Ancient Death Rancor | Elden Ring Wiki

Wish they do more damage or at least give some frostbite

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The stat spread allows you to stack the two strongest damage buffs in the game: terra magica and howl of shabriri. combined with physick you can turn your little skulls into flying cheese graters and melt everything in the game, even in mid-game

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Good stunlock potential and they're really spamable, but the damage is too low without high stat investment.

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the ultimate cheese sorcery, I've done two playthroughs melee build and after losing to malenia a bunch of times again, I figured why don't I try something different. I tried almost spell and when I got to this i realized that it was going to work, died and we back with just this and erdtree heal and mimic and trivialized malenia, she only hit maybe 1 time, then I went for radagon and elden beast and not as easy but it was a breeze, if you're having trouble with at least these two bosses definitely recommend it if you get frustrated with dying and dying. I don't plan on using it for everything but I just wanted to finish this run

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Spamming this with mimic tear is how I beat Malenia.

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I used to love the Family Heads flail L2, has less skulls but does a lot more damage and one of the skulls is HUGE and does a lot more poise damage+looks cool, but since this got buffed the weapon is useless because the skulls from the L2 are way slower and don’t last as long.

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While it's not as efficient as other spells as dealing damage its much more likely to cause the enemies open to a riposte.

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This spell is so goddamn annoying to deal with -_-

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This obstructs vision in Colosseum and allows instant win ninja ganks.

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Anybody missing Pursuers and Dark Bead? Dark magic went to OP (ds1) to meh (ds3). And now we call it Death magic, because, yeah, is a dead type of magic: only who likes to die casts it.

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Wish we could of gotten some classic hexes, maybe dark orb skull edition, this class could do with a basic projectile spell.

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Wrecks Omens in leyndell sewers. Along with darkmoon greeatsword. Walk in the park

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With new patch this si the most cancerous spell in the game by far. Heeeyy lets make a spell chase you for 10 minutes and cover whole screen

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equip this on a magic build and watch your mimic tear stun lock malenia

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Honestly the only useful death sorcery within the small selection of death sorceries. Ancient Death Rancor is what Rancorcall wishes it can be as it staggers more enemies as well as having slightly more range due to the skull's ability to explode. Why couldn't we get the slow moving exploding skull as a sorcery from the skeleton mages? How about the fast single-skull projectile attack that skeleton mages use? It's a shame that there's no effort to differentiate between the two as Ancient Death Rancor is just way better than Rancorcall in every aspect except FP cost.

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hey from: WHY????? why do these need to last longer? at least make the old volley disappear when a new one gets cast! you thought that was necessary with elden stars, no?

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If you can get just a bit of distance on someone in PvP, you can use this two or three times and place a massive amount of pressure on your opponent. It does okay damage if it lands and staggers basically everyone. Solid wild card pick!

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I was able to hit for 5000 damage per charged cast with this spell on the trolls located in the Mountain Tops of the Giants in NG+. It took a laundry list of items to pull it off. And with the high stat/Talisman investment the spell doesn’t shine unless you’re in NG+ territory. Here’s the setup below

80INT/80 FTH
+25 Prince of Death Staff
Terra Magica
Lord of Blood’s Exultation
Ritual Sword Talisman
Godfrey Icon
Magic scorpion charm
Commander’s Standard
Seppuku
Contagious Fury
Magic Shrouding Cracked Tear
Crimson Crystal tear (to negate the health loss and subsequent debuff of the Ritual Sword Talisman)

And you will become a boss melter even in NG+. It’s a strong spell, but your build has to be optimized to the max (tho tbh multiple spells/incantations start to melt at that point as well).

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Annoying in pvp if you let them get more then one cast off

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Repeated chains of this + Sword of Night & Flame L2R1 just borderline perma-stunlocked Alecto from full health to zero on my recent playthrough—the only window she had to close in and attack was when I had to replenish FP once. Good lord this can be a powerful tool for spellcasters/INT-heavy builds if used wisely.

90% of PvE enemies will flinch after each skull hits them, and given how many are released per cast, most enemies will be stuck in a constant flinch animation for around 2 seconds if all skulls connect (which isn’t uncommon). This can allow you to hold enemies in place (especially dodgier ones) while you charge/cast harder-to-land attacks that hit like an absolute truck (Carian grandeur, SoNaF AoW, Rock Blaster, maybe even Comet Azur if you time well, just to name a few).

Take the comments complaining about damage output with a bit of a grain of salt. While I agree that the damage is a bit lackluster (ESPECIALLY considering the hefty FTH requirement and how hard this hits when the Death-rite birds use it), it’s respectable at decent INT levels/minimum FTH requirement and isn’t meant to be used as a spammy boss melter—other spells already exist for that purpose. It’s a reliable stun tool to land bigger hits against quick yet flinchable enemies, and pair this tactic with Terra Magica for some seriously hard hitting combos. Definitely worth trying out if you have the stats for it to see how it works for you/what you can chain after it.

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This spell ****ing sucks

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if these went through/avoided walls, it would be S tier in my books

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I see a lot of hate towards these sorceries, that it's so limited and requires so much investment. But the staff itself has the highest scaling in the game, any sorcery with this staff with 80intel/80faith will do more then any other staff. As well with 80 faith, you now have the prime faith for godslayer incantations, godlsayer seal in one hand for the boost and cast with golden order in the other. Not to mention golden order seal has the highest scaling of seals in the game as well. This build is meant for ng+ and beyond not ng.

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how can these spells look so awesome but be so bad

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On the albinuric staff at 34 int 24 faith and 42 arc with the silver tear helm to get to 50 arc the staff gets a 316 incant scaling at max level not a bad spell to run if you’re using that staff

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only no-no for me is that faith requirement; with godrick's rune and two-fingers heirloom I can get 19 faith, and that's as far as I'm willing to go

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The flinch-lock on this bad boy absolutely wrecks Malenia. It gives you ample time to bonk her with Carian Grandeur.

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It's a shame this does not cause a special effect, the death birds cast a version that causes frostbite. And the black flame spells have a DoT to feel like a burning status. Would have been nice if each projectile caused small frostbite build up or a special version of frost to make this special. Maybe a speed debuf or something? The lore of the death birds state that it's a cold flame they cast.

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I think people who hate on this spell miss the point of it entirely. When you have a spell that can erase basically any human-sized enemy, including bosses like Alecto, without taking a hit, that's a pretty good spell, imo. It's not meant to serve as a primary spammable.

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Scarlet Rot just melts him. It takes a bit get it to proc - but it just eats his health. Coupled with Latenna the Albinauric (+6) you can just stand back and watch.

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It spawn activation on the island of rubble just before the grace. The map isn't too accurate.

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Maybe its cuz I have 80 faith 75 int with a fully upgraded PoDS but in NG+5 I'm consistently using this to melt bosses

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One of the best spells in the game for open world IMO. Easy to spam while moving, staggers, low FP cost, decent damage with max staff and buffs, auto aims, great range, great for vertically if you're above target and its the best looking spell. Only downside is trying to use it in tight sections of catacombs and caves. Get it.

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Aaah the troll killer spell

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Everyone is talking about how this spell would be good if it just lacked faith at all, but not so much the fact that the prince of deaths staff just has horrendous scaling bonuses. You need to have 55 Int and 52 Fth before the prince of deaths staff even reaches 300 scaling, assuming you're trying to have somewhat equal investment into both. Meanwhile, at 40 Int and 40 Fth the golden order seal is at 317. I don't think the spells are the problem, the problem is that certain hybrid casting tools are just ****ing awful. The clawmark seal suffers a similarly horrible scaling not even reaching 300 scaling with 70 str/fth, while the dragon communion seal can get 315 scaling at 40 fth/arc.

From Software needs to buff the Prince of Deaths Staff and Clawmark Seal, so that they can at least reach 300 scaling by 40/40 in their respective scaling.

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Ancient Death Rancor is the name of my Scandinavian True Black Metal band.

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At typical PvP/PvE levels, the damage on this isn't great, but the utility is solid. The projectiles have excellent tracking, last ages, and they will stagger on hit, so you can't just ignore them.

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Smoothbrains complaining about the lack of damage lol. This spell is for setting up combos and staggering enemies. Not every spell has to melt on a single cast.

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34 Int 24 Fai... those are some pretty hefty requirements. You'd think if they wanted INT/FAI to be a real build, they'd create more than one Weapon that scales with those stats. Such mind-boggling bad design is EVERYWHERE in this game.

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34 Int 24 Fai... those are some pretty hefty requirements. You'd think if they wanted INT/FAI to be a real build, they'd create more than one Weapon that scales with those stats. Such mind-boggling bad design is EVERYWHERE in this game.

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Cast this follow with few glint blade then try catch roll them if hit all of skull will stagger them for glintblade to finish the job.
very good for put up the pressure to great shield user with glintblade too. any long last spell is very good in pvp.

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Decent in Malenia fight as each ball can stagger her and since they fly slow it and hit in intervals, it keeps her busy for about 2 seconds per cast if they all land.

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Rocking Prince of death staff 80 fth 80 int + 4 Tailsman buffs, this thing melts everything.

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Either put faith or int, death spells stats requirement are stupid but this one is on top.

It costs so much stats in both faith and int that you cannot make use of it in a classic sorcerer build and a "medium" meta sl like 125....

So much wasted stats for only one spell in the end, it's a good spell, too bad it forces you to go near sl 150.

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Either put faith or int, death spells stats requirement are stupid but this one is on top.

It costs so much stats in both faith and int that you cannot make use of it in a classic sorcerer build and a "medium" meta sl like 125....

So much wasted stats for only one spell in the end, it's a good spell, too bad it forces you to go near sl 150.

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Pretty nice poise damage because of how many projectiles it spawns for one cast. It's no Rock Sling, of course, but it's not too shabby nontheless :D
It's strong enough to play normally, so it's a fine thing to use in hybrid int/faith builds

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Only "buff" I want for this spell is to reduce the ridiculously high faith requirement

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Southwest of Gate Town North grace site, West enough that you reach the grass area connected to the academy landmass. South enough that you just pass the sunken building with the large steeple (which is the immediate isle south of the grace site. ONLY spawns at night, as usual. For me, it spawned in, landed, did a leap attack, never came down and died, tumbing to the ground. Didn't even get a chance to attack it. Quite awkward. Visions of victory I suppose.

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While this spell isn't all that good, I've found it useful for applying stress in PVP. The homing is great, the stun is okay, and, while the damage is awful, enemies tend to spend a lot of time and energy avoiding it because they are afraid of getting staggered. While they are rolling around avoiding the skulls, you have time to spam a few SoNaF weapon arts or other spells if you're good at switching (I am not).

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The damage on this is underwhelming considering its demanding stats investment, Glinstone cometshard does more damage and only has 36 INT req for comparison. We can all agree that both these spells behave differently and rancor has very good tracking (albeit slow), but those are the numbers sadly. Also PoD staff being as bad as it is does it no favours either. (And no something requiring 80/80 is not always viable). I always found myself getting the minimum faith req and casting with another staff like the academy's. Now for the good stuff: It's really spammable with high spell cast speed and you can dish out decent DPS that way, or you can deal high stagger damage when you charge this. It's really versatile that way.
All in all it's good, but I feel like it's missing just a little something, as it's the case for anything death related in Elden Ring.

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The damage on this is underwhelming considering its demanding stats investment, Glinstone cometshard does more damage and only has 36 INT req for comparison. We can all agree that both these spells behave differently and rancor has very good tracking (albeit slow), but those are the numbers sadly. Also PoD staff being as bad as it is does it no favours either. (And no something requiring 80/80 is not always viable). I always found myself getting the minimum faith req and casting with another staff like the academy's. Now for the good stuff: It's really spammable with high spell cast speed and you can dish out decent DPS that way, or you can deal high stagger damage when you charge this. It's really versatile that way.
All in all it's good, but I feel like it's missing just a little something, as it's the case for anything death related in Elden Ring.

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This absolutely melted Malenia on NG+. I had a Death Prince Staff, 80 INT, 70 FTH, and a summoned mimic. She went down within probably 10-15 seconds for her first phase and her 2nd phase took about another 10-15 seconds.

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I think this needs a bit of damage increase, though it has decent utility, I think running 50/50 int/fth with the prince of death staff which specifically boosts death sorceries and only doing 550-600's fully charged and full on (without the unnoticed damage bonus) to the average knight enemy is kinda F, still way better than explosive ghostflame after 1.04 patch.

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For me the bird spawned only when passing between the raia lucarya wall and the isle.

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Extremely strong spell at mid range, casts from above your head and can set up easily into longer animation spells and weapon arts

It's a good middle ground between Elden Stars homing at long range and Swarm of Flies at close range

Highly recommend having it on any Int/Faith build alongside Golden Order spells

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this feels and is trash to use compared to other options. but hey, dont listen to me, listen to the 90 people who will downvote this because "WELL TECHNICALLY AT 80/80 WITH PRINCE OF DEATHS STAFF IT DOES COMPARABLE DAMAGE TO PEBBLE SPAM"

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This spell gets good at higher int levels (no need for faith investment beyond minimum), so I get why some people are down on it if obtained early. This spell is great because you can chain cast it and create a wall of skulls that stuns and keeps pounding on the enemy until dead. You also can back up or strafe while casting to keep proper spacing. Especially good for dealing with fast bosses that tend to dodge rock sling. Took out Alecto with this spell without taking a hit, for example. Not sure about duels, but it is good for dealing with pvp invaders. If the invader gets stun locked by this, they are dead in most cases. Plus the cloud can hide other spells if doing a combo.

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south-west of gate town north grace site. not straight south, straight south will take you right past it without spawning it.

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Stun is nice and all but doesn't feel satisfying to use. Running an Int/Faith build and I could easily just use a Black Flame Fireball to do the same damage as 2-3 casts of this.

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I really hope they buff this in some form, hopefully damage or adding frost

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Please add frostbite to this spell, it would seriously help it out.

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this has high poise damage and no stamina cost, in some PVE this is very helpful
The lock down is also nice.

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Does it auto track or is it just me? Aim your camera at an enemy and dont lock on and it still follows them

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imo the real utility of this spell really comes from how it's cast and it's reach. because you raise your staff high above your head when rancor is cast, you can cast it while staying behind cover and at a decent range away from whatever your aiming at, making it very useful when dealing with particularly annoying ranged enemies.

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The only bad thing about this spell is that you have to kill the Death Rite Bird to get it

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This bird doesn't show up for me, are there requirements to make it show? I'm at the place shown on the map, at night, no deathbird.

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If you cast this and then stars of ruin shortly afterwards, you can get most people to start panic rolling and eat a good amount of the projectiles lmao

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Does anyone know what damage type this falls under? Only magic or does this do fire or frost as well?

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Good spell, not great, but I like it. It is slow, has good homing, is doing good stance damage. It is a great opener/setup spell. Generally I don't charge it. I try to time my attacks together. So for example ADR > jump attack.

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Stun for days holy crap, can't block it, hard to dodge. Doesn't do much more damage then the regular call, but if you want to make sure your 24 fp is doing SOMETHING +stagger, this is it. Pebbles are an easy dodge is all I'm saying. I wish there were more int/fth weapons chasing people after casting this can be scary.

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Mediocre in everything but against Malenia, in the first phase it does just ok but in the second when her pose is even lower it pretty much keep her in the floor.

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Spam it, dont charge. Running 40/40 with death staff, does solid damage but not the best. it will stun lock any smaller enemy and next to never miss larger ones. Annihilates agile enemies like zamor champs and bloodhound knights who dodge normal spells, with this they literally cant move. Great for dragons will next to never miss their head so no dps lost.

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This feels how about where Rancorcall should in terms of DPS. The utility if you're trying to stunbarrage someone from long range and kite, yeah, that's pretty cool. You can use to set up a wall of ghost skulls that will slowly kill someone, as long as they don't spam dodge towards you

I would love to see a big increase in FP cost and requirements, and just get a big damage buff. I honestly never had a situation where ADR seemed to do the stun barrage thing better than Rancorcall, so couldn't we at least get it balanced into a burst spell? Or adjust the scaling so that it had a lower damage floor? Anything to justify the 58 SL requirement cost.


Comparing this to Comet, sure they seem to be designed differently, but I really can't think of a time that ADR is a better choice than Comet because threatening actually killing your opponent with damage seems a bit more useful then low damage stagger if their finger slips off the dodge button? I really wanted to make the hybrid INT/FAI build work but it's just not fun to cast this 8 times hoping the enemy doesn't just walk up and kill me, all to do less damage with a much higher FP cost and a larger investment in character development?

Like think of how great this spell would be if it was a slow, expensive, but very reliable long range, tracking, short term stunlock. Nothing crazy, but if actually was REALLY GOOD at crowd control and could consistently hit enemies and you could use it creatively to stop their charge through one of your AoEs or something. That would be great spell and it wouldn't even have to do damage. But this spell doesn't really do that. A smart opponent won't get hit, an agile mob will run up and kill you, a tanky mob will shrug off the damage.


It's just subpar at everything it tries to do.

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Frankly incredible. For me it's the sorcery equivalent of giantsflames—trades off some of that high-impact damage for travel time and homing. Each projectile does a minor amount of poise damage, meaning it can hitstun quite a few enemies. The regular damage is great, the range is not bad at all, and the travel time means you can set up swarms of the things for enemies to walk into.

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In pve I feel people only look at the damage, when where this thing shines is in the stun/range, and how much it pursues the enemy. Like yeah rock sling does more damage, but it starts to requires to hit more times and some enemies bosses are really hard to hit with it, let alone with the 3 rocks.
But I also understand that in first sight you expect this to be like dark bead.

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If you’re like me and others wondering why you killed it and got the Red-Feathered Branchsword Talisman instead of the spell. It’s because that isn’t the right bird. There’s another Northwest of the Academy Gatetown grace. It does seem weird they’d put the exact same boss so close to each other and that’s where the confusion comes from.

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PvE wise, it looks cool but requires a TON of INT/FTH investment to do good damage. PvP wise this rare to see spell can throw invaders off and the impact can set you up for a swing if timed right.

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Stunlocks Melenia so good

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While the damage is definitely lower than what I'd expect even using PoD, the reasonably fast cast time combined with the slow moving projectiles does mean you can get a few of these off before the first one impacts and takes aggro away from a spirit summon. Combined with the good tracking, this spell isn't actually that bad, though it's fairly niche and only useable in certain situations.

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FP efficiency is okay-ish. Speed is low, tracking is decent but with the low speed it doesn't feel great. Damage is actual garbage until you get massive massive amounts of INT/FTH and use the Prince of Death staff at +25, but at that point you can just meme Lusat/Azur for several times higher damage, or spam stars of ruin or something. At lower levels with the base stats it's just awful, every other spell in the same/lower FP cost ballpark will get you higher efficiency and DPS, even Night Shard (aka the worse Pebble) spam ends up being more efficient and higher DPS until you reach endgame.

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Death sorceries are terrible, no matter which way you look at them, not really viable except for some bosses maybe.

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Casts very fast and has good range and tracking. Was able to cheese the entire Malenia boss fight because of this.

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Tested with the shielded frog mobs at the rune farming spot near the Palace Approach Ledge-Road in Mohgwyn Palace:
Prince of death staff +25 on right hand and meteorite staff on left hand for the added gravity spell bonus. All spells were cast on the right hand to benefit from the higher scaling.
Int - 70 Faith - 73
Ancient death rancor: 1326. Cast 5x in ≈ 9.45s. Dps: 701.6
Rock Sling: 1631. 5x in 12.5s. Dps 652.4
Collapsing Stars: 1311. 5x in 10.3s. Dps: 636.4
Conclusion:
Although the other spells hit harder and do more damage per FP spent, Ancient Death Rancor will surpass the others in regards of dps because of the shorter cast time. It also locks enemies in place when they get hit. This thing melts bosses. And yes, it works on Malenia.

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Honestly a nasty lil spell to have in your kit. Doesn't hit too hard but its fast to cast, tracks well, good range, good stagger, while being cheap AND chargeable. You can completely lock down low poise enemies just by spamming this at them. IE if you want to cheese those annoying black knife enemies this is your spell

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What type of damage does this have?

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Damage is kind of ass but the tracking and hitstun make it pretty useful in PvP, also pretty fast to cast and travels pretty far!

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does increasing faith past the requirement cause the spell to do more damage?

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I defeated the Death Rite Bird for this, but instead of dropping the spell, it dropped Red-Feathered Branchsword Talisman instead. How do I get this spell now?

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He was at 2/3 health when I (presumably) hit it with a black flame fireball. He instantly lost his remaining health and died. I don't know if that was a bug or if this is a hidden weakness of his. Can someone confirm or deny this?

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It's a decent spell. Fires a bunch of slow moving missiles that follow the target. The tracking and damage are good and the cast speed is fast. It probably won't see much use until all the overpowered weapon arts get nerfed though.

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The stat scaling for this spell should be a clear hint on what kind of build this spell would perform well on.

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There seems to be a lot of people claiming this is awful like the other two 'death' sorceries, I'm not sure if they think it's the weaker Rancorcall or what, but this thing hits enemies in Deeproot Depths, relatively lategame, for over 1k per uncharged cast with a scuffed setup: Carian Regal Scepter +9, 60 int & 40 fth. Tested it out on the way to grab the prince of death staff for it and was surprised that it did good damage after all the people writing it off. There are other valid things to complain about on this spell like the high stat investment, awful range & speed, but it hits hard and has more stagger potential than Rock Sling spam.

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Weirdly enough, this spell is probably the best "spellblade" spell for non-boss enemies.
Not because of the damage, but because it staggers most enemies (not bosses though) with every hit, which lets you go in and go for a backstab, charged strong attack or weapon art with a long wind up.
I've found this to be the only way to reliably test fully charged carian grandeur. Still sucks though.

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Hit's a bit less than Stars of ruin, at a longer range, better tracking, and half the cost. The slow moving projectiles keep people dodging or allow you to set up spells behind them. I think it's lack of damage makes up for the utility.

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Not sure why but all death spells are so underpowered.

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