Rogue Blight Stats Explained: Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Poise

Rogue Blight doesn’t hide its stat math — open your equipment screen and each stat lists exactly what it does. That’s rare for a roguelike, and it means you can plan a build before you find a single legendary. Here’s the full picture.

The three core stats

Stat	Raises	Seen in-game
Strength (STR)	Critical Damage and Bonus Defense	A STR 41 character showed Critical Damage 66%, Bonus Defense 41
Intelligence (INT)	Skill mana cost reduction, Elemental Damage bonus	An INT 3 character showed Skill mana reduction 2%, Elemental Dmg Bonus 3%
Dexterity (DEX)	Critical Chance, Stamina Regeneration bonus	A DEX 7 character showed Critical Chance 7%, Stamina Regen Bonus 27%

How to read that in practice:

• STR is the “hit harder and tank a little” stat. The Bonus Defense line scales with Strength, so strength builds are naturally sturdier. Weapons that scale with STR display their scaling in red.
• INT is the caster stat — it stretches your mana pool by making skills cheaper and boosts elemental damage from wands and flame effects. Wand-scaling gear and skills want it.
• DEX is the crit-and-tempo stat. Crit chance plus faster stamina regen means more swings, more dodges, more crits. Weapons that scale with DEX display green.

Defense stats on the equipment screen

The right column of the equipment panel lists four defensive lines:

Defense	What it does
Def (Defense)	Reduces incoming physical damage. Gear adds to it, and STR adds a Bonus Defense layer on top (shown as e.g. Def 28 + 41).
Poise	Your stagger resistance. Weapons also carry a Poise damage value — hitting enemies enough breaks their stance and staggers them, exactly like players describe when a “heavy” weapon interrupts attacks.
Elemental Resist	Reduces fire, ice, lightning and similar elemental damage. Players report elemental enemies being common from the second floor on, making this a popular mid-run purchase at the resistance teacher event.
Status Resist	Reduces your chance to suffer Burn, Bleed, Poison, Freeze and similar effects. Starts at 0% — worth watching once enemies start applying statuses to you.

How you gain stats inside a run

• Level ups. Your character levels as you fight (the HUD shows your level next to the health bars). Kills and cleared nodes push it up.
• Praying at bonfires. Campfire prayer lets you raise max HP, mana or stamina — a cheap, repeatable boost most players spend on HP first.
• Gear. Every armor piece carries stat lines, and armor bonuses persist in the equipment totals whether or not the game visually changes your look.
• Events and blessings. Some NPC events teach permanent-for-the-run stats, and certain Blessings trade stats for power.

Which stat should a new player raise?

Whichever your best weapon scales with — that’s the honest answer and it’s why the Weapons guide marks every weapon’s scaling color. If you’re between maps with mixed drops:

• STR is the most forgiving; the crit damage and the free defense both help before you have a coherent build.
• DEX snowballs once you own a fast weapon (daggers, katanas) and pairs with bleed and crit builds.
• INT is strong but mana-hungry early; it takes off once you have mana reductions or a mana shield.

The Build Finder turns this choice into three questions, and each build page shows its stat priorities in full.