Best Spells in Elden Ring: How to Become Elden Lord Fast

Ask the Souls community which play style is best and you likely won’t get a consensus. Everyone loves their Strength, Faith or Dex builds, but in Elden Ring, Sorceries take on a more significant role than ever. The best spells in Elden Ring can take you from Tarnished to Elden Lord before Margit even knows it.

If you haven’t given an Intelligence-based build a try, this FromSoft game is a great one to explore it in. You may just have to replay the whole Dark Souls series with magic as your focus.

Glintstone Pebble

The Glintstone Pebble spell is one of the Sorceries in Elden Ring. It’s a ranged spell that creates small stones and launches them at enemies, which you can get if you start as an Astrologer. You can also buy it for 1,000 Runes in the Waypoint Ruins, Curth of Irith and Roundtable Hold — just make sure you have 10 intelligence so you can use it.

What makes this basic spell so good? Not only does it have a decent range, but the cheap Intelligence requirement and 7 focus point (FP) cost to cast give low-level casters a lot of bang for their buck. Glintstone Pebble also inflicts 1.52 times your Sorcery Scaling in damage before resistances, which isn’t too shabby for early game.

Night Comet

Night Comet is another Sorcery and is like Glintstone Pebble’s older sibling. The spell fires a semi-invisible streak of magic at enemies, meaning they won’t be able to dodge it. However, it’s a little harder to find — you can only get it from a chest in Sellia, Town of Sorcery. You’ll also need an Intelligence of 38 to be able to spend 21 FP every time you cast it.

Make this spell even more potent by wielding a Staff of Loss. Just one increases the potency by 30%, while two stacks the benefits. According to the wiki, this makes the strongest of the comet spells. If you’re running around Sellia, consider lighting a lamp at the top of one of the towers in the southwest of town to access the chest containing one of the best spells in Elden Ring.

Terra Magica

This spell doesn’t directly do damage, but it’s a great way to deal a lot more early on. Terra Magica makes a sphere that increases your magic potency while you’re standing in it. You need 20 Intelligence and the ability to spend 20 FP to cast it. To learn it, you’ll need to get through the Academy Crystal Cave and defeat the Crystalian bosses, but taking them down is worth it.

Terra Magica is one of the best spells in Elden Rin because it buffs your magic damage by 35%, which lasts for just over a second when you leave the bubble. That’s nothing to scoff at when you’re wondering why you can’t beat the Fire Giant toward the end of the game. Considering it can apply to weapon damage and stacks with the Magic-Shrouding Cracked Tear, Terra Magica is one of the most useful buffing spells.

Carian Slicer

Need to get some enemies off you in a pinch? Carian Slicar is another of the great Sorceries in the game, which you can get from Sorceress Sellen, Preceptor Seluvis or Miriel, Pastor of Vows for 1,500 Runes after giving them the Royal House Scroll. You only need 14 Intelligence and 4 FP to cast it — very cheap for damage of Sorcery Scaling times 1.8. That potency increases when the player carries the Carian Glintstone Staff.

You can use Carian Slicer as a melee attack to get a much quicker startup than how you typically cast it. So long as you don’t mind accommodating a low move set variety and poise damage, it has the highest DPS (damage per second) output of any other spell. It also deals the most damage per FP cost, so it’s probably worth finding that Royal House Scroll sometime.

Loretta’s Greatbow

Though it costs 24 FP, Loretta’s Greatbow is a fantastic Sorcery if you want to do a lot of damage at range. You’ll also need to have reached 26 Intelligence to be able to cast it. However, tread carefully — you need to beat Royal Knight Loretta to find the spell, so be sure you’re leveled up enough to take her down in the first place.

Once you start using Loretta’s Greatbow, you no longer have to worry about Thops’s Barrier Ash of War — the spell is immune to the parry attempt and will break right through it. You’ll do 22% more damage with 15% greater attack power when you fully charge the bow with the Godfrey Icon buff. You’ll have to charge the bow fully to get the benefits, but it’s powerful enough already and its huge range is what makes it so useful.

Ranni’s Dark Moon

To get this one, you’ll need to be pretty far into Ranni’s — or Renna, if you haven’t gotten too far in the game yet — quest line. You’ll have to get up Chenola’s Rise and find a chest behind a seal at the top of the tower. It’s also necessary to be a bit more leveled up to cast it, since this is a later-game spell. Ranni’s Dark Moon requires 68 Intelligence and costs 57 FP to conjure — plus, it’s the only Sorcery on this list to use two spell slots.

At such a high cost, what makes this spell so good? On top of dealing magic damage, Ranni’s Dark Moon also builds Frostbite on enemies while reducing magic negation up to twenty percent. That extra damage lasts for a whole minute and once Frostbite triggers, the total goes up to around thirty percent. Just make sure not to cast this one too close to swinging fighters — if they hit you, it can cancel the spell’s animation, eliminating the projectile entirely.

Night Maiden’s Mist

Hailing from Nokron, the Night Maiden’s Mist spell is purchasable for 5,000 Runes after you finish Gowry’s quest line. It has a low Intelligence cost of 14 and a moderate FP requirement of 20. The spell creates a mist that spreads around for about 15 seconds while dealing standard physical damage rather than magical. It can activate mobs, so keep your ears perked up and your finger off the cast button while sneaking.

This is one of the best spells in Elden Ring because of how much pain it inflicts for a long period and a cheap cost. You’ll deal around 1,500 damage during the spell’s duration, though you won’t be able to stack multiple mists. However, you can injure enemies through walls and objects, as well as hurt them when they’re glitching into the walls or ground during invasions. You also get the benefit of hitting with standard physical damage rather than magical — helpful for bosses tough against magic.

Shard Spiral

Stop by Sorceress Sellen one more time to buy Shard Spiral for 8,000 Runes, making sure you’ve gone far enough in her quest line to choose to side with her. You’ll need 21 Intelligence to cast it, but it comes at a cost of just 14 FP. Like many of these Sorceries, Shard Spiral deals magic damage, but it does so by twisting through its target rather than exploding on impact. This enables you to cause much more hurt than other spells.

Shard Spiral really finds its use against bigger enemies, so you may want to grab it if Radahn is still giving you issues. Its ability to travel through foes is where it shines. The two bolts will keep going until they dissipate at their maximum range — not super useful for the little guys, but a heavy hitter for large problems.

Use the Best Spells in Elden Ring, Ye Tarnished

Becoming Elden Lord is no easy feat. You have to slash and bash your way through The Lands Between, overtaking demigods and incredibly skilled warriors, to get to the top. Thankfully, magic is incredibly strong and varied in this game, so the best spells in Elden Ring depend on how you like to deal damage. Now go forth with this knowledge, Tarnished — it’s time to disrupt the Golden Order.