In this Lords of the Fallen Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you my Death Knight Build. This is a midgame Build that focuses on using Inferno and Radiance together with a Catalyst that casts umbral magic, wither damage, and physical damage.

Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build – Umbral Wither Build Guide

So let’s take a look at the Sword we’re using for this Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build. We’re using the Rosamund’s Sword, which is a Longsword so it’s somewhere between a Short Sword and Grand Sword. It swings kind of in the middle in terms of attack speed and does decent damage. Half of its damage is physical, half is wither. The Rosamund’s Sword has some decent requirements in Strength and Agility, Radiance and Inferno in order to use and scales with all four Attributes. 

It also does frostbite buildup on each swing. Frostbite sort of builds up until it triggers like a damage explosion and also reduces the target’s stamina by half. This is particularly good if you’re fighting another player. Although the Death Knight Build is not PVP-oriented specifically but if you happen to get invaded that’s really good against them.

Now some people might be wondering why wither damage? When you look at enemies and hit them with wither damage, you’ll see their bar go white. And then, you need to connect again in order to rip off that wither health just like it would happen if it was happening to you. You might think that this involves extra steps and in some cases, you may be right. But what wither damage is really good at doing is dealing with umbral enemies.

When you’re in the Umbral Realm and you’re fighting the creatures there, most of them are weak to wither damage which are normally resistant to just about every other type of damage, making it very strong. 

Now the trick about Rosamund’s Sword it’s not available until probably a good 10 hours into Lords of the Fallen so you’re going to have to use something else in the meantime. I recommend using any Weapon that has high base damage, which doesn’t have great scaling in order to deal more damage unless it’s Inferno or Radiance scaling. This is because it’s hard to find any other Weapon earlier in the game that scales with either of them so it doesn’t matter too much what you initially use since you’re not really putting points into Strength and Agility.

Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build – Gameplay and Other Equipment

Now for our Shield, I have the Pale Eye Shield, which is acquired very early on in Pilgrim’s Purge. It has requirements of Radiance and Inferno that are great because these are the things we’re focusing on for this Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build. And I’ve socketed it with two ruins – the first one can be obtained in the Sunless Skein that basically gives you Mana regeneration over time every time you cast your Spells. Meanwhile, the other one provides you with Health regeneration over time so if you take a little bit of chip damage here and there, it’s not the end of the world.

Now for the Catalyst, I’m using the one that you can buy from Molhu. Charm of Fortune’s Sight has decent spellpower alongside four Spell slots and it’s a little ways into the game before you can gain another one of these. So by the time you do get a second version, you’re probably going to have your first one upgraded and because of this, I don’t see a lot of point in switching. 

Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build – Spells

And for Spells, I’m using Umbral Orb, which is your go-to Ranged Spell since it’s predominantly cheap. It’s really good at dealing with pesky ranged enemies that you can’t reach and it’s a nice option to have.

Next, I have Umbral Weapon to further buff your Weapon with more damage, particularly wither damage so when you hit enemies or other players, you’re going to be dealing more damage. This is a good buff early on in the game but you might substitute this for Poison Weapon in order to do poison buildup. It’s much better against a Boss rather than regular enemies so you’ll want to use the Umbral Weapon instead. 

So I also have Latimer’s Javelin, which is an Umbral Spell that you get from defeating The Hushed Saint and buying it from Molhu from his remembrance. This functions similarly to a Ranged Spell that does AOE on impact. It’s really nice for dealing with groups of enemies because you’ll be able to deal high damage by just trying to pick them off real quick. I highly recommend this one if you can get it.

And then I also really like Umbral Guardian and what this does is it summons a giant eye that follows you around for 20-30 seconds. It constantly inflicts wither damage to nearby enemies and this can even deal with them at a much farther distance than you would think. But it’s really good when you’re fighting tough targets or groups because it helps thin them out a bit or soften them up. 

Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build – Armor and Accessories

For Armor, I’m using the Angel of the Void Set. You can find this not too far into the game in the Fen area in a chest in the Umbral Realm. The set is really awesome-looking because it makes you appear like a Skeletor so it fits the Death Knight theme. It also has decent protection. But remember that the Armor you use for this Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build is not particularly important since you can use whatever you want.

For Necklace, I’m using the Faceless Carving, which increases your wither damage and wither defense. You really want to crank this damage type and lean into it when you’re fighting against enemies so you can rip off huge chunks of Health. At the same time, I also have the Mineowner’s Ring. This increases max stamina and stamina regeneration. If you look at our Stats, you’ll notice we don’t have a ton of Endurance for this Build and that’s kind of a weak spot so it’s important to get additional stamina to swing, block, and dodge more while increasing stamina regeneration. 

And then I’m also using Ring of Night’s Fire, which further boosts fire and wither damage. Again, we’re focusing on wither damage for this Build but you could use something else that boosts physical damage or just damage in general. 

Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build – Character Creation

So when you’re taking a look at what starting Class to play this Death Knight Build with, the Putrid Child would be ideal. It’s perfect because of their Stat distribution but if you’re playing for your first playthrough and you don’t have that unlocked yet, you probably want to take either the Pyric Cultist or Orian Preacher to have high starting Radiance or Inferno. It’s not super important which Class you select though because most of them have a pretty even Stat distribution.

You’ll notice that you need 13 Strength and 13 Agility just to meet the requirements of the Weapon we’re using so you can probably do this with just about any Class.

Generally, the strategy that I employ with this Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build is kind of similar to how I play my Paladin Build except that we have different buffs and Spells. You’re going to want to try and keep Umbral Weapon up all the time to buff your damage constantly to hit as hard as possible. Whenever you run out of this, you’ll want to rebuff with it. And because you have Mana regeneration on your Shield, you should be back at full Mana every time you cast this.

As I mentioned earlier, you’ll have Poison Weapon to use on specific Bosses because it ticks hard in this game. And then you’ll use Umbral Orb as your Ranged Spell if an enemy is too far away and you can’t get to them. Remember that your Mana is going to regenerate but you might have to replenish it manually, and sometimes, using Mana Stone. Another reason why I like Umbral Orb is it pierces its first target so it can go in a line through a bunch of enemies. 

Lords of the Fallen Death Knight Build – Attributes

So talking a bit about Stat distribution, you’ll notice we have 13 Strength and 13 Agility to meet the requirements of the Weapon that we’re using. This scales with both Attributes so you can increase them at some point to deal more damage. And then, you could theoretically use a different Shield because of your Strength score. 

Next, we have Endurance only at 13 and the reason why it’s so low is due to the other things that we need to invest points into such as Vitality. Vitality is good because you’re playing a Melee Build first and a Ranged Build second so you’re going to get hit periodically and if you have a low Health pool, you’re going to die real fast.

And then we have 22 points in Radiance and Inferno to meet the requirements for Umbral Guardian and there will be more Umbral Spells that you’ll want which have at least this much. But you’ll eventually want to increase this to boost the damage of your Weapon due to the scaling. So you really have a lot of room to grow with this Umbral Wither Build.

This would probably be phenomenal in a new game plus run where you can take your Radiance and Inferno up to 40 and then crank up your Strength, Agility, and Endurance to gain even more damage out of your Weapon. These will also allow you to wear heavier Armor and have more stamina.

Obviously, there are other Spells that you can use with this Build besides the ones that I recommended because they’re just good early on in the game. There are other Spells you can get from remembrances and stuff like that. I tried some of them but they didn’t work as great for me. 

Past the midpoint of the game, you’ll discover more Umbral Spells, which I suggest you try to see if they incorporate well into your playstyle. 

Final Thoughts

So that wraps up the Death Knight Build, which is a ton of fun to play. I’ve been invaded a couple of times using this Build and it absolutely owns in PvP because people are not prepared for the frostbite that’s really, really effective at dealing burst damage, particularly against those with low stamina. They’re also unprepared for the wither damage. And you’re quite tanky here on top of having a lot of ranged options. 

As always, if you have tips for other players and questions, leave them in the comments. We will do more Builds like a primarily Bow Build coming up. If there’s something that you guys want to see, let me know as well.