Hardness is a hidden Stat in Elden Ring. It governs whether a weapon will bounce off an enemy when used one-handed, preventing attack chains and generally making it harder to land attacks quickly. Two-handed attacks, running attacks, and jump attacks never rebound, while heavy attacks, running attacks, and crouching attacks have somewhat more hardness than other attack types but can still rebound.
There are six hardness tiers for both enemies and weapons. If a weapon's hardness matches or exceeds an enemy's, it can hit that enemy without rebounding.
Tier 0
Everything that isn't listed in any other level has no hardness. Tier 0 enemies won't bounce any weapons, and tier 0 weapons will bounce off any enemy of a higher tier. All unlisted weapons will not bounce off Small Shields.
Tier 1
| Foes | |
|---|---|
 |
Players guarding with Medium Shields |
| Weapon Classes | |
|---|---|
 |
Straight Swords |
 |
Heavy Thrusting Swords |
 |
Curved Swords |
 |
Axes |
 |
Halberds |
 |
Small Shields |
Tier 2
| Foes | |
|---|---|
 |
Crystalian (before breaking) |
 |
Lesser Crystalian (before breaking) |
 |
Glintstone Miner |
 |
Players guarding with Greatshields |
 |
Players using Dragonbolt Blessing |
| Weapon Classes | |
|---|---|
 |
Greatswords |
 |
Curved Greatswords |
 |
Greataxes |
 |
Hammers |
 |
Great Spears |
 |
Fists (Strike) |
Tier 3
| Foes | |
|---|---|
 |
Stonedigger Troll |
 |
Miner |
 |
Turtle |
 |
Players guarding with Ant's Skull Plate |
| Weapon Classes | |
|---|---|
 |
Colossal Swords |
 |
Flails |
 |
Great Hammers |
 |
Colossal Weapons |
|
Medium Shields |
|
Greatshields |
Tier 4
| Foes | |
|---|---|
 |
Miriel, Pastor of Vows |
 |
Walking Mausoleum |
 |
Players guarding with Barricade Shield |
 |
Players buffed with an Ironjar Aromatic |
| Weapon Classes | |
|---|---|
 |
Whips |
 |
Cipher Pata |
 |
Coded Sword |
Tier 5
| Foes | |
|---|---|
 |
Crystalline Crab that drops Twinsage Glintstone Crown |
 |
Master Lusat |
 |
Primeval Sorcerer Azur |
 |
The Great-Jar |
There is no weapon tough enough to match these foes.
Anonymous
- Anonymous
Hm. I've just defeated Stonedigger Troll while one-handing Uchigatana and it didn't bounce off him. While it does always bounce off any miners one-handed.
- Anonymous
It seems that if you don't meet the requirements for a shield, it won't have any hardness. Even if you two hand it to make up the difference.
- Anonymous
If I am understanding this correctly, Tier 4 weapons would be good to block with to make enemies recoil, right? I tried testing out the whips for funsies and they never once recoiled.
- Anonymous
There is no force in the universe powerful enough to cramp this crab's style.
- Anonymous
why not put this image instead for crab: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Elden-Ring/crab-4-hq-elden-ring-wiki-guide.jpg?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
This is based on Deflection, a hidden value that's been part of the series since Demon's Souls. Certain attacks can overcome Hardness tiers, or potentially bypass Hardness entirely, as it is determined per-attack as well as per-weapon. There might be multiplicative thresholds determining how harsh the weapon bounce is, but I don't recall specifics.
- Anonymous
No spreadsheets? No arbitrary multipliers? This is entirely too straightforward for a hidden stat.
- Anonymous
Picture of twins age crown sucks. Please make picture of Chuck Norris if not the crab itself. Also what about the second one in the tower?
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Certain weapons 1h R2s will not rebound when the 1h R1 would so theres a bit more nuance then this chart suggests but still quite helpful.
- Anonymous
I'm pretty sure either my jump attacks or charge attacks with meteoric ore blade weren't bouncing of crabs .
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
There is no weapon tough enough to match the crystalline carapace of this crab
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
tier five shouldave been : there is no weapon strong enought to withstand its armor, gods have mercy.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Tier 0 melee weapons not listed: Daggers, Thrusting Swords, Katanas, Twinblades, Spears, Reapers, Claws, Torches.
- Anonymous
Malenia's deflect is hardness 3, it bounces my curved greatsword.
- Anonymous
the fact that power stance attacks aren't affected by hardness makes this stat basically worthless lmao. and now with the shield nerfs, blocking and sword-and-board builds are in the worst state they have ever been in souls history. just trash balance.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
How can a crab be so tough that weightless blades of pure magic bounce off???
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
something is uniquely amusing about watching a character recoil after hitting a crab with the Coded Sword
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Crystal Crab is so swole that even carian slicer bounces off of it
- Anonymous
Wow, a crab is officially the hardest thing in the game. Also, consider editing "crystalline hide" to be "crystalline carapace". Sorry if it's nit-picky.
- Anonymous
Reapers aren't on the list, making me assume they bounce off of all shields, but wouldn't that negate the benefits of them ignoring part of blocking? The vulgar shotel at least doesn't bounce off of small or medium shields, but it doesn't have innate bleed, so you can't have both bleed and frostbite chip through shields on it.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
I don't know why, but the sentence "There is no weapon tough enough to match the crystalline hide of this crab" is incredibly funny to me.
- Anonymous
I'm missing something here. Does the stone digger troll having a hardness of tier three, and also great-stars being in tier 3, mean the reason great-stars does not bounce off stone-digger troll when used one handed is because they are both in the same hardness tier? or is it because this variation of troll is weak against strike damage? would a weapon in hardness tier 2 that did strike damage, like the morning star, bounce off the troll regardless of what it is weak to? The reason I ask, is because the first time I came across a stone-digger troll boss was a dungeon in limgrave, and the only weapon I had that did any sort of strike damage was the morning star that's found early on in the weeping peninsula, but I can't remember hits bouncing off the troll and preventing combos. I can't say 100% for sure, it was a good while ago, but I don't remember getting salty like I would have had I seen my hits bounce off it.
- Anonymous
Katanas aren't in this list but I'm assuming they're tier 1.
Need to test the hardness of the ironjar aromatic and update the list
I tested it on some enemies and while their weapon types don't correspond with the hardness level of player weapons they do indeed have some attacks which can't cause a rebound/flinch reaction on hardness level 2 defense (dragonbolt blessing and greatshield) but WILL rebound on level 3 hardness (ant's skull plate and of course level 4 hardness from barricade shield and ironjar aromatic). One such example is the ball and chain attack from duelist enemies (those guys with the snake helmets).
Also some player weapons have a higher tier heavy attack than their normal hardness attack level. This means some weapons can continue their heavy combo while bouncing off with their light combo. The entire system seems to be a bit more complex than guides and wiki entries suggest. I didn't test this but considering the ant skull plate (and dragonbolt blessing) unique hardness already bounces back some attacks greatshields won't bounce back the chances are high that there are PvE attacks which won't bounce off the ant's skull plate but will get bounced back by ironjar aromatic and barricade shield. Ant's skull plate can be pretty strong in many lategame areas when it comes to stance breaking as the shield bash also uses it's hardness level hence enemies won't be able to get past your shieldbash spam while also receiving massive stance damage opening them up for a lot of easy critical attacks. I would argue it's better than any of the boosted shield bash shields (like spike shield, thorn shield, etc.) due to the unique hardness level.
2
+10
-1