Elden Ring reveals the Bandit and the Astrologer classes

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FromSoftware has given us a look at two more playable classes in its upcoming action-RPG.

Elden Ring - Bandit and Astrologer
(Image credit: FromSoftware)

FromSoftware has revealed two more of Elden Ring's playable classes: The blade-wielding Bandit, and the book-wielding astrologer.

The Bandit "strikes for weak points," the all-too-brief Twitter description says. "Excels as ranged combat with bows."

The Astrologer takes a more intellectual approach to making things happen: "A scholar who reads fate in the stars. Heir to the school of glintstone sorcery."

As with yesterday's Prisoner reveal, there's no real detail here, but the basics seem fairly apparent: The Bandit looks like a typical rogue-style character—high damage modifiers, but a little on the delicate side—while the Astrologer is all about throwing around magic: "Glintstone sorcery" is a type of spellcasting that enables some pretty powerful effects, like conjuring magical weapons or calling meteors down from the sky.

The repeated nods to space are curious. FromSoftware has surprised us with extraterrestrial beings before with Bloodborne. The Astrologer class could be a hint at a faction that is playing with stuff that’s a little out of their reach. We only have things like the gameplay trailer where a character asks to be delivered “unto greater heights” to go on though. But Elden Ring fans will latch onto anything, and frankly, I support them.

This brings the total number of revealed Elden Ring classes to eight: The five that were available in the network test—Warrior, Enchanted Knight, Prophet, Champion, and Bloody Wolf—plus the Prisoner, who we met yesterday, and now the Bandit and Astrologer. I expect that we'll see even more characters unveiled in the leadup to the launch of Elden Ring, which is set to happen on February 25.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.