Best Messmer Spear of the Impaler build in Shadow of the Erdtree

✓ at a glance

• Weapon – Spear of the Impaler (Messmer’s Spear), Fire Knight’s Seal.
• Stats – Dex and Faith.
• Incantations – Flame, Grant me Strength, Fire Serpent.
• Talismans – Smithing Talisman, Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, Two-Handed Sword Talisman, Shard of Alexander.
• Armour – Rakshasa Armor.
• Mixed Physick – Opaline Bubbletear, Flame-Shrouded Cracked Tear.

Messmer’s Spear, also known as the Spear of the Impaler, is an incredibly strong and broken weapon in Shadow of the Erdtree. Thanks to the high damage capabilities from Elden Ring’s DLC weapons, you can make especially strong builds that will help you through some of the tougher content in SOTE. Once you beat Messmer, you can use his Remembrance to make this weapon. Here’s how the build shapes up:

Stats and attributes

The Spear of the Impaler requires Strength, Dexterity, and Faith to use. Primarily, you should focus on Strength and Dex, with your main focus on Dex. Faith will only be beneficial to level to a certain extent. You need 18 for the weapon and you can stop there if you want, but we recommend taking that up to 30 if you don’t mind sacrificing more points into Vigor or Endurance. Here’s a table showing the stats you roughly want to aim for:

Attribute	Level
Vigor	60
Mind	30
Endurance	30
Strength	40
Dexterity	80
Intelligence	9
Faith	30
Arcane	14

This spread of stats will give you a huge damage bonus with the Spear of the Impaler at +10. As mentioned, if you want to readjust this stat allocation, feel free to reduce the number you invest in Faith and put them elsewhere if you find you need more survivability.

Weapons

• Spear of the Impaler +10
• Fire Knight’s Seal.

With the stats we’ve suggested, you can also handily use the Fire Giant’s Seal if you want to. This will only be to provide buffs to yourself, capitalising on your Faith investment. With the Spear, you can’t change the Ash of War to give it any special properties. This means you’re stuck with using Messmer’s Assault. This Ash of War is especially powerful and locks you into a long combo. The attack gives you decent hyper armour during the animation to stop any interruptions and it has fantastic stagger capabilities.

Another fantastic thing about the Messmer Spear of the Impaler build is the weapon’s unique strong attack. Holding it down will result in you charging up a throw, where you launch the spear at your enemies and it causes a small AoE when it lands. The spear is then returned to your hand. This synergises extremely well with the Smithing Talisman. You can only get this weapon by defeating Messmer and trading his Remembrance for the spear at the Roundtable Hold.

Spear of the Impaler:

• Strength – 14
• Dexterity – 35
• Faith – 18

Fire Knight’s Seal:

• Strength – 8
• Faith – 115

You don’t need to bother upgrading the Fire Knight’s Seal if you don’t have the resources to spare. This will only be used to buff you and maybe cast an odd spell if you feel like it.

Ash of War

• Spear of the Impaler – Messmer’s Assault
• Fire Knight’s Seal – No skill.

As mentioned, the Ash of War cannot be changed from Messmer’s Spear. As such, it is a unique weapon that is upgraded to +10 by using Somber Smithing Stones. Thankfully, the Ash of War is the main reason you want to use this spear. Messmer’s Assault will mess people up, and you can spam it so often that it almost feels kind of cheap. At least, it would feel cheap if the game wasn’t being cheap to you.

With Messmer’s Assault, you can chain together a nasty combo that ends in an AoE attack. It does animation lock you, which can be a problem if your enemy doesn’t get staggered or interrupted during your attacks. As this is a Great Spear, you shouldn’t have too hard of a time with that.

With this Talisman setup, you might be a bit of a glass canon. Sadly, that won’t get you too far in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. If you want to sub some things out, you can take the Erdtree’s Favor +2 or the Crimson Amber Medallion +3 to improve your overall survivability. Likewise, the Crimson Seed Talisman +1 is fantastic. For this build, we specifically recommend using the Rakshasa chest piece to improve your damage further, but this comes at the cost of greater damage taken by yourself.

With this, no one will deny your fashion ever again. As always, feel free to mix and match these pieces. We’re simply going off of theme and style, without paying much attention to damage negation.

Mixed Physick and Great Rune

• Opaline Bubbletear
• Flame-Shrouding Cracked Tear

For your Mixed Physick, there’s something of a mixed bag. If you wear the Rakshasa armor, you are going to be extra squishy. To this end, you’ll probably want to slot in the Opaline Bubbletear to help with this. We also recommend using the Flame-Shrouding Cracked Tear to improve your fire damage. This will enhance how much damage you do using your Ash of War, which will be a huge part of your attack rotation with this build.

For your Great Rune, you can use Godrick’s Rune or Radahn’s Great Rune for extra survivability. These runes honestly don’t make a ton of difference, but if you can remember to pop a Rune Arc, you’ll welcome the extra HP that comes with either of these.

With your buffs active, you have the advantage of range with Messmer’s Spear since you can throw it at people. This is a big part of your damage, thanks to the Talismans working in tandem to boost it. Your normal attack animations with the spear aren’t great and are simply a few stabs.

While nice in a pinch, you’ll be reliant mostly on Messmer’s Assault and the charged throw attack. Your Mixed Physic will let you stave off a hit and keep you on the offensive with more fire damage. You’ll also get a buff to your fire damage thanks to Flame, Grant me Strength. Good luck and have fun.