Thorn Sorceries are a group of Sorceries in Elden Ring that share characteristics or a specific type of buff criteria. They have the unusual quality amongst sorceries of only requiring Faith in order to cast. Thorn Sorceries revolve around damaging oneself in order to summon tendrils of thorns to deal damage.
There are a total of 4 Thorn Sorceries available for players.
Shadow of the Erdtree added 2 distinct Thorn Sorceries: Impenetrable Thorns and Mantle of Thorns.
Thorn Sorceries info
Obtaining Thorn Sorceries
- Briars of Sin: Dropped by a Thorn Sorcerer directly north-west from the Artist's Shack in Liurnia of the Lakes. Jump across the rocks and past a group of Burning Slugs. Map Link.
- Briars of Punishment: can be found at the leftmost dead tree next to three Thorn Sorcerers just before the long stone bridge in the Mountaintops of the Giants region. Map Link.
- Impenetrable Thorns: Found on a corpse in Shadow Keep. It can be found lying next to a bat enemy just before the Dark Chamber Entrance site of grace. Map Link.
- Mantle of Thorns: After draining the water in the Shadow Keep Church District, defeat the Lesser Ulcerated Tree Spirit enemy that emerges beneath the ground, below the large tree. Map Link.
Thorn Sorcery Requirements
Boosting Thorn Sorceries
- Staff of the Guilty boosts Briars of Punishment, Briars of Sin, and Impenetrable Thorns by 20%.
- Alberich's Set boosts Briars of Punishment, Briars of Sin, and Impenetrable Thorns by 6% per piece. Altered robes and trousers excluded.
- Azur's Glintstone Staff reduces the casting time of all Sorceries, but increases the amount of FP consumed.
- Albinauric Staff and the Maternal Staff
scale with Arcane and increase Bloodloss buildup from Thorn Sorceries based on Arcane investment.
- Briars of Punishment, Briars of Sin, and Impenetrable Thorns deal magic damage and receive damage buffs from the Magic Scorpion Charm (12%), the Terra Magica spell (22.5%), and the Magic-Shrouding Cracked Tear (20%).
All Thorn Sorceries
- Anonymous
So there's basically two ways I see to build around these. Do you...
A) Pump ARC/min Faith and use the albinauric staff to proc bleed with ok damage. Have offhand staff of the Guilty for a minor buff.
B) Ignore ARC, go all in on Faith and dual wield 2 staves of the Guilty for max damage
C) Something else? I heard maternal staff is good but I'd rather stick to 125-170 level
- Anonymous
Praise the Mantle of Thorns, for he can save your lives many times!
- Anonymous
It feels like the magic of thorns and the magic of clay people have been confused.
Other comments seem to confuse faith requirements with faith scaling. These spells don't scale to faith at all, and the damage is based on the staff used to cast the spells. With that in mind, the faith-scaling staff that boosts these spells sucks at higher levels, you would need to dual wield two to stack the bonus for respectable damage. Even then, just meeting the fai requirement of 24 and putting the rest into Int for the Carian Regal staff or Lusat's staff with the guilty staff in the offhand would result in better damage. To increase the bleed buildup, you would want to use the Maternal staff, but that staff is a backloaded staff requiring high investments in both Int and Arc to be good on top of the fai requirement for the spells. For your consideration, but I would disagree that these are "faith/arcane spells".
- Anonymous
These are basically incantations in disguise, mechanically speaking. They require faith and arcane is what bleed scales off of. Arcane compliment faith builds much more then int builds. In other words, these are faith/arcane spells. I don't really see a reason to make an int/arc build when are you get are bubble spells that aren't unique, where the faith version is way stronger. The only reason I see for a int/arc would be to make a specialized frost/bleed build. Then again, you can still do that without int investment with just frost ash-of-wars. I have never tested it, so I don't know how optimal an int/arc bleed build is.
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I like how both the absolute-top-tier and absolute-bottom-tier spells (at least in the DLC 1.12) are thorns. Really shows that they don't know what the hell they're doing with this group of spells.
- Anonymous
i understand the impenetrable and mantle of thorns spells are based off the scadutrees thorns, but i really wish they were a pretty bright sanguine like the "blood star" ones.
- Anonymous
it sucks you cant use the thorn Sorcerers thorn sword swing
- Anonymous
Weird. The new DLC Maternal Staff calls out "Finger Sorceries". It is like Impenetrable Thorns is two things it is not.
I think it is just a Thorn Sorcery, with the Bleed being built on your Arcane level?
- Anonymous
A great intro to sorceries for faith users without investing into int at all. Also Scadutree sorceries should be with the Aberrant ones
- Anonymous
I'm told the new thorns sorceries benefit from both the set and staff. Please test and post, but if even one of these things is true, it is great. Even if it isn't, they are still faith based and ought to work in the same builds. Seems good to me.
- Anonymous
So sad they didn't add any new abberant sorceries with the DLC -.- why, Fromsoft, why???
- Anonymous
Are you seriously telling me nobody has found ANY aberrant sorcery in the dlc????????
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
These are good with bloodflame incants since you only need to level faith to use both.
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Full Alberich Set + Terra Magica + Warming Stones/ Frenzyflame Stones + Albinauric Staff/Staff of the Guilty + Holy Ground (Ash of War)
You’re bound to this commitment, deal with it.
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- Anonymous
Just came up with a spell idea for this . I decided to call it briars of inhibition , it would summon one of those wooden poles that are near fire monk camps , but smaller , and it would act as basically vow of silence.
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should have more content like a weapon or smthin and way more spell variety
dlc PLEASE DO SAVE US
A nice little use these have is low level coop. Double staff of guilty, takers cameo and alberich set, and you oneshot most mobs from a mile away for measly fp and no hp cost while looking very cool. Bleed is nice addition too since many early game people have bleed too, good synergy
- Anonymous
They have the same symbol as blood incantations, it just doesnt show
- Anonymous
How much blood loss is inflicted when using these with the Albinauric staff?
- Anonymous
I wish these were the INT/ARC spells of Elden Ring instead, INT/ARC is so underdeveloped compared to FTH/ARC.
Give this 3 or 4 more spells, make it INT/ARC and it would have been perfect
- Anonymous
Alberich Set + Staff of the Guilty + Frenzyflame Stone(s) + Aberrant Sorcery + Terra Magica = Cookie Cutter Build
- Anonymous
I would forgive everything about the lacklustre implementation of this school of spells if they had just bothered to put the cool thorn whip spell that the sorcerers use.
- Anonymous
I think these sorceries could be REALLY cool if they were just fixed. These would be my suggestions:
- Remove the health loss, but keep the bleed build up. It encourages you to not spam spells, which is so clever.
- Convert the faith requirement to INT/ARC or just ARC. I understand the lore reason about the Blood Star... but can't just a Tarnished instead draw the power from the Outer God since they're using a staff? Arcane is a synonym for willpower, after all.
- Give back our combo casting. It encourages to weave attacks together, and it made combat so much dynamic. I still don't understand why it was removed.
- Anonymous
I feel like if these were scaling on INT/ARC, would anybody even complain?
- Anonymous
I understand the lore behind the faith requirement, but that makes them impractical to use.
Using them on a faith build? You'll have to use both a seal and a staff. No. Just no. 21/24 faith is no small amount. That is a significant contribution.
You'll also have to invest into intelligence to use the Albinauric Staff. Thus rendering your build poorly optimized. Yuck.
- Sure you can use the Staff of the Guilty but bleed buildup is the primary reason for using these spells. They do very low damage and if you are investing enough into Faith to get good damage you will likely be casting incantations as well. It is very awkward to use both a staff and a seal.
If these had low or no Faith requirement it would be very easy to fit them into the neglected Int/Arc build. A nice contrast from the bubble spells.
- Anonymous
If this gets 2 or 3 more spells for mixup it will be perfect
- Anonymous
Here my recommend build for no int investment since i love these spells.
Faith: 25 (minimum to cast golden vow)
Int: 10 (for albi staff)
Staff: albinaric staff (main hand), guilty staff( offhand)
Physisk: int knot + magic crack
Talisman: radagon icon+ 2 mass talisman + magic scopion charm(or lord of blood ex if not prefer extra damage taken)
Spell buff: golden vow, terra magica, flame gain me strength.
Armor: full aberrant set
Even though albi staff not producing high AR like other staff, but with all the buff, you can still do around 1k1 to 1k3 per cast of each spell and on top of high bleed proc in 2 -3 hit on boss.
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Had an idea for a new spell for this school. "Flogging Briar", basically a "magic" whip. Drains the users HP to conjure a briar whip to lash out against enemies. Quick casting results in a sort of thrust attack, similar to the Urumi's R2. Charge casting results in a large sweep, perfect for crowds. Can be chain casted aslong as stamina and FP (and HP, I suppose) is available. Charged and uncharged casts can be combo'd together.
- Anonymous
With how much casuls love spell spam and bleed, I would've though these would have been more popular.
- Anonymous
as one of the less developed schools of sorcery, I hope this gets some love when the eventual DLC comes out
- Anonymous
they should honestly remove the health cost and just increase the self-hemorrhage
- Anonymous
These do crazy damage and look so cool, I wish there were more of these spells in the game
- Anonymous
Alright so i was thinking “it’s only two spells they probably suck” but I used the albinauric staff to cast and the staff of the guilty in my other hand and holy moly it slaps (in PvE).
It has such good range too and can be cast repeatedly indefinitely unless you run out of stamina or fp.
I recommend lowering streght and dexterity for faith and arcane. Actually pretty good. Solid 9/10 in my book.
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I need to get outta these comments before I start complaining about all the complaints..
- Anonymous
These should be incantations that scale with Fatih and Arcane like bleed incantations. Whilst at it, they should make FTH/ARC weapons, ashes of war, and affinity (like thorn/serrated whetblade). Hope the expansion will resolve this. #copiumpepe
- Anonymous
These really should've been arcane based
Or incantations that only use int
- Anonymous
they're cool, but they're incredibly impractical unless you spec your whole build to them, and at that point any other spell is gonna perform better in the damage department, and any blood infused weapon is gonna perform better in the blood loss department.
- Anonymous
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Spell Idea
Thorned Shield
Entangles your Shield with Red thornes which apply bleed built up on contact
This also applies to the wearer... for a lesser extend.
Requieres some HP to cast.
- Anonymous
Would have been nice if there were more tools for an int arc build as I like that combo there just aren't allot of tools that make sense for that the way dragon incantations make int faith make sense
- Anonymous
I always want to like a build with these spells because they seem cool to me but by the time I get enough faith to use these and enough arcane to make them effective the dragon incantations seem so much better with the same stats distribution that I end up using those and thus derailing the abberant build altogether
- Anonymous
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Would've been nice to have a couple more spells to flesh out this class. Maybe a blood glintstone pebble or the funny spike explosion that red albinaurics do.
- Anonymous
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Weird that there are sorceries that exclusively require faith only require faith.
- Anonymous
I heavily reccomend using endure on your main wep to anyone looking to try these out in pvp. Briars of sin especially.
- Anonymous
Just discovered today that these spells can actually be chain cast out of their recovery animations with any other spell. Cast punishment and immediately follow it up with ranged spells; the delay with punishment makes it harder to dodge with other spells and hit surprisingly often in PVP. Use sin when enemies are approaching; since the animation is the same people don't usually expect it to be sin after casting punishment the whole match and often get caught in the thorns. The spells are slow and awful on their own, but hit way more when mixed up with other spells and are actually viable. It would be nice if you could chain cast INTO these spells as well though.
- Anonymous
Did FROMSOFT forget to take their medicine ? ? ? like how could they possible make Death, Darkness, BLOOD, spells and the best pvp star type attacks specifically for FAITH USERS (WARNING: dislikes from Faith users incoming -_-)
- Anonymous
If the elemer armour boosted this we could at least have a cool looking build, but as it stands there is nothing of substance here
2 *sorceries* that inexplicably scale on faith
They are based around bleed build up, but again, inexplicably scale on faith
Even with a maxed albinauric staff in one hand, staff of the guilty in the other these spells do under 500 damage, they almost do more damage to the caster than the target
As the other user mentioned, the enemies that use these spells have a wide sweeping attack with their staves to protect themselves from up close attacks, despite being in the game, having sound, animations, hit boxes, damage algorithms all done, we do not get that, so we need to find a weapon that is faith/arcane for when enemies get close, but spoiler alert, there are zero weapons that scale on both, the closest we can get is the woeful erdsteel dagger with an occult AoW
I am 100% convinced that fromsoft built the game around katanas and magic and only put some other stuff in to give an illusion of variety and build customization, Because those 2 things are inarguably broken and everything else evidently got no effort, thought and evidently no play testing at all
- Anonymous
How come there is only two aberrant sorceries when clearly the Thorn Sorcerer who uses all these attacks have additional attacks?
There's one spell clearly missing and it's similiar to Carian Greatsword attack except you transform your staff into some sort of blood staff which deals extremely high damage. There's also one attack where the staff can hit vertically down which would have been useful.
I'd also argue I'm disappointed that they made Alberich Armor Set the only Thorn sorcery boosting armor when they could have added a rare drop from Thorn Sorcerers which would have added their beauthiful redish armor.
I also wanna copy a comment from Blood Incantations that says this for those wondering why this is not arcane based:
"Something of note is that the stuff that takes the most faith in these spells is more so just relying on the blood mother to give you her flame while the two that require the most arcane is you stealing her power, which together with dragon communion hints at arcane just stealing another gods power".
The Formless Mother (Blood Mother) is not related to this magic which is why is why it does not scale with arcane. This sorcery is related to something called "The Blood Star" which is quoted here "The guilty, their eyes gouged by thorns, lived in eternal darkness. There, they discovered the blood star."
This can be further emphasized by the blood incantation Bloodboon which states:
"The mother of truth craves wounds. When Mohg stood before
her, deep underground, his accursed blood erupted with fire, and
besotted with the defilement that he was born into."
Which means The Blood Star and Formless Mother are either different gods or the same god depicting itself differently, but most likely they are two different gods. What's interesting is it says Mohg has stood before the Formless Mother which means she might not be as formless as the name suggests, meaning we might be able to slay her one day or meet her.
- Anonymous
Why the actual HELL is F A I T H related to blood ? ? ? and not arcane, seems counterintuitive if you ask literally everyone. LIKE WHY THE ACTUAL HELL. FROMSOFT are "obsessed" with FAITH so much that it's toxic to arc/int
- Anonymous
This is a spell for low level invasions and that's about it. I dont get half these comments, maybe its not the spells that are bad, but the people using them like they are any other spell to spam cast.
use Sin as a turn and burn, in tight spaces or as a Area of denial to get a heal in OR break up a 3 man gank, most phantoms and hosts die to two casts of sin. Use Punishment to chase down a lone host trying to heal or on bridges/tight corridors.
Pair this with bloodflame blade or a weapon with natural bleed for ranged and CQC stat proc. This isnt a spell to bleed someone with, its a spell to be aggressive/defensive with the damage output can hit 500+ at RL30
+5 fth talisman, faith knot, prophet class, raise fth to around 24/25, add talismans, drink the funny drink, cause bloody chaos. you can pair this with the Alberichs set for more damage output of tank up with poise to take more hits when casting Briars of sin. Crimson Bubbletear will save you
- Anonymous
That they scale with faith and not arcane is abhorrent, and I'm a faith enjoyer...
- Anonymous
QUESTION: WHY ARE 99.99999% OF SORCERIES SUPER EASY TO DODGE AND LAUGHABLY EASY COUNTERABLE ???
ANSWER: FROMSOFT JUST WILL NEVER LIKE INTELLIGENCE !
FACTS: ELDEN STARS AND WAVE OF GOOD (northern lights) IS FAITH : (
- Anonymous
Just using these, I’m doing way, way too much “self-inflicted damage” whistle to even hitting a pvp opponent. And in the 1% chance that it dies hit, it’s never going to be good ‘cause it has non-existent hyper armour. To make these viable, “FROM” has no choice but to dramatically / exponentially increase hyper armour for BRIARS OF SIN, and incredibly increase its AOE, and buff its damage a little more. While for BRIARS OF PUNISHMENT, I feel like I’m being punished for using it, lol… legit needs improved tracking, damage, casting speed… Honesty making these cost more of fp / hp to FIX these would be a good start, but a spell that is Horribly Weak which drains your own health is never good, as it’s always decreasing your survivability…….
- Anonymous
Probably one of the worst schools of magic in the entire game, sorcery or incantation. Not only are they hard to use effectively, they also inflict damage upon the caster. I understand why for lore reasons, but when incantations have an entire school of blood incantations that don't damage the caster and also cause bleed, it's just baffling to me why anyone would willingly choose these sorceries. Also, if you are looking for bleed as a caster, there's always the Meteorite Ore blade or Moonveil, as common as they are, and don't require investment in faith while both being VERY strong weapons in their own right.
Here's hoping any potential DLC adds more aberrant sorceries to make this school actually worthwhile because this just isn't worth it, and if you're a sorcerer that also has a considerable amount of faith, both Magma sorceries and Death sorceries will generally serve you better.
- Anonymous
They missed an opportunity to make the thorn whip, that the fire followers make from their staff, into a sorcery
- Anonymous
If they had removed the self damage and made them faster, but kept the bleed build up, then they could have been a fun sorcery type based around high-risk high-reward, as they stand now, they have too much risk for too little reward
- Anonymous
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Fromsoft realllly missed on not making these arcane sorceries. Not only does it make sense lorewise with these being literally "bloodthorns", but in terms of gameplay it makes niche int/arc builds more viable, whereas the faith scaling magma sorceries alone make "faith mages" considerably overpowered. But nope, arcane mages just have to stick with shitty oracle bubbles.
- Anonymous
I tried, I *really* tried to make these work. They have cast speed similar to comet azur with seemingly no hyperarmor so you can easily get stunned out of it (despite one requiring enemies to be close to hit them) they have deceptively small hitboxes that miss most of the time, they deal self-damage, and they don't even have good bleed build-up which is wierd because they're bloody thorns made from your own cursed blood. On a build tailored for using them (10int/50fth/36arc, albinauric staff, full Alberich set which I later switched for some poise armor so I could actually finish the casts) I saw very poor results in both PvE and duels. You could have used these in the past via chain-casting but not anymore.
- Anonymous
All the different bosses that have used blood based moves and spells and the best they could come up with was one incantation and two sorceries. I main gravity and moan at the small selection but rip blood and frost bros they did you dirty
- Anonymous
new spell ideas
thorn whip (like the thorn sorcerers do)
Thorn shard
let me know if you have any more ideas
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These do magic damage so you can use terra magica / cracked tear to make them better.
- Anonymous
The fact that these don't scale with Arcane but the Oracle bubbles do ...
- Anonymous
Metamancers can stick to their oneshot spells; personally I'm having a blast using these two in PvP. People keep getting caught up in the combos you can do with these, partially because nobody ever sees them in use.
- Anonymous
I wish we’d get the Thorn Sorcerers’ Fire Thorn Whip attack.
- Anonymous
These should've scaled with arcane, not only they betray the theme of bleed=arcane but also there's no support for int/arc builds, could've been a nice niche filler...
- Anonymous
Even with the buffs these are unfortunately still pretty mediocre
- Anonymous
Do I need Something like Rennala's staff to pull a decent damage out of these? Using the staff of guilty alone with 50 faith and full alberich's set and they hit for something like 500-600, which is pitiful...
- Anonymous
I like the changes but why nerf the albiraunic or atleast only nerf it to have the same bleed dmg as before the patch with 50 arcane.
- Anonymous
both of these have been buffed in 1.04, hoping they become more usable bc i really like the hat :)
- Anonymous
These are called "Thorn Sorceries," check the item descriptions which actually boost them.
- Anonymous
I think these are pretty good imo, out of all the hexes these are probably the best. BoP seems to prevent enemy ai from dodging, and can hit enemies hiding behind shields. BoS just has good hyperarmor, and surrounds the whole area around the caster. Lastly, it seems like they can be chained into each other. But glintblade and gavel kind of do the same things, so their use is still pretty subjective
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Weird that the best staff for this isn't even the staff made for it.
- Anonymous
Why does the wiki refer to these as aberrant sorceries when all in-game items refer to them as thorn sorceries (i.e. the staff of the guilty and Alberich's set)???
- Anonymous
I really hope more of these show up in DLC; having an entire armor set and staff devoted to it while the Blood incantations get jack is pretty disappointing.
impenetrable thorn spell is the only spell above C tier, they should’ve added the thorn like attacks of those who use such spells… i have 80fth with staff of the guilty +24 (299 sorcery scaling) and compared the weakest base game option against a mountain peak giant and the difference in usage is massive, using impenetrable thorn massively increase the likelihood of someone using this type of sorcery
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