Elden Ring: How Arcane Works & What It Does [Explained]

Arcane is an attribute in Elden Ring that’ll be unfamiliar to most veteran Soulsborne and even RPG players. At first glance, it doesn’t seem to have much influence on necessary stats like stamina or HP. However, if you want to make a niche yet powerful build in line with the meta later down your playthrough, you should start raising this stat.

Arcane Stat Effects

Arcane isn’t like most traditional Elden Ring attributes because it’s extremely situational. This is because it only boosts certain niche aspects and, therefore, encourages very specific playstyles and builds. Furthermore, in my experience, it’s one of the only attributes that actively increase your offense and defense.

Offensive

• Arcane focuses on raising the potency of most status buildups on weapons, which include:
  1. Blood Loss
  2. Poison
  3. Sleep
  4. Madness
• Most weapons and Incantations centered around these status effects belong to specific subcategories of more common archetypes like Faith, Intelligence, and Dexterity builds.
• Therefore, I suggest you level up 2 attributes simultaneously to properly use an Arcane weapon or build.
• For instance, the Rivers of Blood is a hybrid Bleed weapon that scales with Strength, Arcane, and Dexterity, requiring high levels of all three stats to be combat-effective.

Defense

• For defense, this attribute mainly impacts the following resistances:
  1. Holy Defense: While Arcane raises most physical and elemental resistances like Magic and Fire, its influence is more prominent against Holy attacks by immensely boosting your Holy Defense.
  2. Vitality: Arcane is the only attribute that actively raises Vitality, which gives you higher immunity against Death Blight, an instant-death mechanic.
• Here’s how much these resistances scale as level up this particular attribute alone:

Passive

• Besides what Arcane does in Elden Ring in terms of combat-oriented stats, it also increases your Discovery by +1 with each level up.
• This, in turn, yields a higher chance of getting rare item drops from enemies when you kill them.

Arcane Weapons

As previously mentioned, Arcane is a situational attribute that you’ll need for going for and even countering specific builds. This includes making sure your weapon scales well with it and ensuring that the runes spent on leveling up the attribute increase your attack potency.

How To Find An Arcane Weapon?

Here’s the path I would suggest you to find the Arcane Weapon:

• One way to view a weapon’s scaling attribute is by checking its details in the Equipment Menu.
• Here, you’ll see the weapon’s scaling grade between S-rank to D-rank and the attribute(s) it scales with.
• The higher the scaling grade, the more it relies on its corresponding attribute and the more damage it dishes out.
• Besides that, you can also view that weapon’s overall damage output and any other passive abilities it may have, giving you a clearer idea of how versatile it is.

Best Arcane Melee Weapons And Incantations

Compared to other attributes like Strength or Faith, only a handful of Arcane melee weapons exist. Fortunately, though, most of these are considered some of the best weapons in their respective weapon types. And apart from their insane damage output, they cause extremely high Blood loss buildup, which most players regard as the most overpowered status effect you can apply.

To get you started, I’ve listed down some of the best melee weapons you can get if you’re going for an Arcane build:

Regarding incantations, Arcane is mostly associated with Bleed and Dragon spells. However, despite the limited possibilities, these incantations are unique and powerful, and you can use them in various circumstances.

With that said, here are some of the best options for this category:

Arcane Talismans

Alongside a good Arcane weapon, you can equip certain talismans that can enhance your build by either strengthening your attacks or lowering their costs. Since most Arcane-based damage comes from Ashes of War and Incantations, here are a few talismans I would like to mention that can make them exponentially more adaptable:

Shard of Alexander

• The Shard of Alexander raises the attack power of skills by 15%.
• Coupling melee weapons like the Ripple Crescent Halberd that rely on Ash-of-War attacks with this talisman can drastically increase your damage output and melt through enemy HP.
• This item is dropped from Alexander the Iron Fist after you complete his quest line in Crumbling Farum Azula.

Godfrey Icon

• The Godfrey Icon is excellent for boosting both your melee and Incantations’ potency by enhancing charged spells and skills by 15%.
• You can ideally pair it with Arcane-based Incantations with effective charged attacks like Dragonice and the aforementioned Ekzykes’s Decay.
• Furthermore, it can stack up with the Shard of Alexander to give you a 30% attack boost in Ash-of-War attacks.
• You can obtain this talisman after killing Godefroy the Grafted in the Golden Lineage Evergaol, located east of the Grand Lift of Dectus in the Altus Plateau.

Flock’s Canvas Talisman

• This talisman raises the attack potency of Incantations by roughly 8%.
• Like the prior skill-talisman combo, you can use the Godfrey Icon talisman alongside Flock’s Canvas to considerably boost your Incantations’ combat power by 23% overall.
• You can find this talisman once you visit Gowry after completing Millicent’s Questline, after which he’s seen mourning her death.

Primal Glintstone Blade

• The Primal Glintstone Blade encourages an offensive playstyle and lets you perform more Incantations by reducing the FP cost of spells by 25%.
• However, it does drop your maximum HP by 15%, effectively making you sacrifice one meter for another.
• Unlike previous talismans on this list, this one is slightly more divisive because of its outlying caveat.
• But if you’re primarily an Arcane-spell user and regularly run out of FP, this is the talisman for you.
• And to get the Glinstone Blade, you’ll need to unlock a chest deep in the Stargazer’s Ruins located in the western region of the Mountaintops of the Giants.

That wraps up our guide on what Arcane does in Elden Ring and how you can make a build around it. Despite the attribute supporting a tight niche, most players will actively go for that niche since the current meta hovers around it.

Sink your teeth into more niche archetypes by checking out our Elden Ring Bolt of Gransax build. If you want to improve your build by other means, here’s how you can upgrade Spirit Ashes. Also, consider reading our guide on the Best Remembrance Weapons and put your rare loot to good use.

Next:

• Elden Ring Lenne’s Rise
• Elden Ring: How To Get To Hermit Village
• Elden Ring: How To Get The Great Jar’s Arsenal Talisman