Elder Ring is full of great Talismans and the right combination of Talismans’ changes, depending on the enemy or boss you’re facing a lot of the time. But I want to explore the best Talismans of Elden Ring if I could only choose a spot. This is very hard to do simply because there are so many good choices. But I’ve narrowed it down, nonetheless. And I’m going to be talking about my top five Talismans in Elden Ring.

When selecting a Talisman for this list, I factored in things like how soon can you get it, how many different builds does it impact, how powerful of an effect does it have, and is it situational or does it have broader application.

Many talismans have very situational impact, like Ritual Sword Talisman, that is only good when you’re at full health. That said, one that I do want to mention, though it didn’t make my top five list, is the Bull-Goat’s Talisman.

Bull-Goat’s Talisman

The Bull-Goat’s Talisman changes the Poise Damage you take to 0.75 times, which essentially lowers the Poise Damage needed to tank one regular attack from an enemy or boss and not be interrupted to 38.

Though the game will display this as adding Poise to your character, this might not seem valuable, but it indeed is. There is a case to be made that the Bull-Goat’s Talisman is arguably the best Talisman in Elder Ring for one reason and one reason only.

That’s because it allows you to choose fashion over equipment. When choosing armor, you can equip 28 more armor sets and still meet the 51 Poise break point when wearing this Talisman and many more combinations if you break sets up into various pieces, which many people likely will do.

Why is this important? Many people love transmog systems in their RPGs and this Talisman is effectively the closest thing to that. How important is 51 Poise? It can make or break any builds, particularly hyper aggressive builds and many early game builds or early builds made for Elden Ring were made without the knowledge of this breakpoint. That would be so much better now if this was factored in.

What’s also great about this Talisman is that you can get it rather early if you ride over to Caelid, so you can use the armor you want from near the beginning of the game. This plays a role in the decision to make it my honorable mention, but fashion trumps all, so it likely would have been there, anyway.

5. Lord of Blood’s Exultation

Lord of Blood’s Exultation provides you with 20% attack power (12% in PVP) for 20 seconds when either you or a nearby enemy suffers from Blood Loss refreshing if this happens again before the bonus expires.

This is a really strong bonus as this increase in attack power affects every type of attack you do, all of your weapons, skills as well as any offensive spell you cast. The White Mask also has a similar effect to a lesser degree 10% in PVE and 6% in PVP, allowing you to use both items spearheading this concept.

In order for this Talisman to be effective, you have to trigger Blood Loss, which means you have to play a somewhat bleed-focused build to really take advantage of this effect because of its short duration. By the way, no build really would be complete without the backing of a ton of Elden Ring Runes.

Though Bleed is one of the most popular, if not the most popular style of playing Elden Ring, not every enemy can be affected by it. And usually, enemies on the landscape die before triggering this bonus a lot of the time. Otherwise, it would be much higher on the list.

Also Read: Free Elden Ring Runes & Items Giveaway(Updated in May 2023)

4. Rotten Winged Sword Insignia & Winged Sword Insignia

Rotten Winged Sword Insignia provides you with increased attack power as you continuously strike enemies over and over. For each tier, attack power increases by 6%, 8% and then 13%, slowly dropping interior each 1.5 seconds. It takes roughly three hits to trigger the first tier, with subsequent tiers taking only one more hit to go up each tier.

Again, what makes this deadly is that attack power increases the damage of everything you do, such as attacks, weapon, skills, spells, etc. So, getting a boost to attack power is one of the best things you can accomplish. This allows you to deal more and more damage no matter what your build as long as you keep attacking.

This Talisman works effectively with just about every weapon type in the game, particularly if you do a wield. Though it triggers much more quickly on faster weapons, if you plan to use faster weapons, then this Talisman is almost a no-brainer and it’s better than Millicent’s Prosthesis, because it gives more damage per tier.

On top of that, you can also use the Winged Sword Insignia, which you can receive much earlier in the game in the place of the rotten version in order to start putting this build together sooner before swapping it out when you get this one.

What makes this style of play even deadlier is that you can stack Millicent’s Prosthesis, Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, and Thorny Cracked Tear to really increase your damage as you attack over and over. This allows for hyper aggressive builds, particularly in boss fights that just destroy them a lot of the time before they can do much.

3. Magic Scorpion Charm

Magic Scorpion Charm boosts your magic damage by 12%, 8% in PVP. But if the cost of increasing your physical damage, you receive by 10% and 15% of PVP.

This is a fair trade-off because the best way to avoid damage and FromSoftware titles is to learn enemy attack patterns and avoid being hit in the first place. You can also improve your physical defense rather easily, making this penalty not as bad as it could be.

The vast majority of sorceries in Elden Ring deal magic damage, making this a must-have Talisman for nearly every mage build in the game. Not only that, but some of the best weapon skills deal magic damage as well, including Ice Spear, Carian Grandeur, Sorcery of the Crozier, Spearcall Ritual, Nebula and many more.

Many weapons as well deal some magic damage, allowing you to get some benefit from this Talisman even on builds that don’t use Sorceries.

In short, the Magic Scorpion Charm has more of an impact than any other Scorpion Charm in the game and its only real negative is that it’s missable and you don’t get it until a good way into the main plot.

2. Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman & Dragoncrest Shield Talisman

The Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman is one of the best Talismans in Elden Ring simply because it increases your physical damage resistance by 20% (5% in PVP).

Most enemies deal physical damage, so this is a very easy way to increase your protection against common damage types and allows you to get away with lighter armor sets or use Scorpion Charmed Talismans without as much of a negative impact.

Of course, there are earlier versions of this Talisman we can get and these give lesser protection and a decent amount of physical damage resistance. And this allows you some form of this Talisman nearly the entire game. The easiest version is located below Bestial Sanctum, which you can ride to without killing anything and just drop down and pick it up.

What I like about this Talisman is that there are no conditions to trigger it and it’s just constantly active. This means all physical damage you take is going to be reduced just by having it slotted and frankly, that makes it really strong.

The negative is that this benefit is not additive, which means if you already have some physical damage resistance, which you likely will unless you’re naked, you won’t get the full benefit of this Talisman. But instead, you’ll get a reduced amount based on how much visual damage resistance you already have. The higher you have, the less you gain from this Talisman. This makes it much better and lighter armor builds than heavy armor builds.

1. Shard of Alexander & Warrior Jar Shard

Shard of Alexander increases the damage of your weapons skills by 15%, which is no small amount. There are so many different weapon skills now in Elden Ring, and some are much better than others. But just about every single build in Elden Ring uses at least one weapon skill. This means nearly anyone can benefit from this Talisman.

Many Elden Ring builds use their weapon skills as much or more than regular attacks, which makes this Talisman even more valuable to those builds that can do this, such as builds that use Corpse Piler, Transient Moonlight, Double Slash, Sword Dance, Repeating Thrust, Unsheathe, Storm Blade and more.

There is another version of this Talisman that you can get called Warrior Jar Shard that only increases your weapon’s skill damage by 10%. But the major upside is that this Talisman can be acquired at the very beginning of the game, which is much sooner than Shard of Alexander. This will allow you to use it 95% of your playthrough where a Shard of Alexander is only usable for about the 10% of the game at the end. This means if you don’t plan to take your character to New Game Plus, then Warrior Jar Shard is a better choice for you.

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