The Erdtree Greatshield stands alongside weapons like Moonveil and the Sword of Night and Flame in the “absolutely absurd” category of Elden Ring gear. “But it’s a shield,” you might be saying. Well, yes and no. While it is a fairly effective item for defense (with a 100 percent physical damage block), the Erdtree Greatshield is most notable for its absolutely silly damage potential. This helps make it a monster in PVP and even quite effective in PVE — allowing you to fire homing lasers like a holy machinegun. Though any Erdtree Greatshield build requires a bit of setup. So let’s take a look at some Erdtree Greatshield build ideas for Elden Ring!
UPDATE: Apologies for those of you coming to this guide late! Elden Ring just received a surprise Patch 1.03, which eliminates the interaction between Erdtree Greatshield and Fire’s Deadly Sin. This build is sadly nullified now. Though the shield itself is still pretty solid for its original purpose of parrying spells!
Note: You can only acquire the Erdtree Greatshield in a midgame region of Elden Ring. While it’s technically possible to reach the shield very early on, you need to beat a reasonably difficult boss to acquire it. That means this guide will include some very minor spoilers (i.e. the names of bosses and locations). There’s your fair warning!
You can acquire the Erdtree Greatshield almost as soon as you reach the Altus Plateau. It’s dropped by a pair of Tree Sentinel field bosses guarding the west gate of Leyndell. This battle is quite difficult on your own, but it’s possible to sneak up on the sentinels by jumping over the wall to their south. In my testing, the southern sentinel stays behind while the northernmost boss walks forward on a patrol pattern after a short delay. This frees you to deal with one Tree Sentinel at a time. In which case the fight is much easier (and pretty similar to the Tree Sentinel near the Church of Elleh in Limgrave). Get in close, take a few swings, and get back out of the way.
Once you get it, the Erdtree Greatshield is a mostly Strength-focused weapon that also scales a bit with Faith. Though it’s the weapon skill, Golden Retaliation, that matters to us. This is an anti-magic equivalent of the Parry skill found on smaller shields. It costs a paltry four FP to activate and bounces enemy projectiles back at them in the form of a golden laser. If you time it right, of course. And that’s not all!
Where to Find Fire’s Deadly Sin in Elden Ring
Whether by bug or by design, Elden Ring counts almost any incoming, nonphysical damage as an attack for the purposes of Golden Retaliation. This includes self-inflicted elemental damage and even Poison or Scarlet Rot. Long story short: whenever you’re taking damage over time, you can spam the weapon skill button (LT/L2) to rapidly fire devastating holy beams. This is monstrous in PVP and quite effective in PVE as well. The beams have solid tracking and stagger. Human-sized enemies fall into critical hit range quite quickly under sustained fire. All you need is to poison yourself (such as with a Raw Meat Dumpling dropped from warrior jars) or, for less item farming, light yourself on fire.
That second option comes from a particularly notorious Incantation: Fire’s Deadly Sin. You can acquire this in Dominula, the windmill village, by flipping a U-turn to the southeast overlook before the boss arena (shown in the map above). There’s a hidden ghost on the southeast overlook — tied to a treasure map painting found in Leyndell. Just approach the cliffside noted in the map above. A chair-bound ghost should appear and promptly disappear, leaving you with the Incantation. You can acquire the relevant painting inside the Fortified Manor (shown in the images below).
This spell isn’t too terrible on its own. It lights your character on fire, dealing damage over time to you and every enemy standing near you. It can be charged to deal more damage, but that’s not it’s true value. You want to take damage. This will tell the Erdtree Greatshield that you’re under magical threat and allow you to “parry” it back at any foe you target. It’s perfectly viable to hold nothing but a seal in one hand and the shield in the other. Then just light yourself up and spam away on the weapon skill button.
The damage, rate of fire, and stagger are all pretty excellent on their own. To take full advantage of the shield, though, it’s good to have a small weapon equipped in your spellcasting hand. I prefer the Black Knife for this. It scales well with Faith and deals bonus damage on critical hits. The Erdtree Greatshield can easily stun lock enemies at a distance — eventually leading them to stagger and open up for a crit. That’s when you get in close and stab. The Black Knife also has an excellent ranged attack in its own right: Blade of Death. One useful combo is to burn yourself with Fire’s Deadly Sin, two-hand the Black Knife to fire its weapon skill, and then fire on your target with Golden Retaliation. Your opponent will take damage over time and have their maximum HP reduced while you plink away.
Morgott’s Cursed Sword is another good option. It’s one of the heavier weapons in Elden Ring that still gets a critical hit bonus. It scales with Arcane, rather than Faith, but deals higher and higher levels of Blood Loss along with that stat. It also provides a good area-of-effect skill to balance out the very narrow beam of your shield.
Its single-target focus is one weakness of the Erdtree Greatshield. Another is that it steadily chews up stamina, FP, and HP (with Fire’s Deadly Sin and/or poison). It’s easy to lose track of your own diminishing health as it literally burns away. Not to mention, if an enemy isn’t stunned by your shield, they won’t give you time to stand still and fire. This wastes precious seconds of buff time and health — as opposed to other ranged attacks that only require FP.
The Blessed Dew talisman can help mitigate the burn. Its thin trickle of HP regeneration isn’t super useful during boss fights but makes the cost of moment-to-moment battles easier while you explore. Mixing the Crimsonburst Crystal Tear into your Flask of Wondrous Physick (drink it just before a boss fight and Fire’s Deadly Sin) almost makes a big difference. Just don’t forget that you’re still using a shield. Taking too many hits and running out of stamina will stun you while blocking.
You can finally add the Mushroom Crown and/or Kindred of Rot’s Exultation. The former is a helmet found in the Lake of Rot. It boosts all damage you deal by 10 percent whenever someone gets poisoned nearby. That includes you. Kindred of Rot’s Exultation is a talisman that does something similar — except that it temporarily boosts damage by 20 percent. Raw Meat Dumplings are by far the easiest way to achieve this, but they’re random drops and cannot be crafted. As such, I don’t recommend relying on them. Fetid Pots, on the other hand, can be easily crafted. They poison your character and enemies you throw them at. The problem is that the effect takes several throws to trigger and doesn’t last very long. Fire’s Deadly Sin so far seems like the most reliable way to use the shield offensively, whenever you’re not in a poison swamp.
With a bit more effort, of course, you could combine the crown and talisman with anything that inflicts Scarlet Rot. This super-poison does immense damage on its own and can be applied via Incantations: Rotten Breath and Ezykes’s Decay. While it wouldn’t directly trigger Golden Retaliation, the buff and venomous damage might be worth it on their own. The Arcane requirements for Dragon Communion spells also blends well with Morgott’s Cursed Sword.
Here’s what the build might look like in overview form:
- Left Hand: Erdtree Greatshield
- Right Hand: Sacred Seal of your choice (I suggest Clawmark Seal, since it scales with Strength and Faith just like Erdtree Greatshield, and upgrades using basic Smithing Stones)
- Right Hand Alternate: Black Knife / Morgott’s Cursed Sword / Misericorde / any weapon with a critical hit bonus
- Helmet: Mushroom Crown (when using Poison and/or Scarlet Rot)
- Talismans: Any choice, but suggestions include Blessed Dew Talisman, Starscourge Heirloom, Two Fingers Heirloom, Green Turtle Talisman, Greatshield Talisman, Radagon Icon, Radagon’s Soreseal
- Spell: Fire’s Deadly Sin (and perhaps Ezykes’s Decay)
- Wondrous Physick: Crimsonburst Crystal Tear + another ingredient of your choice
And those are the basics! Some things can obviously be adjusted according to your preferences. Talismans in particular are easy to adjust according to playstyle. Though Radagon’s Soreseal is inarguable fantastic at the moment.
Enjoy this build while it lasts, too. Many players Fire’s Deadly Sin has a number of strange interactions with particular weapons at the moment. Most notably, it can be used to inflict Instant Death with the Eclipse Shotel — without every directly attacking a foe. This leads many players to believe the spell is either the victim of another bug, and will be fixed, or will otherwise be nerfed in an upcoming patch. Though FromSoft doesn’t often publicy announce update plans until they’re very close to ready.
