First spotted by weliveinasocietyboi on the Elden Ring subreddit, Bandai Namco has finally clued us in on the stats for one of Elden Ring’s upcoming new starter classes, an absolute unit of a knight who looks tailor-made for strength builds—and whose knuckle dragger spellcasting stats may leave them a prime pick for PvP tryhards.
Most of the reporting on Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition’s showing at Gamescom has focused on its apparently abysmal Switch 2 performance, with both IGN and Nintendo Life criticizing its poor showing. But that’s no skin off my back: I just care about the new character classes and items included in the package, which we’re set to get as a free update on PC.
Bandai Namco shared footage of one of the two new classes on its EU TikTok channel, revealing the stats and giving us a clearer view of the starting equipment for this heavy tank knight, who doesn’t seem to have an officially translated name yet. They boast heavy, black iron armor resembling Tarkus from Dark Souls, no shield, and a brand new curved greatsword. Their starting stats are as follows:
Elden Ring Heavy Knight stats
- Level: 8
- Vigor: 14
- Mind: 7
- Endurance: 17
- Strength: 15
- Dexterity: 11
- Intelligence: 7
- Faith: 7
- Arcane: 9
Just look at them, they can’t even do basic math. On the flip side, this character’s star linebacker stats make them not only a great starting point for a strength build, but an attractive option for melee-focused min-maxers of all stripes.
Many hefty dex weapons still require a big strength investment, and when level restricted like you are in PvP—most of the matchmaking action is below level 200 as I understand—every stat point counts. The comments of weliveinasocietyboi’s post are full of people predicting that this knight will be a new “meta” pick.
I’m still itching to see the stats of the other new class, whose name translates to “Knight of Ides” from the Japanese preview we saw earlier this year. Not only do they come with the DLC Milady light greatsword out of the gate, their armor set looks like a fashion souls cheat code. Unfortunately, we still don’t have a release window for the Tarnished Edition and its corresponding free update for other platforms.