Shields in Elden Ring are pieces of protective equipment which provide defense against the world's Enemies and Bosses. Typically wielded in the off-hand, Shields are capable of guarding, parrying, bashing, or even something entirely unique with their respective Ashes of War. They can be two-handed for increased stability against incoming attacks. Most Builds can benefit from having a Shield equipped, even with infrequent use.
Please visit Shields Comparison Table for a minimalistic view with Max Upgrade stats.
Suggested Early Game Shields
Some useful aspects to look out for in selecting an early game shield are:
- Modest stat requirements to wield
- Ease of acquiring
- Decent Guard Boost (How much stamina is used per block)
- 100 Physical Damage Reduction (Anything less than 100% would only be useful in specific builds.)
Some candidates:
- Beast Crest Heater Shield:
- 100% physical negation, 51 Guard Boost, 10 Str required, 3.5 weight
- Looted from a chest in a camp northeast Limgrave, past the Warmaster's Shack
- Very light for a Medium Shield, has low requirements, while still having 100% physical negation and decent Guard Boost. An ideal earlygame selection for many characters.
- Good variety of other heater shields with virtually the same requirements later on for fashion.
- Brass Shield:
- 100% physical negation and decent elemental defense, 56 Guard Boost, 16 Str required, 7.0 weight
- Easily farmed from Soldiers all across the game.
- Has the best Guard Boost among Medium Shields, but is also the heaviest and requires significant Strength investment.
- Great Turtle Shell:
- Comes with the Barricade Shield skill that temporarily enhances Guard Boost and lets your shield deflect more attacks before running out of Stamina.
- Passive stamina regeneration bonus (+8%) while in use. This passive remains active if you're two-handing your main weapon.
- 87% physical negation, 49 Guard Boost, 14 Str required, 5.5 weight
- Obtained at the top of a tower accessed by Spiritspring Jump near the Castle Morne Rampart Site of Grace in the Weeping Peninsula.
- Formerly a popular choice before its physical negation was reduced in v1.03.
- Carian Knight's Shield:
- 100% physical negation, 71% magic negation, 49 Guard Boost, 10 Str/10 Dex/15 Int required, 4.5 Weight.
- Dropped by defeating Moongrum, Carian Knight near the boss room of Raya Lucaria Academy.
- Excellent damage negation against both physical and magic attacks, but requires Intelligence investment and defeat of a midboss.
- Buckler:
- Comes with the Buckler Parry skill with faster startup and generous parry frames.
- Poor damage negations and Guard Boost. 8 Str/13 Dex required, 1.5 weight
- Starting equipment for Bandits. Otherwise bought from Gatekeeper Gostoc at Stormveil Castle.
- For those who prefer to parry rather than block.
- Can be substituted by putting Ash of War: Golden Parry or Ash of War: Carian Retaliation on any small or medium shield.
When selecting a Shield players need to factor in many things including; Requirements, Weight, Guard Boost, and the Damage Reductions of the Shield.
- Requirements: What stats are needed to use the shield effectively.
- Weight: How much the shield weighs, which affects your Equip Load.
- Guard Boost: The higher the Guard Boost, the less Stamina that's consumed for each attack you block. Upgrading shields increases their Guard Boost every other level (+3, +5, and so on).
- Type: While a shield's Guard Boost determines how much stamina is consumed when you block, the shield's Type (small, medium, or great) determines which attacks will bounce off of it, briefly stunning the attacker in a recoil animation (a perfect opportunity for a guard counter). Greatshields will bounce the most attacks, while small shields will only bounce very light attacks. For example, Brass Shield has a higher guard boost than Wooden Greatshield but will not bounce any attacks from a Banished Knight, while the Wooden Greatshield will bounce most normal attacks from the same enemy.
- Damage Reduction: How much of each damage type will be prevented when you block an attack with the shield. Physical damage reduction applies to Standard, Strike, Slash, and Pierce damage. For example, if a shield with 59% Fire Damage reduction blocks an attack that would normally deal 132 Fire Damage, you'll only take 54 damage.
- Damage: To attack with a shield, two-hand it or equip it to your right hand. Unless you're doing this, a shield's damage stats are irrelevant.
- Special Skill: Infusing Ash of War: No Skill onto your shield lets you continue to use the shield to block attacks without losing access to your main weapon's skill.
Elden Ring Shields List
Small Shields
Small Shields are a type of Shield that usually weigh very little and have the least form of protection from attacks. They are often used by players who prefer Parrying rather than Blocking.
Medium Shields
Medium Shields usually have better stability and damage reduction than small shields, but at the price of increased weight.
Greatshields
Greatshields boast the greatest guarded damage negation and blocking stability but suffer from significant carry weight.
AnonymousI want the dark hand shield again, always looked cool for a “spell blade” character wasn’t the best option to block with but always looked cool to be casting spells and blocking a strike with a swirling vortex
- Anonymous
Shields are still good in pve, for some enemies like leonine misbegotten theyre way better than trying to dodge everything, but bring one to pvp and you're just wearing a "kick me" sign
- Anonymous
TFW when no Albinauric small shield(the dirty, wood-looking thing with vegetation on it) drop in Academy Town.
- Anonymous
they should've made a shield that increases the number of runes gained and other one increasing discovery
- Anonymous
They should make a shield in the DL that’s ash of war acts as a faith seal.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
all i want from the dlc is the twin shields that nox monks sometimes use. shields that work as fist weapons would be hilarious and fun. ngl i spent hours grinding those guys on my first playthrough (shield only) and was sorely dissapointed that it was a non-player weapon.
- Anonymous
Id like to see something akin to Valor Heart in dark souls 3 again, it was fun to use and if you picked and chose when to attack you could be a real pain but choose wrong via either lag or attacking into something with hard guard break get youre guard broken and open for a repost. Miss that weapon and truth be told would like to see something like that again
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
I miss being able to block without looking like a fool. I always thought it added more depth, too. Nowadays, the only defensive option they want you to use is dodge. But I consider it a lot more difficult and complex to properly manage your stamina during blocking than to press circle in the correct 30 frame window for immediate invulnerability. I don't know, combined with having to parry bosses three times for a riposte, it feels like this game just lacks defensive options. Compared to Demon's Souls Dark Souls 1 at least, never played the Dark Souls sequels.
- Anonymous
All you have to look for is a Greatshield with 100% physical resistance, highest guard Boost, and lowest Strength requirement.
- Anonymous
Definitely need more shields. An infusable lightning-resistant Greatshield is top on my list, personally, but I just wanted some decent variety.
I found an albinauric with a weird orange shield in Caria Manor's graveyard past lorreta. I can't find anything on him, and wanna know what he's got
- Anonymous
lol i was thinking about how much i would love to have more gimmick shields and then i read the comments and most people are complaining about how are too many LOL
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
THERE ARE TOO MANY DAMN SHIELDS IN THIS GAME CUT EAT CATEGORY IN HALF AND REBALANCE THEM FROM! ALL CAPS!
What the hell does Rst mean and why does the wiki not explain it?
- Anonymous
I avsolutely HATE that every thrust attack does chip dmg through shields. As if thrusting weapons didnt have enough pros already...
- Anonymous
Is there any point to meeting the stat requirements of a shield if you're not attacking with it? The stat penalty only applies to its attack damage.
- Anonymous
I've read the page about the hardness tiers for how different weapons and shields will act if they come into contact with each other and I thought I had a basic understanding of it but now I'm not so sure. I only ever use a brass shield +16 with barricade shield AoW on it and I've never felt like that combo wasn't giving me enough protection. I've used it on some hard hitting enemies and I only take a small stamina hit even from blocking heavy attacks. But I hit Malenia's difficulty hard for the first time yesterday and there's no denying she is a cheap OP 1st class c**t of the highest order. I don't see any enjoyment or fun from banging my head against a wall dying over and over trying to beat her. So I started trying the finger print shield, I haven't upgraded it because I never thought I'd use it because of the massive weight penalty that goes with it.
The finger print shield is how I knew I needed clarification from someone who knows more than I do. I made the troll outside the secluded cell all aggro with me then I used the brass shield to block it's attacks while casting barricade shield between hits and even blocking heavy attacks from that troll the stamina hit from each attack wasn't much at all. I tried the same with the finger print shield but the stamina loss from blocking the trolls attacks with that shield was considerably higher.
Can anyone explain what's going on here? I'm assuming the finger print shield is in the top hardness tier and can make weapons bounce off, preventing combos and making the attacker flinch. But the brass shield with barricade shield cast on it has a higher guard boost so drains less stamina from each blocked attack, is that correct?
I don't want to use the resources to upgrade the finger print shield knowing I'd only be doing it for one boss fight. But how high does FPS's guard boost get if it is fully upgraded?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Kill Lhutel the Headless at black knife cata for this shield, easy farm, run past him and open doors, hit grace in cata, will always spawn facing away from you and doesnt move until attacked, backstab and guard counter him to death.
- Anonymous
Does anybody here want the shield from a Shielded Silver Tear? I think I this would be a great medium shield or possibly great shield?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Incredibly disappointed there's no equivalent to Orma and Reeves or the Twin Door Shield. That's something that I've noticed a lot of in the game. There were a lot of cool ideas that should've been expanded on in the previous games, but were just outright removed in this game. Pretty sad if you ask me.
- Anonymous
Why, oh why, can't we get the giant disk that the Fire Giant uses as an offensive greatshield with slams and swipes instead of just bashes?
- Anonymous
why shield with under 100% physical damage negation (95% of spiked greatshield for example) sometimes can block all physical attacks from enemies? does that hit have to be low on power or something?
- Anonymous
Is the level of your shield the same as your weapon in terms of matchmaking? I'm assuming it is, but I cant find an answer anywhere.
- Anonymous
Can someone count every shield for me I want to get every single one
- Anonymous
I really liked the Redmane Greatshield. its both looks good/have stats and you can put ashes of war on it. Totally worth farming
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
I wish there was at least one shield that had a similar shape to the crest shield. The closest in size are the heater and kite shields, but they're just slightly too small.
- Anonymous
Wrong link on the Horse Crest Wooden Shield and Marred Wooden Shield. The first one leads to the Marred Wooden Shield and the second one to the Twinbird Kite Shield.
C'mon man, I just wanted a perfectly round, not oval, but round MEDIUM shield with 100% PHYSICAL block for my solaire cosplay build.
Oh well. At least I can reasonably do an Ostrava cosplay build.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
anyone know where we get the 2nd generation albinauric shields? the wooden ones
- Anonymous
Flame Crest Wooden shield link redirects you to a different shield, please fix
- Anonymous
For people that just want to know what shields have what passives, such as 2HD players, they are:
Greatshields (probably not useful for 2HD due to high weight)
Ant's Skull Plate - 13.5 wgt, 28 Str - +60 Immunity
Eclipse Crest Greatshield - 15 wgt, 32 Str - +50 Immunity, Robustness, and Focus
Icon Shield - 11.5 wgt, 22 Str - Regenerate 3 HP/second
Medium Shields
Great Turtle Shell - 5.5 Wgt, 14 Str - +7-8% Stamina recovery
Twinbird Kite Shield - 4.5 Wgt, 12 Str - +5% attack and defense when below 20% HP
Small Shields
Ice Crest Shield - 3 Wgt, 9 Str - +40 Robustness and Immunity
Perfumer's Shield - 1.5 Wgt, 8 Str - +40 Immunity
Rift Shield - 2 Wgt, 8 Str - +40 Focus
Shield of the Guilty - 2 Wgt, 8 Str - +50 Focus
Smoldering Shield - 3 Wgt, 10 Str, 9 Dex, 12 Fai - +30 Robustness
Spiralhorn Shield - 2 Wgt, 8 Str, 10 Dex - +50 Immunity, Robustness, and Focus
In short, you probably want the Spiralhorn Shield for protection from debuffs (Eclipse Crest Greatshield only if you'll be using it), or Great Turtle Shell for stamina recovery. And you can get any of these really early in the game since the first two are in Liurnia and the turtle shell is in Weeping Peninsula.
- Anonymous
Can someone add this to the wiki? You can back step while blocking. Any shield or weapon. You can lower the guard at any point during back step but can’t start guarding during a backstep. Doesn’t appear to be a cost penalty for blocking hits mid back step but it seems to stop your backwards momentum. Very helpful on my two handed str weapons if I want to use backstep bait attacks safely in a pvp duel.
- Anonymous
A couple of articles lead to 404s because there's a '+' before the article name,
Example:
https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/+Smoldering+Shield = leads to 404
https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Rickety+Shield = leads to article
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
The link to "Albinauric Shield" on this page is broken due to there being an inappropriate + between a / and the word Albinauric.
What should read as https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Albinauric+Shield
reads instead as https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/+Albinauric+Shield
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
For example: FINGERPRINT STONE SHIELD +10 with shield amulet will have 0 stamina cost per hit. You can simply hold your position until Malenia's dance is over and survive it without losing any health or stamina.
- Anonymous
Yes, the medium shields get the same parry frames with certain ashes of war. Still a shoutout out to the rickety shield for it's low weight (1,0) if you only use shields to parry, and want to weight optimize your builds. Another strong contender is the spiralhorn shield for double the weight, but which adds some useful resistances especially for pvp against mainly bleed/frost/madness and to a lesser degree rot and poison (who cares about death, lmao).
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Small shields need passive buffs to be worth using, (can't) change my mind.
- Anonymous
I wish blessed infusion worked like ds3. Still, this shield, at 95% physial at least matches any blessed infusion for a useable greatshield. Though in ds3 we could put blessed on the most junky lightweight shields and throw it on our backs to get , what was it 2 hp/sec per blessed item when maxed out in ds3? My ds3 bling was hollow greatsword black armor set and a broken wooden blessed plank shield. Depressssed guts... at least the r1 greatsword had a correct back and forth slam in ds3... now it's like someone using a baseball bat. tsk guts does not approve. has to use a zwi or similar now.
- Anonymous
The details in some of these shields are a little odd but they're still cool in a way
- Anonymous
Ok maybe I'm crazy, but if you put the no skill ash of war on two greatshields and dual wield them, do you unlock a powerstance moveset?
- Anonymous
Does the stability/boost of a shield also affect the stamina loss of a partial/missed parry?
- Anonymous
DS3 = twin giant shield
Elden Ring = can't even double wield shields. 0/10.
- Anonymous
DS3 = twin giant shield
Elden Ring = can't even double wield shields. 0/10.
- Anonymous
what is the point of upgrading shields? it seems like all it does is increase damage but why would i want that?
By the way, you don't NEED 100 physical block so long as it's close. The difference between 95 and 100 even for heavy attacks is about a throwing knife.
Stability is more important.
- Anonymous
Shame they didn’t change shields directly in 1.04. I think the great shield talisman nerf of high boost shields and the buffs to shield bash and crash were good changes, but there’s so many shields that are massively underwhelming. Most of the somber/boss shields don’t have unique passives or skills, why add so many unique shields in the game if you don’t give anyone a reason to use them?
- Anonymous
I wish they would've included a couple shields along the same aesthetic as the crest shields from DS3. I really like the style of those shields and was surprised not to see any in this game.
- Anonymous
Shield Order in Inventory
Small Shields:
Rickety Shield, Riveted Wooden Shield, Blue-White Wooden Shield, Scripture Wooden Shield, Red Thorn Roundshield, Pillory Shield, Buckler, Iron Roundshield, Gilded Iron Shield, Man-Serpant's Shield, Ice Crest Shield, Rift Shield, Perfumer's Shield, Shield of the Guilty, Spiralhorn Shield, Smouldering Shield, Coil Shield
Medium Shields:
Hawk Crest Wooden Shield, Horse Crest Wooden Shield, Candletree Wooden Shield, Flame Crest Wooden Shield, Marred Wooden Shield, Sun Realm Shield, Round Shield, Large Leather Shield, Black Leather Shield, Marred Leather Shield, Heater Shield, Blue Crest Heater Shield, Red Crest Heater Shield, Beast Crest Heater Shield, Inverted Hawk Heater Shield, Elipse Crest Heater Shield, Kite Shield, Blue-Gold Kite Shield, Scorpion Kite Shield, Twinbird Kite Shield, Brass Shield, Banished Knight's Shield, Albinauric Shield, Beastman's Jar Shield, Carian Knight's Shield, Silver Mirrorshield, Great Turtle Shell
Greatshields:
Wooden Greatshield, Lordsworn's Shield, Briar Greatshield, Spiked Palisade Shield, Icon Shield, Golden Beast Crest Shield, Manor Towershield, Crossed-Tree Towershield, Inverted Hawk Towershield, Dragon Towershield, Distinguished Greatshield, Gilded Greatshield, Cuckoo Greatshield, Redmane Greatshield, Golden Greatshield, Haligtree Crest Greatshield, Crucible Hornshield, Dragonclaw Shield, Fingerprint Stone Shield, Eclipse Crest Greatshield, Ant's Skull Plate, Erdtree Greatshield, Jellyfish Shield, Visage Shield, One-Eyed Shield
Someone order them on the page pls
- Anonymous
For lazy people:
Small shield: Spiralhorn (increases all status resistances);
Medium shield: Either brass (highest guard boost) or Carian (high phys and magic resistances, good stability);
Heavy shield: Jellyfish (boost att% only when not two-handed), Fingerprint (highest guard boost), Icon (hp regen when not two-handed). Visage and one eyed if you ever wish to deal damage, or ant's skull if you want best deflection. Erdtree can deflect spells, but it's meant to go in pvp.
Thanks me later.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Fingerprint shield + greatshield talisman = 100 guard boost
Thank me later
- Anonymous
This is really petty, but for the sake of fashion, there isn't a decent perfectly round medium shield with 100% physical reduction. The Albinauric is close, but its an oval and too gaudy for the aesthetics I'm looking for. The Black Leather Shield looks amazing, but its physical negation is only 88.
- Anonymous
Maybe this is a small nitpick for a niche playstyle, but I'm disappointed there's not a powerstance moveset for shields. DS3 already had the giant door shield they could recycle the animations from for greatshields, and the small/medium shields have a similar but slightly slower moveset to single hand fist weapons so they could give them a slower version of the dual fist moveset with block frames. Shouldn't be much extra work for the devs while giving shields more variety on top of the unique ashes of war they get.
- Anonymous
"Damage: To attack with shield, use it in both hands. Then the shield's damage stats apply, outside of that situation offensive stats are useless for shields."
should be
"Damage: To attack with shield, use it in your right hand or both hands. Then the shield's damage stats apply."
- Anonymous
Does guard damage override armor damage negation? So if I run naked there would be no difference in incoming damage if I wore the heavy when blocking attacks with a great shield ?
- Anonymous
What is the gun shield from the Elden Ring game trailer where the character used a shield that had a gun connected to it and shot a dragon with it?
- Anonymous
Is there a list of shield with special effects like the turtle shield? Would be very useful for 2 handers
- Anonymous
Can you please order the shields the same way they are in-game? It makes cross-referencing much easier.
- Anonymous
Bro I really wanna make a build just using the one-eye, coil, and visage shields
- Anonymous
The Carian Knight's Shield doesn't have the best magic negation among medium shields at 71%. Silver Mirrorshield is also medium and blocks 89% of magic. The latter is also lighter and requires less intelligence (10 vs. 15), but has slightly less stability.
- Anonymous
They really needs to buff greatshields or nerf medium shields. It makes no sense to use half of the greatshields - like the golden beast crest shield, when medium shields like brass shield have better parameters.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
I want to do a shield-only run of Elden Ring.
What are the best shields for combat? Preferably melee, I want to bonk some baddies with a big ol’ shield.
- Anonymous
is there a shield of want to increase the soul/rune besides golden scarab
- Anonymous
Do shields get increased guard stabilityby upgrading? It doesn't show it for +1 but it might upon further upgrade levels?
There are currently 69 (nice) different shields available in game.
- Anonymous
New patch says "Increased shield’s effectiveness". Wonder what exactly they did with it....
- Anonymous
Wish we had a faith shield to match the coded sword or cipher pata.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
are shields without barrier even usable? i was using the eclipse crest towershield against a number of enemies and the ones where it mattered-namely bosses and supersized creatures just break the guard with a single combo
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
do passive effects only work with like shield block or can something get poisoned just by blocks
- Anonymous
Dear Fromsoftware. Please include the Dragon Crest Shields (medium, crest, 100% physical block, ~55 stability) in the first DLC for Elden Ring. Sincerely, a Fashionable Quality Build.
- Anonymous
is it possible to make shield only run (pure shield in every situation)?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
is there a shield increase rune like shield of want in DS3 ?
- Anonymous
still upset that the nox dual shields are not available to the player. they were so cool. heres hoping that they come in a DLC.
- Anonymous
Brass shield entry at the top is wrong.
It requires 16 strength, not 12.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
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Is there any shield that increase my physical damage or physical resistant?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Best Medium shield and is carrying me thro all of the game... Banished Knight Shield with Barricade Shield on it. ( You can Block anything with this ). Ontop of that having Shield Armament buff as a mage helps alot with getting Magic Spells too with this shield and Carian Knight Shield... But overall Banished Knight Shield is better with Fire , Lightning , Holy and Guard Boost than the Carian Knight Shield. The other best Great Shield imo is the Eclipse Crest Greatshield , best for Magic damage negation and has alot of Poise to bounce enemy attacks too.... To me Barricade Shield is an essential Skill to have on Shields , as it gives insane Guard Boost for a short time making you just take a small tink of Stamina Block damage only.
I wish there were more shields that looked good with robes.
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