Affinities in Elden Ring determine an armament's attribute scaling, attack power, guard boost, guarded damage negation, and passives. Affinities are represented by both an icon in the inventory and as a prefix to the armament's name.
- See Damage Types to identify the best sources and resistances for all damage types.
- See Status Effects for all status buildups and other effects applied to your character.
- See Equipment with Special Effects for special stat-increasing or effect-granting weapons and armor.
- See Buffs & Debuffs for useful information regarding the stacking or overwriting of effects on your character.
Choosing an Affinity in Elden Ring
Affinities can be granted to compatible armaments while selecting an Ash of War. This can be done at Sites of Grace after obtaining the Whetstone Knife or by speaking to a Smithing Master. You can expand your selection of affinities by obtaining Whetblades.
Ashes of War are defined by type, determining which other affinities can be granted:
- Physical - Standard, Heavy, Keen, Quality
- Magic - Magic, Frost
- Flame - Fire, Flame Art
- Golden - Lightning, Sacred
- Occult - Poison, Blood, Occult
Example:
- Ash of War: Thunderbolt has the Lightning affinity, which makes it a golden-type ash of war.
- Sanctified Whetblade: "When applying an affinity using physical or golden-type ashes of war, an additional affinity of sacred or lightning can be chosen."
- Iron Whetblade: "When applying an affinity using ashes of war, an additional affinity of heavy, keen, or quality can be chosen."
Any applicable armament with any affinity can be buffed by Skills (e.g., Flaming Strike), but only armaments with Physical Affinities can be buffed with Sorceries, Incantations, or Greases (e.g., Scholar's Armament, Order's Blade or Drawstring Magic Grease). However, remember that certain armaments cannot be buffed, regardless of their affinity (e.g., Sacred Seals, Glintstone Staves, Bows, etc.).
Simple Table
Detailed Table
Elden Ring Affinities Simplified Guide
| Type | Whetblade | Affinity | What it Does | When to Take |
Physical |
- |  Standard |
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 Heavy |
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 Keen |
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 Quality |
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Magic |
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 Magic |
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 Cold |
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Flame |
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 Fire |
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 Flame Art |
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Golden |
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 Lightning |
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 Sacred |
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Occult |
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 Poison |
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 Blood |
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 Occult |
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Elden Ring Affinities Detailed Guide
| Type | Whetblade | Affinity | Positive Effects | Negative Effects |
Physical |
- | Standard |
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Heavy |
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Keen |
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Quality |
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Magic |
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Magic |
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Cold |
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Flame |
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Fire |
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Flame Art |
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Golden |
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Lightning |
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Sacred |
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Occult |
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Poison |
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Blood |
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Occult |
Affinities Notes & Tips in Elden Ring
- What does "Improves [Stat] scaling upgrade multiplier" mean? For the Cold, Poison, and Blood affinities, the armament's base attribute scaling is reduced, but its scaling upgrade multiplier is increased, making its upgrades more important (e.g., A Standard Zweihander +25 has a Str/Dex scaling of D/C, but a Cold Zweihander +25 has a Str/Dex scaling of C/C).
- All Occult type affinities added by the Black Whetblade have several counterintuitive interactions with status effects, so here is a break down:
- All Occult Type affinities will lower all native Status buildups on the weapon they are applied to, but will allow these buildups to scale with the Arcane attribute.
- Poison and Bleed affinities will add Arcane scaling Blood Loss or Poison buildup to a weapon if applied, respectively. This added Blood Loss buildup will override any Bleed buildup the weapon might have natively, they do not stack! Same thing for native Poison and the Poison affinity.
- The Bleed Affinity will not override native Poison buildup, or vice versa.
- Native Status Effect buildups, such as Madness, Scarlet Rot, or Sleep will never be overwritten by any Occult Type affinity.
- The Occult affinity will result in better AR but lower status buildup for most weapons on builds that invest in Arcane primarily. For most weapons the AR gained by this is significantly higher than the loss in buildup.
- A weapon can inflict multiple status effects as a result of having an Occult Type Affinity applied to it, e.g. a Blood Infused Venomous Fang will inflict both Bleed and Poison with each strike and both buildups will scale with Arcane.
- With point 1. and 5. in mind the following general rule can be formed. Weapons with native Bleed buildup prefer the Occult Affinity for maximizing AR at the cost of slightly lower buildup. But weapons without native status effects, or native non-Blood Loss buildups will benefit from having Blood Loss buildup added by the Blood affinity. E.g. On a build aiming to make use the Curved Sword Power Stance moveset, an Occult Scavenger's Curved Sword (native Bleed) and a Blood Bandit's Curved Sword (no native bleed) would be ideal to maximize both AR and Blood Loss buildup simultaneously.
AnonymousSo everything but Standard affinity decrease base Attack Power?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
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maybe it's just me, but occult doesn't really seem to have a use.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Why can't I apply occult affinity to elemental ashes of war? It just adds arcane scaling, for God's sake. It feels like you're getting locked out of some many options for no real reason.
- Anonymous
I think we can expect new infusions with the DLC'(s) to come. Obvious ones are missing, E.G. spell quality (INT+FTH) among other dual infusions that would be very much welcome for interesting builds, and alternative damage sources from mono scaling (like INT physical damage scaling or the obvious lightning FTH). Wouldn't say that the system is worse than DS3, it's different in that choices are worse but their use is more flexible.
I'm just gonna call them infusions because they are still as lack luster & nearly identical as they were in DS3. All they really do is change the flavor of the damage type you are dealing. Nothing creatively or functionally different about the elements.
Powerstancing is its own can of beans, but the status effects are 'mixed' to say the least, in spite of being easier to proc. Poison is still pathetic. Frost's debuff balance-checks its instant damage. And Bleed is OP because it doesn't have a balance check is just straight up damage.
The exact same stingy cons still apply; lower defensive performance and guard boost/stability. They did give us guard counters, but they aren't all too useful in PvP. And because of the cons, shields can't be anything but standard infusion, because their guard boost gets crippled otherwise.
2-handing gets a raw deal too. In DS3 people 2 handed a weapon because the wanted to use the skill, But since skills are easier to access(quality-of-life, under the hood changes, where DS3 prioritized the skill of the left hand weapon, while Elden Ring prioritizes the skill of the Right hand weapon), and weapon defense was already lackluster, people just go for the offense with powerstancing instead. There is no strategical advantage to 2-handing, even in weapons where it makes sense to 2-hand them like twin blades.
They could have avoided some of this and at least made sense of 2-handiing, if only they removed the defense performance trade-off of infusion.
Blood and Poison Affinity DO NOT improve Strength and Dex scaling, on any weapon. they decrease physical scaling
- Anonymous
sad that magic affinity doesnt replenish FP like simple infusion in DS3
- Anonymous
Kind of a shame that there is not a dual faith/int scaling infusion, akin to DS3's Dark Gem. Really limits the options for those builds to Sword of Night and Flame and... yeah sword of night and flame. Potentially a Sleep affinity could be such an infusion?
- Anonymous
when it says can't be buffed by spells that would be spells or incantations that buff the weapon itself, like bloodflame blade yes? but a weapon given blood or cold affinity would still do more damage after golden vow was cast, is that right?
- Anonymous
I've been playing for a while now, but there is still something I'm having some trouble understanding. What I want to know is, does every player using a melee build or a hybrid build of melee and FTH, and have changed a weapon to the cold affinity, just accept the hit they see in damage output by using an affinity that scales to INT, an attribute they wont have invested points into? or is it the same as it is with the weapons, where certain weapons will only be viable for certain builds and players have to make a choice in terms of which weapon they want to use then put points into the attributes needed to get the most out of it? so it would be a case of certain builds not using the cold affinity at all, they would use freezing grease instead? I haven't put a cold affinity on any weapon I've got yet because of the massive difference in damage output I see. I always think that even if an enemy is weak to frostbite, it wont make up for the massive drop I get in base damage. Is that right? or does the damage a cold weapon does to enemies vulnerable to it make up for the drop in base damage?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
why on earth does lightning scale with dexterity?? Or at least not have a faith equivalent like fire + flame art
I've been looking everywhere, and I haven't found an answer to my following question:
Does anyone know of you can buff an Occult Affinitied Weapon, or does it turn off the capacity to use Greases like a large portion of affinities (i.e. can't buff a weapon set to Blood or Flame Art, etc.)?
- Anonymous
Hey Im trying to apply the sacred affinity to a weapon but the option doesnt appear despite the fact that i have the wetblade for sacred. Is this bc some weapons can only take certain affinities or can ALL weapons take ALL affinities. Just to clarify, the weapon can take affinities however it only has the option of Standard, Keen, Heavy, Quality, and Fire. Sacred Magic and whatnot arent shown at all.
- Anonymous
Just wondering is their any cases to use fire affinity over flame art or in turn as flame art is better for fire builds as fire incantations usually use faith and flame art, in my experience, gives higher damage than basic fire affinity. Any reason why someone would just use fire affinity? Outside of a dex build which lighting affinity would work better for it seems kinda pointless.
- Anonymous
Fire/Flame & Lightning will add some flames or sparks when you attack an enemy, is that just visual or actually some DoT/debuff
- Anonymous
Occult affinity doesn't prevent skeletons from respawning.
Also cold affinity doesn't lower all non-int scalings, on hammers at least it also slightly increases strength scaling. (more than standard, less than heavy of course)
- Anonymous
Occult affinity doesn't prevent skeletons from respawning.
Also cold affinity doesn't lower all non-int scalings, on hammers at least it also slightly increases strength scaling. (more than standard, less than heavy of course)
- Anonymous
Dumb question but I'm a little unclear on this, if I use, for example, a flame ash of war with a heavy affinity, what will the special fire move scale with? Will it scale just as well as it would if I kept it as flame affinity?
- Anonymous
Cold adds int scaling and some magic dmg, but does the frost buildup amount scale with arcane?
Is it worth upgrading any of the starter weapons?
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