Don’t Be a Dark Souls Noob: Pick This Class To Stay Alive In Elden Ring

For my personal choice I picked the Astrologer class that gives you access to some very satisfying sorceries straight off the bat.

• How you’ll live: 
  • Your starting intelligence is at an impressive 16, giving you the opportunity to deal huge amounts of damage on early enemies.
  • You receive two cool spells, Glintstone Pebble and Glintstone Arc that are even still useful later in the game.
  • Easy to upgrade your intelligence and spells very quickly to become OP very early on!
  • Fantastic for new and veteran players looking for a different playstyle than the regular melee combat.

• How you’ll die:
  • On starting your adventure you only receive a wooden shield and sorcery armour making you open to huge amounts of physical damage.
  • You only recieve a Short Sword for low physical damage making your melee damage limited in the early game.

Choosing the Samurai class has made for a very solid melee and ranged starting build for another one of Party Aunty friends.  

• How you’ll live: 
  • As a samurai, you receive the fantastic weapon Uchigatana that has the weapon skill Unsheath, which are both cool AF! The Uchigatana also gives you a blend of a great amount of damage and an additional amount of bleed damage on the first bosses. A fantastic way to get a one-up on some of those harder starting enemies and bosses.
  • As a Samurai, you also receive a Longbow with a set of fire arrows and regular arrows that are great to fire from your noble steed, Torrent. Also great for ranged battles to help keep your distance from some of those harder enemies.
  • It's a very good and rewarding class for new players learning some of the basic combat mechanics of Elden Ring keeping you alive.

• How you’ll die:
  • You have no options of any sorcery and incantations at the beginning of the game.
  • If you focus on arrow combat you’ll die if you don’t keep an eye on your arrow inventory, they deplete very quickly. Make sure you’ve crafted or bought some arrows from a traveling merchant before clearing an area.

Another one of Party Auntys’s friend chose the Prophet class because the incantations and armour looks cool. Great for any Dark Souls player who loves using pyromancy and miracles.

• How you’ll live:
  • When you start the game you get two great incantations called Heal and Catch Flame, which are very useful to stay alive when you first get started. Heal is an especially important incantation if you run out of healing flasks before getting to a Site of Grace or you are in the middle of a boss battle.
  • Your Faith stat is at an impressive 16 giving you the ability to wield some great incantations straight away, and the option to progress to much stronger incantations is quicker than normal.
  • You’ll receive the Short Spear which is a great weapon option.

• How you’ll die: 
  • With your starting mind skill at 14, you might run out of mana/FP very quickly during your adventure making you more reliant on your spear.
  • The shield you receive when you first start called “The Rickety Shield” will definitely not keep you alive from some of Elden Rings’s early hard-hitting bosses, making you reliant on rolling more often.

Another one of Party Aunt’s friends picked the Bandit class. They found that the Bandit class has high mobility and gives fantastic options for stacking damage on bosses with the starting bleed weapon.

• How you’ll live:
  • On entering the world you receive the Great Knife that as a bleeding weapon can cause large amounts of burst damage on bosses. Which also has the benefit of stacking small amounts of damage very quickly with the bonus bleed damage.
  • You can deal huge amounts of critical damage, fantastic for any players that like performing backstabs, parrys, or attacking a downed enemy from horse combat and sneak attacks catching the helpless enemy unaware.
  • Your starting stats are great! You have great dexterity and arcane stats that are complementary with your starting weapon, giving you higher damage, as well as more mobility and even a greater item discovery helping you to find more precious items earlier in the game.

• How you’ll die:
  • Making use of the critical damage features in the game early on may be difficult for some new players, especially parrying.
  • While the bleed damage is great, if your reaction time isn’t quick enough, you might be better off picking another class to stay alive.