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A scholar who reads fate in the stars. Heir to the school of glintstone sorcery. - In-game description
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Astrologer is one of the starting origins in Elden Ring.
Consider this origin very carefully. While melee and bow fighters are spoiled for choice of weapons and equipment very early on from both loot and stores, you will not get access to effective equipment for spellcasting until you are past at least two major bosses of Margit, the Fell Omen and Godrick the Grafted, where you will be finally able to buy the equipment listed below that the Astrologer starts with. The Sorceress Sellen who will be your main spell teacher is also locked behind a boss fight. Even if you heavily prefer melee or bow combat, it might be worthwhile taking the Astrologer anyways just for the early tactical option of the spells.
When choosing to be an Astrologer i.e. spellcaster, you're going to have to force your "hand preference" and controls based on your intended combat style due to two key spells that hard-force whether your Staff can be in your Right or Left hand, with such spells being blocked from firing in the opposite orientation. Note that the handedness has no effect on the raw strength of spells, nor does 2-handing a staff.
- Scholar's Armament forces you to have the staff in the Left hand in order to be able to enchant a weapon on the Right.
- Scholar's Shield forces you to have the staff in the Right hand in order to be able to enchant a shield on the Left.
Given that you can't have the same staff equipped twice in two different weapon slots and that it is not economical to keep Strengthening two separate staffs as you level up, it is suggested to stick with just one of the above. If you truly detest melee combat except as a last resort and want to stick with spells as much as possible, go with a Right-handed staff to be able to use the shield buff for more defense (which is the Astrologer's default setup when you first start the game). Otherwise, switch the staff to the Left hand and get used to the different activation keys so that you can use the surprisingly powerful weapon buff.
Starting equipment[]
Armaments
Spells
- Glintstone Pebble (Sorcery)
- Glintstone Arc (Sorcery)
Gear
Misc.
- Any Keepsakes the player chooses
- Memory of Grace
Build Optimization[]
For people who wish to select an origin that will have the most optimal stat distribution for a build with the fewest stat points wasted, the Astrologer is the best choice for essentially any build which focuses mainly on Intelligence, and more specifically the Sorceries. Note that these builds are not necessarily "good", they are just what this origin is better at than any other.
Intelligence-Strength-Dex[]
The main goal of this build is to give the Astrologer access to the very powerful spells while simultaneously giving some tactical flexibility in melee and the ability to lure/damage enemies at a range beyond what their spells can reach via a Longbow. If you get your Strength to 20 and Dexterity to 14, you can fully use the Longbow and the Pike, as well as several of the shields that have a 100% Physical damage reduction through guarding like the Heater Shield. However, as an alternate option you can stick with the Pike and Staff build for liberal use of Scholar's Armament, and then you can easily have both spells and melee attacks happening interchangeably along with relying on dodge rolls for defense. In this instance, just remove the shield to reduce your Equip Load; remember that a Shield only helps you, in any way, if you Guard with it. They do not give any bonus passive defenses just from wearing them like Armor does, so you may be better off saving the weight of the Shield and wearing a stronger Armor instead.
You won't really need to push either stat much further than this for a LONG time. Then you can pile on Intelligence, as well as the occasional Vigor, Mind and Endurance for improved HP, FP and Stamina capacity; keep Vigor and Mind up enough so that your HP and FP max capacities are just slightly above what a Flask charge can restore, growing as you upgrade the Flask strength.
Make liberal use of the auto-targeting feature and your range. While not having a particularly fast damage output, Glintstone Pebble is extremely FP-efficient against single targets. Glintstone Arc has identical damage per shot as Pebble but with a higher FP cost and slightly less range, however it can hit small groups of enemies simultaneously which is where it truly shines. Combine these with a careful evasive ranged combat style and a decent Summon, and you can do VERY well for quite some time before you even find another reasonable spell.
Once you've gotten comfortable with the attack patterns of certain enemies you can easily switch to melee with the ultra-long Pike (using the Spear beforehand which is acquired earlier), allowing for efficient kills without burning through too much FP.
One additional benefit of this playstyle is that the equipped weaponry and staves of Magic Users tends to be fairly light, since they can use spell selection to give them a spread of short range and long range combat options. This in turn allows magic users to wear heavier, more protective armor than melee fighters normally would at the same load limit and still maintain good mobility.
Gallery[]
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