Best Dryleaf Arts hand-to-hand build in Shadow of the Erdtree

With the introduction of the Dryleaf Arts and Dane’s Footwork weapons in Shadow of the Erdtree, the hand-to-hand monk martial arts build is now very legit. These weapons are obtained through Elden Ring’s DLC, and this is our pick for the best Dryleaf Arts build to try out.

We’ve come up with a sort of bleed hybrid build for the Dryleaf Arts. You want to have bleed on the Dane’s Footwork, using the Poison Flower Blooms Twice Ash of War for poison and scarlet rot on top of the bleed. For the Dryleaf Arts in your main hand, you want to choose the Divine Beast Frost Stomp and choose ‘Quality’ for the weapon type. This lets you throw out a huge AoE stop that can further cause Frostbite buildup along with everything else you’ve got. Let’s break it down below.

You will want a bit of arcane for this build since it is using bleed, but the amount you get from the weapon at +25 is still D, so it’s better to focus on Dex/Str depending on which way you lean. For us, we’ve gone with quality. This is optional, but you can raise Faith to 15 so you can use Flame, Grant me Strength, but this is not necessary if you don’t want to spend the level points.

Weapon

To go full martial arts mode in Elden Ring, you will want to use Dryleaf Arts in your main hand and Dane’s Footwork in your left. You can now switch between them on the fly, letting you cover all bases with punches and kicks whenever you want. Feel free to switch the order, it doesn’t matter. These weapons can be upgraded to +25, so you will need Smithing Stones to get them there.

• Dryleaf Arts +25
• Dane’s Footwork +25

You can make the Dryleaf Arts whatever you want. We opted for Quality or Keen. Image taken by VideoGamer

Put bleed on Dane’s Footwork for extra damage. Image taken by VideoGamer

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Ash of War

So, this is where we’ve taken the build in a strange direction. We think you can dish out a ton of status ailments with these fast attacks, so it’s important to pick an Ash of War for both of these that will suit this.

• Quality Dryleaf Arts – Divine Beast Frost Stomp
• Blood Dane’s Footwork – The Poison Flower Blooms Twice

At +25, Dane’s Blood Footwork has a blood loss buildup of 116. For reference, Rivers of Blood has 78 blood loss buildup. With the Quality Dryleaf Arts, we’ve taken the Divine Beast Frost Stomp to help you with a very easy-to-use AoE that causes Frostbite. With these two, you’ll have a lot of options when it comes to taking on your foes.

Incantations

For Incantations, we don’t really think it’s worth it for this build. If you want to, you can invest 15 points into Faith so you can use the Flame, Grant me Strength incantation to increase your physical damage. As we mentioned, this is if you want to. It won’t make a huge difference to the build.

Talismans

With these Ash of War and the way you want the weapon to scale, the Talismans we’ve chosen for this Dryleaf Martial Arts build are synergised perfectly with this. When it comes to Talismans, you want to use these four:

Talisman	Effect
Shattered Stone Talisman	Raise the potency of kicking and stomping skills.
Rotten Winged Sword Insignia	Greatly raises attack power with successive attacks.
Lord of Blood’s Exultation	Blood loss in the vicinity increases attack power.
Shard of Alexander	Greatly boosts the attack power of skills.

With all of these Talismans, you’re doubling down on your skill damage. This will help you exploit the Frostbite, poison, scarlet rot, and bleed build-ups when you hit enemies.

Armor and gear

For full monk immersion, you could choose to don the Dryleaf Dane armour set. This won’t give you a ton of damage negation, but it will help you look the part. As we all know, fashion is more important than stats in Souls games. Otherwise, you could opt for fully heavy armour, such as the Solitude set dropped by the Blackgaol Knight. Here’s a good set that doesn’t push you into heavy equip load:

• Black Knight Helm
• Horned Warrior Armor
• Gauntlets of Solitude
• Night’s Cavalry Greaves

As we said, the damage negation increase probably won’t make a huge difference, so go with whatever you think looks and suits best. It’s important to note that if you opt for something very light or no armour at all, you could consider using the Blue Dancers Charm to further bolster your damage with a lower equip load.

Mixed Physick and Great Rune

No matter what you want to do with your Mixed Physick, we always recommend the Opaline Bubbletear to give you a shield for damage negation. We’d use this mixed with the Thorny Cracked Tear to help increase damage and synergise with the Rotten Winged Sword Insignia.

In terms of your Great Rune, it’s a tie between Godrick’s Great Rune and Radahn’s Great Rune. The stat increase from Godrick’s Rune is significant and will generally help out all around when you need it. Likewise, you get more HP, Stamina, and FP with Radahns so these are the two we recommend for boss fights. While you’re out exploring, it’s always good to use Rykard’s Great Rune for HP regen when you kill an enemy.

General combat tips

As with most advice we can give in this game, you need to be aggressive and know when to back off. We’ve found that this build is extremely powerful if you keep hitting and don’t let the enemy move. Your best bet is to start off by using the weapon skill depending on the encounter. If you need to clear out a lot of ads, charge up the Divine Beast stomp and then get into the fight. If it’s a one-on-one with a Black Knight or something, then blast them with the Poison Flower skill to trigger Rot.

If you keep chaining your bleed combos first, you’ll get a stagger in no time. When the enemy staggers, feel free to change back over to the Dryleaf Arts attacks and throw in some Frostbite for good measure. The key with this build is triggering status effects to power up, along with hitting the enemy successively to get another Talisman buff. We hope you enjoy your newfound strength as a punching, kicking, hand-to-hand fighting machine.