All Elden Ring Soft Caps: Stats & Attribute List Detailed (2023)

Alongside the reformed orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton winning a game award, Elden Ring also got a piece of the cake by winning the 2022 Game Of The Year award. While that was unsurprising to many, it’s not exactly much of an easy grab for Elden Ring. It stood against Stray, for god’s sake! And also God of War: Ragnarok.

Alongside the reformed orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton winning a game award, Elden Ring also got a piece of the cake by winning the 2022 Game Of The Year award. While that was unsurprising to many, it’s not exactly much of an easy grab for Elden Ring. It stood against Stray, for god’s sake! And also God of War: Ragnarok.

But we’re not here to talk about The Game Awards. We’re here to talk about Elden Ring. Not “talk” as in a discussion, but… you get the idea. Have you heard of the terms soft caps or hard caps and wondered what the hell is that? It’s never too late to learn about some Souls mechanics, is it now? So without further ado, lets-a-go.

What Are Elden Ring Soft Caps?

In Elden Ring, a soft cap is the farthest point you would want to reach in upgrading your character’s stats before spending the points ceases being worth it, while a hard cap is the maximum threshold that a player can spend on their character stats for each attribute.

The difference is quite simple to get a grasp of. While a soft cap is a point where you should stop, but you have the option to advance, the hard cap is the point where you can’t advance or upgrade any further. The hard cap is not of any importance, really, because it’s almost always at level 99. Furthermore, it shouldn’t be your way of measuring when to stop.

Unlike hard caps, soft caps are of utmost importance. But why? Why are they important anyways?

Why Are Soft Caps Essential?

Almost all RPGs have a limited amount of upgrade points that they give you each time you progress, be it a level up or be it a mission passed. You need to consistently know what level of an attribute is a soft cap. So you don’t have to waste your points on insignificant attribute level-ups. Saving the points and spending them evenly around the attributes will make you a virtually unbeatable force.

Unlike some games, upgrading past certain points, which are known as the soft caps, in Elden Ring doesn’t always give you the same outcome. Sometimes an attribute upgrade will give you +90 for like 30 levels until it drops to giving +30, and so on. Effectively, this will diminish your return and the value of your character upgrade points.

Some attributes, like endurance, completely subside the value of your character points by giving you +1 for every three levels you upgrade past a particular level, which is a topic I’ll touch upon later down in the attribute stats list.

One thing I might’ve forgotten to mention is that there are eight attributes in Elden Ring. Each attribute is directly responsible for affecting your character stats. These attributes are Vigor, Mind, Endurance, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Faith, and Arcane. And you bet we’re going to go through each one in the exact same order. So, without further ado, let’s go.

Vigor

The vigor attribute primarily influences the health points your character has. The more vigor you have, the more HP you get. Apart from directly influencing HP, the vigor attribute also influences fire resistance and immunity.

Vigor Stats

Vigor Soft Caps

(40/60)

You can either use the chart or the table above to deduce where the soft caps are. For vigor, the soft caps are level 40, followed by level 60. After level 40, the “increase” value starts to dip. So instead of giving the usual 48+ something HP, directly after, in level 41, the game gives you 26+ HP points. The 40 soft cap is roughly close to a 50% decrease.

However, if you’re in desperate need of HP, you can go up to level 60, but I would advise you not to go past that. Consequentially, the character point you spend on the vigor upgrade after level 60 is simply not worth it because the plunge in value roughly signifies another 50% loss.

How to Increase Vigor

Like the following attributes, you can increase the vigor attribute without knowing how to spend runes wisely or learning the Elden Ring soft caps. This can be done through the items mentioned in the table below:

Mind

Mind is the attribute that governs the focus points “FP” and the focus body stat. While FP resembles the mana from other games, the focus body stat is the resistance to sleep and madness effects. Mind is one handy attribute when it comes to playing with mage characters that rely on FP.

Mind Stats

Mind Soft Caps

(50/60)

While the vigor attribute signified and distinguished the soft caps by a 50% decrease each time, the mind attribute, it’s a little trickier than that. Primarily because the FP gain “increase value” is kept under 10 for the most part, and most are recurring numbers. Because of the limited numbers, the FP gain will go a little like +3 FP, then +3 FP, then +3 FP, then finally +4 FP, and so on.

However, while you can use the table or chart above to indicate where to stop, I would advise you not to go past the 50 mind level. Unless your character is FP hungry, you can upgrade ten more levels and totally stop at level 60 of mind.

How to Increase Mind

Yes, you can increase the Mind attribute without upgrading the runes using the help of the Elden Ring soft caps. Luckily, the game, like any RPG, contains items that increase many attributes, and the mind attribute is not an exception. These are the items needed to increase mind:

Endurance

Chart & Image via: Elden Ring Wiki — TheDezzi55

Chart & Image via: Elden Ring Wiki — TheDezzi55

Endurance is where it gets much more problematic and harder to comprehend. So if I had to simplify it as much as I can: Endurance is the attribute responsible for the Stamina Points “SP,” and robustness which lets you carry more items in the inventory with ease.

For most people who play melee characters, endurance is pretty significant for you. However, for the mage characters, you’re exempted from investing in this attribute. Why? If you have noticed, there are two tables instead of one and two graphs instead of one. But that’s not the problem.

The problem is that endurance is one of the worst attributes to invest in. But why? For the first seven upgrades, you’ll receive zero equipment load. Also, for the most part, investing in endurance for the stamina gain, you’ll receive zero stamina points for every 2-3 upgrades, depending on your level, rendering it the hardest attribute to upgrade.

Endurance Soft Caps

(15/30/34/50) , (25/60)

Alright, reading this will require some focus and good attention from you to get it in the first read. Since endurance primarily affects two stats, It will be harder to know when to stop since one stat completely diminishes the outcome while the other continues.

The stamina stat itself has multiple soft caps. First, level 15 will reduce the frequency of you getting +2 Stamina Points “SP,” while alternating between +1 and +2. However, you shouldn’t stop there if you need stamina. Upgrading past levels 30 and 34 will also reduce the frequency of you getting +2 Stamina Points.

Nevertheless, there’s a point where you should stop upgrading endurance for stamina, and this point is called Level 50. Investing in endurance for the objective of getting more stamina past this point is nothing short of folly.

As for the equip load, its soft caps are much easier to understand. Equip load is soft-capped at levels 25 and 60. You can go past 60, but my advice would be not to, especially after knowing that endurance upgrading past this point is absolutely not worth it.

How to Increase Endurance

Although endurance is a pretty different and distinct attribute, you can increase it without runes. Therefore if you haven’t optimally utilized the Elden Ring soft caps, you can still get a shot at increasing it through the items in the following table:

Strength

From this point onward, every mentioned attribute will scale with the weapons, meaning that the stats are not fixed stats but rather dynamic ones that alter according to your weapon and how scalable it is. Weapon scalability is also a topic we will unravel in a short while.

Strength is the attribute responsible for allowing you to wield heavy weapons, “armaments.” Most importantly, strength scales with scalable weapons to amplify your attack, effectively giving it more damage. The strength attribute also minorly affects the physical defense based on your level, which I will illustrate in the following table.

Surprisingly though, strength is one of the attributes that are available for you to advance past 99. With the help of strength-boosting items, you’ll be able to go up to 150. Also, please note that strength-based armaments usually require a certain level of strength before you can wield “use” it.

Strength Soft Caps

(18/60/80)

Although strength does not have fixed stats, it still has soft caps. Furthermore, that’s when the strength upgrades cease giving satisfying outcomes that scale with the strength-based weapons. However, even though strength has soft caps, yet they’re not usually the same for each weapon or each grade.

Nonetheless, while soft caps differ from one weapon to another, there’s a loose standard that you can apply if you don’t really care about maximum damage output. The standard soft caps for most weapons are level 18, then level 60, and finally level 80.

According to the Elden Ring wiki, some unique weapons and heavy affinities can take a slightly different route, which is soft capping at level 20, level 60, then level 80. And for other armaments and quality affinities, the soft cap might start from level 16 instead of 18 or 20.

How to Increase Strength

Apart from learning all the Elden Ring soft caps and spending your rune points wisely, you can increase and boost the strength attribute through the items in the following list:

Dexterity

The dexterity attribute is pretty much like strength in almost every aspect. Dexterity scales its damage based on the weapon’s scalability grade, and it also affects the wielding of a particular type of weapon. Since dexterity primarily affects the ability to wield “use” dexterity-based armaments, most of them will require a certain level of dexterity.

It’s also worth noting that dexterity has a reducing effect on fall damage. Likewise, the higher the dexterity, the harder it makes it for enemies to knock you off your horse. The attribute affects sorcery and incantations as well, meaning every time you put runes into dexterity, it increases the casting time of said spell.

Dexterity Soft Caps

(18/55/80)

Fundamentally, dexterity scales incredibly well with armaments that are dexterity-based, and on the rarest of occasions, magic items will scale with dexterity. The soft caps for these items consistently start at level 20, then level 50, then level 80, which is the maximum soft cap.

In spite of that, the soft caps for the dexterity attribute are identical to those of the strength attribute. Most dexterity-based armaments are soft-capped from level 18 to level 55, then finally to level 80. Likewise, the soft cap for heavy affinities and unique weapons beings at level 20, then to level 60, and finally level 80.

How to Increase Dexterity

Other than spending your time knowing the Elden Ring soft caps and wisely investing your runes, you can also increase dexterity through any item from the following list:

Intelligence

I know it might be confusing since intelligence is essentially a synonym for dexterity. Intelligence is the required attribute that allows you to do glintstone sorcery. That’s about the only quality that might separate it from dexterity and strength.

The intelligence attribute also minorly affects the magic resistance. From here point onward, things get pretty repetitive when describing the attributes, so let’s cut things short.

Intelligence Soft Caps

(20/50/80)

Since intelligence scales with most weapons, and it’s always different, correspondingly to strength and dexterity, you can follow a loose standard. In this case, the loose standard soft cap while scaling magic damage, fire, holy damage, and lightning begins at level 20, then to 50, and finally to level 80.

It may differ if you want to scale intelligence with physical damage, which might render the soft caps to levels 18/60/80.

How to Increase Intelligence

Your only way of increasing intelligence without spending a couple of minutes remembering the Elden Ring soft caps is by obtaining the items from the following list:

Faith

According to the Elden Ring Wiki, faith is the required attribution that qualifies you to perform sacred incantations. Faith also scales pretty well with the faith-scaling incantations and armaments, indicating that the incantation damage is not static and changes depending on each incantation and faith level.

Faith Soft Caps

(20/50/80)

Sacred incantations are only allowed if you have faith. Since that’s the case, you will have to spend your rune points with extra care. The soft caps for faith start at level 20, then level 50, then finally level 80, which is the maximum amount you would want to invest in faith.

However, if you’re looking to scale incantation damage through faith, the soft caps will start at level 60, then level 80. Of course, the exact rates will vary from one incantation to the other and will depend on the items scaling on incantation.

How to Increase Faith

It’s understandable if you’re not all the way there to scale your damage based on the upgrades that the Elden Ring soft caps offer, but your other way of increasing faith would be through these items:

Arcane

Arcane is the eighth and final main attribute in Elden Ring. It is the attribute that is primarily responsible for [item] discovery. This, in turn, improves the chances of you discovering items in dominated corpses, which can store up to 10 items per corpse.

The arcane attribute is also responsible for vitality, holy defenses, and some types of sorcery and incantations. Each of them is a different stat that affects certain elements of gameplay that we’ve likely covered before in this guide.

Arcane Soft Caps

(20/50/80)

The soft caps for the arcane attribute are similar to the prior three to four attributes, which start from level 20, cap at level 50, and then final cap rests at level 80. However, beware that this is a loose standard. The soft caps can be reduced or upped by a level.

Furthermore, the attack rating will be different according to the weapon scale rating, which we will touch upon next in the guide. The soft caps for the incantation scaling may be a little more distinct than the attack rating, which starts from level 60 and rests at level 80, which is the maximum advised cap.

How to Increase Arcane

Like the other seven attributes, you can increase arcane with the help of items found in defeated corpses of enemies. The following table contains significant items that will boost your arcane:

Weapon Scaling In Elden Ring

Alright, now that we’re done talking about Elden Ring stats and soft caps, let’s talk for a bit about the weapon scaling system. Any armament in Elden Ring has a base attack number that’s shown under the “Attack Power” stats while opening the inventory. The number that follows “Physical,” for example, is the base number of the physical damage the sword deals.

The base damage of a weapon can be increased only by upgrading the weapon itself. However, you might see a plus symbol following the base number. The base number shows that this weapon is affected by your character stats and attributes and will, in fact, scale. This number following the plus symbol is called additional damage.

The additional damage can be increased by upgrading your character attributes, depending on which attribute the weapon scales with, of course, and what attribute controls what type of damage, which is something we’ve talked about before.

Why? Because there’s what’s called a scaling grade, which determines how much a weapon can scale with the attributes. It’s basically like a tier system. And the grades are shown under the “Attribute Scaling” section of the inventory.

The grading system goes like this, from best to worst: (Grade S – Grade A – Grade B – Grade C – Grade B – Grade C – Grade D – Grade E), with grade S being the absolute best scaling grade, and with E being the worst scaling grade. You can utilize this knowledge to decide which weapon is worth upgrading the attributes for and which one is not.

Conclusion

Elden Ring is a fascinating RPG game. With many Role-playing elements like this, we can finally see how the souls sub-genre developed from Dark Souls 1 to Elden Ring. And from what I can observe, the games have come far from their starting point.

You can utilize this guide to find easier ways to progress through Elden Ring, using soft caps and the knowledge of stats and weapon scalability. Or you can simply use it in the PvP mode to get the upper hand on other competitors. What do you think the next step is? Did the guide help you? We’re always eager to hear from you down in the comments.