Best Star-Lined Sword build in Shadow of the Erdtree

✓ at a glance

• Weapons – Star-Lined Sword and Lusat’s Glintstone Staff.
• Stats – Dex and Intelligence
• Sorcery – Comet Azur, Terra Magica.
• Talismans – Primal Glintstone Blade, Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, Graven-Mass Talisman, Shard of Alexander.
• Armour – Crown of Light.
• Mixed Physick – Cerulean Hidden tear, Stonebarb Cracked Tear / Opaline Bubbletear.

People just discovering the Star-Lined Sword in Shadow of the Erdtree are quickly learning how broken and OP it is. With innate bleed, a stylish Ash of War, and split magic and physical damage, this is the new Dex / Intelligence sword you’ve been looking for. You can only get this weapon from the boss Demi-Human Queen Marigga, in the Cerulean Coast. Here’s how the best Star-Lined sword build looks.

Stats and attributes

To equip the Star-Lined Sword, you need 10 Strength, 23 Dexterity, and 21 Intellect. The points in strength should already be there depending on your starting class, but the main stats for this are Dex and Intelligence. Sadly, the Star-Lined Sword can’t be imbued with magic, nor can you change its Ash of War. As such, you have to double down on the weapon’s innate stats and supplement it with the magic you want to use. Here’s a table outlining the stats you want:

Attribute	Level
Vigor	60
Mind	46
Endurance	30
Strength	10
Dexterity	65
Intelligence	60
Faith	8
Arcane	14

As with any Dex and Int builds, you’ll want to diversify your offensive options with Terra Magica and Comet Azur. We highly recommend these two as Comet Azur is one of the strongest spells in the game. Feel free to take any other sorceries you want. We’ve opted for these two to help out when you don’t want to bother using the Star-Lined Sword. You have 60 Int, so why not use it?

It’s probably not worth your while to level Lusat’s Glintstone Staff to +10, but you can if you’ve got the Somber Smithing Stones to spare. This is mostly useful to get a slight increase in Sorcery Scaling, which will improve your overall spell damage with this staff. Generally, you will want to use the Star-Lined Sword in two hands and then only use the staff to blast things into oblivion with Comet Azur.

Ash of War

• Star-Lined Sword – Onze’s Line of Stars. Fixed, can’t change.
• Lusat’s Glintstone Staff – No skill.

You can’t change this weapon’s Ash of War since it is a unique weapon. This means you’re stuck with Onze’s Line of Stars. Sadly, this means you can’t further benefit from the innate blood-loss build-up on the weapon. You will trigger bleeding intermittently, and this will help in prolonged fights. The good news is Onze’s Line of Stars is an incredibly stylish Ash of War, featuring a multi-hit combo and a cool-as-heck finishing slash from above. Lusat’s Staff doesn’t have an Ash of War, meaning you can always use the Star-Lined Sword attack without having to put it away.

Sorceries

As we’ve explained, you want to use Comet Azur and Terra Magica. While these are the two we recommend most, you can opt to use all of your spell slots with more abilities. Having something to ping at ranged enemies might be helpful, so taking something Glintstone Nails, or even Glintstone Icecrag will help you tackle a wide variety of encounters. If you bring another offensive magic, you should make sure it has a low FP cost or make sure that it suits your vibe and theme. Outside of this, you can take whatever Sorcery you want to play around with. You’ll have over 60 Int, so have some fun with it.

You have a bit of freedom with this build. Since the focus here is the best Star-Lined Sword build, we highly recommend you gear towards melee damage more than anything else. This Talisman setup will help you do both very well, so feel free to experiment and skew more towards magic if you live for Comet Azur.

Feel free to switch these pieces out to something more optimal that will help your stats. We don’t think it’s entirely necessary and fully believe that looking stylish is more important than min-maxing your damage.

Mixed Physick and Great Rune

For your Mixed Physick, we’ve chosen the Cerulean Hidden Tear and the Stonebarb Cracked Tear. The first one will eliminate your FP usage for 15 seconds while the Stonebarb will let your attacks do more poise damage to break their stance easily. You can remove Stonebarb for the Opaline Bubbletear if you want to be a bit safer, but this is entirely up to you. If you open a battle with Comet Azur, this will help you burn down the enemy with little resistance. Likewise, you can spam Onze’s Line of Stars with infinite FP for a time. Either way, it suits either playstyle between melee or magic-focused.

For your Great Rune, we recommend using Godricks Rune. This rune gives you a boost to all your stats across the board, which will let you deal more damage and help offset the HP you lose from taking the Primal Glintstone Blade Talisman. Likewise, if you feel you need more HP and FP, go for Radahn’s Great Rune.

General combat tips

For this build, Comet Azur is entirely optional. If you don’t want to use it, you can just rush straight in for melee damage. However, if you want to use Comet Azur first to soften them up, you can do the following to buff up beforehand:

• Cast Terra Magica.
• Chug your Physick.
• Blast with Comet Azur / Go in for melee strikes with your Ash of War.
• If something survives Comet Azur, go in for melee damage.
• Slice your foes to ribbons with the Star-Lined Sword.

With your buffs active, start a fight by using Comet Azur to burn down a lot of HP. The bubbletear will help you tank any damage you get while stationary and casting. If you don’t want to start with Comet Azur, then go straight in for melee damage. Close the distance and use your Ash of War to deliver several hits and hopefully stagger your foes with blood loss. If you need to create space, you can run away and use magic to cover your retreat.