Swarm of Flies | Elden Ring Wiki

I'm glad they nerfed it so hard that no one uses it anymore. Oh From and your scorched earth nerfs..

Submit

Equip Malenia set, then this spell when on a bleed build:

"I am Malaria, blame the mosquito, and I've never known vaccine"

Submit

Does the bleed build up actually scale with arcane when using the Dragon Communion Seal? I'm really sick of finding out weapons and spells don't actually scale with arcane...

Submit

Still a favorite of mine. Would be interesting to get one that doesn't track but does good damage with bleed build-up.

Submit

very effective against malenia if youre summoned

Submit

I can settle the debate. Blue Dancer Charm increases it's damage, so it must be physical.

Submit

malenia doesn't dodge it properly if you cast it from super far away

Submit

this incant carried me in Mohg fight at RL 60

Submit

It was good till nerf, was my favorite spell but now it’s not half as good :(

Submit

Love, love, looove this spell. Finally rolled an arcane-based character (well, technically, arcane with a splash of faith) for my most recent journey. It's been very satisfying thus far, and also a definite change-up in my playstyle after my first two characters (one a high-level pure strength/no magic whatsoever, and the other a mid-level strength/faith).

Anyways, my first impression of the spell was definitely not good. I didn't like the way it moved, I wanted it to do more damage/blood-buildup... Just really didn't click at first. After giving it more of a chance and doing some experimenting, however, it's become one of my favorites that I always keep a spell-slot open for. The fact that you can move while you cast it is quite crucial, I've found, as well as the ability to cast multiple swarms fairly quickly. The icing on the cake is the FP cost. Once you become a bit more proficient with it, that low cost is a God-send.

There's something immensely enjoyable about approaching some chonky, bleed-prone enemy from behind, casting one of these, and then almost being able to sense the enemy thinking, "what the hell is that horrifying sound coming from behind m-," right before you do a running attack with a Bloody Helice that perfectly syncs-up with the flies actually making contact!

Submit

Respecced my character just to use this against Godskin duo and... it's friggin useless. It does hardly anything to them. Awesome.

Submit

I'm so happy I cloned my original Steam copy of the game at v1.02. Obviously it can and should only be played offline and you miss out on some of the cool things the developers buffed, but damn is it fun to be able to relive the glory of some really fun weapons, abilities, etc. Although I am definitely enjoying the v1.08 online with friends.

I think it would be a lot of fun if you could de-patch or un-update your games in an offline only mode that did not allow you to gain trophies or achievements, no cheating or any shady stuff, but just allowed players to see how the game evolved in a sort of developer mode. Many of my friends just got this game for Xmas and have no idea how crazy things were the first few months. I wish I knew how to make version copies when I was younger, I would love to play a completely fresh launch day edition of Dark Souls 3. I never got to experience it.

Submit

The confusion over the damage typing probably has something to do with this being in the same category as the other Blood incantations. It probably does pure physical damage, but the Blood incantations probably also have the "Bloodflame" tag on them regardless of whether or not they actually have fire damage attached to them, hence the big hands freaking out when hit.

Submit

The big hand things freak out when I use this spell, so I'm gonna say it deals fire.

Submit

Think the comments about this are confused on whether this deal fire damage or not because of some of its interactions but to clarify, this does not deal any fire damage as testing this with the fire damage tear had no effect at all. This may be the game registering it as a fire spell causing the hands to react to it as such but using any fire damage modifiers seems to do nothing. So no, this doesn't actually do fire damage.

Maybe a mistake in the code though and this originally was supposed to be a fire spell?

Submit

Swarm of flies deals pure physical damage

Submit

Don’t let the damage distract you from the fact that the tarnished can create relatively complex biological life out of nothing for this spell. Like yeah lasers, fire, and lightning are cool, but just spawning organisms on a whim is literally biblical.

Submit

it deals fire damage, not phys/magic

Submit

What does the blood loss buildup scale with or is it a set amount regardless of stats?

Submit

If you want to always dodge this with no buildup, roll the nanosecond you feel the controller vibrate. You'll get no bleed and no damage, pretend your meter is high to get a cheeky trade in too.

Submit

This is really good against Malenia, and a little cheesy if you use it with Mimic Tear. I'm hardly ashamed.

Submit

I just got this Incant Try Using it for 1st Time against 'Lord of Blood' and He Bleed to Death...

Submit

Finally, elden mosquitos

Submit

Well. All these comments, the whole page about the spell but missing a few pieces of information that would be important, at least for me.

What's the buildup per tick, what's the damage of the spell and how does it scale?
You gave this information on the Grand Heal page or for Bestial Vitality. Could you please add this information?

Does the Dragon communion seal scale this spell? This information is missing as well, but is present for https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Bloodflame+Blade

Thanks in advance.

Submit

Ok so does this do fire damage like the other blood incants? The wiki description says physical with a bit magic like it says for other physical incants

Submit

It seems to stop working after chain casting it too many times. Tested on troll knight he stopped bleeding after second bloodloss no matter how many times i spammed it. To confirm he dont gain increased resistance to bloodloss I used dual bleed bandit curved swords at 99arc and every jump attack inflicted bleed on him.

Submit

It's a good thing they nerfed this thing, or blood build up in elden ring might be OP

Submit

DS1 pursuers sorcery is back and it's brought its friends, approximately fifteen thousand mosquitos

Submit

Tried this on an Albinauric at the farming spot at Moghwyn place. New game plus, 99 arcane, 80 faith, dragon communion seal, and it took 5 of these. Not to proc bleed, but to kill it. It didn’t proc bleed. I don’t know these guys’ resistances, but that seems ridiculous.

Submit

Currently bugged in MP, If it hits you while in I-Frames it will look like it activates but instead it will become invisible and continue to chase.

Does not happen 100% of the time but seems pretty consistent.

Submit

My favorite part of the game is having a host spam swarm of flies on the boss as i try and melee it, it really makes you FEEL like a blind person.

Submit

Does this deal fire damage to certain enemies? Every time i use this on the giant hands they seem to burn

Submit

Ive been having success with it so far. Running dragon communion seal on a heavy arcane build. Its a guaranteed blood loss on anything it hits. If not it can be easily topped off by a bleed weapon, bloodboon which is also really handy. Or just casting this again.
This might be useless info but The game seems to consider the spell as fire damage. Or it just removes frostbite for some reason. So in theory, you could cast this. Use dragon ice to proc frostbite while the flies are traveling. Then as you prepare the follow up breath the flies should have hit Removing the status while rapidly applying bleed to a most likely stun locked enemy. Causes blood Loss to trigger more stun. Just in time for the follow up dragon ice to reapply frostbite. Netting you a guaranteed 45 percent loss of max health on whatever you hit plus whatever damage dragon ice dealt. Nasty nasty stuff. Not sure about the effectiveness on npcs or invaders. But bosses or mid to large sized enemies. this should work with the right range.

Submit

This might be my favorite spell in the game. So simple yet so effective.

Submit

Gne gne gne, From, bleed too op! Pls nerf!1!

How many useless human being have cried on this? How much do their butts hurt after being hit by this? Play pve, and don't ruin others' games. Thanks.

Submit

Can it bleed now?

Submit

Gne gne gne, From, bleed too op! Pls nerf!1!

How many useless human being have cried on this? How much do their butts hurt after being hit by this? Play pve, and don't ruin others' games. Thanks.

Submit

Oh no, not the bees! NOT THE BEES!

Submit

This move is such cancer to deal with against people that really stack bleed. To help counter bleed, you use boluses, to use boluses, you need to create some distance, you create some distance, they use this. They should nerf the tracking at least so that it can't do a complete 180 and come back at you if you dodge it.

Submit

Reminds me of that time I went to a farm and got attacked by horse flies.

Submit

As a player with only 17 Arcane I can get a bleed proc about every other cast post nerf. It's fantastic at staggering and stunlocking enemies like knights and omen. Leaves them wide open for jump attacks. It's not broken anymore but still a great incant.

Submit

Bleed players really upset this got nerfed when they're still the best builds in the game. Like oh no now you need to get close to annihilate bosses for free. It's still good aswell what's the issue

Submit

I like how all the top comments before the nerf are all "must have for bosses, helped me DESTROY Malenia" and then post nerf its somehow pvp's fault.

Submit

This thing apparently does fire damage…? I cast it at a Miranda flower and it burst into flames as if I had hit it with a pyromancy spell.

Submit

all these salty pvp players are ruining my solo game i tried going for a blood build and everything is getting nerfed so now i gotta constantly change every update

Submit

Bro the comments is literally reddit

Submit

Does it scale with arc or faith?

Submit

Glad it got hit with the nerd bat. Now I go I to pvp and it isn't a three-man squad just spamming this at me. The game is more fun, for me at least. Besides, faith already has the best toolkit in the game, it literally has a hard counter for every situation in pve. This wasn't needed.

Submit

For all the "yep, this is in a good place now" people. What exactly is the point of this incantation now? At exactly which point, do you imagine, should I choose to dedicate a slot to a slowly floating pile of itch that unceremoniously floats over to a target to do a small poof and do absolutely nothing, over say - I don't know - any other direct dealing damage spell like lightning spear, black flame, flame sling, stone of gurranq, etc? Please, riddle me this one.

Submit

Yeah it was pvpers that got this nerfed, not people cheesing every boss including goddess of get stunlocked.

Submit

I love how people talk about bleed as if it's some kind of exploit and not a mechanic that has been in the series since Demon's Souls. Y'all just salty that someone one-shot you in pvp and you can't pretend to be a sweaty god anymore.

Submit

wiki description should include:
"Now nerfed to hell even in PVE due to crying PVP players. Thanks FromSoft."

Submit

There's literally no difference with the bloodloss build up since the "nerf". People being childish as always :)

Submit

I find it extremely funny people complaining about bleed as of bleed doesn’t work as intended blood loss does kill you quickly…

Submit

I can play blood mage without feeling dirty now. Fun to combo with briars of punishment.

Submit

Still a great spell, but was nerfed enough for me to justify not using it because I didn’t like leaning on it so much. So yeah, as a str/arc Mohg Spear user: thanks for nerfing this and buffing Bloodflame talons.

Submit

Oh no, now you might actually have to learn to play the game as intended! Hopefully they nerf bleed completely.

Submit

lmao to all of those anonymous comments who downvote and frown upon who's using this thing. The spell is far from unusable, it's still a viable choice if you lack bleed arrows and still triggers bloodloss pretty quickly on high arcane builds. I bet you're running moonveil+comet of ****ery to oneshot bosses and show off in the beautiful and balanced pvp section of this pve-based game.


Casuls.

Submit

This spell still shreds. Calm down children.

Awesome for setting up an eyebeam, which also still shreds.

Submit

yeah now we have to fight late game bosses that are gael on crack because they nerfed this
good job nuking it FROM
why don't you nuke bleed like ds3 and make it not viable for the rest of its life too?

Submit

I simply don't understad people. At first they complain about this skill being too OP but whent it got nerfed they start to complain about this skill being nerfed.
I mean... what?

Submit

despite what any complainer says the spell still has an extremely powerful role. it just isnt the complete best choice in every situation. if you so deeply desperately want it to be broken again just uninstall the game and load it up without updates.

Submit

I love it how Fromsoft nerfs everything that needs a slight adjustment and gives it the nuclear treatment.

Submit

Does this incant benefit from the Faithful's or Flock Canvas talismans?

Submit

Honestly I just used it to kill the dragonkin soldier in Lake of Rot at lvl 20 with zero weapon upgrades post patch, still works super good for spamming at bosses. I know that's not a super hard boss but its end game and all my damage came from that or a +10 Lhutel the headless summon and I killed him 3rd try pretty easy.

Submit

instead of turning this into Swarm of Turds, they should have buffed the other blood spells. Now the only viable ones are the bloodflame weapon buff and bloodflame Talons

Submit

Goodnight sweet prince :(

Submit

Still ok for its stagger potential on certain enemies; just no longer an instant bleed on command button. Surprised this got nerfed; and yet Rivers of Blood is sitting pretty with its broken @ss. Miyazaki and his love of katana. . .

Submit

For Arc primary builds (60-80 Arcane), the nerf doesn't seem all that substantial. I'm guessing the nerf will affect people who are barely exceeding the base requirements.

Submit

pouring one out for a real one

Submit

RIP.. You got me through some hard times.. You shall not be forgotten.

Submit

I'm not saying it didn't deserve a nerf but now it's completely useless. No point in having it anymore.

Submit

Pls revert the nerf, or remove **** like Rivers of Blood.

Submit

The nerf is here. Looks like the 2-3 quick bleeds that you get from casting AND attacking are gone. As someone said there’s now a cool down that doesn’t let enemies/bosses bleed multiple times quickly from this. At least so far what I’ve noticed.

Submit

Barely nerfed--it's still a formidable boss killer and feels a bit cheesy to use.

Submit

RIP flies. You will be missed

Submit

Malenia: I am Malenia, blade of Miquella. I have never known defeat.

Bunch of red flies: ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?

Submit

Totally wrecks a certain NPC boss near the end.

Submit

This spell unfortunately got nerfed. They put a prolonged bleed cooldown on this spell.
The way the nerf works is kinda strange, but if this spell bleeds proc the 15% max health damage. It will put on a pretty long cooldown which during about 3 seconds enemy will not receive any bleed build-up from any source. (Think of the enemy is bleeding (poison) during that 3 seconds.)

But this cooldown will not happen if this spell builds enemy 99% build-up and you use another bleed source to proc it. It eliminates the chain bleed you see in a lot of youtube videos where the enemy bleeds 2 - 3 times from one blood flies cast.

Submit

Clapped as of 1.04.

Does half as many hits. Took three to four casts to proc bleed once with Dragon Incant Seal, Arc 60, on Fort Faroth dragon.

Submit

This spell alone cements incantations are better than sorceries. S+ tier

Submit

If it bleeds this will wreck it. S-tier incantation. Spammable and staggeringly effective. Kind of a pain to get but oh so worth it.

Submit

Like so many other things in this game, this spell is broken. Impossible to survive this in pvp.

Submit

this makes bosses seem like a joke.. it chunks their health so fast

Submit

DR. BEES!

Submit

i had some weird results on the test giant with this spell, with the frenzied flame talisman +8 i got 2 bleed procs in for 1200ish total damage.
then i tried my stronger dragon talisman+10 and it only did a single bleed proc, it also seemed to last shorter overall. anyone know why?

Submit

If the invader casts this in front of you do not try to poise through it and hit him. You will die! Do not cast rock sling when one of these things is about to hit you. You will die! And for the love of god do not go near me the host when a guy is spamming this spell at you! Im trying to run a gank, not a zoo. I have no idea why this spell makes people into animals.

Submit

It sets the giant hand enemies on fire. I noticed other commenters mentioning they light plants on fire too. Makes up for not having blood fire on arcane weapons!

Submit

I'm no expert on pvp in this game, but since it seems no other comment is offering advice on countering this in pvp I'll throw my hat in the ring. If someone is spamming this at you in a duel it's your queue to close distance as quickly as possible and slap them around until they stop. I haven't had good luck trying to outdo this in a ranged battle, but bloodhound step may be advisable for barrel stuffing people who use this.

Submit

For those of those wondering. Yes it does do fire damage. It belongs to the blood fire family like the armament and the slpells you get from Mhog. It’s in the description. One of the spell from the Lord of Blood. His spells do that burn and bleed dmg.

Submit

I got this from killing varre the white mask guy. I'm playing on ps4 and have not patching it updated my game. I couldn't find swarm of flys at the moghwyn palace cave but killed varre and got it

Submit

got this from killing varre the white mask guy. I'm playing on ps4 and have not patched or updated my game. I couldn't find swarm of flys at the moghwyn palace cave but killed varre and got it

Submit

Pretty decent in pvp for harassment - Any magic or stationary art of war that your opponent tries to use will cause them to get bled by these little buggers. Really, really effective against Rivers of Blood crutchers because the special attack locks you in place for a while and this will 100% stagger them out of it if they try to use corpsepiler while one of these is chasing them. Use this with the dragon seal and high arcane and it bleeds in a fraction of a second. Can be countered by just rolling straight into it before it activates, but they'll still get some bleed buildup on them.

Submit

This incantation makes up for literally all the other incantations being complete garbage.

You'd think Malenia's scarlet incantation would be the best thing in the game, but nooooo here comes the flies of Death that will murder everything.

Let's go.

Submit

Must have for arcane builds in my opinion. It absolutely melts Malenia.

Submit

I don't know if it deals fire damage, but it does set those plant enemies on fire

Submit

I haven't noticed this on normal enemies yet, but Swarm of Flies apparently also applies fire damage. I just used it on a group of those giant hand enemies and they kept getting lit on fire and rolled around to put themselves out. It is, in fact, bloodFLAME magic.

Submit

I haven't noticed this on any other enemy, but Swarm of Flies consistently sets the giant hand enemies on fire and causes them to panic. Either this is some kind of unintended effect or it also deals fire damage.

Submit

It is somewhat ridiculous how efficient this incantation is.

Submit

literally, get this spell and you win the game... Super difficult moonlight boss? ah yes first try
collosal dragon? not even a scratch, who even needs mimic when you have light armour and a +10 talisman with this thing

Submit