Elden Ring Bleed Build

In Elden Ring, there are a variety of different status effects you can hit enemies with (and they can, in turn, hit you with) using your weapons and magic. These status effects can drain health, slow movements, siphon FP, and in some cases, cause instant death! How fun. One of the most dangerous of these status effects, though, is also one of the simplest: Hemorrahging, or if you prefer, Bleeding. Here’s what you need to know about Bleed builds in Elden Ring.

As a status effect, Bleed is neither supernatural nor incomprehensible, but an unfortunate fact of being a living thing. When you take Bleed damage from an enemy, usually one using sharp weapons or claws, the Bleed meter appears on your screen, colored in dark red. Every additional Bleed attack fills the meter, and if it fills completely, you’ll be inflicted with Blood Loss, instantly slicing off a massive chunk of your health bar. It’s because Bleed is so simple that it’s difficult to resist, but that strength works just as well against your foes as it does on you. With the right weaponry, as well as some creative stat allocation, you can create a Bleed build in Elden Ring that can deal massive damage by repeatedly filling up an enemy’s Bleed meter.

Elden Ring Bleed Build

So, what do we need to get things running red in here? The first order of business is weaponry. As I mentioned, most bladed weapons naturally inflict Bleed damage, even if that’s not their primary function. You can enhance a weapon’s ability to inflict Bleed damage by applying certain Ashes of War and/or modifying its affinity with a Whetblade, though you should know that switching a weapon’s affinity to Blood will lower all of its stat scalings except for Arcane.

What we need is a weapon that’s already predisposed to inflicting Bleed damage. There are a few candidates here, but one of the absolute best is unquestionably the katana Rivers of Blood. That name alone should tip you off to what this thing is capable of.

Here are Rivers of Blood’s stats:

• Damage Type: 89 Phys, 89 Fire, 100 Crit
• Scalings: STR E, DEX D, ARC D
• Requirements: STR 12, DEX 18, ARC 20
• Status Effects: 50 Bleed
• Special Skill: Corpse Piler. Unleashes a series of wide red slashes.

Rivers of Blood’s base damage output is already insane, moreso if you upgrade it, so when you add the Bleed inflicted by both its normal slashes and Corpse Piler, you can slice off giant chunks of an enemy’s HP with just a few combos. 

Rivers of Blood is dropped by Bloody Finger Okina, an NPC invader that spawns in front of the Church of Repose in the eastern section of the Mountaintops of the Giants.

Now, on its own, Rivers of Blood can provide more or less all of the bloody goodness you’d need, but if you really wanna bring it on home, you can dual wield it along with a second katana. Any generic katana will do the job fine, such as the Samurai’s starting Uchigatana, but if you’d like a suggestion, you should try to get Bloody Finger Hunter Yura’s signature sword, Nagakiba. He’ll give it to you if you complete his questline, or you can just kill him and take it. Either way, if you apply the Bloody Slash Ash of War to it, you’ll have two swords that deal insane Bleed damage and regular damage swinging one after the other.

As for stat allocation, you’ll want STR, DEX, and ARC primarily, since those three are what Rivers of Blood and Nagakiba scale with. Some END might help too since Katanas tend to be a bit heavier than other sword-type weapons. If you’re feeling creative, you can also opt for some Faith, or at least enough to use the incarnation Bloodflame Blade, which enhances a weapon’s ability to deal Bleed damage further.