Great Stars Build Guide in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Achieving immortality in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is more possible than you’d think, and one of the best tools to help you achieve that is the Great Stars. The Great Stars is a unique Great Hammer that will heal you with each hit of this weapon. When it’s built correctly, it can both churn out large bursts of damage and be a key tool in keeping your Tarnished away from the “You Died” screen.

One of the best points of this weapon is how it encourages players to be aggressive in the right scenarios or to choose an Ash of War that can hit multiple times in quick succession. These two points allows Tarnished to build around how they want to go about getting away with the levels of aggression required to comfortably heal back any damage they’ve taken, whether it’s through powerstancing two of these weapons, or through aggressive positioning with a shield in hand. Here are some points to consider when building this pointy hammer.

Pros And Cons Of Great Stars

The Great Stars is a Great Hammer with the ability to heal you by 1% of your max HP with every hit. While the base Great Hammer move set is a little lackluster because of its slow swings and vertical light swings, its heavy attacks hit in a wide arc in front of it, and any Ash of War attached to this weapon can also trigger its healing effects. The vertical light swings can be a little troublesome thanks to their limited range, but once you get used to where they land, these attacks still come out fast enough to catch most opponents.

This weapon also has two unique qualities to it – two copies can be found in a single playthrough, and it’s the only Great Hammer that innately inflicts Bleed on enemies. Being able to find two of these in a single playthrough makes it a wonderful candidate for dual-wielding (powerstancing) so you can get double the healing, and double the status effect build-up. The powerstance jump attack also hits like a truck, and when combined with Raptor’s Black Feathers and Claw Talisman , you’ll be crushing even the largest of foes in a few swings. This benefit is also complimented by being the only Great Hammer with innate bleed application, which allows it to be used with any infusion and still continue to apply bleed.

Best Shields with the Great Stars

While powerstancing is a great way to get heals and status application, using a shield in your offhand instead to block attacks is also a powerful option to use with the Great Stars. The logic behind this is to block attacks with something like either a great shield, or a shield with good Guard Boost and decent stats. Whatever chip damage you take while blocking, you can attack your opponents back to recover that health.

Great Shields are usually preferred for this strategy, since you won’t be taking too much damage through your shield in the first place, and what little health you’re missing can be easily recovered with the Great Stars. Medium Shields are also a good substitute if you don’t mind being a little more aggressive when you need health back. For specific shields to consider, the Fingerprint Stone Shield , and it’s much easier to acquire DLC-cousin, the Verdigris Greatshield are amazing choices because of their high guard boost and 100% physical resistance.

Among Medium Shields, the Brass Shield and Wolf Crest Shield are similar enough to the Great Shields in that they have a high Guard Boost and 100% physical resistance so you can block physical attacks almost endlessly. The Carian Knight’s Shield with a Greatshield Talisman isn’t a bad option either, since it can block Holy and Magic attacks extremely well, but its lackluster Guard Boost can hold the shield back sometimes.

Best Ashes Of War and Infusions With Great Stars

Ashes of War

Infusions

Thanks to the innate bleed and the Great Star’s passive healing, there are three different infusions you should take with your build, including Bleed, Cold, or Heavy for raw damage. For Ashes of War, you’ll want anything that can hit multiple times to get as much healing as possible. Since you’re already gaining a benefit from fast, repeated attacks, applying status effects like Cold or Bleed will also fit neatly into your build.

Cold builds will use a Cold infusion with either Cragblade or Chilling Mist as the Ashes of War. Chilling Mist will give you healing with each tick of the cloud’s damage while Cragblade can be used to make up for the middling poise damage. Additionally, Frostbite triggers deal 10% of your target’s Max HP as damage (7% for bosses) and they’ll also increase the damage your target takes by 20%. When used with the Great Stars, these effects will bring this weapon’s damage to some fairly high levels.

In comparison, Bleed builds will use a Blood or Heavy infusion with Wild Strikes or Cragblade as the Ashes of War. Blood is usually preferred if you aren’t putting any points into Strength beyond what you needed to equip the weapon. Heavy is better if you wanted your swings to hit harder and only wanted the Hemorrage triggers for the additional damage and all the buffs it can activate. Regardless of which infusion you choose, White Mask, Blood God’s Exultation, and Bloodflame Flame Blade are all required to buff your damage from wallowing in mediocrity to devastating average foot soldiers and demigods alike.

Prelate’s Charge gets a special mention because of how fast it hits and how strong its final upswing is. It’s very easy to use Prelate’s Charge to both mow down mobs and recover your entire health bar. Against humanoid targets, Prelate’s Charge can knock them into the air, allowing you to chain into another’s Prelate’s Charge.

Best Stats With Great Stars

Ideally, you’ll want to either focus on Strength to maximize your damage, or Arcane if you want to maximize bloodloss damage. 80 Strength is ideal if you want to maximize how much damage each swing does. Both Cold builds and Heavy-infusion builds will want to reach close to 80 Strength to reach the softcap.

For Bleed builds, you’ll want 45–50 Arcane to reach the softcap. After that, you can invest the rest into Strength, Vigor, and Endurance to keep.

Best Talismans With Great Stars

Beyond the usual talisman options that shine in every build like Erdtree’s Favor +2 , the Great Stars benefits from a wide variety of talismans, depending on how you want to shape your build. Here are a few standout options that are unique to the Great Stars:

Great Jar Arsenal

Two of the best ways to use this weapon are either powerstanced so you can deal a high amount of damage and build up status effects faster, or with a Greatshield so you can maximize the survivability granted by this weapon. In either case, you’re going to be carrying a large amount of heavyweight weapons on you. Equipping the Great-Jar’s Arsenal to increase your carry capacity will allow you to wear all of this equipment and some medium to medium-heavy armor without any downsides.

Pearl Shield Talisman/Greatshield Talisman/Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman

These three talismans are best used to fix any weaknesses your shields may have. The idea here is to lower the amount of damage you take while blocking so you can more easily heal back up to full HP. ThePearl Shield Talisman is best used if you’re using a shield with a decent amount of physical damage resistance and Guard Boot, but it needs help blocking everything else. The Brass Shield is a perfect candidate to benefit from this talisman.

Greatshield Talisman is for shields that may have great resistances with its block, but its Guard Boost is incredibly weak. The Carian Knight’s Shield is the best example of this since it can block Magic, Holy, and Physical attacks incredibly well, but its low Guard Boost means it struggles to block multiple hits.

Finally, the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman is best used if the shield you’re using doesn’t have 100% Physical damage resistance. This way you’ll reduce the amount of physical damage you take through your block. A good example of a shield that would benefit from this is the Carian Thrusting Shield which has decent resistances, and can be two-handed for a different kind of defensive build, but lacks the 100% physical resistance of other shields.

Ritual Sword Talisman

The Great Stars is one of the few weapons that can consistently enjoy the 10% damage buff from the Ritual Sword Talisman . You can block or trade against some attacks, then heal everything back when you get a damage window through your Great Stars.

The biggest downside for this talisman is that it’s useless if you can’t keep your health full. However, between Crimson Flasks, the Great Star’s natural healing, and the Crimson-Sapping Sacked Tear, your build should have plenty of tools to help you get back to full health without wasting too much time.

Lord of Blood’s Exultation

Right next to the White Mask , The Lord of Blood’s Exultation is one of the best ways to increase your damage output in Bleed builds. It gives you 20% damage increase (12% in PvP) whenever Bleed is triggered near you, and with two Great Stars, this is a fairly simple task.

Against bosses where you’re going to be very aggressive on their damage windows, you can put this talisman into a Frost build and still eventually enjoy the damage buff because of the Great Star’s innate Bleed applications.

Two-Headed Turtle Talisman

If you plan on using your powerful powerstance jump attack, you’ll want to equip the Two-Headed Turtle Talisman talisman. This talisman will help you recover Stamina faster, and when you’re burning through chunks of your stamina bar through jump attacks, you’ll appreciate every point of stamina you get back.

Best Cracked Tears with the Great Stars

Since the Great Stars heals you with every strike, it has a few unique tears it can synergize with. The most prominent option is the Bloodsucking Tear, which slowly drains your health for 3 minutes but increases your damage by 20%. Be aware that the healing from the Great Stars will not completely offset the life drain, but it will give you a little more health to work with.

The Crimson-Sapping Cracked Tear is also an amazing crystal to use with this weapon, because it increases how much health you gain per hit from 1% of your max HP to 1.75%, almost doubling the amount of health healed with each attack.