Elden Ring: Best Prisoner Build Guide

Elden Ring gives you a few different starting classes to choose from, and while your class selection stops mattering quite as much after you’ve sunk a few hours into the game, it can be a pretty important choice if you want to min-max your stats. With that out of the way, here’s our take on the best Prisoner build in Elden Ring.

Elden Ring Best Prisoner Build

The Prisoner class starts at level 9 with the following stats:

• 11 Vigor
• 12 Mind
• 11 Endurance
• 11 Strength
• 14 Dexterity
• 14 Intelligence
• 6 Faith
• 9 Arcane

With those stats, the Prisoner makes for a pretty good hybrid build, save for Faith-based builds that make use of incantations. However, with 14 points in both Dex and Int, it just makes sense to go for a good sorcery build if you’re gonna be picking the Prisoner as your starting class.

Stat Allocations

For a Prisoner sorcery build, you’ll definitely want to hit 52 Int at the minimum, as well as 40 Vig so that you have enough health to deal with the harder hitting enemies in the late-game areas.

Your primary focus should be on Int and Mind, which will give you the most damage output, as well as enough FP for you to keep casting your sorceries. At the time of writing, the Moonveil katana is still one of the best Int-based weapons for PvE content, so you’ll also want to hit 12 Str and 18 Dex in order to be able to wield it.

Once you’ve hit all of those thresholds, it’s up to you how you want to allocate the rest of your points. While putting points into Dex can reduce your casting speed, it’s worth noting that there are talismans that can shorten cast times as well. And if you choose to use Azur’s Glintstone Staff, you can further reduce your cast times at the expense of more FP. Because of this, we’d recommend putting more points into Endurance and Mind over Dex to help with stamina and FP management.

Weapons to Use

As mentioned above, the Moonveil katana is still one of the best Int-based PvE weapons in Elden Ring, so we’d definitely recommend going for it with a Prisoner build. Aside from that, here are a few other weapons and staffs that would work well with a Dex/Int build:

• Dark Moon Greatsword (requires 16 Strength)
• Azur’s Glintstone Staff
• Lusat’s Glintstone Staff
• Carian Regal Scepter

All three staffs listed above require 52 Int, so we also recommend going for the Meteorite Staff early on in Caelid as you’re leveling up your Intelligence.

As for spells, it ultimately comes down to your preferred play style and whether you’d like to cast them from a distance or get in close. Spells like Carian Greatsword are fantastic for close ranged battle, while Rock Sling is pretty much your bread and butter for ranged combat in almost any situation.

That’s all you need to know about making a great Prisoner build in Elden Ring. Be sure to check our guide wiki for more tips and information on the game.