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This is a player-created Build for Dark Souls. If you want help making your own build, you can consult this useful page on how to make a build by Blaine.
- Build Name: Nazgul
- Build Level: 120
- Build Focus: PvP
- Build Main Stats: Intelligence
- Link to Dark Souls Calculator: Add link here.
Armaments:
Greatsword of Artorias +5
Scales excellently with this build and since 24 str is required for one-handing the Zweihander (which is always useful both in PvE and PvP) so you mind as well get it, right? Upgrade a broken sword to +10 and have the Giant Blacksmith in anor londo forge it with the soul of Sif. Be careful YOU DO NOT WANT THE CURSED VERSION!
Chaos Parrying Knife +5 (I like the fire damage, which is a big weakness for some enemies in PvE, plus I was hoping I would get a cool Chaos animation ever y time I parried… alas!)
Parrying is a VERY excellent way to end a fight, if you can time it right. Practice on the NPCs in the forest covenant, plus you may get some PvP practice from forest covenant members. As a rule of thumb, try not to parry anything being two-handed (i.e. Zweihander, Claymore, Bastard Sword, etc.). For a chaos knife you need to upgrade the parrying knife to +5 Normal, then +5 fire, then +5 chaos. The chaos ember is found in a lava pit pretty much as far away from the bonfire as you can get, after you beat Ceaseless Discharge go down to the lava lake, which has cooled, and kill all the Taurus demons. They are VERY hard hitting and will slam you back, even with your shield up, so stay away from lava. Eventually, you’ll see a body in the middle of the lava. Heal up, and run in to grab it. It’s worth losing some souls over, but the lava can kill you quickly. So without the Orange Charred Ring, you’ll want high vitality. Just FYI, the Taurus demons don’t respawn.
Lag is a problem with parrying, so if you're noticing a bit of it swap back to a regular shield. It's risky enough normally, practically impossible when the enemy's attacks and their attack animations are 3-5 seconds out of sync.
Gravelord sword +5
VERY slow and predictable, except for the two-handed R2 attack, which is quite fast and unpredictable compared to the swords primary combo’s. However, the poison effect is worth a second look, as few people care enough to carry the correct moss. Better for harrying the opponent than a fight ender.
Of course, as an intelligence-based build, you wouldn’t be complete without magic weapons.
I prefer the Enchanted Dark Sword +5 for its bad-assery, long reach, unique strong attack, and A scaling with intelligence. Because you only get ONE blue titanite slab per game, be very careful as to what you want to upgrade to +5.
Some other weapons worthy of note (all should be enchanted, to maximize the scaling with intelligence, and if they don’t take blue titanite, upgrade the***** out of them with twinkling titanite or demon titanite):
Zweihander: A classic, “I’m gonna cut you from neck to nutsack” Ultra-greatsword, this beastly blade boasts superior reach and damage, while sacrificing speed and, most likely defense or mobility, considering its weight. Fantastic for PvE (especially v.s. the Four Kings of the Abyss) but I don’t particularly like it for PvP because of its predictability and over-usage. It is obtained in the graveyard behind firelink shrine, before reaching the catacombs and guarded by several skeletons.
Barbed Sword: Obtained from Darkwraith Kirk, knight of Thorns, it has comparable base damage to that of the Enchanted Dark Sword, but just a little bit less. It also only scales to B with intelligence, BUT it does provide a bleeding effect of 300. Essentially, when you fill the bleed meter, it will take a whopping 30% of the enemy’s health. Unsure whether it is TOTAL health or current health, but I believe it to be 30% of the enemies max health. Now, the way bleeding effects work is that each swing adds 300 to the enemies bleed meter. Let’s pretend you’re fighting someone in heavy armor, so therefore they’ll have a higher bleed defense. Let’s say it’s 650 (not sure if this is feasible or not, but just pretend). With three consecutive swings, you’ll deal normal damage for the first and second, and at the third you’ll have inflicted 900 bleed damage, resulting in a blood loss affect, and 30% of the HP being taken away. Pretty nifty huh? Definitely a fantastic replacement for the Dark Sword. Darkwraith Kirk will drop this sword at one of his three locations, I got it at Lost Izalith before the fight with bed of chaos. If you want this sword, be in human form and reach the fog gate, but BEFORE beating bed of chaos. He should invade you at the top of the stairs. Other locations include The Depths and the Demon Ruins.
Claymore: Another classic, it has a versatile move set, doesn’t weigh too much, and is surprisingly fast for such a large sword. You get it on the hellkite wyvern bridge. If you want to kill the hellkite wyvern, I found the best way is to get about 100 arrows, shoot off the tail (just to have the drake sword, which is a god send at early levels) and then rest at the bonfire. Now however many arrows you have left should be used like this: stand at the top of the stairs leading to the bridge, to where you can see the hellkite, but it hasn’t registered you yet. Shoot it in the head and it should fly up and land on the bridge. When it lands, you should be able to 2hand the drake sword, or whatever your best weapon is, and smack it in the face once before retreating down the stairs. Rinse and Repeat. Now when it’s dead you have the drake sword, 10,000 souls, and the claymore! Not too shabby in my opinion.
Bastard Sword: Same as the claymore, except you lose the thrusting strong attack of the claymore for the generic horizontal cut of most swords. Same damage and moveset otherwise. Buy it from the Zeus look-a-like blacksmith in the Old Undead Church at the Intersection of the Undead Parish, Sen’s Fortress, and Darkroot garden. Beware the titanite demon leading to darkroot garden. But it’s pretty easy to beat if you keep your shield up and be sure to dodge. You’ll really want its precious demon titanite soon enough.
Great Scythe: You look like a bad ass grim reaper. What more do you want? The two-handed strong attack is as fantastic for cutting off torsos as it is for cutting wheat. Get it from the Catacombs. Go to the second bonfire, which is in a little cave up some stairs, past a booby trapped statue and an illusory wall. Now past the statues, there is a bridge. With back to bonfire, walk towards the bridge and keep an eye on the right. You should see an entrance you could jump to. When you make it, you should be able to find the Great Scythe easy-peasy.
Not enough for you? Well if you don’t want to devote the necessary time and humanity for the dark sword, both the Sunlight Straight Sword (the sword dropped by the fat ass sunlight knight you meet after the Taurus Demon) and the Balder Side Sword (dropped by the Balder Knights in the Undead Parish) achieve an A ranking with intelligence at enchanted +5!
Magic/ Long-range Weaponry
Pyromancy Flame +15 à Pyromancy Flame +5
You get it as the starting equipment of the pyromancer, or from Laurentius of the Great Swamp after rescuing him from the depths under the lower undead burg, after the Capra Demon. He returns to firelink shrine and will sell you a bit of pyromancy and upgrade your pyromancy flame. He gets it to +15, then you need to go to Quelana of Izalith. You can find her like so: Starting from the lowest bonfire at swamp-level in blight town, look out at the swamp with the bonfire to your back. Go right. Look for the island with a pillar on it a little into the swamp, but not far from the canyon walls. She should be on there. I think you have to kill quelaag and she should show up. She sells a lot of fantastic pyromancy and will upgrade your flame to +5. After beating the bed of chaos, you should have also killed a Quelana look-a-like; one of her sisters. She should thank you and give you a new spell (Fire Tempest, great for room clearing) after doing this and going back to her, so don’t forget!
As for pyromancy spells, you want them ALL!!!! So buy them ALL from Laurentius, buy them ALL from Quelana, and, finally, buy them ALL from Eingyi, the egg-burdened by the Daughter of Chaos, underneath the area you fought Quelaag. You get pyromancy spells from him by becoming egg-burdened yourself. You get egg-burdened by kicking (NOT KILLING!!) an egg-burdened other than Eingyi, and waiting for a grabbing animation to start. The egg-burdened should grab your feet, and then the top of his egg sac will open and a maggot will bite your head. Let this happen at least 5 times, then kill the wretch, or run away, or whatever you want. Now you play the waiting game. Go eat some food, or go outside for a bit, or procrasturbate, whatever you normally do to pass the time. After about 10 minutes, your character should have a sudden head ache (it reminds me of putting on a mask in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask lol) and grab his head, then, voila! You have you very own disgusting egg sac.. all over your face. Gross. Go to talk Eingyi, and he’ll comment on it, give you an egg vermifuge to remove it, and sell you Toxic and Poison Mist. Excellent for harassment in PvP! Now, there are some benefits to this disgusting parasite, but I don’t know what they are, and I DO know it weakens you to fire, so I would get rid of it ASAP in my opinion.
Logan’s Catalyst: Get it in the Duke’s Archives in a chest, in the room where normal Logan was after you beat Seath the Scaleless. After killing hollowed Logan, along with his robes… minus his hat of course (you’ll see after you fight him as a hollow lmao). Has a great Magical Adjustment (increases spell damage) at high INT levels, but if you're not planning on boosting INT to 50 or so it's probably not too much better than the regular catalyst.
Tin Crystallization Catalyst: Get it as a drop from hollow Logan in the room where you first fought Seath the Scaleless in the Duke’s Archives. Logan goes hollow after you beat Seath, and you’ve bought all the spells he has to offer. Has a VERY high Magical Adjustment, but it halves the uses of your spells. Right now, I think it’s worth it, since this build doesn’t rely solely on magical attacks. And don’t be dumb like me and think that you can use 2 crystallized soul spears with a normal catalyst, then switch to this catalyst for the last two, because it doesn’t work like that =( more like it uses twice as many charges per use. If you're using Magic Weapon or a similar buff when invading, this is the catalyst to use, especially comboed with the Bellowing or Lingering Dragoncrest rings.
Sorcerer’s Catalyst: Standard fare for a sorcerer, buy it from the noob mage you save in the lower undead burg before the capra demon, or get it in the same room you save him from. You need to buy the residence key (master key doesn’t work, sadly) from the crazy male hollow that sounds like Cleveland from family guy in the upper undead burg. He’s in the room right before the dead end with the riot mob of hollows with torchers. Be wary, these asshole pyromaniacs are actually pretty dangerous at an early level. Beatrice's Catalyst is the same, but with more style, and the Izalith Catalyst has the same Mag. Adjust but more durability.
Velka’s Talisman: Can only be purchased from the pardoner Velka in the Bell Gargoyles Tower, it scales with intelligence so perfect for this build. Costs 5000 souls. Don't forget, you need to level your Faith to attune miracles anyway, no matter how the talisman scales.
Dragonslayer Greatbow: In Demon’s Souls, archery was not bad ass. Well that has changed with this bow. It takes 20 strength and 20 dexterity to wield, so it fits in nicely with this build. Also, it does***** TONS of damage for a bow, so it’s definitely the way to go. Downside, it takes giant spears called dragon slayer “arrows” (psh yeah right, they probably weigh more than a dragon… arrows my ass) which cost 500 souls a pop from the giant blacksmith in Anor Londo. So with money to blow, this is definitely the way to go. Headshots with a mother *****ing spear thrower? I think it’s worth it! CAUTION: Use this for PvE, NOT PVP!! You usually won’t be able to do a whole lot except piss them off, unless they’re already in a fight with an NPC enemy.
Lightning Black Bow of Pharis +5: I guess you could enchant this bow, but I like the lightning’s usefulness among the NPC enemies, which is where you’re using this. You get this bow as a drop (not sure if its 100% guaranteed, so you might want to wear the covetous golden serpent ring found in Sen’s Fortress) from Pharis in the Garden of Artorias, after using the crest of Artorias. Don’t forget, there’s a hidden bonfire to the left of the door, smack it with a weapon and the wall will disappear. Also exchangeable with a lightning longbow or compound bow, if you so prefer.
Shields:
Dark Hand (not upgradeable)
Even though the stability sucks, you shouldn’t be turtling in this build. You want to harry your opponent. The best defense is sometimes the best offense, etc. etc. Besides, its lightweight, blocks 80% of ALL incoming damage, and you look like one bad ass mother *****er with a gods damned black hole for a left hand! Also, the right hand strong attack is pretty bad ass too, and if you upgrade your standing with the Darkwraith covenant it can do a fair bit of damage, while also stealing humanity.
Plus, it weighs less than 1 unit, and basically negates damage attributes. A great counter to all the Lightning weapons in PvP, lightning doesn't penetrate this any more than physical/fire/magic.
Moonlight Butterfly Shield (don’t bother upgrading, unless you REALLY want to)
The main purpose of this shield is as a long-range attack. Instead of parrying, when pressing L2, you lift the shield above your head and slam it down toward the enemy. This releases a spinning circle of light that does a certain percentage of damage of your right hand weapon. DEFINITELY above 100% though. For you non-math majors, that means this attack is ALWAYS stronger than your right-hand weapon. So use it whenever you can, if you’re invading and they retreat to use an estus flask, this is more than likely your fight ender. However, the upgrade barely increases the damage so only do it if you have demon titanite to spare. Just be well aware that the animation takes a bit and you’re totally vulnerable during the casting time.
Silver Knight Shield +5: I prefer this over the black knight shield just because it blocks more magic damage, which is very common, at the cost of slightly less fire damage, equally common. However, if I had more twinkling titanite I would probably have gone for the Black Knight Shield for pure aesthetics. Your choice here. Another note, DON’T turtle behind your shield! Get used to dodging and parrying, which is the defense of choice in PvP. So turtling behind a shield and using a spear to “play it safe” is detrimental to your PvP mastery. You get this shield as a drop from the Silver Knights of Anor Londo. May be in a chest there as well, but I’m not 100% sure as to that, but I know they will drop it. Just have some humanity on or the gold serpent ring and you should have one by the time you reach Ornstein and Smough. Requires Twinkling Titanite to upgrade.
ARMOR:
I like to use The Dark Set with the Gold-Hemmed Black Skirt for maximum protection and bad assery. You get the Dark Armor after reaching rank 2 with the Darkwraith Covenant, by donating 30 humanity. It’s a bit time-consuming but worth it for me. The look is awesome, and its got great defense. Plus, you can upgrade it with twinkling titanite. It requires 9 pieces of titanite per piece of armor to get to +5 so save as much as you can for this armor, since it’ll save your life in PvP to have that extra edge over people who didn’t invest in their armor.
Rings:
I like to use the ring of favor for +20% hp and equipment burden, and change around my second slot as necessary. If I think I’m going to use a lot of magic, then I use the bellowing dragoncrest ring. If I’m feeling melee, then the dark wood grain ring or cloranthy ring or steel protection ring are all viable. Really, I’d just buy them all and change it up as necessary. If someone beats your ass unconditionally, try to figure it what exactly they were focusing on, and try to counter it, then challenge them to a rematch =) this build has great versatility, so you should try to buy every single ring you can!
Spells/Pyromancy/Miracles:
The best spells are crystal homing soul mass, crystal soul spear, homing soul mass, soul spear, and white dragon breath. I’m still testing out different magics and which ones I like best, but they’re all useful so buy all the ones you can and decide which ones you like best. Same with pyromancy, but I personally love any mist since it blocks visibility which can let you heal or cast another spell, or even use the moonlight shield. Lots of possibilities. As for miracles, I like homeward for farming, gravelord sword dance for*****s and giggles (at the moment it does absolute crap damage against most enemies, idk why) and heal for most other cases. I usually don’t take heal with me for PvP as I don’t like relying on it. Plus, the low attunement doesn’t leave a whole lot of room, and I like to fill them up with damage spells. Force is also fun though, as pushing someone off bridges or cliffs is always an insta-kill, no matter what they’re exploiting =)
Equipment:
I like to keep Estus Flasks for obvious reasons IN PvE NOT PVP! Duelists (those who bow before a fight) should never use Estus to keep it fair. I fill up the rest with the grass that increases stamina regeneration, toxic moss (just in case someone does use toxic mist, which is deadly), poison throwing knives, to stop healing or casting, blood loss moss (for bleeding effect-based builds), and the red eye orb for easy invasion.
Tips/Tricks/Progression :
Farming (P.S- I like to use the great scythe for farming… get it?!)
Green titanite is best farmed in the swamp level of blight town by killing leeches, they’ll drop 5 at a time pretty regularly with the covetous gold serpent ring. Used for upgrading weapons to magic +5. You can also buy them from the*****head knight merchant in sens fortress. At the top of the fortress theres a gap in the catwalk (narrow walkways connecting the upper towers). To the right you should see the giant loading that annoying boulder-tossing contraption, who should be executed promptly for being a massive annoyance. But anyway, if you jump the gap, you’ll see the merchant in the corner who will sell a variety of wonderful trinkets, including these shards.
o Go down the stairs, and you’ll see a snake-headed mage guarding body, kill it and pillage the corpse for a key to a cage in the main tower where the fire-bomb tossing giant was. There a cages in the lowest room, below the fog gate, that can now be opened and used as a shortcut to get up and down the tower quickly and easily.
Blue titanite chunks are best farmed from the crystal golems outside of the crystal caves at the Duke’s Archives. They drop one at a time, but they aren’t sold anywhere so this is your bets best. Get 10 humanity and the gold serpent ring and farm away.
The blue titanite slab is found in the Crystal Cave after the dukes archives. Once you get inside proceed past the first invisible walkway to the huge, solid crystal walkway. When you get to the fragmented, multi-crystal part, to the right is the boss. To the left is your destination, a far off glowing blue flame indicating a ripe corpse asking for pillaging. Honestly, I don’t know how I reached it but I did after several trial and errors. It’s up to you to find the right path. Just be sure to minimize your losses by spending as much of your souls as possible. Also note, that when you drop down onto this invisible walkway, if you turn behind you, there’s actually a hollow tunnel through the crystal you were just standing on. Inside there are two crystal lizards.
Speakingof those glowing little bastards, here are some tips on getting them:
o The great hollow has the largest amount of these little windfalls in one area. You can reach it by going to the swamp level of blight town, and getting to the giant tree. Go up the root guarded by three leeches and there should be a body holding the plank shield. It’s utterly useless but I guess you can feed it to frampt the primordial serpent if you want, so I guess you could take it if you’d like. Now, the interesting part is the wall to the left of the body. Smack it and there is a hidden passage with a chest in it. Because From is a devious mastermind, they assumed few would think to smack the wall behind the chest, and I bet a lot of people HAVEN’T! But if you do you’ll see it’s an illusion, again and if you follow the path you’ll reach the great hollow and the ONLY bonfire for this area. There is no boss, since its utterly optional, but I think the sheer detail that this area got is worth a look. Side note, this is probably the most epic game I’ve ever played… seriously! This is a very in-depth and rewarding “optional” area. So don’t miss out and try to reach all those pesky lizards!
o Unlike demon’s souls, when one of these bastards run away, there’s no reason to cry. They aren’t gone forever. The only way to lower a crystal lizards “count” (i.e. how many times it will respawn) is its death. SO, if one of these things die you better hope you die rather than not loot its body! Seriously, souls are technically infinite if you have the time for farming them. Same with humanity. But twinkling titanite is a finite supply per playthrough, and VERY in demand for this build. So collect them all!
o Finally, if one of them DO get away, you can easily bring them back to life. Set yourself up in the perfect position, which means you by any nearby ledges (so they don’t get all suicidal and jump off) and within reach for melee attacks and looting. Quit the game, which saves for you, and reload. All enemies you killed stay dead, but all crystal lizards will come up from their burrows.
Well, that’s my guide for Dark Souls. Even if you dislike my build, I think this is a great read for beginners, so recommend it! Just not the build because I like being unique =)
Best places for PvP, in my experience, are Anor Londo, the Kiln of the First Flame, and the Garden of Sir Artorias (where the forest covenant is).
Any suggestions you have to the build, or any extra tips, etc. etc. will be taken into consideration and added if necessary or extremely useful.
If you want to play sometime, or see how you match up against the original Dark Lord my PSN is Alakazam827
Just FYI, I suck right now, mostly because I refuse to use the ring of fog or lagstabs. So you better not either if you use my build!!
Build Strategy
Since nearly all medieval fantasy games have a large debt to Tolkien, I think it appropriate the terrible ring wraiths from his Trilogy deserves a place in the world of Lordran. Plus, the Gold-Hemmed black robes and strong attack for the dark hand were just ASKING for it! So here it is, my very own Nazgul Build. Based around powerful enchanted weapons and maxed out Intellgence. Even if you dislike this idea, at least give a look at the Armaments section, as I go into detail as to where to most of them. A great read for all, not just potential Nazgul.
The only variation I would particularly recommend would be to get intelligence up to 50 for the spell White Dragon’s Breath. However, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW EFFECTIVE/DAMAGING THIS SPELL IS! I’ve never used it so I can’t really recommend it but I hear good things. The main reason to increase faith is for the Greatsword of artorias, which scales well with both intelligence and faith (B –rating) but it requires fairly rounded base stats. If you don’t plan on using this sword, leave faith at the base and you can pump up intelligence or vitality. I leave attunement at 14 because I fight fine with just 3 spell slots. 20 Dexterity will let you use the Iaito and the Dragonslayer Great bow, excellent for PvP and PvE, respectively. 24 strength lets you one-hand the zweihander (always useful) but if you’d like to become less rounded you could lower all these to the bare minimum for your weapon of choice and pump up intelligence or vitality. ALWAYS leave endurance capped at 40 because that’s where the cap for stamina is.
Warning:
DON’T BOTHER UPGRADING ANY GOOD WEAPONS TO +5 LIGHTING! They are broken and will be nerfed. Enchanted weapons do get better numerical damage at high intelligence levels. NEVER EVER use Ring of Fog or Tranquil Walk of Peace. These exploits in PvP really do ruin things, so please fight fair!
