DS2: Halberd Build Guide (Step-by-Step)
This page explains how to make a Halberd Build in Dark Souls 2
This DS2 Halberd Build Guide will explain how to make a halberd build in Dark Souls 2. If you’re having trouble, we’ve got you covered.
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What Is a Build in Dark Souls 2?
Dark Souls games are famous for making players overcome massive challenge in return for massive satisfaction. You start as a lowly undead, but throughout the game, you collect souls. Souls act as both experience points that you use to level up your stats, and currency you use to buy new gear and consumable items.
A build is a combination of your character’s stats alongside the weapon and rings that they use.
What Goes Into Making a Build?
A build is made up of three main elements: your weapon level which determines your base damage, your stats which determine your bonus damage, and your rings which provide additional effects.
One of the key things to think about is ‘scaling’. Each weapon you come across will have certain stat requirements in order to wield them. Along with the stat requirements, it will also have a letter grade: E being the lowest, S being the highest. A weapon’s bonus damage will increase for every level you invest into a stat that it scales with. The higher the letter grade, the higher the bonus damage.
Choosing a weapon to suit your playstyle, investing in stats that scale with it and choosing complimentary rings all lead to you crafting your build.
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Making a Halberd Build
Making a Halberd build is easy. All the ingredients we need can be found very early in the game. Halberds are great for crowd control, they have a varied move-set, they’re able to easily stagger enemies and you can even attack from behind the comfort of your shield. What’s not to love?
Here’s what you need to do.
STEP 1: Finding the Halberd
The Halberd itself is found very early in the game in the Forest of Fallen Giants. From the Cardinal Tower bonfire, you will make a long journey through the crumbling fortress. You’ll pass a small army of enemies, a rooftop tussle with the Pursuer, and a handful of ambushes all to find that you’ve looped back around to the same bonfire. However, you’ve now opened the route to the Halberd.
To reach it, you need to climb down the ladder from the Cardinal Tower bonfire and run past the elevator that leads to the Last Giant boss fight. Clear any enemies along your way and look for a giant sword statue sticking out from a ledge. You can walk on this sword, but keep in mind that when you do, you will be ambushed by four enemies. At the very end of it you’ll find a corpse with the Halberd.
STEP 2: Reinforcement & Levelling
Now that we have our Halberd, it’s time to make it stronger. We do this in two ways: weapon reinforcement and stat investment. Each level of reinforcement you apply to your weapon, increases its base damage by 10%, but to reinforce weapons, we need two things.
The first is a blacksmith. The earliest of which is Lenigrast who lives in Majula. At first his shop is locked, but you can buy the key from Melentia the Hag at the Cardinal Tower bonfire in Forest of Fallen Giants for only 1000 souls.
The second is Titanite. We need a total of 6 Titanite Shards to reinforce our weapon to +3. After that, we need 6 Large Titanite Shards to reach +6. Then 6 Titanite Chunks for +9. However, only a single Titanite Slab to reach +10. You’ll come across an abundance of Titanite just by playing the game, but here are some locations they can be found.
Lenigrast sells 10 Titanite Shards for 800 souls each. Steady Hand McDuff, the Lost Bastille blacksmith, sells unlimited Large Titanite Shards for 2,500 souls each. Titanite Chunks are harder to come by, but much later in the game Stone Trader Chloanne sells 10 for 6,000 souls each after you obtain the King’s Ring. Finally, the Titanite Slab is surprisingly easy to find. In the Forest of Fallen Giants, kill the enemies in the ballista trap room and use a Pharos Lockstone to open the Pharos Door in the room below where you’ll find a chest with the precious Titanite Slab.
Onto levelling, let’s look at the Halberd’s stats. The regular Halberd requires 20 strength and only 14 dexterity, scaling at a C grade with dexterity, but only a D grade with strength. So, we’re building a dexterity character, right? Wrong!
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As you reinforce your weapon, your scaling can improve. Usually this will mean that your highest grade will receive an increase, but the Halberd is a weapon that flips its scaling as you reinforce it. At +5 reinforcement the scaling balances to a C grade in both strength and dexterity. At +10 dexterity stays at a C grade, but strength becomes a B grade providing a huge boost to its bonus damage. This means that while it may be tempting to invest levels into dexterity, putting them into strength instead will be better in the long run.
Allocate your stats how you see fit to suit your playstyle, but make sure you invest a good portion into your strength stat.
Step 3: Rings
The rings you use with your Halberd build will depend mostly on individual playstyle, but here are four that I would recommend, and they’re all early-game finds.
Stone Ring: deals extra poise damage, more easily staggering enemies. It can be found in Things Betwixt, the first area of the game, by killing the Ogre by the Firekeepers’ Home.
Chloranthy Ring: boosts stamina regeneration and is a staple in almost any Dark Souls 2 build. You can find it in the same room you found the Titanite Slab.
Ring of Blades: provides extra damage to your physical attacks and is dropped upon defeating The Pursuer at either fight in the Forest of Fallen Giants.
Old Leo Ring: boosts the damage of thrust counter attacks. This means if you use the Halberd’s thrust attack and hit an enemy who is swinging to hit you, you will inflict extra damage. This is especially useful as you will thrust attack while holding your shield up, so even if you miss the extra counter damage you will still block the attack. It is dropped upon defeating the Old Dragonslayer in Heide’s Tower of Flame.
This build is great because everything you need for it is found near the very beginning of the game, and it’s not only viable, but powerful enough to see you through to the end credits.
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I hope you found it helpful, let us know in the comments if it was and if there’s anything you’d like to see next. Thanks for reading our DS2 Halberd build guide.
