What Does Arcane Stat Do In Elden Ring: Effects Explained (2024)

GINX TV>>Elden Ring

Arcane is an Attribute that influences offense and defense capabilities when in and out of combat, as we learn how it affects you in Elden Ring.

By Ashleigh Klein |

First Published April 21, 2023, 16:49

What Does Arcane Stat Do In Elden Ring: Effects Explained (1)

Arcane is one of many Attribute scaling stats determining your character’s strengths and weaknesses in-game. It also influences your combat capabilities and the armor and weapons equipped and wielded, mainly when engaged in combat.

While it doesn't have significance compared to other Attributes like Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence, many weapons, Incantations, and a few Sorceries available require some Arcane to wield or cast. Keeping this in mind, this guide explains what Arcane is, how it affects your character, and everything else you'll need to know to survive The Lands Between in Elden Ring.

What Does The Arcane Stat Do In Elden Ring?

The Arcane stat primarily influences the Holy Defensive stat, meaning how well your character defends itself from Holy Damage Negation. Additionally, having a high Arcane stat allows you to find items more quickly, especially if enemies and bosses should drop them.

It also influences the efficacy of various Sorceries and Incantations by improving their power, damage output, and resistance to different status effects, which will be Death Blight. To increase your Arcane stats, you’ll need to spend Runes to add points to this specific Attribute which also can enhance its secondary stats like Holy Defensive stat and Vitality.

Increasing your Arcane stat increases the ability to discover new items more frequently by one point for every Arcane level reached. Improving your Holy Damage Negation varies between Arcane levels as you can gain +2 between Arcane levels 1 to 20 and +0.25 between Arcane levels 61 to 99.

The same can be applied to when Arcane improves your Vitality, which increases the chances of resisting Death Blight or Death Blight build-up. This, too, sees you gaining +1/+0.6/0.5/0.25 Vitality which depends on your Arcane level according to Fextralife.

Multiple weapons scale with Arcane, which has varying passive effects such as inflicting Hemorrhage (or Blood Loss), Madness, Poison, and Sleep build-up. Additionally, you can apply Arcane scaling on weapons without Affinities bound to them by using the Black Whetblade to add the Blood, Occult, or Poison enhancements.

Below, we’ve listed all weapons currently available that scale primarily with the Arcane stat in Elden Ring:

All Arcane Scaling Weapons In Elden Ring:

  • Albinauric Staff
  • Bloody Helice
  • Clinging Bone
  • Eleonora’s Poleblade
  • Marias Executioner’s Sword
  • Mohgwyn’s Sacred Spear
  • Morgott’s Cursed Sword
  • Reduvia
  • Regalia of Eochaid
  • Ripple Blade
  • Ripple Crescent Halberd
  • Rivers of Blood
  • Serpent Bow
  • Varre’s Bouquet

Like with the weapons, there are a few items that influence the Arcane stat by increasing its level and power once equipped, which we’ve listed all known items below:

All Arcane Scaling Equipment In Elden Ring:

  • Albinauric Mask
  • Imp Head (Elder)
  • Marais Mask
  • Marika’s Scarseal and Soreseal Talismans
  • Mask of Confidence
  • Silver Tear Mask
  • Witch’s Glintstone Crown

Lastly, as previously mentioned, certain Sorceries and Incantations require a high Arcane level for you to cast. Only two Sorceries listed first* scale with Arcane as they generally scale with Intelligence and Dexterity for a handful of Sorceries.

All Arcane Scaling Sorceries And Incantations In Elden Ring:

  • Oracle and Great Oracle Bubbles (Sorceries)*
  • Agheel’s Flame
  • Bloodboon
  • Bloodflame Blade
  • Bloodflame Talons
  • Borealis’ Mist
  • Dragonclaw
  • Dragonfire
  • Dragonice
  • Ekzyke’s Decay
  • Glinstone Breath
  • Greyoll’s Roar
  • Magma Breath
  • Rotten Breath
  • Smarag’s Glintstone Breath
  • Swarm of Flies
  • Theodorix’s Magma

And finally, to start you on your journey to mastering Arcane, the Bandit starting class has the best Arcane stats of 14 with a reasonably high Dexterity stat of 13. This can form the foundations of various niched Arcane/Dexterity builds based on status effects like Bleed/Blood Loss or Scarlet Rot or based on weapons like the Magic Archer build.

What Does Arcane Stat Do In Elden Ring: Effects Explained (4)

Written by Ashleigh Klein

Ashleigh was a former Features Intern at Glamour South Africaand previously worked as a Multimedia Journalist at IOL News and the Weekend Argus before reigniting her love for video games.

She now works full-time with GINX and can often be found exploring the worlds of Palia, Conan Exiles, Elder Scrolls Online, and Elden Ring while trying to reach Infinite rank in Marvel Snap. Whilst she has seen improvements at farming in Stardew Valley (much thanks to Palia), Ashleigh more than makes up for it by being a decent Blastoise trainer in Pokemon GO.

While her gaming adventures take her to unique locations, she actively enjoys following trending stories within the Entertainment industry, just don't ask why her Letterboxd hasn't seen an entry in a while. If you manage to catch Ash in between playing games and watching Marvel or Star Wars shows, you can forward any gaming and entertainment news, tips, and tricks to her via email or on social media.

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What Does Arcane Stat Do In Elden Ring: Effects Explained (2024)

FAQs

What Does Arcane Stat Do In Elden Ring: Effects Explained? ›

Arcane also increases Holy Defense, reducing the damage you take from attacks with the Holy element, and it raises your resistance to Blight, an affliction that can instantly KO your character. Like other stats, Arcane is required to use some spells and equipment and a higher Arcane level raises their power.

What does the arcane effect do in Elden Ring? ›

- Elden Ring explanation. ” The Tarnished's Arcane stat affects which weapons they can wield effectively and affects the damage output of weapons which have Arcane scaling. Increasing Arcane will also increase Discovery, which increases the chance of finding drops from enemies.

Is Arcane a useful stat Elden Ring? ›

Arcane is Elden Ring's equivalent of the Luck stat. It increases item discovery rates, meaning a higher Arcane stat increases the chances of enemies dropping valuable loot upon their defeat.

Do all status effects scale with Arcane Elden Ring? ›

Uchigatana gets nothing from arcane unless it's blood or occult (or poison). Frostbite doesn't benefit from arcane. If the weapon has initial status effect AND arcane scaling, then both AR and status buildup will scale with arc. Arc only affects poison, bleed and sleep.

Does Arcane effect bleed? ›

Arcane just increases the amount of bleed buildup per hit. If you don't use Arcane, it means it takes more hits to proc bleed. Of course, instead of putting points into Arcane, you could use Blood Grease or Bloodflame Blade on the weapon.

Does Arcane help with runes? ›

Arcane might not be the best stat to spend Runes on for beginners, since it only helps with a small number of weapons and incantations, but it's a great choice for people looking for something a little different.

What pairs best with Arcane Elden Ring? ›

Undoubtedly, the best Arcane weapon for PvE and PvP is the Rivers of Blood Katana. It's fast, it deals a lot of damage, it pairs extremely well with other Bleed katanas (when in the main hand), and its Ash of War is one of the most overpowered in the game – even after several nerfs.

Does arcane affect holy damage? ›

In Elden Ring, the Arcane stat's primary function is governing item discovery. This influences how frequently normal enemies drop items after being killed. On top of this, leveling up Arcane also increases resistance to Holy damage and resistance to buildup of the Death Blight status condition.

Should I max out Arcane Elden Ring? ›

Arcane is mainly good for increasing bleed buildup, which is a very powerful technique through most of the game. Alternatively, occult scaling adds straight physical damage with arcane scaling. I've played through the entire game with pure arcane and it was great.

Does Rivers of Blood scale with Arcane? ›

Rivers of Blood Stat Requirements

Most builds stay away from Arcane because it is only useful for Item Discovery and certain spells, but Rivers of Blood scales with Arcane. Because of this relationship, Rivers of Blood is one of the very few Arcane-scaling Bleed weapons in Elden Ring.

What does Arcane scale with? ›

Arcane scales physical damage and bleed/poison build-up on weapons (and consumable items like poison throwing daggers for example) that have ARC scaling innately or through infusion (bleed, poison, occult). Some incantations (blood and dragon communion ones) have ARC requirements to use.

Can you Death Blight bosses? ›

Multiple enemies and bosses are vulnerable to Death Blight. Anything that can be considered alive is susceptible to Death, with a few exceptions like Dragons. NOTE: If you die of Death Blight, you permanently lose all your current runes.

Does swarm of flies scale off arcane? ›

Swarm of Flies is extremely effective at building up Blood Loss, so you want weapons that are good at that as well. You'll also want a weapon that scales well off of either Arcane or Faith since those are the stats that Swarm of Flies scales best with.

Is occult better than blood? ›

If your Occult stat is high then you're generally better off going for an Occult infusion rather than a Blood one (since it gives you slightly better base damage and drastically better scaling, to the point where the loss in buildup is relatively minor).

What armor increases arcane in Elden Ring? ›

Elden Ring best Arcane armor: Silver Tear Mask

The Silver Tear Mask is one of the best pieces of armor in the game for players using Arcane builds, as it raises your Arcane by a whopping eight points.

Does Arcane affect Bloodhounds Fang? ›

Yep, arcane doesn't increase the blood loss of Bloodhound's Fang. If you have the stats for it, Bloodflame Blade is better.

Is Arcane Build good in Elden Ring? ›

Arcane is mainly good for increasing bleed buildup, which is a very powerful technique through most of the game. Alternatively, occult scaling adds straight physical damage with arcane scaling. I've played through the entire game with pure arcane and it was great.

What is the best keepsake in Elden Ring? ›

Which Keepsake do you choose? The best starting Keepsake items. Our recommendation for the best starting Keepsake is a Golden Seed. This will give you an extra Flask use - either to restore your HP or FP - and at the start of the game, survivability is paramount.

How many larval tears are in Elden Ring? ›

Larval Tears in Elden Ring are pretty rare, with a total of 18 to be found all across Elden Ring (though some are found in the same location) and no way to farm them, at least that has been discovered yet.

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