Here's a Dark Souls 2 sorcerer guide by ITOverlord. It gives you a step by step walkthrough of the game and building a sorcerer.
To start, here are some benchmarks:
SL 121 Attributes:
- Vgr: 8
- End: 6
- Vit: 7
- ATN: 50
- Str: 7
- Dex: 9
- ADP: 9
- Int: 50
- Faith: 30
Armor: Full Lion Mage set Hexer's Hood
Rings:
- Clear Bluestone
- Southern Ritual Band
- Life Protection + misc Left hand: Leather shield, Binoculars
- Lightning Short Bow +5 Right hand: Staff of Wisdom +4
- Archduke's Chime +10
- Dark Pyromancy +10
2. Get to 2nd bonfire in Forest of Giants
3. Buy Heavy Soul Arrow @ 2nd Forest bonfire
4. Find upgraded spell in Forest
5. Upon reaching boss fog gate go back to Majula.
6. Raise attunement to 2 slots
7. Kill Forest Giant
8. Upgrade starter staff to +4 (large titanite in ballista room), do not go past +4
9. Kill Pursuer
10. Raise Int to 20. Rule of Thumb (RoT): 1 spell slot, then 5 INT, repeat
Should now be at least 20 int and 3 filled attunement
11. Proceed to Heide’s Tower and farm souls
Safe to eat all boss souls except Ruin Sentinels and Scorpioness Najka
12. Kill Old Dragonrider and Dragon bosses
13. After Dragonrider light the bonfire, and exhaust all chat options with Licia of Lindelt. Once she starts repeating herself, use that fire to get back to Majula and level up again!
14. Min stats 4 slots. Once you have 4 slots then 35 int ASAP!
NOTE: int will stay at 35 for a long while, should not be huge challenge since we aren't worrying about armor yet.
15. Get faith to a minimum of 8 and return to tower between Majula and Heide Tower of Flame and speak with Licia who for 2000 souls will move the tower opening Huntsman’s Copse.
16. Talk to Felkin the hex vendor and purchase: Archdrake Staff, Archdrake Chime, Ring of Life Protection, Dark Orb, and Resonant Soul.
17. Level Archdrake staff to +10 (ongoing process)
18. At 20/20 INT/Faith, Felkin will give you Hexer’s hood
19. Clear No Man’s Wharf. The enemies here should be 2 shotted by your bigger soul arrow.
20. Speak with Carhillion at the end of the dock and buy the Clear Bluestone Ring, Great Heavy Soul Arrow, Soul Spear Barrage and Heavy Soul Arrow. Go back to a bonfire, re-attune your spells (at this point you should be able to use Dark Orb, which casts on a staff) so your spells in 4 slots should be 'Soul Arrow, Heavy Soul Arrow, Great Heavy Soul Arrow, Dark Orb'. If you have a 5th slot for whatever reason, Soul Spear Barrage.
21. Kill the boss of the area and continue to the Lost Bastille!
22. Get 22 faith and leave it there until SL 100+ so you can use the Archdrake Chime and switch from using Dark Orb to Resonant Soul.
23. Now get your Int to 40 then 30 Attunement.
24. While in Lost Bastille, get Branch of Yore and unfreeze girl pulling the lever in Majula but do not pull lever, use the nocs to shoot one of the doors on the upper level 3 times, the door will break, then attack with your strongest spell, they should only take 2 hits. From there, run outside back to big blue sword dude. The enemies that would have formerly ambushed you now come out only to be siphoned through a small doorway into a barrage of decimating spells.
25. The last 30 levels from SL 90-120 needs to be making your Int and Attunement hit 50, your faith hit 30, and then a ADP for some Agi.
26. Other than that upgrade Chime and Staff as high as possible.
27. With 22 faith, 40 int, 30-40 attunement, you are officially the Archmage. You can cast spells from every facet. You officially have 'access' to everything we need for the build at this point in the game.
28. At this point, it's not set in stone where you should go.
29. Upgrades: Lion Mage set, Southern Ritual Band +1 (And optionally Clear Bluestone ring +1), upgraded spells, and Staff of Wisdom (easiest to hardest)
30. Soul Spear: Hunstman Copse hut with the hole in the roof. Your second cast being bought from Agdayne later on.
31. Soul Vortex: In Brightstone Cove, after the second bonfire if you carefully descend to the sand below near the Sarlacc pit there will be two rooms below where you started at. One of them is where the blacksmith goes when she is freed, the other has a bonfire and a few spiders. In there, break everything it's behind one of the book shelves. Agdayne for 2nd cast.
32. Homing Crystal Soul Mass: In the shrine of Amana third bonfire, it's actually visible before you leave the cave.
33. Flame Swathe: You need a fragrant branch to unfreeze Straid in the lost bastille to buy this from him, branches are fairly limited so I would wait to get your armor first.
34. Southern Ritual band +1 gives you 2 more attunement slots to work with. At 50 attune = 10 slots. Warp to the second bonfire in the Cove (after the church), backtrack to the area right before the bonfire and look down over the cliff. You will see a doorway not far below you and a ledge you can easily jump to. Go through until you open the door with the spiderman who has his back turned, punish it thoroughly, then turn to the right and kill the other one from above. DO NOT DROP DOWN.
Once he’s dead, turn to your left and slowly/carefully land on the stone area joining the entrance to this courtyard. You will see a mage behind a pot to the left, kill him. Now turn around you you will notice a big opening with spider men inside. Kill them and break the objects along the wall to reveal a lever. Pull it and you will notice a chest descending to your left. Go up the stairs, hop onto the platform.
35. For the next ring which isn't necessary but very helpful. Travel to the forked road in the shaded ruins. Head up to the fog area, and move along the wall to your right until you reach the first corpse. Now from here, orient the wall to your back 100% level so that you come off the wall completely straight. Now run... A lot. Don't stop, you will eventually come across a giant tree with a metal chest next to it... DON'T STOP. This is where we need to be but it is literally surrounded by 3-4 invisible jerks. So instead start running around the tree for 5-6 seconds, then turn and run in a random direction. Your goal is to aggro the men, then get them to chase you away. Make sure you remember where the chest is, because you are then going to turn and run back to the chest open it and grab the item as fast as possible. I can do this 100% flawlessly every time now... but I Died 20 or so times getting to that point.
36. Lion Mage Armor -- To get it, you will need a fragrant branch from Harvest Valley, edited procedure for space. Once you have branch...
37. Warp back to forked road. Once more, into the mist, however this time, hug the left wall and keep going. You will go until the mist stops. If you never leave the left wall, this is easy and fast. As soon as the mist stops you will reach the first bonfire. This area is where the difficult enemies are. The lion mages severely resist magic and hexes. Pyro works moderately well. There are also 3 enemies here we can unfreeze BUT DON'T. We have 1 in particular we want. This area kinda sucks. It takes 8+ casts of normal spells to kill or using pyros a lot. But to get to the spot we need you have to kill 5 lions, and the giant basilisk. My suggestion is to kill the two lions (they are painfully slow and their attacks are so easy to dodge I’ve done it on accident), then the basilisk, then go bonfire.
The basilisk won't respawn and frankly, won't move much. From there, kill the two lions again, and then go to where the basi was. Don't walk on the wood. It will fall through and it sucks, especially since you won't have the key needed yet. You will see 2 big towers and 2 lions. Kill the lions, ignore the towers. Once the lions are dead position yourself between the two towers, then turn around. You should see a bunch of ruins, and one lion warrior petrified, surrounded by curse jars. Break the jars with spells/throwing knives, and unpetrify then kill the lion. If you walk into the area he was blocking you will see a metal chest. Boom! Best mage armor in the game. It will give you +50 cast speed.
38. Staff of Wisdom. Unfortunately, you have to get to the end game to get it. It's in the Dragon Shrine, very easily acquired. If you just look around the area you will find it no sweat. It's a small zone and the item isn't particularly hidden, it's behind a Pharos Door. 39. MISC: SL 120 may not even be the best place to stop. I actually plan on bumping up to SL 150 in the next few days, testing where those 30 points are best spent. There are also the more advanced rings!
You can get the Clear Bluestone ring +2 from killing the Skeleton Lords in Ng+ (or upping the bonfire), and can get the Southern Ritual band +2 from killing the Scorpioness as well! There are also at least 3 more spells to acquire in the late game/NG+ (Crystal Soul Spear, Soul Geyser, which is awesome btw, and more casts of the powerful spells) There are also more armor sets in the NG+ and ++ variants that could well be better for us than Lion Mage! Either way, there is still at LEAST 4-5 more hours worth of 'upgrading content' available to you so fret not! This isn't even our final form!
If you have any other hints, tips or tricks for Dark Souls 2 sorcerers, please post them below. Thanks for your contributions and for visiting the site.