Dark Souls 2 Comprehensive Sorcerer Build, Tips and Strategy Guide

This is a build that is absolutely hinged on dodging, (2 bosses could 1 shot me from max HP), even with every piece of gear at +8 or higher. However! The specific composition makes this build amazing.

So here is where it starts. This guide will give you guide lines, and land marks, but won't walk you through the whole game. (Though it will add a boss strategy section... very spoilery) But first! How to 'start' your game.

Obviously, if you are reading this you picked sorcerer. It's fun, it builds into a monster, but... it starts off very lacking. You WILL need to get good with that dagger. It's all you will have when you run out of spells for a little while. Now the very very very first thing you want to do, as soon as you leave the tutorial zone, Things Betwixt, is watch along the right hand side for a break in the rocks. When you see it, look down and if there is a ledge, drop onto it, then below it. This is the path that leads to your Spell Sco- Err Binoculars... which you use as a Spell Scope to snipe enemies. Also behind you on the path is some cleric stuff. It's alright. As for using the Nocs, well I'll explain that in the strategy section!

Now for the start, you are going to want to start in the forest of giants. Until you reach the second bonfire you have 2 goals. Goal 1, don't lose or spend a single soul. Not a one. Goal 2, start learning to roll. Not block, not even with a dagger in the off hand, but roll.

Now when you reach the second bonfire you will come across a merchant. And guess what! She has a spell of ours! Yay! At this point, you should actually have enough to buy it, do so, but don't bother trying to attune it. You don't have the slots just yet. From here continue on through the forest until you reach the boss. Once more, try not to spend or lose any souls at all. It will only take a short while, but within the forest there is actually another spell that we can use, and even better! It's an upgraded version. Obviously pick it up, but again, don't bother attuning, no slots, and soul arrow is needed for volume of spells alone. Now then, when you finally reach the boss fog gate, stop. Go back to Majula, and now is the time to spend them souls. Pump attunement first. You want 2 slots before the first boss, and in the second slot you want to fit that Great Soul Arrow. The first boss is fairly easy (for strategy look to the strategy section of this), . and once it is dead, immediately go back to majula, and upgrade your starter staff. Thought I forgot about that didn't you? With those souls, you will be able to get it to at least +4 (yep you should of had a large titanite by now, it's in a chest in the forest, under the room where all the ballistas try to kill you... but you only need to get it to +4, even if you have more) This is where the staff stops being upgraded. Now there is not much of consequence to note for sorcerers unfortunately for the next part. Go and continue through the forest until you kill the second boss, (if it's your first time fighting him ever, I would get some help, it makes it cake, but again, strategy section if you want to solo.) Once he's dead, use your souls to try to get your Int to 20. That is the goal before you leave the forest, and if you reach it, great...STOP. Start pumping attunement. You are really going to need those slots soon. A good mix of stat increases is 1 attunement slot, 5 points int. 1 attunement slot, 5 points int.

So! You've killed the second boss in the forest... Awesome! Did you engage in jolly cooperation and help kill him again and again? Well why not?... Well it isn't necessary (but it is fun so there is that), so now it's time to get really funky. Now then, you've got at least 20 int, and by this point hopefully 3 attunement slots (which should all be filled since you have 3 spells now), now it is time to progress! The sad news... is that you won't be increasing your build at all in the next area. Yep, the tower is useless for us mages. However! There are lots of souls to be had.

Note: You know those pretty boss souls? Eat em. We have 0 use for almost any of them. We only keep 2, and that's to convert them to spells. Otherwise? Om nom souls.

In the tower you are going to have a tiny bit of trouble. At the start, these enemies are going to take a good few hits to kill. The good news is that they are super slow, and we have a lot of casts, the bad news, is that you may have to bait an attack on the shield wielders, then punish it. You DO have to clear this entire area, so be careful! Draw them out one by one and use alll the levers that appear. Also, make sure you go to the left first, and meet an old friend. It's an easy boss fight (strategy section!) that gives you access to the second and only other bonfire in the area. Once you make it to the boss of this zone, it's a bit more difficult but still easily do able (and again, don't be afraid to ask for help, sunbros are best bros while you are learning). Now then! At the top of this section light the bonfire, and exhaust alllll chat options with the lovely young lady sitting there. Once she starts repeating herself, use that fire to get back to Majula and level up again! Your attunement goal is 4 slots. Once you have 4 slots you should focus on rushing 35 int ASAP! (as a note your int will stay at 35... for a long while). To be honest, with all the souls of the area, souls from the bosses, and souls from the boss souls, this is very easily done. Especially since we aren't worrying about armor yet. Now, to note here, since everyone plays differently, and you may well choose to farm an area for items/souls, or may die a bit more and build up souls that way, As soon as you have 4 slots and 35 int, you want to pump faith. 'But wait IT... My faith has been completely ignored and is soooo low.' Yes.... well sorry, but we had literally no use for it til now, and in the beginning your other stats are needed ASAP.

Now then, with the lovely lady from the tower moved, and your int at 35 and roughly 4 attunement slots, you can move on while working on your faith! Go to where you headed to get to the tower, and stop at the contraption. Pay the lady 2000 to move it, and move on through! Congratulations! You are in huntsman's copse! Progress through this area carefully. You have to walk along a precarious cliff but there are no enemies. Now as you progress through towards the first bonfire, you will come across a strange man sitting in a chair with a hood over his face... DO NOT ATTACK. This man is where we will be getting the last staff you will ever use til the end. Now if you have put any points in faith you should be fine, he requires 8 to talk to him properly, but your goal here is to buy 5 things. Archdrake Staff, Archdrake Chime, Ring of Life Protection, Dark Orb, and Resonant Soul.

Congrats! Technically you have completed the Hex portion of your build. (though we obviously won't stop there completely, this is all that I consider build 'core') Now this Archdrake's Staff you are going to up alllll the way. Yep, that means +10. It will be your first and utmost priority so do it to it! Another thing to mention... This is where we get our Hexer's Hood!!!! Which increases spell casts per spell. To get it though, you need to talk to mister mask here with a decent bit of faith AND int. 20 of each confirmed.

Now at this point you have 2 options. Option 1 is continuing through Hunstmans Copse, which while possible, is not suggested. For one, you don't even have the ability to use your hexes yet most likely, and for 2, you don't have the spells to deal with the area effectively. So it is suggested back pedaling and warping to the bonfire where Licia was initially in the tower, and progressing towards no mans wharf. Now, with all the souls you've acquired and the fancy new archdrake staff that you might be able to use ( and if not, jolly coop is a good way to get the souls, as is just going through the warf) getting to the end of this area should be easy. However, there are some things to watch out for. The big spider guys with huge arms? Easily killed, easily killed by. IF they get ahold of you... you are probably dead, but if you see them first, you are in no danger. The enemies here should be 2 shotted at the worst, by your bigger soul arrow. That's fine. Especially since our goal isn't even to kill the boss (though we will... just not immediately) but to make it around to where the bosses boat is. So, progress through the wharf, and when you are on the docks at the end, go the path leading to the right. Meet, Carhillion! Your favoritest guy ever. Carhillion will appreciate all the time you put into your int. So talk to him...a lot. He will let you buy the Clear Bluestone ring!!!! (Cast speed win) and let you buy spells. You want from Carhillion, 3 things. Great Heavy Soul Arrow, Soul Spear Barrage (not as awesome as it sounds btw), and Heavy Soul Arrow. You will never use Great Soul arrow again. Go back to a bonfire, re-attune your spells (at this point you should be able to use Dark Orb, which casts on a staff) so your spells in 4 slots should be 'Soul Arrow, Heavy Soul Arrow, Great Heavy Soul Arrow, Dark Orb'. If you have a 5th slot for whatever reason, Soul Spear Barrage. Kill the boss of the area (strategy section! but as a hint, fight the mace side, and only the mace side) and continue to the Lost Bastille!

Now then! You've made it to the lost bastille! You have spells aplenty! You are starting to feel like a bamf with that great heavy soul arrow! Now you run into another challenge. Once more, I'm not going to walk you through the area, this is a light build guide to get you optimal ASAP. But I will warn you. The big guys with the Machete's on sticks, while not resistant, do have a lot of hp. It will take a good few casts to kill them, use GREAT soul arrow, not Great Heavy. The dogs? 1 shot. Easy. The knights? 2 shot, easy. The heide knight on the bridge just chillin? Leave him be! We don't need his item for anything, honestly, and we can come back and destroy him later. So! Just the same as before, we have an area goal. Our area goal here, is 22 faith. Once you reach 22 faith, leave it alone. You literally will not touch it again... at all, until SL 100+ Why 22 faith you ask? Because that's when you can use the Archdrake Chime, and switch from using Dark Orb to resonant soul. Once you get to that point, you must IMMEDIATELY get your int to 40.... then once more ignore it (this time til SL 80 or 90). From there. Pump Attunement. Oh you want to put just a bit more into int for dam-NO! Attunement attunement attunement. You have all the powers of the dark arts and mastery of sorcery in the palm of your hands! But such a tiny spell pool. And that cast speed... its... its sad. So your hard goal is 30 Attunement. There is a chance you may already be there, if so, 40. Basically, the last 30 levels from SL 90-120 needs to be making your Int and Attunement hit 50, your faith hit 30, and then a few points to toss into ADP for some Agi. Other than that? Upgrade upgrade upgrade. Chime and Staff need to be as high as humanly possible for you.

Now that that is out of the way... continue! The Lost Bastille is a pretty rough area overall, not even specific to us. It introduces those exploding mummies (the only enemy I 100% genocided in my game... no really, even when you asceticed an area, the first thing you should do is to res and kill them til they stopped appearing, and yes even the ones in the Aerie.), the sewer gators, and is the first area with a prime boss soul... LE GASP! By the way, since this isn't a 'game walkthrough' it didn't mention it, but it pays off to be buddy buddy with Lucatiel in the wharf and in the bastille. The only reason we are clearing the bastille at all is because it happens to be the easiest place to get a fragrant branch. So! Once you get through it and beat the big boss (by the way, Strategy section, but for a hint, if you don't dodge. You don't cast. A.k.a if you haven't had to dodge, you don't have the luxury to cast).

So! Now that we have this awesome branch... we're going to unfreeze Straid right? He has awesome spells! Wellllll no. While it's true, he's awesome and we want him for things, nothing he has is crucial to us now. Instead we are going to unfreeze the poor girl pulling the lever. So trek back to Majula, head over there and unfreeze her... but do NOT I repeat, do NOT pull the lever!!! I'm sorry but we can't do that fight. It's not possible in NG to weather that barrage (or maybe it is, but most players like to consider themselves skilled and couldn't do it). Instead! Use the nocs to shoot one of the doors on the upper level 3 times, the door will break, then just lightly tap the person in the room... with your strongest spell. To be honest, they should only take 2 hits. From there, run outside! Yep back to big blue sword dude. The enemies that would of formerly ambushed you now come out only to be siphoned through a small doorway into a barrage of absolutely decimating spells.

But at this point in the game, with 22 faith, 40 int, 30-40 attunement, you are officially the archmage. You can cast spells from eveeeerrryy facet. You have catalysts for everything (although if you missed the pyromancy flame, it's in a chest after the boss in no mans wharf... and shame on you for not doing your due diligence.) That being said. You officially have 'access' to everything we need for the build at this point in the game. No more boss requirements, no more stat requirements. At this exact point, you can even get every piece before your next primal soul fight. That's right Sinner is all you have to kill to get every piece of the build*.

So as mentioned before, you are officially an archmage! From this point on, it's pure excess acquisition. And you are in the perfect spot to do it. This section of the guide is going to be... a bit disjointed. See, at this point, it's not set in stone where you should go. There are 4 things you need to do/get to finish off the build. Those things are as follows.

In order, going by easiest to hardest, you should probably get these things in, spells, ring, armor, staff (the staff has to be last anyways actually)

 Now... the spells, will actually come from multiple places.

Soul Spear: Hunstman Copse is the earliest place you can get it. After working through the Copse a bit and you've reached the point where you can lower the giant iron bridge, walk to the right side of the bridge (while facing it) and walk along the ledge without falling. If you keep looking as you walk you will notice one of the huts below you has a hole in the roof. Jump in, and voila. Your second cast being bought from Agdayne later on. Soul Vortex: In brightstone cove, after the second bonfire if you carefully descend to the sand below near the Sarlacc pit, there will be two rooms below where you started at. One of them is where the blacksmith goes when she is freed, the other has a bonfire and a few spiders. In there, break everything it's behind one of the book shelves. Otherwise, Agdayne as well.

Homing Crystal Soul Mass: This one... you actually can't get early on. In the shrine of Amana third bonfire, it's actually visible before you leave the cave. (note its not in the cave, but you can see it when you look to the area outside of it)

Flame Swathe: A must grab! You need a fragrant branch to unfreeze Straid in the lost bastille to buy this from him, branches are fairly limited so justt wait to get your armor first.

Now the ring there are actually 2 rings to get but we will focus on the easier one first. Southern Ritual band +1 it gives you 2 more attunement slots to work with. At 50 attune, it means you have 10 slots. This one is deceptively easy. Warp to the second bonfire in the cove, the one after the church, now backtrack to the area right before the bonfire and look down over the cliff. you will see a doorway not far below you and a ledge you can easily jump to. do it, boom! You've skipped a good bit of walking. Go through until you open the door with the spiderman who has his back turned... punish it thoroughly, then turn to the right and kill the other one from above. DO NOT DROP DOWN. now once hes dead, turn to your left and slowly/carefully land on the stone area joining the entrance to this courtyard. You will see a mage behind a pot to the left, kill him. Now turn around you you will notice a big opening with spider men inside. Kill them them break the objects along the wall to reveal a lever. Pull it and you will notice a chest descending to your left. Go up the stairs, hop onto the platform, and boom! Easy ring.

For the next ring which isn't necessary but very helpful... you will need some pre-prep and a lot of de-stressing after. Travel to the forked road in the shaded ruins. Head up to the fog area, and move along the wall to your right until you reach the first corpse. Now from here, orient the wall to your back 100% level so that you come off the wall completely straight. Now run... A lot. Don't stop, you will eventually come across a giant tree with a metal chest next to it... DON'T STOP. This is where we need to be but it is literally surrounded by 3-4 invisible jerks. So instead start running around the tree for 5-6 seconds, then turn and run in a random direction. Your goal is to aggro the men, then get them to chase you away. Make sure you remember where the chest is, because you are then going to turn and run back to the chest open it and grab the item as fast as possible.

It was mentioned earlier that there was a single enemy type in the entire game that we can't decimate on the spot. Yep, that asterisk was placed there with this much forethought. Unfortunately, you are near encountering those enemies now. The last bit that we can acquire for now, is the lion mage armor set. To get it, you will need a fragrant branch. Two can be acquired from Harvest Valley. If you don't want to trek through the valley immediately, you can grab one literally as soon as you step into the valley. Near the stone trader look over the cliff and kill the enemy. From there wak down into the are with the mist, entire the mist, grabbing all the items there, and look for the archway. Go into the archway kill the skele, and hop into the pool of poison below There is a chest there with it. Warp back and boom, you barely stepped in and have the branch. There is also a second branch past the second bonfire if you go and step into the sickle wielders ambush (for that fight lure them all down then run up the ramp and along a ledge, they have to come at you single file from there). Which is about 20% of the way in.

Now then... Warp back to forked road. Once more, into the mist, however this time, hug the left wall and keep going. You will go until the mist stops. If you never leave the left wall, this is easy and fast. As soon as the mist stops you will reach the first bonfire. Now then. This area... is where those enemies are. The lion mages severely resist magic and hexes. Pyro works moderately well. There are also 3 enemies here we can unfreeze BUT DON'T. We have 1 in particular we want. To be honest, this area kinda sucks. It takes 8+ casts of normal spells to kill or using pyros a lot. But to get to the spot we need you have to kill 5 lions, and the giant basilisk. My suggestion is to kill the two lions (they are painfully slow and their attacks are so easy to dodge), then the basilisk, then go bonfire. The basilisk won't respawn and frankly, won't move much. From there, kill the two lions again, and then go to where the basi was. Don't walk on the wood. It will fall through and it sucks, especially since you won't have the key needed yet. You will see 2 big towers, and 2 lions. Kill the lions, ignore the towers. Once the lions are dead position yourself between the two towers, then turn around. You should see a bunch of ruins, and one lion warrior petrified, surrounded by curse jars. Break the jars with spells/throwing knives, then once that is done you can hop over the wall to get the chest. Here is a good guide for it!

The end. So, at this point, there is but one small piece left to 'finish' the build. Yep. The Staff of Wisdom. Unfortunately, you have to get to the end game to get it. It's in the Dragon Shrine, very easily acquired. If you just look around the area you will find it no sweat. It's a small zone and the item isn't particularly hidden, it's behind a Pharos Door. So with that, it's all over... nothing left... right?... Wrong!!! There is actually a LOT left to do, even if it doesn't seem like it! For one thing, with the new soul memory mechanic, SL 120 may not even be the best place to stop. It is also good bumping up to SL 150 to test where those 30 points are best spent. There are also the more advanced rings! You can get the Clear Bluestone ring +2 from killing the Skeleton Lords in Ng+ (or upping the bonfire), and can get the Souther Ritual band +2 from killing the scorpioness as well! These are things I've done already but I'll leave up to you to do as you please. There are also at least 3 more spells to acquire in the late game/NG+ (Crystal Soul Spear, Soul Geyser, which is awesome btw, and more casts of the powerful spells) There are also more armor sets in the NG+ and ++ variants that could well be better for us than Lion Mage! Either way, there is still at LEAST 4-5 more hours worth of 'upgrading content' available to you so fret not! This isn't even our final form!

This fight is cake. Yep, even without leveling up at all. The giant is extremely slow, his attacks only hit in front of him, and he has a huge wind up and recoil time when he attacks. Your goal here is to bait him into a swing, roll backwards twice, then cast twice. Even at low levels you can do that without worry. This fight will take roughly 10-14 casts if you do it without a phantom.

This one is a bit more difficult. For one, the pursuer is fast, and does a lot of damage, and two he blocks while moving in certain ways. This really is a good way to gauge your dodging abilities. For this fight you actually want to stay pretty close to him, his charges are scary with our limited stamina pools so stay close to him on his shield side. You basically want to line up with his shield and when he starts to attack, roll into him (which should put you at his left shoulder) then turn and cast quickly, and get ready to repeat. It takes a little while but is easily done.

This fight was actually saddeningly easy. ODS is very slow attacking, if you lock on and strafe to his left side he won't even hit you his spear. No need to roll (though go ahead if it makes you feel better) because he stabs at you slow enough to just walk out of the way. He leaves a big opening on every attack so cast once/twice then dodge and strafe again. The only thing to watch out for is his AoE, it won't instakill you, but it's annoying and leaves him hugely open.

This is one of the more difficult fights. If only because of where it takes place. You don't have a huge area to run around in, and he uses a poleaxe which gives him lots of range. You want to stick to his right (the opposite of ODS, a.k.a strafe towards him weapon) and you MUST roll when he swings. His range is too high to just walk back from. He recovers fairly quick, however his attacks themselves take a lot of time so as soon as you dodge, cast.

This one is fun. It requires baiting attacks and is one of the few that you have to stick close to the enemy the entire time. Also, only fight the mace side. The sword side can clear the room in a single jump and won't knock you down when it hits so you get comboed hard. For the mace side, step close until he starts to attack, then roll perfectly left or right so that you pass UNDER the weapon he lifts to slam down. If he raises his right hand, you dive to the side. IF you don't when he swings the other down it will crush you. As soon as you get up from the roll, cast twice. You can bait this attack 100% of the time once you get good at it. Otherwise, if he does the big double swing, roll backwards cast once, and if the sword side stabs over the head step (not roll) backwards and then cast twice.

This is the only fight which it is suggested to use a phantom entirely. Not a player, but Bellclaire. While it is possible to solo this (I've done it once...never again) Bellclaire makes this fight cake. But I will make this post assuming you are working solo. As soon as you walk in, roll TOWARDS the sentry. He's going to either stab or overhead attack it's a straight line, so go towards the wall not the ledge. From there, cast. Your goal on the single sentry is to attack after every one of his attacks. If he swings overhead, side roll cast. Stabs? Sideroll cast. If he goes to sweep, roll INTO it, you need to land right on his toes if you do, it will miss, then you cast. After that one is dead, drop down and hug one corner, they come down at opposite ends of the room, and are vulnerable as they drop, get 1-2 casts on each as they come in, then you play a rough game. You have to bait one into throwing it's shield. Yes, this is required As soon as it does that, it will two hand it's weapon making it's attack much easier to deal with. These guys have the same strategy (bait them into attacking, cast on one) with 1 exception. The spin. The dreaded spin. As soon as you see one turn his upper torso roll backwards away from it. Don't stop, just roll roll roll. Get as far back as possible. It covers a LOT of ground.

This gal is rough, for most of the same reasons as pursuer. Lots of damage from swift attacks. This gal has a rule though. If you didn't dodge, you don't cast. That's it. She has 4 attacks. An upward swing, a double horizontal swing, a jump attack, and a stab. If you see her move her sword, dodge back and to your left. it will always miss, and then you can attack. If she jumps into the air MOVE she is aiming to come down on top of you, and even if she doesn't she will typically lunge stab so start moving and don't stop. This fight takes a small bit of time but following the don't dodge don't cast rule will make it at least fairly easy.

This fight... is insanely easy. At the point where you could find the lords you should have every piece of the build, including all the awesome spells. Start the fight soul spearing one of the descending lords, then play the running game. The lords themselves are super slow, and don't have a lot of HP but when one dies a lot of skeles spawn... then you vortex. Cast it twice, two different directions and watch as pure carnage happens. Those two killed every skeleton but one of the lords when you use it. Then a quick pyro blast took him out. Alternatively, flame swatheing works almost as well.

This fight... can be super easy, or super tedious. Easy Method: Skip the skeletons. Run past them and either roll under the chariots spikes (stay near a wall) or duck into the alcoves. Get to the end where the lever is, hide in an alcove and kill all skeles around you with weaker spells. Now run and close the gate. When it crashes and falls run up to it and use vortex. 3 kills it. No joke. Either that or 1 Geyser, 1 Vortex. Tedious: Kill everything. As soon as you get into the fog find an alcove and kill all the skeles. Now whenever the chariot is first seen rounding the bend cast a vortex at an angle towards it (like aiming at the other wall, but at a diagonal. Do this each time it passes by. When I tried, it took 6 casts.

There are no specific strategies fighting this boss. On the sorcerer, one vortex decimated majority of his HP... then boom, speared to death. Would accept assistance with this one in terms of a strategy.

This one is actually quite fun completely solo. All of her spear attacks are easily dodged with a roll, if its a stab to either side, if its the sweep then backwards. All you really need to be careful of is the poison ring around the Arena, and her head toss with is quite brutal (but again easily dodged) and the Arena she fights you in is good and small so it's also good for vortex/dark storm/fire storm.