x two-handed multiplier. If you want to be able to use weapons that scale with Dex, you’ll need to invest in it: 40-50 should be your minimum with all your buffs active.
• Intelligence: The Intelligence stat, like Strength and Dex, is almost solely focused on increasing your damage output — specifically with Sorceries. It also governs what Glintstone Staffs you can equip and what their Sorcery Scaling is. There is also the odd spell that requires both Intelligence and some combination of Faith and Arcane. You’ll usually want no less than 40 in Int for a caster build, and as much as 80 at higher levels.
• Faith: If Incantation miracles are your bag, you’ll want to dump plenty of points into the Faith stat. Governing primarily Incantation damage, Faith can be a supplemental stat as well, as most Incantations are relatively cheap, requirement-wise. If you want to focus on Incantations only, 40-60 Faith should be your starting range.
• Arcane: Arcane is an odd duck. It doesn’t directly affect the damage stats of anything that doesn’t use it as a requirement, and it also raises the Vitality stat, which increases your resistance to the Death status. Its strongest quality, however, is that it governs how much status buildup you apply to your enemies. Blood loss, scarlet rot, poison, etc.: the more Arcane you have, the worse the affliction you inflict. As with other damage stats, 40-50 is ideal here.