A Beginner's Guide to Dual Wielding and Bleeding with High Dexterity in Elden Ring
This is also focused on the relatively early gear & Ashes of War you can find for a good progression through the Open World, but I'm sure there's stronger ones later in the game.
The following written guide is about how to Dual Wielding and Bleeding with High Dexterity in Elden Ring.
1. Starter Class & Keepsake
Bandit is ideal as we get enough Arcane to wield one of the best early weapons in the game, the Reduvia Daggers right at the start. You can also go with Samurai for 2x Uchigatanas, but this guide is more focused on daggers, although both work just fine for bleed.
Keepsake is Golden Seed as usual for the extra +1 to Flask charges, which really helps in the beginning.
2. Dual Wielding Mechanics & Bleed
As this is a dual wielding build, it's best to explain how it actually works.
First, you need to have weapons of the SAME type in each of your hands, so 2x Daggers or 2x Straight Swords for example. Then, you have to press LB/L1 to actually attack with both your weapons, for a fast flurry of attacks. Using the normal attack button, so RB/R1, will just have you attack with your singular right hand weapon. Lastly, you cannot dual wield when mounted on your horse.
As for Bleed, it works basically the same as the player: you apply bleed until it reaches a certain threshold, depending on how resistant the enemy is, after their own bleed "bar" is full, they'll take massive HP damage as blood loss. This damage is relative to their HP, so works wonders even for bosses, it is not a static value.
With the daggers you'll get from this build, you can proc Bleed on normal enemies in just a few quick flurry of dual wielding attacks.
3. Getting the Best Early Weapon
The Reduvia Dagger is an amazing unique dagger that is fast, procs bleed on hit and last but not least, has a very powerful unique skill that fires a blood projective from rather long range that deals good damage AND a hefty stack of bleed as well.
Getting it is simple and can be done as soon as the start of the game.
Simply head to the Lake Agheel North Grace, and then head East until you hit the river.
Go north up the river corridor, and you'll soon be invaded by an NPC (this works even if you are Offline).
Bloody Finger Nerijus can be quite tough, but fear not because after some time, a friendly NPC will also spawn to help you.
The key to surviving is just dodging/avoiding Nerijus until the NPC comes to your aid, then deal some quick hits after he attacks the npcs, avoid and wait for him to go for the other NPC again, repeat. Defeat him and you'll get Reduvia.
4. The Best Ash of War for Bleed
Now that we have Reduvia, we want to empower our Great Knife to dual wield both of them for even more bleed procs. The key is adding the Ash of War Bloody Slash to our knife.
It not only increases the bleed buildup, but ALSO gives us the Bloody Slash ability which is crazy powerful, if not OP even.
It has somewhat decent range, so you don't have to be extremely close to the enemy, and deals absurds amounts of damage while also being able to hit multiple enemies at once if they are close to one another. The unique part is that it also costs a bit of HP to cast, so try to manage your health as well.
To get it, simply head to Fort Haight and defeat the Golden Knight on the top.
A simple way is to just rush past all the enemies, then when you see the Gold Knight, go up the stairs in the tower to the right, wait for the other enemies to disperse, and go back down to fight only the knight. Summons like even the Three Wolves help a lot, but your Reduvia projectiles will easily bleed the enemy to death FAST.
Don't forget to get the Whetstone item from the Gatefront Ruins, down a set of stairs next to right wall.
5. Getting a Second Great Knife + a second copy of Bloody Slash
You might also consider getting another Great Knife as dual wielding both can result in higher damage than with Reduvia, especially because you can add Bloody Slash to both.
For another Great Knife, go to the Lakeside Crystal Cave in Liurnia of the Lakes.
Right after the initial Grace, there will be a hidden enemy in the bushes, this enemy (and this enemy alone as far as the others in the cave) can drop a Great Knife. Because it is 5 seconds away from the Grace, farming it is super simple and fast.
Now we need another Bloody Slash to add to our new Great Knife. To copy it, we also need an item called Lost Ashes of War. There is a very easy to find one sold by the merchant in the Isolated Merchant's Shack Grace, to the very western end of the Weeping Peninsula Region.
After buying it, duplicate the Bloody Slash Ash by talking with the Blacksmith in Roundtable Hold.
6. The Backup Weapon
Because our Daggers only deal Slash/Pierce damage, it is in our best interest to get a Strike weapon, to hit resistant enemies like the Miners in the many Mining Tunnels of the game. They are actually very easy to kill with Flails, especially the Heavy Attack (R2) which stunlocks them just fine, as an example.
Flails also have an amazing Mounted Charge Attack, by holding R2/RT your character will spin the flail around hitting multiple enemies along the path. This also eliminates a weakness of the build, since we cannot dual wield when mounted.
Getting a Flail is also very simple, simply head to the Gatefront ruins, and loot it from the leftmost cart, behind it.7. Armor & Talismans
For Armor, as far as the early game at least, the Kaiden Knight set not only looks cool, but is also easily farmable. From the Agheel Lake South Grace, there will always be a mounted knight patrolling the road to the right as soon as you rest there. Just defeat the Knight for the set pieces, and even one Bloody Slash is enough to one shot him usually.
For Talismans, I strongly suggest you rush for Radagon's Soreseal, because the +5 Boost to ALL Physical Stats is simply too good to pass. I already have a guide here for how to easily get it even at the start of the game, but since you'll most likely die at the end, I suggest you do it without any Runes on hand:
It will require you to go to Fort Faroth in Caelid and follow a pretty specific path, sprinting past all the enemies.8. Stat/Attribute Allocation
As usual, I recommend you first get around 15 Vigor, because the extra layer of HP really helps in the beginning.
Dexterity will be your main attribute as far as damage, but you don't necessarily have to go all out on it early, because most of your damage will come from the blood loss and blood procs that aren't really reliant on it. I'd rather get around 20-30 Vigor after some points in DEX (such as 35-40) just to keep it safe, especially because enemies soon start dealing quite a lot of damage per hit.
Endurance can be useful as well, because your Stamina can drain fast depending on how many attacks you are unleashing at once.
There are ways to gain Attribute Points for free, however, such as Godrick's Great Rune (+5 to All until death, at the cost of a Rune Arc), besides our Radagon Seal.
With all that out of the way, hope you have fun with the build & guide, your character will certainly be competent enough to take on the Open World as you gain stronger weapons & gear!
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