Lords of the Fallen: Best builds for all playstyles

Sam Smith
Lords of the fallen logo

Lords of the Fallen is a Soulslike that pays tribute to some of the best parts of the Dark Souls series. Like any game in this genre, there are some powerful builds for every playstyle. Here are some of the best builds in Lords of the Fallen.

If you’ve ever played a Soulslike game before, you’ll know that there are some classic build types often crafted around the traditional RPG archetypes of Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, and everything in between. These often translate into Strength, Dexterity, and Magic builds, or some combination of two. Lords of the Fallen is the same in this regard, with many of its top builds resembling playstyles we’ve seen in other Soulslike games like Dark Souls, Lies of P, or the original LotF from 2014.

Below, we’ll cover the best builds we’ve seen so far in the game, but will focus each one around Strength, Dexterity, and Magic to ensure we’ve covered the three main styles of play in Lords of the Fallen. These are known as Strength, Agility, and Radiance/Inferno in this game, like Elden Ring and other Souls games, Lords of the Fallen features two distinct forms of spell casting.

Be aware that some of these builds will crisscross with other styles – as the best builds in games like this often make use of multiple skills and functions rather than just one.

Contents

A promotional image from The Lords of the Fallen featuring combat.
Lords of the Fallen builds can be tailored by each player.

Best builds in Lords of the Fallen

For these builds, we’re mostly going to focus on the gear you’ll need to equip and stats you’ll want to prioritize. We’re not going to advise how many points you should pump into each stat, as this creates some flexibility around each build for you to put your own stamp on it – also, who knows how high you’ll want to level up!

Best Strength build

The best Strength build in Lords of the Fallen is undoubtedly the Dark Crusader build, this is already pretty overpowered at the start of the game and comes somewhat pre-built for those who purchased the Deluxe Edition. But even if you bought the standard version, you can craft this build and catch up pretty easily by creating a Hallowed Knight character at the start of the game.

From here, continue to upgrade your Strength, Endurance, and Vitality to ensure you’ll remain powerful and protected in combat. This will also ensure you can wield heavy armor and weapons without them slowing you down. We also recommend that you completely ignore the Agility stat as you simply won’t need the weapons it’s needed for. Instead, focus on two-handed weapons, or a powerful weapon in one arm and a shield in the other.

However, don’t make the mistake many first-time Strength build users make and completely ignore magic. It always pays to have a secondary offensive style and a few spells to access when you need them will be a big help. Of course, you’ll primarily be a tank, but our advice is to pick either the Radiance or Inferno stat (only pick one!) and level it sufficiently so that you can sling at least some basic spells at enemies. As we’ll be using an overpowered two-handed fire sword later, we’d suggest leveling Inferno for this build.

Not only will this help you in boss fights when exploiting some enemy weaknesses, but it’ll also give you some ranged attacks to use should you need them. Essentially, you should always have a use for your mana, even when using a melee-focused build. In terms of gear to equip, we recommend the following armor, weapons, and jewelry:

  • Weapon: Sword of Skin and Tooth
  • Shield: None (Two-hand weapon)
  • Armor: Paladin’s Armor Set (Upgrade to your choice in endgame, based on weight & defense needs)
  • Pendant: Warrior’s Claw
  • Rings: Adyrqamar (Extra damage with two-handed weapons), Mineowner’s Ring (Increases stamina and stamina regen)
A promotional image from The Lords of the Fallen featuring the protagonist with a bow and arrow in combat.
Lords of the Fallen also features some powerful Rogue/Dexterity-based builds.

Best Agility build

Agility builds are essentially Lords of the Fallen’s version of Dexterity builds, these are characters who rely on speed, skill, and finesse with smaller weapons to do their damage. It also allows them to wield bows, perform combos, and inflict more status effects on their enemies such as Bleed and Poison.

There are a range of starting classes in that game that are ideal for different Agility builds, but for the one that we think is best, we’re going to recommend the Blackfeather Ranger class. This starting character has good all-around stats but is clearly geared towards Agility. It’ll also give you a nice range of options when it comes to choosing weapons.

For this build, pump your stats into Agility and Vitality, while ignoring Strength. Level Endurance as and when you need it to ensure you can continue to move quickly, but the purpose of this build isn’t to wield heavy weapons or armor, so we won’t need much Endurance.

Like with our Strength build, it’s advisable to level up either your Radiance or Inferno, only choose one, and just get it to the point where you can competently fire off some spells should you need to. However, as this build is more proficient at using bows, you may not need as many points in these magic stats as the above build does.

As for what gear to equip, we’d recommend seeking out the following:

  • Weapon: Assassin’s Bow/ Both Bringer of Stillness shortswords
  • Armor: Blackfeather armor set (Upgrade to another if you need more protection later and can spare the weight)
  • Pendant: Pendant of Induration (Increases defense)
  • Rings: Grayson’s Ring (More damage when dual-wielding weapons), Mineowner’s Ring (Boosts stamina & stamina regen)
A screenshot of the game Lords of the Fallen
Lords of the Fallen features two types of magic, Radiance and Inferno.

Best Wizard build

Lords of the Fallen has two schools of magic, Radiance, and Inferno, but for our best Wizard build, we’re going to go with Inferno and create a kick-ass Pyromancer build known as a Pyric Cultist. So, pick that class to begin with.

This build is all about the Inferno stat as we’ll be blasting enemies with burn damage from a distance. However, it also pays to upgrade Vitality and Endurance to make sure we’re not too much of a glass cannon. As we’re servants to the flame, completely ignore the Radiance stat.

If you want to engage in some melee and be a battlemage of sorts, then it may make sense to level either Strength or Agility, it depends on what kind of weapon you want to wield when you’re not pelting Rhogar with fire. This is up to you, but we went with Strength and ignored Agility, mostly because we enjoyed the Strength-based weapons with fire buffs more. In some ways, this build could be viewed as our first build but in reverse.

Here’s what infernal gear you should find and equip:

  • Weapon: Pyric Cultist’s Staff (With Judge Cleric’s Corrupted Sword for melee if you choose to be a Battlemage)
  • Armor: Pyric Cultist Robes (Later Damarose’s Set)
  • Pendant: Pendant of Infernal Oblation (Burned enemies receive more damage from you)
  • Rings: Adyr’s Mark Ring (Increases Inferno stat), Ring of Infernal Devotion (Causes burn buildup and ignite buildup)

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