Elden Ring Pyromancer Build Guide (PvE) (2024)

A complete Elden Ring Pyromancer PvE Build and Guide to the class. Designed to help you create a versatile, powerful, ranged caster character on your first playthrough, detailing everything you need to know for the mid and late game!

The Guide is up-to-date for Patch 1.10

Pyromancer Build Summary

Mid Level (<190)

• 40 Vigor
• 40 Mind
• 20 Endurance
• 17 Strength
• 22 Dexterity
• 60 Faith

Full Playthrough

• 60 Vigor (hard)
• 40+ Mind (soft)
• 30+ Endurance (soft)
• 17 Strength (soft)
• 22 Dexterity (soft)
• 80 Faith (hard)

NG+ (>260)

• 60 Vigor
• 60 Mind
• 50 Endurance
• 17+ Strength
• 22+ Dexterity
• 80 Intelligence
• 17+ Arcane

Introduction to Pyromancer

Welcome to my guide on playing a Pyromancer in Elden Ring! This guide is oriented toward PvE and will cover recommended pyromancies, seals, melee weapons, talismans, Physick mixtures, armor, and stats as well as where you’ll need to go to find all this stuff!

My recommendations are focused on what you should be working towards in the mid to late game on your first playthrough and what you should have for NG+.

For those of you that are more familiar with Elden Ring and Dark Souls, this guide explains how to play a pure Faith ranged caster build that relies primarily on pyromancies AKA fire incantations.

All of your stats and Flask allocations are designed to boost the power of your ranged attacks (pyromancies) and allow you to play the entire game at range. You’ll only swing your melee weapon if you want to.

In exchange for exceptional ranged performance, you will struggle a bit with prolonged melee combat. Don’t get me wrong, you can still take down regular enemies with your melee weapon just fine, but you’re meant to be fighting tougher enemies with your pyromancies and you don’t have the spare Crimson Flasks and stamina to swing your melee weapon for extended periods of time.

Some boss fights will feel quite different as a ranged build because you don’t have to focus as much on staying in melee range; it’s almost like a dance where you dodge attacks and figure out how much fire you can fling before they try to hit you again. Since you’re at a distance, it’s easier to see the full attack so you might get the impression that attacks feel less cheap because you can see them coming allowing you to fully appreciate their style and grace.

What Makes Pyromancy Unique?

Pyromancers differentiate themselves from other casters by being able to deliver short and medium-range fire explosions that deal damage in a fairly wide, typically circular area around the point of impact. The range and area of effect of pyromancies tend to increase as you gain access to locate more books from the Fire Monks, Godskin Apostles, and Fire Giants.

Cast times tend to be on the longer side and there aren’t too many attacks that you can spam quickly, especially outside of melee range where you could just use your melee weapon instead. In practical terms, pyromancy excels at efficiently taking out groups of enemies, often in a single shot, whereas some enemies with higher health, particularly bosses that have long, infrequent openings, can be a bit more cumbersome to deal with.

This uneven performance is exacerbated by the fact that pyromancy deals fire damage (shocker, right?), so some enemies will take extra damage stop attacking as they writhe from the flames while others will take less damage than normal or even be completely immune. This issue can be mitigated by switching to a different “religion” (school of Faith) completely or at least incorporating a few non-pyromancy incantations.

Pyromancies

Pyromancies now differ significantly and consequentially in the following ways:

• Casting Time
• Range
• Multi-Target / AoE
• Reliability
• Damage Output
• Bonus Effects
• FP Efficiency

Default Pyromancies to use with this Build

This build assumes you’ve managed to locate at least 6 of the 8 Memory Stones scattered throughout the Lands Between thereby having at least 8 Memory Slots available.

The 6 Incantations listed below are what I deem to be the core Pyromancy experience, so if you have found all 8 Memory Stones, you have 2 additional Memory Slots to work with to customize this build as you see fit.

Giantsflame Take Thee

Giantsflame Take Thee is the classic exploding fireball attack that Pyromancy is known for. It deals a ton of damage in a wide area and the charged version can usually one-shot normal enemies, though charging only increases damage output, not blast radius.

This Pyromancy does have a couple of drawbacks. First, it has fairly short range so you need to get pretty close to actually hit things. Second, enemies can and will dodge it, so it’s practically useless against them unless they’re already locked in an animation, in which case you might want to use Burn, O Flame! instead.

These limitations shouldn’t discourage you from using Giantsflame Take Thee; it’s still your most powerful Pyromancy in most cases, but it just means you can’t use it exclusively.

Giantslame Take Thee can be purchased for 13k Runes from a cleric after giving them the Giant’s Prayerbook.

The Giant’s Prayerbook is located in a chest at the top of the Guardian’s Garrison in the eastern region of the Mountaintops of the Giants.

Flame, Fall Upon Them

Flame, Fall Upon Them always deals less damage but otherwise covers for the weaknesses of Giantsflame Take Thee. The biggest advantage of Flame, Fall Upon Them is that it works against enemies that can dodge your main fireball because the radius of the cone of fireballs is wider than enemies’ dodge distance, so they’ll get hit by the edge fireballs even if they dodge.

Each fireball deals its own damage and they get spread out over a wide area, so Flame, Fall Upon Them does not work very well against small enemies because they’ll often only get hit by a single fireball instead of taking the full brunt of a Giantsflame Take Thee explosion.

Unfortunately, you can’t leverage the fact that each fireball deals individual damage because there seems to be a cap on how much damage a single enemy can take from each cast. It maxes out at 3-4 fireballs worth of damage, which means in it can only ever deal slightly less damage than Giantsflame Take Thee, even against massive enemies like dragons that would otherwise get hit by all of them.

The fireballs also just disappear once they hit something, they don’t explode or pierce, so one enemy will block another from getting hit by the same fireball. In general, Giantsflame Take Thee is a lot better for groups of enemies than Flame, Fall Upon Them.

Flame, Fall Upon Them is considerably cheaper than Giantsflame Take Thee (16 vs 30 FP), so if you’re running low on FP, it’s better to just stop using Giantsflame Take Thee altogether and use this instead.

Giantslame Take Thee can be purchased for 13k Runes from a cleric after giving them the Giant’s Prayerbook.

The Giant’s Prayerbook is located in a chest at the top of the Guardian’s Garrison in the eastern region of the Mountaintops of the Giants.

Flame, Grant Me Strength

Flame, Grant Me Strength boosts both your Fire and Physical damage dealt by 20% for 30s. It also increases your Stamina regeneration rate by 5/s while active; for reference, as a Pyromancer, you have 100-130 Stamina depending on how many points you’ve put into Endurance. Since its cast time is similar to that of other Pyromancies, make sure you’re only using it when it would actually reduce the time it takes to defeat something beyond what you’d get out of using an attack instead.

For example, if you can one-shot the enemy with unbuffed Giantsflame Take Thee (or whatever you end up casting) anyway, then casting Flame, Grant Me Strength is just a waste of time.

In boss fights, you can think more in terms of DPS. If the cast time for Flame, Grant Me Strength is roughly the same as that of another Pyromancy, and it boosts your damage dealt by 20%, then you need to hit the boss with 5 other casts while that buff is active in order to recoup the initial investment. Keep in mind that 5 casts is only enough to break even, you need 6 casts to actually make the buff superior to just doing another cast instead.

It will definitely vary a ton based on the fight, but I think it’s pretty tough for Pyromancy to consistently get at least 6 casts off in the span of 30s against a boss, so you’re better off only activating it when you can’t hit the boss as a pre-cast ability. A lot of bosses teleport far away, so Flame, Grant Me Strength is a great ability to use while you wait for them to reappear since you aren’t losing DPS because you wouldn’t have been able to hit them anyway.

If that’s a bit more complicated than you care about, just remember You don’t need to have Flame, Grant Me Strength active all time. Only cast it when you can’t hit the boss or are facing a strong enemy like one of the trolls or giant birds.

Flame, Grant Me Strength is located behind Fort Gael in western Caelid in between a pair of the Flamethrower Chariots.

Flame of the Fell God

Rather than chucking or spraying like with other Pyromancies, casting Flame of the Fell God causes you to birth a miniature sun from your hand that slowly floats towards your target. Once the miniature sun gets close enough to an enemy or just reaches its max range, it will flash and then explode soon after, dealing a considerable amount of damage, knocking affected targets down, and setting the ground on fire.

The blast radius and max range are shorter than you might expect while the travel time is super slow, so if the enemy is moving around a lot, it might evade the explosion. You can greatly improve the reliability by staying nearby the Flame of the Fell God so that enemies would have to be in the blast radius in order to hit you.

Flame of the Fell God cannot be charged, but deals comparable damage to a fully charged Giantsflame Take Thee. You can’t have more than 1 fully-formed mini-sun out at a time either. If you cast Flame of the Fell God again before the first one has flashed to indicate an impending explosion, the first one will just despawn.

It takes about as long for Flame of the Fell God to reach its target as it takes for you to fully charge another Pyromancy and throw it, so against stronger enemies, it’s ideal to pre-cast Flame of the Fell God immediately followed by throwing a fully charged Giantsflame Take Thee so that both attacks detonate at the same time and deal a ton of damage to the strongest non-boss enemies you’ll find in the Lands Between.

Flame of the Fell God has a fairly long cast time, so be careful about using it after you’re already engaged in combat, particularly boss fights, if the enemy can hit you from where they’re standing. It’s great to cast it while the enemy is moving toward you, but still out of range so that you can follow it up with a second attack just like you would if you were out of combat.

Flame of the Fell God is dropped by defeating Adan, Thief of Fire at the Malefactor’s Evergaol in southern Liurnia.

Burn, O Flame!

Burn, O Flame! is the most powerful Pyromancy in the game. Each column of fire summoned from the earth deals similar damage to your other fire attacks and knocks the enemy into the air so they land on their backs. Unlike similar Pyromancies in past games, the flame columns are dense enough to where the same enemy will get hit by multiple, so it’s easy to deal double, triple, or even quadruple the damage of Giantsflame Take Thee with a single activation of Burn, O Flame! depending on the size of the enemy and assuming you manage to actually get the cast off.

The immense power of Burn, O Flame! is constrained by how dangerous it is to use. The cast time is quite long and columns of fire erupt in melee range around you, so you must stand still very close to the enemy without hitting them to successfully cast the Pyromancy.

You can be more aggressive with Burn, O Flame! than it might seem because when you cast it, you slam your hands into the earth, resulting in your entire body being pretty low to the ground in an almost prone position. Most enemies’ slash attacks (sideswipes) will whiff over your head while you’re calling upon the fire of the earth, allowing your cast to proceed safely.

It’s best to cast it against enemies that are in a long startup animation or end lag animation for an attack you won’t (or didn’t) get hit by. It’s also great to cast against enemies that are just walking or running toward you without winding up an attack such that the cast will finish just as they step into range.

You can lead into Burn, O Flame! with other (strong) knockdowns too, especially Flame of the Fell God, Wrath of Gold, and Noble Presence. It’s not worth the hassle against enemies that will get knocked over by less forceful knockdowns like Giantsflame Take Thee since those probably won’t survive another hit from that attack anyway so Burn, O Flame! is overkill.

Since Burn, O Flame! applies a powerful knock-up itself, you can and absolutely should chain multiple activations back-to-back and for the post-Fire Giant boss fights, I found that you really have to do this in order to beat them because you can’t deal high enough DPS to get through boss HP even though the individual damage dealt per hit for your Pyromancies is high.

Given that you can chain Burn, O Flame! into additional activations thanks to the knock-up effect, I find it a bit strange that they didn’t make something you can channel for as long as you have FP like Surge, O Flame!, Unendurable Frenzy, and Comet Azur.

I also want to note that since it deals so much damage, it’s absolutely worthwhile to use Burn, O Flame! when an enemy has had their guard broken (where they’re stunned) instead of trying to stab the exposed glowing weak point.

Burn, O Flame! can be purchased from Finger Reader Enia at the Roundtable Hold in exchange for the Remembrance of the Fire Giant.

Whirl, O Flame!

Whirl, O Flame! causes you to spray out fire from your hand as you spin your arm, creating a little whirl. It can tick up to 4 times on a single enemy. Charging Whirl, O Flame! just makes it deal more damage. It might make it travel slightly farther as well, but the difference is negligible.

It doesn’t deal quite as much damage as your other Pyromances and has a super long cast and travel time. However, it does have longer range than basically all other Pyromancies and pierces through enemies without knocking them over. Both of these advantages make Whirl, O Flame! your best Pyromancy in a few specific situations.

Not applying a knockback is useful when you have enemies that are grouped close together, but they have too much health to be one-shot by a Flame of the Fell God (mini sun) or fully charged Giantsflame Take Thee (fireball) that’s been boosted by Flame, Grant Me Strength so they’ll take multiple hits to take down.

Once you knock enemies apart with one of those attacks, you won’t be able to hit all of them again with a single cast, so you’ll likely have to throw fireballs at each of them individually, which is super inefficient. Whirl, O Flame! can let you two-shot a group of enemies that would otherwise take a whole lot more attacks to take down where you cast Flame, Grant Me Strength -> Whirl, O Flame! -> Giantslfame Take Thee or Flame of the Fell God.

You can leverage Whirl, O Flame!’s range when you can’t get close enough with one of your stronger Pyromancies, though don’t expect this Pyromancy to be a panacea for your range woes. Compared to Sorceries and Incantations as a whole, Pyromancies still have the shortest range on average, and Whirl, O Flame! is absolutely still a Pyromancy in that respect. Its range is similar to that of your standard Sorcery.

In my opinion, Whirl, O Flame! is one of the least valuable pieces of the Pyromancy build, so if you need a Memory Slot that you want to use for something else like Scarlet Aeonia, I’d recommend getting rid of Whirl, O Flame! first.

Whirl, O Flame! is dropped by a dung beetle near the beginning of the Caelid Highway by the Minor Erdtree that’s close to the border between Limgrave and Caelid.

Additional Pyromancies to use with this Build

There are a bunch of additional Pyromancies available, but I think they’re all either too weak to compensate for the additional benefit they provide or are too situational. I believe the wasted time mostly skipping past them in the interface to get to the one you actually want to use outweighs the benefit provided by keeping them available.

That said, there are a few that you might want to consider using either to expand your capabilities or for RP reasons.

Black Flame Ritual

Black Flame Ritual is a really cool ability, but you’ll have a hard time dealing a lot of damage with it unless you’re being cheesy because the cast time is fairly long for how short-range it is.

Don’t get me wrong, its cast time is still short compared to your other Pyromancies, but it’s best to use Black Flame Ritual for spacing and stalling. You conjure the Black Flame to buy yourself time where your opponent will take damage and often get interrupted if they try to attack you while you’re charging up one of your more devastating Pyromancies from the safety of your ring of fire.

Charging the Black Flame Ritual creates a wider ring that will surround the first. It looks super cool, but I don’t think there’s much of a point in doing it since the smaller ring is enough for our purposes. Just like Whirl, O Flame!, I think Black Flame Ritual is fairly situational and not super useful if the enemy is gonna ignore the staggering effect of the fire anyway.

Black Flame Ritual is dropped by the Spirit-Caller Snail boss at the end of the Spiritcaller cave located at the southern bank of the Frozen Lake in the eastern region of the Mountaintops of the Giants.

Frenzied Flame Incantations

The Frenzied Flame is different from the Pyromancy flame, but you’re still using fire and these options expand your overall capabilities the most, so they will be consistently useful. There are 5 Frenzied Flame Incantations, but only 2 of them offer expanded functionality for Pyromancy in PvE: Frenzied Burst and Unendurable Frenzy.

Frenzied Burst is similar in functionality and capability to Whirl, O Flame that trades damage output for additional range. Unendurable Frenzy provides a relatively safe, spammable option since it can be channeled until you run out of FP or max out your Madness bar.

The Frenzied Flame Incantations are always found nearby frenzied NPCs which can be found in multiple areas throughout the Lands Between.

Fire’s Deadly Sin + Gradual HP Regeneration

Sometimes you come across an enemy, like Mohg, that’s just so dramatic and flamboyant that it makes you just want to set yourself on fire. Thankfully, the good folks at From Software have got you covered by including a Pyromancy that lets you channel your inner Lucille Bluth called Fire’s Deadly Sin.

It shares the same cast animation and range as Burn, O Flame! but triggers a single, weaker explosion instead that also sets you on fire, causing you to deal a constant, tiny amount of damage to any enemies that remain nearby.

The burning effect from Fire’s Deadly Sin cannot be active at the same time as Flame, Grant Me Strength (or Flame, Protect Me) since both have a diamond-shaped border around their buff icon which indicates only 1 type of that buff can be active at a time. Activating either effect will immediately overwrite the currently active one, though you can leverage this to extinguish your body early.

The only way to mitigate the damage you take is with gradual HP regeneration by using some of the following depending on your preference: Blessing of the Erdtree, Crimsonburst Crystal Tear, Crimsonwhorl Bubbletear, or Blessed Dew Talisman.

Fire’s Deadly Sin is not completely terrible, especially when paired with some form of gradual healing, so while it’s definitely suboptimal, I wanted to give it a shout-out because it’s super on-brand for Pyromancy.

Fire’s Deadly Sin is the reward for finding the subject of the Flightless Bird painting. For more info, check out my guide on all painting locations and rewards.

Alternative Incantations to use with this Build

If you are willing to break away from a pure Pyromancy build, you have additional options available to you:

• Noble Presence OR Wrath of Gold (knockback, only need 1)
• Black Blade (different damage type)
• Scarlet Aeonia (DoT, remove Whirl, O Flame!)
• Frozen Lightning Spear (different damage type, good for large enemies)
• Erdtree Heal (immediate heal)
• Blessing of the Erdtree (gradual heal)
• Golden Vow (general buff)

I consider these options to be the strongest non-Pyromancy Incantations in PvE out of the options available.

When should you charge spells in Elden Ring

Charging spells is a new feature in Elden Ring where you can hold down R1/RB for longer to boost the damage output of a spell or skill at no additional FP cost. The damage boost is usually fairly small but can be boosted by the Godfrey Icon talisman equipped where it can be more noticeable. Unless stated specifically, spells only deal any additional damage once they are fully charged; there’s almost never any benefit to just half-charging a spell.

Charging never results in a sustained damage (DPS) increase over chaining a spell back to back unless the spell gains additional functionality like lasting longer. Most of the time, the only real benefit of charging comes from being more efficient with your FP when that damage increase would enable you to take down an enemy in 1 less hit than it would have taken if you were to use an uncharged version instead.

Against bosses, you may have enough time or stamina to charge a spell before their next attack, but not enough to cast the spell twice.

Sacred Seals

There are two Sacred Seals I recommend for this build: Giant’s Seal and Erdtree Seal. Below you will find out why they are the best and how to get them.

Giant’s Seal

The Giant’s Seal is the best seal specifically for the Pyromancy build because it boosts the damage dealt by all of the “red flame” Fire Monk and Fire Giant Pyromancies by 20%, including every Pyromancy I recommend as part of the core build by 20%. It does not boost the damage dealt by Black Flame or Frenzied Flame Incantations and its Incant[ation] Scaling is in general weaker than what you can get with other Sacred Seals.

The Giant’s Seal is located in a slightly hidden lower area near a Fire Prelate within the Giant-Conquering Hero’s Grave in the eastern region of the Mountaintops of the Giants.

Erdtree Seal

The Erdtree Seal offers stronger Incantation Scaling than the Giant’s Seal (353 vs 307), but doesn’t boost any specific type of Incantations like the Giant’s Seal does. That said, the superior Incant[ation] Scaling makes the Erdtree Seal only about 7% weaker than the Giant’s Seal for the “red flame” Pyromancies while being about 13% better for every other type of Incantation.

The key takeaway is that the Erdtree Seal is better if you prefer to use different types of Incantations more frequently and lean less heavily on the Pyromancies I recommend as part of the core build since it will make them deal more damage than you’d lose by giving up the Giant’s Seal.

The Erdtree Seal is located inside one of the prisons in the Prison Town in the Volcano Manor (near the Omenkiller) on Mt. Gelmir.

Melee Weapons

Your melee weapon choice (what you use in your right hand) is going to come down more to preference, though you do want to make sure to use a weapon that either already scales with Faith or can at least be made to scale with Faith by using an Ash of War to change the weapon’s affinity to Flame Art.

In addition, I recommend sticking to weapons that have Strength and Dexterity requirements that are below 20 because you can’t afford to spend more stat than that. You can start to branch out once you’ve made a fair bit of headway into NG+ when stat requirements start becoming irrelevant, but in this section, I’ll only be highlighting some weapons that naturally scale well with Faith.

I want to emphasize that I don’t think the differences in damage output between these weapons are all that consequential in the grand scheme of things. Most of the time, you’re gonna be slinging fire anyway, especially against more difficult enemies where damage output matters most, so pick the weapon that you find most fun to use or that you think looks the coolest.

Godskin Peeler + Flaming Strike

The Godskin Peeler is a twinblade that starts with a decent default Ash of War, Black Flame Tornado, but you don’t expand your capabilities with Black Flame Tornado since you can get circular AoEs with Burn, O Flame! and Fire’s Deadly Sin, the former of which can deal a lot more damage.

I recommend pairing it with Flaming Strike, which gives you a fast conal that has a much better range than Catch Flame or O, Flame! that can be chained into a strong attack that will ignite the blades for a while making your Godskin Peeler deal more damage with each swing.

Out of all the weapons, in this list, I think the Godskin Peeler + Flaming Strike is my personal favorite because the damage output is strong, expands functionality, and looks cool (especially while it’s on fire). If you use this weapon, don’t forget to set the Affinity to Flame Art so that the fire damage component scales with Faith.

The Godskin Peeler is dropped by defeating the Godskin Apostle at the Windmill Village on the northern edge of the Atlus Plateau.

Ash of War: Flaming Strike is dropped by a dung beetle in the graveyard at Redmane Castle.

Coded Sword or Cipher Pata

The Coded Sword and Cipher Pata are cut from the same cloth. They both deal pure holy damage, scale exclusively with Faith, mostly ignore shields, and weigh (almost) nothing. The only substantial difference between them is that they’re different types of weapons.

The Coded Sword is a straight sword without any complications, so it’s an excellent choice if you don’t want to think about your melee weapon much at all. It’s also arguably the closes thing Elden Ring has to a lightsaber.

The Cipher Pata is a fist weapon, so it gives you a second one for your other hand when you two-hand it, allowing you to attack faster. As a fist weapon that deals holy damage, you can RP as Bob Ross to literally beat the devil out of enemies. Jokes aside, since this build is focused on casting Pyromancies with the other hand, I think the Coded Sword is the better option since it’s meant to be used in a single hand.

Both the Coded Sword and Cipher Pata can be found in the Roundtable Hold. The Coded Sword is located in the physical Roundtable Hold in Lyndell, Royal Capital, on the Altus Plateau behind the throne where the Two Fingers would be.

The Cipher Pata is located in the hub version with all the NPCs on the lower level in the room to the left of where you fight the invader Mad Tongue Alberich.

Magma Blade or Magma Whip Candlestick

If only the most firey weapons will do for your Pyromancer and future Elden Lord, look no further than the (bedazzled) Magma Blade or Magma Whip Candlestick. They’re both similar to each other just as the Coded Sword and Cipher Pata are, with the only real difference being weapon type where the Magma Blade is a curved sword while the Magma Whip Candlestick is, you guessed it, a whip.

Curved swords are faster and easier to use, but are much shorter-range than whips and I think there’s a pretty good chance you’ll prefer one over the other because they’re so different. Try them both out!

The Magma Blade has a small chance to be dropped by specific serpents that wield them at the Volcano Manor on Mt. Gelmir. Some can be found past the Temple of Eiglay right before you reach the warp gate to Rykard’s arena.

The Magma Whip is given to you by Patches by talking to him again sometime after completing his Volcano Manor mission for him. Basically, after you tell him he’s defeated Great Horned Tragoth, he has to go tell Tanith and get the reward that you later ask for.

Blade of Calling

The Blade of Calling is a dagger that partially scales with Faith and deals some holy damage. Daggers are lightweight, can deal more critical damage than most other types of weapons, and feature the fastest swing speed in the game at the cost of shorter range and lower damage per swing.

From an RP perspective, I think the Blade of Calling makes the most sense if you plan to use Blessing of the Erdtree with Fire’s Deadly Sin because the Blade of Calling’s Unique Skill (Ash of War) has you leap into the air and send a flaming blade of gold at the target.

The Blade of Calling is located in a secret room in the elevator shaft that transports you from Lyndel, Royal Capital to the Forbidden Lands leading to the Grand Lift of Rold.

Shields

I have never used the shield in From Software games. It’s completely fine if you want to use one and it would work as an alternative to a weapon, but I’m just not equipped to offer much in the way of useful recommendations on the subject. The only thing I can say is to stay away from greatshields with this build because they almost always require more than 20 Strength to use.

Talismans

What Talismans to use with this Build

My default build includes the Faithful’s Canvas Talisman, Flock’s Canvas Talisman, Fire Scorpion Charm, and Godfrey Icon, which is structured around maximizing fire and Incantation damage output.

Faithful’s Canvas Talisman

This talisman provides a 4% damage boost to all Incantations, which is effectively a 4% damage boost. It doesn’t seem like much, but it can be the difference between defeating some enemies in 1 hit instead of 2.

The Faithful’s Canvas Talisman is being worshipped by 2 Kindred of Rot located towards the back of the Sellia Crystal Tunnel in Caelid.

Flock’s Canvas Talisman

This talisman provides an 8% damage boost to all Incantations, so it’s literally just a stronger version of the Faithful’s Canvas Talisman. Unlike most other talismans with an upgraded version, you can equip both Canvas talismans at the same time!

The Flock’s Canvas Talisman is dropped by defeating Sage Gowry for real at his hut outside of Sellia, Town of Sorcery, in Caelid. He won’t actually be defeated unless he is weeping, which only occurs after completing Millicent’s questline or assassinating her after meeting her at Dominula, Windmill Village.

Fire Scorpion Charm

This talisman boosts the damage dealt by sorceries by 12% (as much as the Canvas talismans combined) but increases your physical damage taken by 10%. In the Dark Souls series, this was called the Fire Clutch Ring. Unlike the Canvas Talismans, the Fire Scorpion Charm boosts fire damage, so it will increase the effectiveness of your melee weapon if it deals fire damage.

The Fire Scorpion’s Charm was stolen by a noble attempting to flee Fort Laiedd on the western side of Mt. Gelmir, but he didn’t make it very far, so it’s pretty close to an already-open chest that he likely took it from.

Godfrey Icon

This talisman increases the damage dealt by fully charging chargeable Pyromancies by 15%. I think the Godfrey Icon is valuable because almost all of your Pyromancies are chargeable and you have a strong incentive to charge Pyromancies so you can take your opponent out in a single shot.

The Godfrey Icon drops off of defeating Godefroy the Grafted at the Golden Lineage Evergaol in southern region of the Atlus Plateau.

For more information on how to find this talisman, check out my guide onall Legendary Talisman Locations.

Alternative Talismans for the Pyromancy PvE Build

Moon of Nokstella

This talisman is great if you want access to additional Incantations, but don’t care as much about damage output. I’d recommend giving up Whirl, O Flame! and Black Flame Ritual to repurpose those slots before taking Moon of Nokstella.

Dragoncrest (Great) Shield Talismans

This series of talismans boosts your physical damage negation by 10-20% depending on the variant. If you’re after increased survivability, this is a great option.

Pearldrake Talismans

This series of talismans boosts your non-physical damage negation by 5-9% depending on the variant. This is also a great option if you prefer to sacrifice damage output for survivability.

Erdtree’s Favor

This series of talismans boosts your max HP (by 3-4%), stamina (by 6.75-9.6%), and equip load (by 5-8%), offering a nice improvement to survivability.

Flask of Wondrous Physick Mixtures

There are several approaches to concocting a mixture for yourFlask of Wondrous Physickdepending on your priorities. Beyond picking something that’s effectively useless, there isn’t really a bad combination of Crystal Tears, so I recommend that you pick 2 that cater best to your preferences.

Recommended Concoction

I use the Flame-Shrouding Cracked Tear in conjunction with the Opaline Bubbletear because I favor long-lasting buffs that improve both offense and defense.

Yes, the Opaline Bubbletear only lasts one hit, but it does last until you get hit. This combo also allows you to “pre-game” your Physick before even entering boss rooms so I don’t you don’t need to waste a precious opening during the actual fight to drink it.

Flame-Shrouding Cracked Tear

The Flame-Shrouding Cracked Tear boosts your Fire damage by 20% for 3 minutes. This effect is quite potent and lasts for the majority or entirety of boss fights. Outside of bosses, it usually lasts long enough to clear out a difficult area and definitely long enough to take down tough enemies.

Dropped by the Putrid Avatar at the base of the Minor Erdtree in northwest Caelid near the Rotview Balcony and Smouldering Church.

Opaline Bubbletear

The Opaline Bubbletear reduces the damage you take from your next attack by 90%. It isn’t always useful, but it usually ends up mitigating more damage than you’d heal from a single sip of your Crimson Flask, especially during a boss fight. Out of all the defensive Crystal Tears, I think this one offers the best balance between overall defensive effectiveness, reliability, and consistency.

The Opaline Bubbletear is dropped by defeating the Erdtree Avatar at the Minor Erdtree at the center of the Weeping Peninsula in southern Limgrave.

Opaline Hardtear

The Opaline Hardtear reduces the non-physical damage you take (just like the Pearldrake Talismans). It’s an excellent alternative to the Opaline Bubbletear in boss fights that deal a lot of non-physical damage. I found this Crystal Tear made a massive difference against the final boss.

Faith-knot Crystal Tear

The Faith-knot Crystal Tear increases your Faith by 10 for 3 minutes. It is mainly only useful before you hit the 80 Faith hard cap but becomes less and less useful as you get closer to 80 as individual points of Faith become less impactful. That said, before going past 70 Faith, this is a great alternative to the Opaline Hardtear.

Crimsonburst Crystal Tear and Crimsonwhorl Bubbletear

Both of these Crystal Tears provide healing over time that can mostly mitigate the damage you take from Fire’s Deadly Sin. I personally prefer Crimsonburst since it lasts longer, but Crimsonwhorl works too.

Cerulean Crystal Tears

The Cerulean Crystal Tears each restore half of your maximum FP, and together will completely refill your mana. These tears are likely to be more valuable to you as a Pyromancer since your build is so dependent on casting.

Check out my guide on theFlask of Wondrous Physick and Crystal Tear Locationsif you want to learn more!

Armor

Which armor set you wear will be defined by how much Endurance you have and which weapon you choose since their weights vary significantly, so I’ll only be going over a couple of armor sets that are usable and match the Pyromancer aesthetic.

Fire Monk or Blackflame Monk

The Fire Monk and Blackflame Monk sets weigh the same and only differ in terms of stat distribution (slightly) and color scheme. They are wearable when you have 15-20 Endurance depending on the weapon you use.

These pieces of armor just have a chance to drop from Fire Monks and Blackflame Monks respectively.

You’ll find Fire Monks near a lot of the places where you obtain other essential pieces of the Pyromancy build, but Blackflame Monks are much rarer.

The best place I’ve found to farm Blackflame Monks for their armor is at the bottom of the Divine Tower of Caelid. There’s a Lost Grace right next to the Blackflame Monk that guards the chamber with the Godskin Apostle boss arena.

Beast Champion (Altered)

The colors of the base armor match the colors of the Godskin weapons while being some of the heaviest armor available that is still wearable with 30 Endurance. I recommend the Altered version of the chest because the blue cape and ornamentation don’t really match as well and clip with the Godskin Peeler.

The Beast Champion’s Armor Set drops off of Recusant Bernahl at Crumbling Farum Azula.

If you want to check out all the armor sets in Elden Ring, visit myFull Elden Ring Armor Set Catalog and Locations Guide.

Stat Targets and Flask Allocation

Stats in From Software games, includingElden Ring, offer different amounts of stat per point depending on how many points you have previously invested in that stat. They also tend to have soft and hard cutoffs where once you pass a certain threshold, you will get significantly less benefit per each additional point added to that stat.

With soft caps, it can still be valuable to allocate points towards that stat, but it’s typically not as beneficial as increasing a stat that has not yet reached a cap, assuming you can benefit from said stat, of course. With hard caps, there is extremely little benefit in allocating additional stat. The only time you’d want to allocate more is if you’re hard-capped on everything else.

I will denote if you are at a soft or hard cap for the purposes of this build. These are not necessarily absolute soft and hard caps for the stats overall.

Level 190 Stat Targets

If you do everything, you’ll probably be around Level 190 by the time you beat the game. Here are the stats you should shoot for by the end of your first playthrough with this build:

• 60 Vigor (hard)
• 40+ Mind (soft)
• 30+ Endurance (soft)
• 17 Strength (soft)
• 22 Dexterity (soft)
• 80 Faith (hard)

The 17 Strength and 22 Dexterity are based on the requirements to wield the Godkin Peeler. If you prefer to use a different weapon, reallocate these stats so that you meet the minimum requirements to wield that weapon instead. For example, if you want to use the Magma Blade, you’d want to go for 9 Strength and 16 Dexterity.

For this build, I do not recommend using an armament that requires going beyond about 20 Strength or Dexterity; you want to stick with weapons that can be easily one-handed. If you opt for a shield instead of a melee weapon, I’d stay away from Greatshields since almost all of them require way too much Strength to wield.

After reaching level 190 or so, you can start putting points into Mind. Since a single Cerulean Flask replenishes less than the FP provided by 40 Mind, the only benefit you’re getting is having a larger reservoir for more flexibility when drinking.

Stamina per point of Endurance is less past 30, but not by too much. It can let you wield heavier weapons or wear heavier armor while being more flexible in combat.

Beginning Late Game, Pre-190

These are the stats you should be shooting for as you work towards the final build and gain access to the Mountaintops of the Giants. They assume you are at a lower level when going into NG+ or otherwise switching to this build where you can’t afford to reach all of the desired soft caps.

• 40 Vigor
• 40 Mind
• 20 Endurance
• 17 Strength
• 22 Dexterity
• 60 Faith

You may want a bit more Endurance. 15 is barely enough for the Carian Knight set, Moonveil, and Staff. It doesn’t give you enough stamina for encounters with a lot of enemies either. I highly recommend shooting for 30 Endurance before going to 60 Mind.

NG+ Stat Targets

These are the hard caps you should be shooting for as you level up in NG+. Increasing your Faith will give you access to additional sorceries.

• 60 Vigor
• 60 Mind
• 50 Endurance
• 17+ Strength
• 22+ Dexterity
• 80 Intelligence
• 17+ Arcane

With 17 Arcane, you’ll be able to cast all of the Dragon Communion and Blood Oath incantations as well as boost your Item Discovery rate.

At 60 Mind you end up with a nice, round 350 FP. That said, the benefits of that extra FP are pretty limited. You’re able to spam the unlimited duration spells like Comet Azur for longer, but in almost all cases, your opponent will have already been defeated or the channel will have been interrupted. 300 FP at 50 Mind already gives you enough room to fully benefit from a sip from your fully upgraded Cerulean Flask even if you still have a bit of FP left.

The biggest advantage of reaching 60 Mind comes from the Cerulean Amber Medallions and Radhan’s Great Rune, both of which increase your FP by a percentage rather than a flat amount, meaning you’ll get more FP from those boosts because your base FP is higher.

Going beyond 30 Endurance will give you some more stamina and equip load, allowing you to spam even spells to your heart’s content and wear the heaviest armor sets in the game.

Exceeding the Strength and especially Dexterity requirements will boost the damage dealt by your melee weapon. Increasing Dexterity will also reduce the cast time for all of your Incantations.

Once you hit all the hard caps listed here, you can start increasing Faith, Vigor, and Mind, but it will take about 4-5 points to match the benefit you got out of 1 point worth of stat prior to hitting the hard cap.

Crimson and Cerulean Flask Allocation

Since enemies won’t be able to hit you most of the time because you’re too far away, you won’t need nearly as many Crimson Flasks to survive until the next Lost Grace. At the same time, you will need a lot of Cerulean Flasks to have enough FP to enable you to cast the entire time. I recommend starting with a 50:50 split and making tweaks as needed.

With Pyromancy, you’ll probably end up leaning more heavily toward Crimson Flasks and you’ll probably want to lean this way whenever you have an uneven amount. If you’re struggling to find Golden Seeds and Sacred Tears, check out my guide onAll Golden Seed and Sacred Tear Locations.

Inboss fights, you can typically get away with fewer Cerulean Flasks while you can benefit from more Crimson ones as you’ll take more hits than you normally would when you fight normal enemies, so you will want something more like 9 Crimson and 5 Cerulean Flasks.