Elden Ring Soft Caps Explained

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Cody has been in the video game business as part of media and content creation for more than 10 years. During that time, he has contributed and even led some of the largest sites in the world dedicated to gaming and entertainment. He has also dabbled some in PR and was a tester for Activision in the past working on the Call of Duty series. When not playing games or writing about them, he enjoys cooking, sharpening his Japanese skills, and watching the latest anime shows.

Bottom Line Up Front

Soft caps are exactly what they sound like, a limitation you eventually reach with every attribute in Elden Ring. From your Vigor (health) all the way down to your Arcane stats, there is a soft limit by which you pretty much don’t benefit at all from continuing to focus on that stat.

Knowing the soft caps for your preferred stats helps you to build your personalized build in the best way possible properly. This way, you never waste the attribute points you get from each time you level up, and you can ensure that your character is performing the best they possibly can.

Why You Need to Know the Soft Cap for Your Stats

Soft caps are mainly there to help you better plan out how you’re going to make your Elden Ring character. At this point, you likely already know which stats are the most important for your build and what you want to focus on.

Now, it is time to ensure that you are raising the correct stats for your character in the most optimal way possible. There are some stats, for instance, that cap out at around 60.

This is even though the actual max stat level is 99, meaning you could theoretically waste around 39 attribute points on that stat by continuing to increase it.

In this way, you could optimize your build by then taking those 39 points and using them on another stat that you have neglected up until this point.

That could then open the door for you to use weapons you usually wouldn’t be able to use and perhaps even survive some fights that were giving your current build trouble.

Knowing your stat soft caps protects you from wasting your time. After all, even though every attribute can be raised all the way to level 99, that would require you to reach level 713 to see that through, which is unfeasible for most players.

In fact, chances are, most players will only get to around level 150-200 realistically. As such, your stat points are as precious as can be, and you shouldn’t waste half of them unnecessarily.

All Elden Ring Stat Soft Caps

To help you out, here are all of the Elden Ring soft caps that currently exist, courtesy of a few fantastic Reddit users and Elden Ring players who went through and figured out how every stat works.

This covers all eight of the core attributes that you are able to increase as you level up using the Runes found by defeating various enemies in The Lands Between.

Let’s get started on optimizing your character build. I’ll be sure to list out the basic information for each of the soft caps at first, with a further breakdown of how it works for each particular attribute.

Vigor Soft Caps Explained

Initial soft cap: 40
Secondary soft cap: 60
Final soft cap: 90
Hard cap: 99

In this case, Vigor is the core stat that affects how much health your character has. Here are the essential soft caps and how many points you get per level that you need to know about for this Vigor stat:

Level 40: Only 13 health points each time you level up this stat (down from 26 before)
Level 60: 5 or 6 health points per level (alternates between stat levels, recommended soft cap for stopping)
Level 90: 3 or 4 health points per level (alternates)
Level 99: Final possible stat level. Permanent cap

Mind Explained

Initial soft cap: 20
Secondary soft cap: 50
Tertiary soft cap: 55
Final soft cap: 60
Hard cap: 99

Mind is one of the other core attributes in Elden Ring, being the primary determinant of your FP.

This bar is basically your mana in Elden Ring, so if you are someone who uses spells, incantations, and various skills often in your fights, this is the stat that you’ll want to focus on. The more Mind you have, the more skills you’ll be able to use continuously in fights.

Level 20: 6 FP per level increase
Level 50: 8 or 9 FP per level increase
Level 55: 4 to 7 points per level
Level 60: 2 or 3 points per level (recommended stopping point for most players)
Level 99: Hard cap

Endurance

Initial soft cap: 12
Secondary soft cap: 18
Tertiary soft cap: 32
Final soft cap: 50
Hard cap: 99

Endurance is the final of the three core attributes you should concern yourself with in Elden Ring. In this case, it determines your stamina points, much like the previous two stats affected their respective bars.

Level 12: 1 or 2 stamina points per level increase
Level 18: 1 or 2 points per level (the alternating changes)
Level 32: 1 or 2 points (alternating switches again)
Level 50: 1 point per three levels (recommended to stop around level 60)
Level 99: Hard cap

Strength

Initial soft cap: 20
Secondary soft cap: 55 (recommended to stop around level 60)
Final soft cap: 80
Hard cap: 99

For most melee weapons, the Strength attribute is going to be your best friend. If you like to swing around a sword or any weapon that uses the Strength attribute to determine how well it does, this is the stat you should focus on right from the start to excel in combat.

Dexterity

Initial soft cap: 20
Secondary soft cap: 55 (recommended to stop around level 60 for most players)
Final soft cap: 80
Hard cap: 99

Dexterity is the critical attacking stat for many of the other weapons in Elden Ring that don’t use the Strength stat. In addition, it is pretty helpful for even spellcasters since it can reduce the time to spell and help with your mount. Dexterity covers a lot of ground with its single attribute.

Intelligence

Initial soft cap: 20
Secondary soft cap: 55 (recommended to stop at around level 60 for most players)
Final soft cap: 80
Hard cap: 99

Now we get to the three stats that generally affect spells, specific skills, and other magical parts of Elden Ring. This gets intriguing because, while the same rules generally apply to Intelligence and its friends as the last two combat-related stats, there are some unique aspects worth mentioning.

For starters, Intelligence is the stat that deals with the various spells and incantations that have to do with this attribute. In general, that means ones that are damage-focused and the like.

In addition, it has to do with magical resistance, which is helpful for making a build that is resistant to all sorts of damage and bosses.

Faith

Initial soft cap: 20
Secondary soft cap: 55 (recommended to reach level 60 for most players)
Final soft cap: 80 (some diehard Faith builds can stop here)
Hard cap: 99

Faith is mainly in a similar boat to how the Intelligence stat works. In this case, it has the same general soft caps, and it even has the same recommendations that I would give to the Intelligence players out there. The difference, of course, is the utility of the Faith stat.

When it comes to Faith, this attribute focuses on Faith-based incantations and various spells. If you don’t use a Faith build with abilities that use that stat, this is obviously not for you.

Arcane

Initial soft cap: 20 (However, most players should stop leveling this stat at around level 35 or 40.)
Secondary soft cap: 55 (Final recommendation for a small number of players is around level 60)
Final soft cap: 80
Hard cap: 99

Finally, there is the Arcane attribute. This is one of the most intriguing and sometimes even confusing attributes for some players. Arcane has a lot of parts that fall into its category.

For instance, it is there for boosting the player’s resistance against death skills and even holy moves.

At the same time, it can play a role in helping with various statuses like bleeding, poison, and the like.

And then there are even a few rare weapons that benefit the most from the Arcane stat, and perhaps its most important aspect in possibly increasing the number of items an enemy drops. This stat covers a lot of ground, and it can be mildly helpful for a fair number of players.

FAQs

Question: What is the Soft Cap in Elden Ring?

Answer: The soft cap generally appears to be around level 55-60, or even level 80, for most stats in Elden Ring. How the soft cap works are that once you hit specific soft caps, you’ll get diminishing returns on how much each point boosts that particular stat, making it nearly useless.

Question: What are the Levels for Soft and Hard Caps in Elden Ring?

Answer: Soft caps generally vary depending on the stat, but the primary soft caps are usually around level 55, level 60, and level 80. There are soft caps before those levels, but they aren’t as dire. The hard cap in Elden Ring, meanwhile, is level 99 for every attribute.

Question: Does Dexterity have a Soft Cap in Elden Ring?

Answer: Yes, Dexterity has multiple soft caps in Elden Ring. The first one happens at level 20, where you start to see less of a difference with each stat increase, but it isn’t that bad.
However, the second soft cap is much more noticeable at level 55, while the third soft cap at level 80 is especially notable.

How to Respect Your Stats in Elden Ring

If I haven’t made it clear enough yet, learning about the soft caps for your attributes in Elden Ring is essential to maximizing your time in the game.

While you most likely won’t have to deal with more than two or three soft caps in your entire adventure in The Lands Between, it’s still worth noting.

After all, even if you beat all of the bosses available in Elden Ring, there is a chance you might use up a few dozen attribute points that aren’t doing you much good for building out your character.

But even if you’ve already made this mistake or you regret focusing on certain stats, not all hope is lost.

With the, unfortunately, quite rare Larval Tear item, it is possible to respec your character and redistribute your attribute points from scratch using your current level.

This is excellent for trying out other builds, seeing if it is possible to optimize your character’s stats further, or even fixing a mistake of going past your soft caps.

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