Arcane | Elden Ring Wiki

Very nice that both the strenght/arcane weapons have the same dex requirement.

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I wonder, with high Arcane, and a weapon that already has bleed like the Flamberg, would you recommend Blood or Occult infusion?

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Google: Definition of Arcane; "understood by few; mysterious or secret."

A very well-chosen name for the stat here, because a lot of these things under this stat seem to be rooted in a knowledge and belief of esoteric or blasphemous things... That is to say, this stat controls things that are a bit distant from, or are outright removed from, or ungraced by, the Erdtree and all of the other commonly beloved/feared higher powers, and/or are just things few know about.

I say this, as it specifically as it influences things that seem alien in nature, or carry a bad omen, or are just opposed to life and nature [at least the known life and nature as it exists now in the world].
Which is to say: Status effect boosts, grants extra resistance to Holy Damage, resistance to Death Blight, lets one wield and boosts damage of exotic/ghastly/dragonic weapons and acts as a requirement for most of them[mostly Albinauric and Dragonic things]. The fact an infusion that is called Occult increases in damage with Arcane just reinforces this opinion more for me.

In a way, i think it says this stat means the character has either odd Faith they follow, chose to take up arms that go against the Erdtree's nature, is a really dedicated scholar to subjects of odd knowledge normal sorcerers wouldn't or couldn't touch, or just has an oddity somewhere in their bloodline... or maybe they are just a master with something outside of styles of combat that one would consider 'normal'.

The only oddity i dunno about is why it increases item discovery, but it could mean that the character is much luckier with a higher start, but i also think it also implies a sixth sense for detecting things, and maybe uncommon techniques of how to better salvage and fix any number of things better after killing their original owners.

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Out of the 12 arcane weapons in this game, 5 of them dont do bleed, 6 do bleed, and no arcane weapons do poison by default, despite poison scaling with arcane.

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the real reason everyone runs an arc build is because the drop rates are masochistic in this game

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Honestly, I think it's weird people aren't using arcane as a primary damage stat more often. You can dump minor investments into the other two physical stats solely for stat requirements, and get so much more for your money's worth than if you went with a Quality build. Add minimum faith and/or int investments, and you have yourself a functional jack-of-all-trades spellblade. Sure, you don't get access to the other damage stats' somber weapons, but who needs em when you have Morgott's Curved Sword and Mohgwyn's Sacred Spear o
And Regalia of Eochaid? Arcane is so much more than just status spam.

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Fellas, is it even worth making an Arcane build? I can use most weapons on my warrior, most sorceries on my witch and most incantations on my priestess. With this and INT/FTH I'm not sure if they warrant another playthrough unless you really love them. But with INT/FTH you at least get a couple new spells whereas my two casters already meet the very low ARC requirements for their spells.

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I just wish that there were more Bloodflame incantations and more options for int/arc since right now it just has some bubbles. I am also surprised that the briar spells don’t require arcane since if any would you would think they do. At least if briar spells got a buff and scaled with arcane they would be at least decent. I think some more briar spells or similar ones would be quite fun.

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So arcane scaling on a weapon does not increase that weapon’s attack power with higher arcane? It only increases the status buildup?

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I know bleed is op asf but they really should have added more blood incantations hopefully dlc will they are so fun especially bloodboon

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Arcane is like luck from DS3, the red-haired stepchild stat. Unlike luck, it has many more things in the game that apply it though.

I think at the very least the infinite use ‘Tool’ items like the Omen Bairns, Wraith Calling Bell, and the Ancestral Infants Head should’ve scaled with Arcane instead of Int/Faith. Those tools aren’t often utilized anyway and I doubt it would greatly increase Arcane’s capabilities, but it’d have been a cool way to grant them a set of spells similar to the way Bloodborne Hunter’s Tools worked.

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Chad ER Arcane vs virgin DS3/DeS Luck,

Arcane builds are actually useful in this game, unlike luck builds in DS3 or DeS. You have actual weapons, a multitude of status in the game where status effects are the most powerful they've ever been, and several strong weapons, some with some of the strongest skills in the game (Eochaid's Dancing Blade...), and some of the most useful incantations? (Rotten Breath is like, one of the most used incantations because scarlet rot destroys most things vulnerable to it, and swarm of flies isn't a joke even after nerfs)

And some people say Arcane is trash or meh? lol no

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Bruh Arcane scales with status effects, is the main stat of one of the two invader factions in the game (Mohg), and influences the strength of Dragon Communion incantations, the most vile form of incantation in the Lands Between. The starting class with the most Arcane is literally the thief/bandit. It's not an accident that this is the cheese stat - it's practically synonymous with fighting dirty.

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arcane has such missed potential. really cool spell ideas and some pretty awesome weapons only for it to get used purely by cheesers with RoB.

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ah yes, the trashiest stat.

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If you level up arcane, you improve bleeding, is the best stat in the game @forsen If you level up arcane, you improve bleeding, is the best stat in the game @forsen

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A shame there's not more arcane magic :/

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trying to get raw damage out of this stat is tough

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There seems to be one common connection between all the Arcane weapons/incantations/thingies. At first I though it was just "occult magic" or something, or worship of outer gods, but neither really did fit. What fits is shamanistic theme of using life energy - yours or your enemies - as a proxy.

Bleed stuff fits obviously, blood is the literal life energy and every single bleed weapon/spell requires usage of blood to function - weapons that are simply "sharp enough to cause bleeding" don't have Arcane scaling.

Dragon Communion - you consume the life essence of slain dragons, simple enough. There's a clear line between DC spells that require this sacrifice (and require Arcane to use), and other Dragon-related incantations that just require faith to cast, as they are tied to the actual worship of dragons.

Albinauric weapons seem to be created from the same material as the Silver Tears - which also seems to be the liquid inside their veins. The "innane arcaneness" of albinaurics mentioned in the description of their staff supports this, they seem to be wielding weapons created literally from their "blood".

Oracle bubbles in their description suggest that the bubbles are actually living beings, as it's mentioned that Claymen look for their lost oracles within the bubbles. It might be another parallel to water mechanics that FromSoft loves to utilize (flowing water - life, still water - death, ripple - artificial life, bubble - short and explosive life), and those sorceries also seem to be related to River Siofra and the legend of the blue fairies.

Marais stuff comes from a family that produced generations of executioners. While their swords don't seem to cause bleeding (which as mentioned doesn't necessarily make a weapon "arcane"), they seem to be infused with some strange magic. Perhaps years of executions infused the weapons with life force of their victims?

Clinging Bone - literal body part. Poison weapons - related to snakes that produce venom within their bodies. Morgott's Sword - his literal, crystallized Omen blood.

My best attempt to figure out what the **** is Arcane even supposed to be, due to so many different elements being a part of it.

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Post below me is wrong. Arcane isn't the "bleed stat." It combines unorthodox and shunned aspects of Elden Ring's world, which bleed falls under. Coincidentally, that's also why knowledge of the arcane arts protects against holy damage, which is mostly tied to faith and part of conventional methods.

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why would arcane boost holy defense? it's a bleed stat. Faith should be the only one to boost holy defense.

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Does arcane effect status buildup of things like madness from incantations or is that purely based off the seal spell buff?

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status buildup isn't properly downscaled from overleveled phantoms, so fighting a super min maxed bleed build at low level is pretty much a guaranteed loss.

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spicy dex

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on a bleed build this stat is the game's difficulty slider

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I just finished a dex/faith run, and now I want to try a poison run. Is poison good? (Don’t tell me to just do a bleed build because I tried and it just didn’t feel honest.)

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Can't wait for season 2

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Lore wise: what exactly is arcane? They affect dragon incants, and bubble spells. Faith works as the caster believes in the infant to work. Whereas intelligence requires the caster to understand the spell (I’m pretty sure). But what about arcane? Some weapons like the marai’s executioner scales with arcane that affects the magic damage it has.

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People need to STOP blaming weapons like cross-naginata and Rivers for THIS being the REAL problem.

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The funny stat

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for some weird reason, weapons that have arcane stat requirements still allow you to use their AOW to full effect if you dont meet that weapons arcane stat requirements, as long as you meet the requirements of all the other stats. for example, say you have the dex to meet the requirements of rivers of blood, but not the strength or arcane requirements. when using corpse piler, no fp will be consumed and the blood slashes wont come out, but itll do the regular animation of double slash, which is what corpse piler is based off of. now, imagine you two hand the weapon and you now meet the dex and strength requirements of rivers, but not the arcane, you will consume fp and do the blood slashes that would normally come out if you had met all the stat requirements. this goes for all the arcane weapons ive tested, being rivers, eleonoras, serpent bow, clinging bone, varres bouquet, ripple blade, marais executioners sword, reduvia, and even mohgwyna sacred spear, the ritual working as if you had the requirements met. of course, they dont do much damage, as youre not meeting the requirements of the weapon and the scaling is in the negatives but it all works, with the blood weapons proccing bleed very quickly. id really like if someone tested the dragon communion seal and if you can cast incantations without meeting its requirements, but im running an int build right now and cant test it myself.

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I don't have much in ARC what I do have was only put in to meet the requirement on a weapon I wanted to try. But I just found swarm of flies and the damage it does is a big let down, especially as I was expecting it to be a boss shredder after seeing so many comments and posts about it. So if I leave ARC at 20 is this incantation useless to me? or at least useless against bosses and strong enemies?

I'm also wondering about bloodflame blade, I like to use it on great-stars, and I use it more than any of the other armament buffs. I had thought putting BFB on it would do good damage on top of its passive bleed buildup. It does seem to hit harder but I'm wondering if I'm getting my money's worth in terms of the cost in FP of using it, and giving it a spell slot? Bloodflame blade has a FTH and ARC requirement, does that mean the blood loss buildup scales with ARC and the flames with FTH? Or am I misunderstanding how bloodflame blade works?

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Start as the bandit powerstance reduvia with your original dagger with the ash or war from fort height and you’ll absolutely rip ass

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Does dex decrease cast time of dragon breath incantations, too?

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Anyone has the data about how ARC investment affects the status breaths? Not my playstyle investing on ARC or FTH, but From did a wonderful job on these dragon incantations. I'll give an ARC build a try on NG+, but now I just want to meet the min for the dragon breath ones. How effective it will be on mid game and after?

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Quick question: does Arcane only affect status effect build up if the weapon in question has Arcane scaling? Or will it increase build up regardless?

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Which items also scale eith arcane? Some pots and perfumes, anything else? General rule, anything inflicting status effects?

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lorewise, arcane builds are weirdos in the lands between

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No shame on you if you use arcane, but holy **** if (in theory at least) lower RL pvp doesn’t translate into arcane being maybe a little too strong. Your spells scale with it, your weapons scale with it, and the status effects of both your weapon and your spells scale with it. Just if you do want to run this build… please don’t use rivers of blood? Maybe use an ash of war like bloody slash or the eleanora, or even the bloody helice. I bet that’d be fun to play, and fun to fight…

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The virgin arc/dex RoB build vs the CHAD ARC/DEX REGALIA OF EOCHAID build

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Does anyone know what in the lore Arcane is supposed to actually represent? Most of the other attributes are pretty self-explanatory though the lore distinction between Mind and Intelligence is a bit blurry, but Arcane gets basically no explanation and the things it's good for are all over the place.

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Is there any soft cap/hard cap for blood loss buildup on weapons with blood affinity? Or I'll have to reach 99 arcane for max blood loss (without other buffs). Using it for PvE (not using Rivers of Blood).

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Bloodtinge except it increases Rapid Poison/Bleed, allows you to use OP incantations more effectively and raises item discovery. Based.

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Testing and wasting some Larval tear’s. At 60 arcance my Uchigatana has 114 bleed proc. At 80 arcane it had 115. RoB went from 76 to 78. No need to go full arcane it seems if you want to play a bleed build, and you’re better off putting points in dexterity instead of maxing out arcane.

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Literally only maiming this because FromSoft decided that enemies should have a grand total of 5% drop chance for their items.

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What are the options for an Arcane focused character who doesn't want to go full Rivers of Blood?
I'm looking to try anything interesting and am currently thinking of Briars of Sin / Punishment or Bloodflame incantations.

Does Arcane affect status build-up on sorceries / incantations cast with an Arcane scaling catalyst? How about Frostbite?

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remember kids, unless the game secretly goes above base 199 discovery with 99 Arcane, only level up your arcane to 82 arcane if your going to use arcane boosting items (Marika's soreseal, Godrick's great rune, silver tear mask. all together give +18) for your maximum farming needs.

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Why does it say that Arcane doesn't affect Arrow buildup on Arcane bows, when they LITERAL only bow that scales with Arcane only scales status buildup for Blood/Sleep/Poison?

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Eleonora's Poleblade has 55 base blood loss buildup instead of 33. 33 Is the value if you don't meet the stat requirements for Arcane.

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Eleonora's Poleblade has 55 base blood loss buildup instead of 33. 33 Is the value if you don't meet the stat requirements for Arcane.

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I did testing with the serpent bow and it does increase blood arrows proc. Against the troll outside the church of marika, it takes 5 arrows with a longbow, 4 with serpent bow and arc of 20, 3 with serpent bow and arc of 50

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this is quite ineteresting. does anyone know how arcane helps bleed build up exactly? like how much for every single point. can't seem to find this data anywhere and i don't have many larval tears to find out on my own.

for example, if a bleed weapon fully upgraded to +25 scales D with arcane and has base bleed proc value of 82, how much would arcane increase it by? like 1 point for every single arcane point?

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Hot Take, Everybody loves their precious bleed builds but the build up really needs to be nerfed. It's no wonder half of the player base uses bleed weapons, because they are busted and kill tough enemies and bosses quickly and can even 1 shot players when dual wielded or in a matter of seconds with certain weapon arts.

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So the one attribute that doesn't have an associated Heirloom Talisman or a Crystal Tear Knot... I think I can guess what's coming in the DLCs.

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other sources have told me that arcane increases the buildup of blood, poison, rot, sleep, and madness. can someone let me know if this is correct?

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The "Discovery" link now has a plus sign after it, resulting in a 404.

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i really hope that they change arrows (or AT LEAST arrows from the serpent bow) to do more buildup with arcane. seems like a bug (same with things that affect charge attacks)

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Tested
Does scale blood build up.
Does not scale blood proc damage.

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One of my favorite Netflix shows

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The "Discovery" link goes to the Vitality page as of right now

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came here to check if any build ups besides bleed scales with arcane. according to the comments it does under specific circumstances. should be added to the article.

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I have been playing a Dexterity/Arcane build, now LVL 125 with three great runes, and my opinion of Arcane is that it's kind of frustratingly a "Do Everything" stat. I struggle to keep my character's Dexterity relevant even avoiding spellcasting entirely. Arcane infusions reducing other scaling too much. Occult basically negates it (when, IMO, it would be nicer as an Arcane-Quality kind of infusion for mixed builds like mine) and Blood infusion, well, who cares about Dex or Str scaling when the bleeding is so much of the damage. IMO, it's not that Arcane needs a nerf, it needs a total rebalance to be less of an "All or Nothing" kind of stat. If ridiculous Arcane Incantation builds or Rivers of Blood spammers required a stat besides Arcane do accomplish anything that'd be a step in the right direction I think. I just wanna be able to uses status effects and boost my item recovery without it being the only thing I invest in.

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I'm still trying to figure out why you get Holy Defense from Arcane, rather than Faith.

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Hardcap is 99 for spell scaling. 45 and 80 are not hardcaps. They’re also softcaps.

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Does Arcane also scale for the other statuses? Like sleep, frost, or Rot?

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does arcane affect frost build-up if the weapon has no arcane scaling? (for example, a cold weapon?)

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You never need to invest more than 81 points in Arcane.

For Arc builds, their scaling caps at 80, and for Item Discovery respecs, you can just stay at 81 and stack additional buffs to reach max item discovery.
Godrick's Great Rune (5) , Marika's Soreseal (5) and Silver Tear Mask (8) on top of 81 natural arcance will reach 99 Arcane.

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Arcane level up sleep.

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This wiki is 100% wrong about the way arcane works with bleed buildup and scaling dmg. It's totally backwards.

Additional Arcane adds scaling dmg only, which is not fixed. It does NOT add any additional bleed buildup with each point added to arcane.

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Arcane seems to be the stat associated with heretical force. Marias's weapons and spells, Mohgwyn's weapons and spells, Dragon Communion's spells use Arcane along with the fact that the enchantment for Arcane scaling is called "Occult".

The fact that Dragon Communion's spells are heretic but Dragon Cult's spells aren't might also mean the act of borrowing other creature's power or changing your own body for power is considered heretic.

Basically this is Warlock's stat for RP purpose.

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dont you just love that the serpent bow is on this considering its the only weapon i know of that still has broken arcane scaling from really hated the bows in this game :(

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finally. an elden ring easy mode.

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what weapons have the highest? after upgrading? besides the dragon communion seal?

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So if I use the scavenger curved sword with bleed or occult, will the arcane scaling on the weapon increase bleed?

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Does this increase the chance for higher drop amounts with materials found on the ground? For instance, picking up mushrooms has a chance to gain between 1 and 3.

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What is the softcap in terms of status buildup rate? Is it 60?

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What is the softcap in terms of status buildup rate? Is it 60?

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Any point putting 80 into arcane or should I cap it at 60?

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Almost every weapon type has a weapon that scales with Arcane, this is so good

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Pointless stat. Shouldn't have been in the final release.

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Pointless stat. Shouldn't have been in the final release.

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Pointless stat. Shouldn't have been in the final release.

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Does arcane affect frost buildup on weapon if weapon doesn't scale with arcane?

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Ripple Blade seems to be the only Arc scaling weapon that grease can be applied to, which is lame if you ask me.

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Really frustrating that there's only 2 arcane weapons with good scaling (S) but both have low base dmg and cant swap ash of war.
Makes them pointless when bleed will just outdamage them for aracane user.

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Really frustrating that there's only 2 arcane weapons with good scaling (S) but both have low base dmg and cant swap ash of war.
Makes them pointless when bleed will just outdamage them for aracane user.

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Currently bugged and increases other status effects like madness. With high arcane you are able to stunlock someone with frenzied burst.

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yea, what about the other types of build up? seems odd it would work only with bleed on arcane scaling weaps

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It appears to me after some testing that staffs/seals that have arcane scaling are NOT increasing damage output of weapon buffs. I raised my arcane, and the damage did not increase. However, when I raised the other scaling attributes of said staff/seal, the damage increased from the weapon buff.

Idk if this is intentional, but I imagine it's not.

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Anyone know for sure if Arcane also increases sleep and/or madness buildup? I haven't gotten to test it myself yet.

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so does arcane increase arrows status build up? or just serpent bow?

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I hope you guys like the new sections to the wiki, I hope I was able to help people in anyway! :)

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we should be calling non-99 severe caps "firm" caps. 99 is the hard cap. this follows the already established soft/firm/hard-ware naming convention and makes more sense when talking about caps

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does arcane increase ur status arrows build up?

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Highest Arcane weapon: Marais Executioner's Sword (23 Arcane)
Highest Arcane spell: Greyoll's Roar (17 Arcane)
Most weapons are 20 Arcane or less
Helmets that increase Arcane skill: Mask of Confidence (+3), Silver Tear Mask (+8), Albinauric Mask (+4)

I haven't been to any areas past Leyndell Capital so feel free to correct me

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so does Arcane scale bleed and poison effects on weapons with no listed Arcane scaling?

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Whats the better split for a Dex/Arcane build? 50/50, 20/80, or 80/20?

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Arcane scaling seems fixed now

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Scaling bug has officially been fixed in the recent patch

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Arcane scaling was fixed in the patch at the end of today (March 16/17 2022) so Arcane enjoyers rejoice, as you can use something other than bleed or an ash of war!

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