How to develop the character? Builds for your champion in Dark Souls III

This chapter describe how to invest your skill points to create strong and well-rounded character. You will also find here two recommended builds. One focused on strength and one on dextirity.

Last update: 11 May 2016

Character development in Dark Souls III isn't complicated, but requires some knowledge and planning. Especially the newcomers can have a hard time recognizing what level of a given stat is going to be enough, and which stats are worth investing in to reach the given build. The task in this chapter is to explain the character development system and to help in creating a decent build for the hero.

Attributes, or universal stats

The basic unit here - needed for all classes - is Vigor. It should be risen once each 2 or 3 levels, up until the value of around 25-30. The amount of health of the protagonist depends on this parameter. High vitality will ensure you don't die after just one powerful blow from a boss, thus having more time to get familiar to their attacks.

The second of the Attributes is Vitality. It increases the defense vs. physical attacks and poison, but most importantly, it increases your equipment load. Increasing the load does not only allow you to wear better armor but also to equip more weapons at a time, as well as to move faster. With big load, you can wear a medium armor and still be able to perform a quick dodge, whereas with too little load, even wearing a light armor can significantly slow you down. Vitality should be increased every couple of levels - basically as soon as you notice that the character's moves are too ponderous while in your favorite armor. Don't go all the way here, though, since you can find rings that increase the load.

Luck is responsible for the frequency of finding items, increases the chance to poison an enemy or cause bleeding, as well as increases curse resistance. It's only worth to invest in luck if you want to use unique weapons, or modify regular ones at blacksmith, so that they scale with luck. Such unique weapons can be found, but only later in the game, so if you invest in Luck from the beginning, it will only make things harder. It's an attribute recommended for more experienced players, during a second playthrough, preferably.

Strength Build

Strength is the most important stat for a character which uses heavy and slow weapons, such as greataxes, great hammers, or two-handed greatswords. They deal massive damage, but are very slow, so a certain measure of timing is required. A badly-placed attack will expose your character to a lot of damage. With enough strength, you can use a greatsword along with a shield. If this is the style you prefer, you should invest anything from 28 to 34 in strength, doing so every 2-3 levels.

Going for the strength should also mean investing in Endurance. It will provide your hero with enough stamina required for dodging, blocking and attacking. Having to little stamina, your character will have to back off after just one swing with a heavy weapon. High stamina will allow dealing three of four deadly blows one after another. Endurance should be developed more or less along with Vigor, up until 20-25 points.

Since weapons scaling with Strength are extremely heavy, it's recommended to invest a couple of points into Vitality in order to increase the load. It will allow you to perform quick dodges while wielding a greatsword. 12-15 points is an absolute minimum, and if you want to equip a heavy armor, then go as far as 20.

Even if you're going all power, it's a good idea to increase the Dexterity. Many weapons scale along with both the statistics, so each point invested in Dexterity will increase the damage dealt by such weapons. The best way here is to increase dexterity according to weapon's requirements. A greatsword may for example require 28 STR and 12 DEX, so if you don't meet the requirements, you will deal far lesser damage.

Faith and Intelligence should only be increased if you're planning on using a specific weapon or some basic spells and miracles.

The rest of the points should be distributed equally between strength, vigor, and endurance.

WARNING! Strength build can make it impossible to use bows - the alternative are the crossbows.

Dexterity build

Dexterity is the most important for a character fighting with light melee weapons, and bows. If you decide to go for Dexterity, you can use e.g. daggers, bows, powerful katanas, or falchions. You can also equip a shield or two weapons at the same time. Such weapons deal less damage, but your attacks are going to be very quick, so an enemy might not even have time for a response. Same as with the Strength build, you should spend your points for Dexterity every 2-3 levels, until you reach 28-34 points.

The next thing here is Endurance. It increases your stamina, hence you can attack, block, and dodge more often. Combined with high Dexterity, this will produce a little hard-to-stop killing machine. Invest about 20-25 points.

For a swift warrior Vitality isn't incredibly important, since the equipment is mostly rather light. 12-15 points should suffice, but if you want to combine light weapons with heavy armors, you ought to increase the load a bit more.

Faith and Intelligence are the same story here; they should only be increased if you're planning on using a specific weapon or some basic spells and miracles.

The rest of the points should be distributed equally between dexterity, vigor, and endurance.