Game Breaker / Elden Ring

In The Lands Between of Elden Ring, you will find very powerful items and techniques that make your journey far less daunting.

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Current Game Breakers

Status Ailments

Several status ailments are powerful enough for Arcane-based builds to find success:

• Bleed is a very strong ailment in this game. Many DEX weapons natively apply bleed, meaning you no longer need to spec into it or modify it into weapons (though doing so will make you apply bleed faster). The massive burst damage that's applied when bleed maxes out scales with the target's max health, making it possible for bosses with huge health pools and large resistances to have a large chunk of their health ripped away suddenly. Getting the bleed to proc also causes the affected to flinch, interrupting their attack and opening them to a few more strikes. This effect makes bleed weapons especially useful for dragon bosses, as their sluggish movesets make them perfect for slashing them multiple times.
  • The White Mask headpiece and Lord of Blood's Exultation talisman grant a 10% and 20% attack power, respectively, for 20 seconds if a blood loss/hemorrhage burst effect is triggered on the player or any nearby enemy. This stacks, by the way. This is exceptionally easy to do for bleed builds just through standard melee attacks. Fighting an enemy that doesn't bleed? No problem if you are using a weapon equipped with Ash of War: Seppuku, whose effect counts as a blood loss and triggers the talisman!
• Compared to Dark Souls III, Frostbite is significantly stronger in this game. It now gives 10% increased damage from all sources if procced on enemies, including bosses, making it a massive damage boost that can make the difference in almost any engagement. Unlike in Dark Souls III, Frost is also much easier to use thanks to the Ashes of War system and multiple Frostbite-dedicated Sorceries; rather than being restricted to a few mediocre weapons, it now affects bosses as much as it does normal enemies. This reworked status effect now keeps ashes like Hoarfrost Stomp and other Frost-inflicting items and spells viable throughout the game, even if they may not do a ton of damage on their own. There is a good reason combining Bleed and Frost effects with powerstancing two weapons is the meta build post 1.03 patch.
  • Dealing any fire damage to a frostbitten enemy will instantly heal the status effect. While this sounds like a bad thing at first since it removes the increased damage debuff, it also means you can immediately start building frostbite again. If you put frost on an innate bleed weapon and powerstance it with a fire weapon, you will essentially be proccing bleed twice as often.
• Blackflame is another hideously broken status effect. Anyone afflicted with Blackflame receives a percent-based DoT, meaning all enemies will burn to death at the same speed regardless of their health pool. A Faith build loaded with Blackflame spells and weaponry will melt boss health, and a particularly patient player can load up on heavy armor and a greatshield. Even better, this kind of build has great synergy with the below-described Mimic Tear Spirit, since if you have no weapons equipped except for a sacred seal (preferably the Godslayer's Seal, which boosts Blackflame incantations), only have Blackflame incantations attuned, and have no offensive items on your Hotbar, then the Mimic has no option but to constantly cast Blackflame, unlike Tiche who has a pretty wide moveset and will only use her projectile attack when she feels like it. Blackflame can be easily obtained in Stormveil Castle, making it a reliable source of damage for any early-game Faith players.
• Madness has limited applications in PvE since it only affects humanoid enemies (effective on NPC invaders, though!), but it is downright infuriating to face in PvP. Once it's inflicted on you, you're staggered as you take HP and FP damage for a fairly long time. Players specializing in these builds often invest in Arcane to improve their Madness buildup. Their attacks can induce Madness in a single hit, leaving you vulnerable to being stunlocked into oblivion. The Frenzied Burst incantation is incredibly potent as its projectile is fast and has incredible range, and the cast speed is shorter than the Madness stagger animation. Your Focus stat is supposed to improve your resistance to the ailment, but players have reported getting stuck in the Cycle of Hurting despite maximum reasonable Focus. The 1.04 patch addressed this by reducing the Madness buildup of popular Madness incantations and adjusting the infliction scaling of the Dragon Communion Seal (an Arcane-scaling seal) and shorten the Madness infliction animation so that you cannot be stunlocked.
• Sleep is a relatively rare ailment, with only a small handful of things inflicting it: a sword, a torch, one Spirit Ash, one coating type, and sleep craftables like arrows and pots. This rarity is because sleep proccing on a target is almost a death sentence for them, as it forces enemies to fall unconscious or get stunned momentarily, leaving them incredibly vulnerable. This ailment can be procced on anyone, including enemies and bosses. A proper sleep build can stun the infamous Godskin Duo, locked in a cycle of forced sleep and getting hit repeatedly until they die. Even without a proper build, crafting a few Sleep Pots can turn the Duo from a brutal Dual Boss into a rather trivial series of 1v1 fights. The best part is the sword in question, the Sword of St. Trina is found right near the entrance to Caelid. It isn't locked behind a boss, and the weapon has low stat requirements, making it a potential Disk One Nuke.

Sorceries

As is common in the franchise, Sorcery continues its long history of being completely broken in this game. The only downside is that it can make the early game rough, but once you have leveled enough and gained more powerful spells, you will find that with the right combo, almost any boss can be easily defeated, sometimes without even having to move.

• As one of the highest-level sorceries, Comet Azur comes across as Awesome, but Impractical. It's a Kamehame Hadoken sorcery that fires an exceptionally powerful beam of Glintstone magic. The spell is an FP hog, does good damage but requires the caster to stay still during firing and while charging it up, and sucks up a whopping three spell slots to equip. Even if you can cast the beam, you're a stationary target for any boss, making it a high risk to use in battle. There is a way to optimize its damage potential. Equipping a defensive Ash like Greatshield Soldiers or an aggro tank like Omenkiller Rollo, creating a Wondrous Physick bottle containing a Magic-Shrouding Cracked Tear and Cerulean Hidden Tear (for Sorcery damage boosts and temporarily unlimited FP), then casting Terra Magica^note a spell that creates a magic circle that increases the damage of sorceries cast while standing inside it by a whopping 35% and firing the beam essentially turns you into a Wave-Motion Gun. Your Spirit Ashes will draw aggro away from you while you fire the spell constantly, and the combination of effects means that you can hold the spell for a whopping ten seconds, which is often more than enough to kill anything remotely dangerous. Any boss that isn't highly mobile will get obliterated by this strategy in seconds. And the best part of it all? Comet Azur is free, earned just by talking to Azur himself when you find him at Mt. Gelmir.
• Adula's Moonblade also takes a spot as one of the best Sorceries. Besides having surprisingly high range thanks to the projectile it sends out, it is fairly cheap as far as FP cost and does high damage for how fast it can be spammed - even higher damage if you connect the magic sword itself and the projectile at the same time. What makes it truly broken is its Frostbite build-up (boosting its damage even more), and its delayed activation speed also makes it very powerful for catching enemies out of rolls in PvP. Its only downside is that you must go through most of Ranni's questline and take out a dragon to get it. Patch 1.07 further increased its viability by reducing its FP consumption alongside buffing its stamina attack power and frostbite buildup against guarding enemies when slashing them with it, allowing them to further put pressure on turtlers.
• Stars of Ruin, found in an optional location that you go through as part of Sellen's questline, fires a very large barrage of homing Magic projectiles, and it can also be charged to do more damage on cast. Nothing too amazing at first glance until you realize it also has bar-none the best tracking and projectile speed of any Sorcery in the game. Considering the dodging speed of multiple endgame bosses such as Maliketh or Malenia - not to mention enemy players in PvP - combined with the spell's fairly high range and fast casting speed, this can be used to rapidly accumulate chunks of damage to bosses without the risk of them dodging it, or keep up the pressure on enemy players trying to dodge your spells. The projectiles don't hit very hard individually, but the damage adds up quickly with high Int and an upgraded staff. The 1.06 patch reduced the tracking strength of this spell to make it easier for players to dodge, but 1.07 later compensated by reducing its FP and stamina consumption, alongside increasing its power when charged, meaning that it will continue to put pressure on players and bosses alike.
• Meteorite of Astel is the Gravity version of Comet Azur, unleashing a hail of large meteors that can easily decimate large bosses. It also has a faster casting speed compared to Comet Azur. As a bonus, because it deals Magic and Physical damage, it's one of the few (maybe only) spells you can buff with Golden Vow, Flame Grant Me Strength, and Terra Magica simultaneously. Its one big weakness is its poor tracking, making it hard to use against small/fast enemies. You have to get to the optional endgame area, Consecrated Snowfield and defeat Astel, Stars of Darkness to get it.
• Night Comet is an excellent Sorcery that is obtained in Sellia, the Town of Sorcery in Caelid thanks to one attribute it has. The projectile it fires is semi-invisible, which means enemies that normally react to projectiles being launched by dodging will never try to avoid the spell. Even highly evasive enemies like Maliketh and Malenia won't try to dodge it! Its damage can also be boosted further by the Staff of Loss, which is also obtained in Sellia, boosting the potency of night sorceries by 30%. The staff can also be dual wielded to make the potency boost stack multiplicatively, giving you a very powerful and chargeable spell that cannot be evaded, all for the reasonable cost of 21 FP per cast.
• Though it falls under Boring, but Practical, Rock Sling is just too good. It can be gotten extremely early, along with a staff that buffs it and all other gravity spells (said staff being a Disc-One Nuke), and it is just all around a powerful spell. It's pretty strong even without the aforementioned staff, it has a surprisingly low FP cost given how strong it is, it has very heavy tracking, and due to how it is cast, it can be used to hit enemies at angles that other spells and arrows wouldn't be able to normally hit. And it causes blunt damage which makes it frequently stagger enemies. AND in PvE, it is better at hitting enemies who normally try to sidestep spells as there is a slight delay between the cast and the rocks actually flying out, and enemies will try to dodge upon the initial cast. The only downside the spell really has is that it causes you to stand still for about a second, but it is far from making you as immobile as Azure Comet does and is a very small price to pay for everything else Rock Sling brings to the table.

Spirit Ashes

Spirit Ashes are a handy tool because they bring additional combatants to the fight and are usable in most boss rooms and hazardous areas populated with tough enemies. Regardless of what you're using, it forces a boss to split its attention between you and your Ashes, giving you extra opportunities to pull back to safety to heal or buff, or free windows to wail on the boss while it's distracted. Spirit Ashes also can have HP bars much larger than what you will realistically achieve, so at full potential, they can face-tank even the deadliest of attacks.

• The Lone Wolf Ashes summons three enemy wolves into the battlefield. The epitome of Boring, but Practical, these wolves don't really do anything but run at the enemy and bite at them constantly. Except they're really damn good at doing just that, often completely burying enemies in an onslaught of gnashing teeth. Working together with them can demolish enemy posture in the early and midgame. While they tend to fall off in the endgame (as bosses become far more mobile) they can still hold their own for a respectable amount of time and should never be underestimated. By the time this summon loses viability, you'll have access to stronger Ashes, even the others on this list. They're also the first summons you get in the entire game.
• The Mimic Tear is found behind a Stonesword Key door in Nokron, an area that's fairly off the beaten path unless the player's been following Ranni's questline. Its strength makes the journey worth it. Costing HP instead of FP, the player creates a copy of themselves with their exact build at the summoning time, stats, and consumables included. Increasing the spirit's level makes it much tankier, essentially allowing the Mimic to keep up with the player despite only having one Crimson Tear flask to heal with. You can adjust your equipment, summon your Mimic, and then switch what you're wearing or holding to effectively have two personal builds working against a boss at the same time! The result is something that can literally solo most non-endgame bosses by itself, especially at higher levels, to say nothing of the player working alongside the Mimic, and it's only restricted by the player's imagination or the Mimic's own Artificial Stupidity. The Mimic's damage output was nerfed in the 1.03 patch, but it doesn't detract from its amazing ability to tank enemy blows or assist with building ailment procs. Equipping the Shabriri's Woe talisman, which increases aggro drawn, before summoning the Mimic Tear then unequipping it immediately after will ensure that the enemy practically never looks your way.
• Black Knife Tiche is another legendary summon spirit. Found in the Ringleader's Evergaol that's on the plateau on the southeast corner of Liurnia (which in turn requires near completion of Ranni's questline), you'll face Alecto, Black Knife Ringleader, a difficult fight who's stunningly fast and aggressive. After beating her, and after reaching the very high FP cost needed to summon Tiche in the first place, this spirit will turn that same fast and aggressive moveset upon your foes. Her real OP move however, is a blackflame projectile; it inflicts a DoT upon any struck by it, and the damage is percent-based — it barely does anything to normal enemies, but it will absolutely melt through the health bars of even endgame bosses.
• Latenna the Albinauric woman is an immobile archer summon found in Liurnia. At first, she seems like a fairly humble spirit- she plops down where you summon her and continually fires arrows. Upgrade her a bit, and suddenly she's dishing out huge amounts of damage while firing arrows near-constantly. If you're rocking a close-combat build, Latenna can be invaluable for putting pressure on your enemies through Death of a Thousand Cuts. This is especially true if you focus on breaking posture since Latenna's constant arrow barrage makes it nigh-impossible for bosses to recover their posture. Additionally, if you summon her in a place with direwolves, she can tame and ride one, turning into a mobile turret.
• Banished Knight Oleg and Omenkiller Rollo are powerful Lightning Bruiser summons who speed around the battlefield and zone-in on anything in their path. Their relentless combos, high poise and solid health pools make them an excellent choice for frontline tanks that soak up damage, making them work great with healers or long-range damage dealers. Oleg works best in large group fights thanks to his wind magic, while Rollo is great for single-enemy encounters thanks to his constant machete assault, which causes Bleed buildup. And even if you choose to fight in melee, both of them work great for keeping damage going and breaking the posture of bosses. While Rollo is locked behind a somewhat difficult Dual Boss encounter, Oleg can be found in the Fringefolk Hero's Grave right next to spawn, making him a fiendishly powerful Disk One Nuke if you can beat the dungeon.^note Pretty big if, though, since that dungeon boss is far from easy.
• Lhutel the Headless and the Greatshield Soldiers are absurdly powerful Stone Wall summons that can act as perfect meat shields. Lhutel is a headless knight armed with a greatshield, a throwing spear, and Teleport Spam for mobility, while the Greatshield Knights are a group of Fallen Hawks using greatshields. And yet somehow both summons are nigh-impossible to kill- their huge poise, large health pools and sturdy defenses make them a great compliment to just about any playstyle. The Greatshield Soldiers are especially effective for tanking, since there's five of them deployed at once, totaling six enemies, including you, for the boss to fight against in an engagement. Even if the boss is strong enough to get past their shields, aggro will be swapped between them constantly, making them collectively a lot tankier than they initially seem. Meanwhile, Lhutel's ability to phase right through enemy strikes and pester them with throwing spear attacks makes her surprisingly effective throughout nearly the entire game.
• The Dung Eater is a ridiculously powerful AND tanky summon. At max level, he has ridiculous amounts of HP and hits incredibly hard, and can keep up the momentum because he has high poise while also being fast. Add to this the fact that he has both long and short-range attacks, and you have someone who can keep the hurt going in any situation and will stay around in boss fights for a long time. His sword also inflicts bleed, and its weapon art lowers the enemy's resistance to status effects which helps him proc it more often and also helps you proc your own bleed or other statuses. The catch is that you have to use Seluvis' Potion on the real Dung Eater, and not only does the game never even hint that this is a possibility, but it is very easy to miss out by finishing the first part of Ranni's quest, which can be done FAR earlier than meeting the Dung Eater.
• Banished Knight Engvall was a summon that was not included in the base version of the game but implemented after the 1.03 patch. Here's the thing: the developers replaced the reward of the boss in Murkwater Catacombs with him, meaning you can get him before even leaving Limgrave, and he has the same FP cost as Oleg (100) despite being much easier to get. Like Oleg, he's a Lightning Bruiser who's a frontline tank, but focuses more on poise damage, which in turn lets him keep aggro more because he has a higher chance to make the enemy stagger or stumble and break focus on you. Not bad for a summon you can get ridiculously early.
• The Crystalian is probably the best Stone Wall you could ever ask for. Its sky-high defenses result in almost everything doing pitiful Scratch Damage to it. Just make sure to keep it from getting its posture broken... and away from enemies that deal Strike damage.

Wondrous Physick Crystal Tears

• Cerulean Hidden Tear reduces all FP costs to 0 for a very short duration upon using the flask of Wondrous Physick. This allows you to summon a Spirit for free, even if you can't normally afford to, while still having enough time to fire off one or two expensive spells after the fact. Many of the ashes listed above are very expensive to summon, to the point where they're impossible to use without significant investment into leveling up Mind otherwise.

Ashes of War

Elden Ring's Ashes of War system allows for nearly-limitless customization and can make almost any weapon and weapon art viable. Of course, some Ashes are more viable than others:

• Seppuku is a core of the Bleed build. It costs little to use, triggers a minor Bleed on your own character (which procs the White Mask and Lord of Blood's Exultation for a damage boost), and gives you increased attack and bleed infliction for a good minute. When used with the right weapons you can inflict Bleed in a single attack, allowing you to utterly destroy bosses in record time! Such is its power that one of the most loathed PvP builds involves Dual Wielding Cross-Naginatas, each with this Ash of War, to inflict bleed from a very good range. It was so notorious that dual wielding any weapon, including Cross-Naginatas, will reduce their status infliction buildup as of Patch 1.07. Seppuku also increased the self-damage dealt with when using its skill alongside further nerfing its buildup.
• Bloody Slash is an easily acquired early-game Ash of War that will carry you throughout the entire game. For the small cost of 60 HP per attack, your sword fires a large shockwave of blood forward that scales off your weapon damage and Arcane, but does non-elemental damage meaning only blocking enemies have any resistance to it. It can be applied to any sword and even lets you apply the above mentioned Bleed damage to the weapon. But what really makes the attack broken is that if you decide not to apply Bleed, its damage is further boosted by any elemental grease or spell enchantment you apply, and it has a perfect hitbox for killing those annoying flying enemies or crowd-control. However, Bloody Slash is rebalanced in the 1.03 patch to get a noticeably slower cast speed, lower damage, and higher HP cost (a small percentage instead of a flat amount), though later the damage nerf and slower cast speed was reverted while increasing its bleed buildup.
  • In a similar vein, Blood Blade is a rather inconspicuous choice that nevertheless boasts a few rather interesting tricks. More or less the Reduvia Blood Blade with a smaller FP cost and a slight HP cost, the Blood Blade Ash of War comes with some odd benefits. It can be put on any swords and bladed weapons, not just daggers'', including Twinblades. But its most impressive use comes from the Nagakiba, which has impressive length - and the Blood Blade Ash of War includes a hitbox that applies Bleed on the swing of the weapon and on the projectile.
• The Hoarfrost Stomp weapon art is widely regarded as one of the most overpowered abilities in the game. It costs extremely little FP, hits ridiculously hard over a massive area of effect, and builds up the Frostbite status absurdly quickly, knocking off a chunk of the enemy's health immediately and hitting them with a Damage-Increasing Debuff. These factors all combine to make it an absolute monster of an ability that's equally capable of wiping out entire crowds and melting through even the toughest bosses' HP in no time. Just to make it even better, it can be applied to any melee weapon capable of receiving Ashes of War, and can be obtained with virtually zero effort at near the start of the game, as long as you know where to look. Then you consider that it can be amped via the Royal Knight's Resolve bug mentioned below AND the Mimic Tear can spam it right alongside you... It (plus Royal Knight's Resolve) quickly became the primary tools for speedrunning the game, with the beginning portion of the speedrun at the time being devoted to getting the Icerind Hatchet (which comes with Hoarfrost Stomp built in) and Royal Knight's Resolve, as well as upgrading the Hatchet to +9. Hoarfrost Stomp got nerfed in the 1.03 patch, reducing its damage and slowing its cast speed. That said, while it isn’t as monstrous as it was pre-patch, it’s still a very useful weapon art for its Frost build up and remains viable throughout the game and outright broken for the early-midgame, when its ability to rapidly inflict frostbite at no cost is murder against basically everything.

Weapons

• The Moonveil Katana is already a strong weapon on its own, as it has good scaling and fast combos, plus the fact that much of the damage it deals is magic damage and therefore bypasses the armor of most enemies. What really sets it apart, though, is its unique skill, Transient Moonlight. The skill is a variant of Unsheathe that includes a powerful wave of energy that can deal enough damage to one or two-shot most mobs, knock a decent chunk out of a boss's health bar, or take off 90% of an enemy player's health with a single attack. The light attack version is also horizontal, meaning it has the potential to instantly kill or severely wound an entire group of enemies, while the heavy attack is longer ranged vertical slash, all at a moderate FP cost, allowing the attack to be easily spammed. It has become one of the most commonly seen weapons in PvP, and understandably so. The 1.03 patch nerfed Transient Moonlight's poise damage, reducing the ability to poise break bosses and players within seconds, but also left its damage and scaling unaffected so it is still an excellent melee weapon for INT builds or as an offhand for Bleed builds, and later on, the 1.08 patch would later redistribute most of the poise damage to the physical blade of the Moonveil as opposed to Transient Moonlight's Sword Beam, encouraging players to fight up close rather than effortlessly stagger targets from a safe distance.
• Wing of Astel and Bastard's Stars are two ridiculously strong options for intelligence builds. Both share a unique weapon art, Nebula, which sends out a cluster of floating orbs that explode after a short delay, dealing high magic damage, and easily staggering even heavier enemies. Combined with a quick cast time and small FP cost, this makes the Wing of Astel in particular a deadly and versatile weapon in any situation. Another aspect that makes the Wing of Astel a rather potent A.I. Breaker is its short-range sword beams that are fired with every heavy attack - they do just as much damage as the sword itself, stack with the sword's damage if you're close enough and, best of all, can be spammed with impunity as they have no FP cost to fire. It's truly a versatile sword, able to completely wreck many enemies' postures and even bosses and stagger them for a crit with just a couple charged swings. With the slight nerf to Moonveil's posture damage in the 1.03 patch, both of these weapons become very viable alternatives as the best INT melee weapon. Patch 1.07 also increased Bastard's Stars Nebula damage, meaning if some poor schmuck happens to be at the location at where Nebula was performed, they will suffer further major magic damage.
• Rivers of Blood, a bleed katana that was bugged on release but fixed in the same 1.03 patch that nerfed the other weapons on this page, surfaced as a Game-Breaker to fill the new void. Its weapon skill, Corpse Piler, is essentially Double Slash combined with Bloody Slash. It deals damage on par with pre-nerf Hoarfrost Stomp or Sword of Night and Flame (although with much less range), but even faster, and causes Bleed buildup on top of that. There are videos online of players effortlessly destroying Malenia just by spamming this weapon art. That said, this weapon is only obtained through an NPC invasion in the Mountaintops of the Giants, so you'll be near the final acts of the game by the time you gain it, and won't be able to obtain it if you went ahead and defeated the area boss that's nearby. Its incredible ease of use and infamous popularity in PvP resulted in patch 1.06 reducing its overall damage and bleed buildup, though patch 1.07 later partially reverted Corpse Piler's damage.
• The Mohgwyn Sacred Spear is a monster of a Great Spear, a weapon class that is already brutal as of Patch 1.10. While it has all the advantages including poise that a Great Spear possesses since that update, the greatest boon the weapon has is fittingly, the Blood Boon Ritual. Covering an area in Mohg's Nihil! attack, the Ritual quickly hits Bleed, and deals incredible Fire Damage, hits through ceilings and at inclines, and can cause enemies caught in it to have quite a bad time. Someone Dualwielding them in PVP is a rather awful thing to see on the opposing side.
• The Sword of Night and Flame is a pretty decently strong straight sword just based on raw stats with the right build, but it enters Game-Breaker status due to its weapon arts. By holding L2, you enter a stance that lets you use one of two skills. The first skill is a very wide and rather powerful fire slash that hits in a pretty large arc in front of you and is very useful for crowds. And the second skill is essentially the above mentioned Comet Azur, but with much faster cast time. And both skills are rather cheap to use FP wise considering their power. The only downside to the sword is that you need to split your stats between both Intelligence and Faith to get the most out of it, and early on that may be spreading your points a bit thinly. Also you will be more of a Jack of All Stats when it comes to spells and miracles outside the sword itself. But the sword's laser is powerful enough to melt most enemies so you won't be complaining much. The weapon skills were so strong that the 1.03 reduced the damage of the wave of fire by 20% and the damage of the laser by 33%, as well as the laser's range. Despite this, the sword's weapon skills remain extremely powerful, but must be used a little bit more carefully than before.
• The Pulley Crossbow is commonly viewed as not just one of the best ranged weapons in the game, but also pretty much the most broken one on account of it being an Automatic Crossbows, as it fires three bolts quickly when fired. What makes this so broken is that it can be combined with various ailment-inflicting bolts, like bleed, poison, scarlet rot, or fire, to shred through a bosses weaknesses quickly. In particular, bleed and scarlet rot bolts can cheese a number of harder bosses due to how those build up. It also makes for a great secondary weapon during fights where you have to retreat from the boss for a moment, allowing you to still attack and build up something like poison or bleed from a safe distance. The only downside is that it eats up bolts, but if you make sure to go into a fight maxed out, you'll be able to make quick work of the boss. Combine it with talismans to boost the damage and range of your shots, and it will make many fights almost a joke.
• The Antspur Rapier is a thrusting sword which has innate Scarlet Rot buildup. Already pretty strong by itself, but what makes it onto this list is that it's classified as a standard weapon rather than a unique, meaning you can buff it with Rot Grease for even more rot buildup, or even better, put Ashes of War on it. Equip the Seppuku Ash of War on it and give it Poison affinity: now, after activating Seppuku, the Rapier inflicts Scarlet Rot, Poison AND Bleed! As you can probably guess, the weapon is a nightmare in PvP, and its thrusting moveset allows players to attack with it without dropping their guard from a greatshield, making them notoriously hard to kill. Additionally, there used to be a bug where it was unable to inflict Scarlet Rot with a Cold affinity, but this was later fixed in the 1.09 patch, making it a viable option for players.
• Many Strength-Faith builds swear by the Blasphemous Blade, obtained from Rykard's Remembrance after defeating him. It already has a decent passive of healing you after each kill, which stacks with both the Taker's Cameo and Rykard's Great Rune, but it shines with its unique skill, Taker's Flames. It has a long wind-up but it unleashes a forward-traveling blast of fire which deals a lot of damage, knocks down smaller enemies, and heals you for each enemy it hits. This isn't a trivial amount of healing, by the way — it heals 10% of your max HP plus another 150 on top, which amounts to at least fifth of your health bar until you exceed about 40 Vigor. It's great for sustainability both in fighting groups of enemies (where one use can almost restore your entire health bar) and bosses that aren't heavily fire-resistant. Anything infected with scarlet rot just so happens to be cripplingly weak to fire, so this weapon can actually make fairly short work of Malenia, who also happens to be small enough for the weapon art to knock over more often than not.
• The Sacred Relic Sword's unique skill has a slow wind-up, but it sends out an arc-shaped Sword Beam that has a long reach, covers a wide area, and deals tons of damage. Not the best for boss fights, but it can clear out waves of mobs effortlessly, and in the Peninsula of Power Leveling it is great for rune-farming. However, it can only be earned from the Remembrance obtained from the Final Boss, meaning it will only be useful for said farming in New Game Plus, checking off missed content in a playthrough, or for harassing opponents in Colosseum team fights.
• The Jellyfish Shield is a greatshield with relatively low requirements but its negation stats and guard boost is not all that great compared to more dedicated defensive greatshields. But what it does have is a unique skill that is worth the stat investment alone for any build that makes use of it - Contagious Fury, which grants 20% extra damage for 30 seconds, for an absolutely tiny FP cost. This affects any form of damage you inflict as long as you keep the shield in one hand or cast it before riding Torrent. This means it is useful for sorceries and incantations as well, which make the aforementioned game-breaking spells even more busted. For strength/dexterity, strength/intelligence and strength/faith builds, it's an incredibly useful shield to consider using, and for other builds it may be worth using if you're not using strength as an outright Dump Stat, as it requires 20 strength to use properly (along with a small dexterity investment for most classes). That being said, if you're relying on other unique skills or Ashes of War, Contagious Fury won't benefit you since it will deactivate if you stop holding it (including putting it on your back for two-handing a weapon), but it does pair nicely with certain weapons - for example, the Dark Moon Greatsword, which you can briefly use two-handed to activate Moonlight Greatsword before one-handing it again and activating Contagious Fury.
• The Erdtree Greatshield's skill, Golden Retaliation, fires a fast, highly damaging bolt if the player takes nonphysical damage while active. Although this is intended to be used to counter spellcasting foes, it also unintentionally triggers on self-damage and ailments. Combined with Fire's Deadly Sin, an incantation which deals fire damage to yourself over time, it turns the Greatshield into a Holy-powered machine gun. This bug was eventually fixed in the 1.03 patch, but it was later discovered that the same effect can be produced by the player's own spells, particularly Discus of Light and the Wraith Calling Bell's projectile, then going into the projectile and activating the skill, though to a lesser extent compared to pre-patch.
• Curved Swords are one of the fastest and hardest hitting weapons in the Dark Souls series, and Elden Ring has no exception to this. Some of them, such as the aforementioned Wing of Astel, are more powerful than others:
  • The Bandit's Curved Sword, aside from having the best range of the curved swords, it also has surprisingly high base physical damage, meaning that even without scaling, it's going to hit pretty hard, and powerstancing them with the Winged Sword Insignias, Millicent's Prothesis and optionally Godskin Swaddling Cloth effectively allows you to essentially recreate the Pontiff's Eye Rings. While viable for Dex builds, it also has a surprising niche as a bleed weapon as well. A Blood Bandit's Curved Sword has an equal amount of Bleed buildup as a Blood Scavenger's Curved Sword (which has innate bleed on top of the infusion), while having much higher attack power. And unlike the Scavenger's, it's an enemy drop, meaning you can get more than one per New Game cycle. Did we mention that the earliest farming location is at the Church of Pilgrimage in the Weeping Peninsula, so you can start farming for it immediately after starting the game?
  • The Grossmesser is a bit shorter than the Bandit's Curved Sword, but in exchange has a better Strength scaling compared to the Bandit's Curved Sword, making it the superior choice for players who want to use curved swords but specialize in Strength. Like the Bandit's Curved Sword, it can be farmed early, in almost the same place even. The skeletons who wield it can be found in the Tombsward Catacombs just across from the Church of Pilgrimage. Unfortunately, also like the Bandit's Curved Sword, it's a very rare drop. Later in the game, it can be replaced by the Beastman's Curved Sword, which scales even better with Strength and hits harder, but has a shorter range, meaning some players may opt to stick with the Grossmesser for that reason.
• Giant-Crusher is the heaviest weapon in the game with an insanely high Strength requirement of 60 to use it one-handed. This Colossal Weapon's non-split damage can easily destroy any boss's posture with a few blows. It's broadness also gives it an unusually high guard stat for a non-shield weapon, making it a decent substitute. Put Royal Knight's Resolve on it to get the most out of your single-hit damage (since it's so huge and slow you probably won't get more than one hit in at a time), and use the Axe Talisman and Spiked Cracked Tear to boost your charged heavy attack damage so that single hit really counts. Also wear the fattest armor you can get away with so that you have enough poise to avoid getting staggered out of your swings.
• The Ruin Greatsword boasts the incredibly powerful Wave of Destruction. It's a far-reaching wave of gravitational force in front of you that can hit multiple enemies and knock the lighter ones off their feet. Much like the aforementioned Fallingstar Beast Jaw's Gravity Bolt, the skill mostly scales with the weapon's upgrade levels, so you don't have to put many points in intelligence to make the most out of this colossal greatsword. The only drawback is that you will need to defeat the Leonine Misbegotten and Crucible Knight Dual Boss fight in Redmane Castle to get it, but once you do, you'll get to enjoy one of the strongest Strength-based weapons in the game.
• The Godskin Peeler is a decent twinblade on its own, but infusing it with Blood and powerstancing it with another twinblade (preferably another that can also inflict Bleed damage), on top of stacking with other Bleed-related buffs like Lord of Blood's Exultation and Seppuku, allows its powerstanced jumping attack to drop over 400 Bleed buildup due to that move hitting four times, with each hit dealing about 100 due to the infusion. This quickly fills the bar for anyone who's not outright immune to the status effect, and major enemies and bosses can be trivialized this way. In the event you don't like the Bleed effect, you can simply infuse the weapon into a Cold one and achieve similar devastating results with Frostbite.
• The Guardian's Swordspear has absolutely monstrous Dexterity scaling with a Keen infusion. At high levels of Dexterity (65+) it has a higher AR than the Lightning infusion (which also scales with Dexterity), without being split damage. It also has a unique moveset that it only shares with Loretta's War Sickle.
• The Ripple Blade and Ripple Crescent Halberd are two very peculiar weapons. Their Ashes of War can't be changed (and thus they can't be infused), but they are still considered standard weapons and are upgraded with regular Smithing Stones. They both scale exclusively off Arcane, and both reach an S scaling at max upgrade level. Since they are standard weapons, they can be buffed, and that high Arcane scaling will increase the status effect buildup of applicable Greases. The only status effects that scale with Arcane are Poison, Bleed, Madness and Sleep. Poison is a minor nuisance at worst and therefore isn't worth bothering with, and there's no Madness Grease in the game at all, which just leaves Bleed and Sleep, but those two effects are powerful enough on their own to make these weapons pretty devastating in PvP, especially if you take the time to farm a massive amount of String to make the Drawstring variants of the Greases for even more buildup.
• The Marais Executioner Sword is a mid-late game Arcane great sword that can best be described as a Boss Killer. The secret of this weapon's efficiency is its Weapon Skill; Eochaid's Dancing Blade. The skill allows your character to telekinetically launch the sword into whatever's standing in front of you and shred it's health. By itself it already does insane poise damage and can even knock Malenia out of Waterfowl Dance, but with the help of 4 Talismans: A Post-Radahn Shard of Alexander, the Godfrey Icon, Rotten Wing Sword Insignia, and Millicent's Prothesis it becomes much better. The idea is that every talisman listed either increases the damage of the Weapon Skill or increases the base damage being dealt to the enemy by consecutive attacks. Once you have all these things equipped, with a buff of your choosing, you'll be able to kill a boss as meaty as Placidusax in about 4-6 casts.

Incantations

• Pest Threads, for the most part, is a decent incantation that fires several homing projectiles with good range. It's fair for sniping small to medium sized enemies from around corners or elevations that block most other projectiles, but it becomes very potent against large bosses such as dragons, as the threads constantly deal damage for as long as they are making contact with the boss. Simply position yourself right next to the boss while locked on in order to maximize the amount of time the threads make contact. It's particularly effective against bosses with multiple lock-on points (again, such as dragons), as you can lock onto the dragon's head then position yourself behind the dragon, so that the threads need to travel through the entire length of the dragon's body in order to reach their target. Furthermore, the incantation deals entirely physical damage, meaning it can be buffed by things like the Blue Dancer Charm and Exalted Flesh/Flame, Grant Me Strength for even more absurd damage.
• The Rotten Breath incantation gotten from the Cathedral of Dragon Communion, in addition to physical damage, causes up to 650 points of Scarlet Rot buildup on a full cast, and has very low casting requirements in Faith and Arcane. Its long casting time makes timing tricky, but if you open the fight with it before the enemy gets an attack off, it's likely to stunlock them, virtually guaranteeing you'll proc the status on all but the most resistant enemies. If you equip this spell with a Dragon Communion Seal and summon the Mimic Tear to spam it, it will trivialize most boss fights.

Former Game Breakers

Ashes of War

• Bloodhound's Step provides both considerable mobility and incredible defensive ability. At the cost of a little bit of FP you get a quick dash that surpasses the standard Quickstep and has far more invincibility frames than any dodge roll, so you can spam it to dodge through boss combos, including Malenia's infamous Waterfowl Dance. It's also great for zipping across treacherous terrain or through enemy lines (especially in areas where you cannot access Torrent) and has full range regardless of your load. This means even Mighty Glacier builds can go with heavy load or even overencumbered with the heaviest weapons and armor they can find and use this Ash of War to compensate for their mobility. Squishy Wizard builds are also known for using this Ash of War to create distance against all but the fastest foes, making them annoyingly difficult to chase down in PvP. The 1.06 patch remedies this by reducing the invincibility frames and the travel distance of this skill and also made it less effective if you used it in quick succession, putting it more in line with the standard dodge roll and discouraging people from spamming it to create distance safely. Its lesser cousin, Quickstep, also received similar treatment (but faster activation speed to give players a reason to use it over Bloodhound's) to discourage similar spamming behavior. Patch 1.1 later nerfed it further by also decreasing the amount of i-frames it has.
• Determination and its more powerful version Royal Knight's Resolve apply a buff that makes a single attack deal more damage. However, this buff affects all damage you do, but is only consumed after landing a hit with the buffed weapon itself. If you buff your left-hand weapon, you could attack with your right and get the damage bonus on every hit, or even boost your spellcasting damage. It does wear off naturally after a short time, but is very quick to reapply whenever you need to. Determination is also available almost immediately by killing a Teardrop Scarab north of Agheel Lake. This interaction was corrected in the 1.03 patch to affect only the weapon with this skill.
• Flame of the Redmanes casts a blast of fire in front of you that deals high damage, has solid AoE, and has a low FP cost. What made FotR special is its insane posture damage, breaking the stance of almost anything in the game in, at most, three casts, giving you free crits and the ability to stunlock bosses to death. More than that, not only can it be applied to almost any melee weapon, but it's not even that hard to get a hold of if you know where to look - it's taped to an invisible Scarab right outside of Fort Gael in Caelid, which is just a ten minute horseback ride from the start of the game. Put it on the Miséricorde, the weapon with the highest crit multiplier in the game, and you can deal some massive damage. It also has no stat requirements (as an Ash of War exclusive spell), can be attached to any weapon (so you can have a very light dagger in your pocket just to use it while putting another Ash on your main weapon), and its damage scales with Strength instead of any spell-based stat; all of this makes it extremely convenient. Patch 1.08 nerfed its poise damage into the ground (going from 40 to 10) but otherwise kept it the same, so now it's simply a good fire spell (the health damage is still solid enough and it still has a lot of horizontal reach, but the range is short).

Weapons

• A bug caused the deathblight-inflicting effects of the Eclipse Shotel's skill to be imparted onto the Fire's Deadly Sin incantation. What this entails is that the player using this combo will set themselves and their surroundings constantly ablaze, which would deal fire damage but also build up instant death, so you could quickly kill players just by being near them. It became the bane of PvP until this interaction was fixed in the 1.03 patch.
• The Fingerprint Stone Shield was perhaps the most powerful shield in the game in the first month after launch, provided you could both find where it is and endure the platforming required to obtain it. It is a formidable (and very heavy) greatshield on its own right, but what made it a Game-Breaker was the fact that, at level +25 with the Greatshield Talisman equipped, the player would take zero stamina consumption when blocking, effectively making them immune to all damage outside of magic and attacks that specifically go through shields. Combined with a thrusting weapon that can attack while the shield is raised, the player could comfortably sit on the spot and poke the enemy without fear of retaliation. To make things better, it also has natural Madness buildup in case you feel like bashing someone with it, and it deals a hefty amount of damage even without it. The 1.04 patch adjusted the Greatshield Talisman so that its guard boost bonus is less effective on shields with higher innate guard boost, a change explicitly designed to prevent passive costless blocking, and the 1.07 patch also further decreased its guard strength to emphasize it.
• The Fallingstar Beast Jaw stands out for its unique weapon skill, Gravity Bolt, which has a long range, deals mostly physical damage that scales brilliantly with Strength and Dexterity, and most importantly, inflicts massive poise damage that can stagger bosses in 2-3 hits. Patch 1.08 reduced the amount of poise damage this skill inflicts so that it can't trivialize bosses.

Sorceries

• Carian Retaliation was a solid spell parry in the initial versions of the game. Once you deflect a spell, Carian Retaliation would cast Glintblade Phalanx, summoning three invisible (except to you) magic swords that hover over you and home in on the nearest enemy after a delay. Good on its own, but nothing special. Then the 1.03 patch introduced a major bug with Carian Retaliation that caused it to scale tremendously with your shield upgrades, easily dealing thousands of damage per activation off a maxed out shield and melting the HP of any boss or player, all while safely firing shots from a distance. It's actually pretty easy to exploit as well, since you can parry your own spells or even consumables like the Wraith Calling Bell to get the swords. This set-up is so powerful that nothing, not even the game's Superboss, can actually stand up to it, killing most bosses in less than a minute with minimal risk to the player. In PvP, the Ash of War produces ludicrous damage that one-shots players and is very hard to dodge, with the only telegraph being the sounds of the item being used to create the projectiles being "parried". The 1.04 patch addressed this by removing the abnormal damage scaling so that players no longer get one-shot off this Ash of War.

Incantations

• The incantation Inescapable Frenzy is a very close-range grab attack that can only be used against NPC invaders or other players. However, through a bug, instead of inflicting madness like it's supposed to do, its damage and effects scale off your right-hand weapon, so it can deal loads of damage on top of building the ailments your weapon can inflict. This bug was fixed in the 1.04 patch.
• If you've explored a little in Mohg's Dynasty Mausoleum (easily accessed through Varre's sidequest), you'll find Swarm of Flies. They don't demand too much of a Faith and Arcane investment, and what you get is an incantation that summons a slow-moving swarm of flies with medium range and good tracking. Once they make contact with their target they hit it with a quick flurry of low-power hits that build up bleed. If you have high Arcane and cast it with the Dragon Communion Seal, which has Arcane scaling, you're pretty much guaranteed to proc bleed with every cast. Low-poise targets can even briefly be stun-locked between the flies' hits and the flinching from the bleed, and the short cooldown between casts makes it possible to trap them in a Cycle of Hurting. The 1.04 patch reduced the scaling on the Dragon Communion Seal for status effects only, so the Flies no longer guarantee a bleed proc on their own.