In this Dragon Cult Incantations Build, I will be showcasing my Dragon Priestess build. This is a build that focuses on using Dragon Cult Incantations, and this is a build that was voted on by our community with over 109,000 votes. So without further ado, let's get into how this build works.
Dragon Cult Incantations Build - Dragon Priestess
In this Elden Ring Build Guide, I’ll be showing you my Dragon Cult Incantations build. This is a Shadow of the Erdtree build that takes place after level 150. If you’ve been looking for a lightning build for Shadow of the Erdtree burst down enemies then you might want to check this build-out.
- Class: Any
- Flask Spread: Equal Charges
- Main Weapon: Erdtree Seal, Coded Sword
- Off-Hand Weapon: Gravel Stone Seal
- Shield: N/A
- Armor: N/A - Uses Priestess Heart
- Alternate Armor: Death Knight Set
- Talismans: Flock's Canvas Talisman, Godfrey Icon, Lightning Scorpion Charm, Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman
- Alternate Talismans: Bull-Goat's Talisman, Crusade Insignia, Ritual Sword Talisman
- Primary Stats: Faith, Vigor
- Secondary Stats: Mind, Endurance
- Spells: Knight's Lightning Spear, Ancient Dragons' Lightning Strike
- Other Spells: Lightning Spear, Lightning Strike, Honed Bolt
- Crystal Tear: Lightning-Shrouding Cracked Tear, Greenburst Crystal Tear
- Alternate Crystal Tear: Opaline Hardtear, Stonebarb Cracked Tear
- Great Runes: Radahn's Great Rune, or Morgott's Great Rune
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Dragon Cult Incantations Build - Spells and Equipment
This build uses the new Dragon Cult Incantation, Knight's Lightning Spear, which is incredibly powerful. It's one of the best incantations in the game with great range. The projectiles come out even if you're interrupted mid-animation, as long as the display above you appears. You can charge this for extra damage. Compared to Lightning Spear, Knight's Lightning Spear has significant stance damage, allowing you to stance break bosses. This lets you use other spells or continue hitting them with Knight's Lightning Spear for massive damage.
A deadly combo is stance-breaking a medium to large boss with Knight's Lightning Spear, then using a charged Ancient Dragons' Lightning Strike. This can finish off most bosses if they're below half health. It works best on medium to large bosses, ending fights quickly.
Other new Dragon Cult incantations include Dragonbolt of Florissax, which provides damage negation but isn't worth it. Golden Vow offers similar damage negation plus an attack buff, making it better for this build.
Other spells for this build include Lightning Spear, a staple for Dragon Cult builds. It's a good ranged single-target spell that you can charge for extra damage. Use it for regular enemies you can kill in one hit. It's cheaper than Knight's Lightning Spear, making it ideal for exploration.
Lightning Strike is a straight-line AoE spell, effective against grouped enemies. You can usually wipe out groups with one cast if you line up properly, saving FP and avoiding charging enemies.
Honed Bolt is a fast-casting alternative to Lightning Spear. It's useful for hard-to-kill enemies at range but Knight's Lightning Spear is generally better. You can use it as an alternative to Lightning Spear in some cases.
Ancient Dragons' Lightning Strike is great for large AoEs or medium to large enemies. Use it when you stagger bosses or need a strong AoE.
Electrocharge is not very effective. Its damage is minimal, and it doesn't seem to increase charges of Rotten Winged Sword Insignia or Millicent's Prosthesis. It also doesn't maintain stance damage on bosses, making it less useful.
For Sacred Seals, use the Erdtree Seal for high incantation scaling with 80 Faith. The Gravel Stone Seal in the offhand boosts Dragon Cult incantation damage. If you have two Gravel Stone Seals in New Game Plus, using both is slightly better than the Erdtree Seal and Gravel Stone Seal combination. If not, stick with the Erdtree Seal and Gravel Stone Seal setup.
Armor-wise, we're not using any armor, opting instead for a new reusable item called the Priestess Heart. This functions similarly to the Rock Heart from the Dragon God build. It transforms you into a Dragon Priestess, granting a flat 7% damage negation across the board and increasing your resistances. It's very light, allowing for light rolling and better dodging, though it provides limited protection and zero poise, making you susceptible to interruptions during animations.
This is why Knight's Lightning Spear is advantageous, as its projectiles still release even if you're interrupted mid-animation. Once transformed, using the Priestess Heart again gives you a 20% damage boost to Dragon Cult incantations for 60 seconds at no FP cost. This allows you to boost your spell damage without constantly draining FP with Golden Vow.
Alternatively, you could use the Death Knight Set, which grants a 2% boost to Dragon Cult incantations and skills for each piece worn, totaling 8% with the full set. However, this results in 12% less damage compared to the Priestess Heart. The Death Knight set offers more protection, making it suitable for players new to the DLC or those learning boss fights. However, it doesn't provide 51 poise, necessitating a talisman slot for the Bull-Goat’s Talisman or swapping out armor pieces, which can compromise damage slots.
You can also use the Golden Order Seal for high incantation scaling. You can also use the Clawmark Seal in your offhand for Bestial Incantations. This setup benefits strength characters needing to use incantations without high faith, though it results in lower damage spells.
Dragon Cult Incantations Build - Talismans
For this build, I use Flock’s Canvas Talisman to boost incantation damage, which applies to all offensive incantations.
The Godfrey Icon enhances charged spell damage, benefiting spells like Lightning Spear, Knight's Lightning Spear, and Ancient Dragon's Lightning Strike, as well as any other chargeable spells you add.
The Lightning Scorpion Charm further increases lightning damage, useful since all the spells in this build deal lightning damage. Keep in mind it also increases damage taken, so upgrade your Scadutree Fragments as much as possible for better protection.
The Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman can also be used for additional physical protection, especially when exploring.
In my fourth slot, I use the Crucible Knot Talisman to increase damage after killing enemies, which is useful when moving through groups but not as effective in boss fights.
For boss fights, consider the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman or the Ritual Sword Talisman for higher damage at full health.
Alternatively, the Two-Headed Turtle Talisman can help with stamina recovery, which is beneficial since this build consumes a lot of stamina.
This build is with Scadutree Fragments upgraded to only +7, including challenging fights like the Bayle and Metyr, Mother of Fingers boss fights. If you upgrade your Scadutree Fragments to the recommended level for these bosses, your build will perform even better and look more impressive. Most players will likely achieve better performance depending on their Scadutree Fragment upgrade level.
Dragon Cult Incantations Build - Attributes Distribution
Getting into attributes here, we have at level 159:
55 Vigor, 38 Mind, 20 Endurance, 8 Strength, 12 Dexterity, 16 Intelligence, 80 Faith, and 9 Arcane. You literally don't need any Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, or Arcane for this build. Those stats are the lowest I could get based on my starting class. So, you won't need any of those.
Vigor is at 55 because we're going to trade damage sometimes with this build and you just need higher health to stay alive in the DLC, particularly if you have no protection like we do. You'll want to get this to 60 eventually.
Mind is at 38 to give us plenty of FP to cast spells, and you might even want to take it higher than this eventually, but you minimally want 38.
Endurance is at 20. This allows us to light roll with our equip load. Light rolling is a good way to dodge attacks. We don't need a lot of endurance with this build. You do go through some stamina casting like Knight's Lightning Spirit, just spamming it back and forth, so you will go through some stamina. Having some more endurance isn't necessarily bad. If you went the Death Knight's Armor Set route, you'll probably need more than this to medium roll, so this might be 25 or 30 depending on if you went that route or not.
Lastly, we have 80 Faith here to take advantage of the Erdtree Seal to get the most out of it. You'll eventually want to take this up to 99 just to get the most damage out of this build that you can because that's the way to increase damage here.
Dragon Cult Incantations Build - Final Tips
So for the Flask of Wondrous Physick, there are a couple of ways you can go. First of all, the Lightning-Shrouded Cracked Tear is really good. This will increase your lightning damage, and all of our spells do lightning damage. You always want that one in there for basically anything that you're doing. Other than that, there are a couple of options.
You can go with Greenburst Crystal Tear since you use a lot of stamina and don't have a ton of endurance with this build. You can also use the Opaline Hardtear for more protection because we don't have a lot of protection with this build, which is also good.
Alternatively, you can go with the Stonebarb Cracked Tear for stance damage to try and stance break bosses faster with Knight's Lightning Spear. This is not a bad way to go either, because if you can stance break bosses and then follow up with Ancient Dragon's Lightning Strike to melt them, you're not getting hit, making it a viable strategy.
When it comes to Great Runes for this build, I think Radahn's Great Rune is the best bet. It gives you FP, stamina, and health, which is good. Morgott's Great Rune is also not bad for just more health in general since you have basically no protection, and getting an extra big chunk of health can help keep you alive.
One other thing I wanted to mention is that this build can have difficulty when enemies get point-blank. You can either punch them—sometimes in a pinch, you can just punch them to death quickly, which works—or you can slot something like the Coded Sword and use that for when enemies get into melee range. Just switch to it quickly. This weapon uses Faith and scales predominantly off Faith, dealing Holy Damage instead of lightning. While we're not optimized for the most damage out of it, because you don't need any investment in other stats, it's not a bad backup weapon to use when you need to melee enemies quickly.
So that wraps up our Dragon Priestess build. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. This is the one you voted on. I will be doing more builds moving forward. I'm looking forward to doing a Bow build, so you might see that next. If there are other builds you want to see, please leave them in the comments below. As always, let us know if you have questions or other tips in the comments below. We have a ton more builds coming for Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree so stay tuned for those. If you need help finding the spells, items, or equipment in this build, and securing some personal objectives, make sure to check the Elden Ring Map.