How to play the Bandit in Elden Ring – Best Strategies and Weapons

The Bandit is one of the ten starting classes for Elden Ring and has more evenly distributed stats than the other classes. Bandits start at level five and are more geared toward dexterity and arcane, with average stats everywhere else. At the beginning of your journey, the Bandit is more of a jack of all trades than a master of none, and this is thanks to their starting items. It’s also excellent for anyone unsure of where they want to take their character.

The Bandit class starts with the Great Knife, a fast attacking knife that can cause bleed damage, a short bow with bone arrows, and a buckler shield. Despite starting with high arcane, the Bandit is not given any magic spells to learn.

The main question is, how will you want to play the Bandit class? The great knife has a quick dash move on L2 (LT on Xbox) that is great for avoiding attacks easily and making follow-ups. Blood loss is also a great attribute on your weapon and can cause hundreds, even thousands of points of extra damage.

With high dexterity, being a bow user is also a great option. Having distance between you and your enemy is always a good thing. Bows are much more viable in Elden Ring than in other Souls games, and arrows can easily be crafted or bought. The starting short bow has a special barrage skill that allows you to shoot off arrows in much quicker succession, albeit for lower damage.

A great early game weapon you can grab for the Bandit class is the Reduvia dagger, which gives you an insanely high blood build. You’ll have to fight Bloody Finger Nerijus, who is close to the game’s starting area, to get the dagger. If you want to dual wield this weapon for even more damage, ask a friend who has the weapon but doesn’t want it to drop it for you. The location for this weapon can be found below.

With so many options available to the bandit giving their starting class, you can relatively easily spec your character however you want as you move through the game.