Weapon Enhancement and Infusion Examples

To demonstrate the effect of Infusions on a weapons statline, we’ve included this chart of a simple Long Sword, imbued with every different Gem in the game at minimum (+0) and maximum enhancement (+10), and at four different stat levels – 10 in every stat, 20, 40, and finally 99.

This should give you a feel for the impact of enhancement, infusion, and attributes on a common weapon. Because weapon scaling improves as a weapon is leveled up, this can result in some cases where at one combination of enhancement level and character attributes, an infusion pulls ahead or falls behind where it was at the previous attribute level.

In general, the non-scaling and single attribute infusions are best in your first playthrough, while the more demanding scaling and multi-attribute infusions work best at the tail end of a playthrough, or when you venture into New Game Plus territory.

Weapons that have different beginning scaling attributes respond slightly differently to the infusions that affect attribute scaling, but the general principles outlined in this table apply across all weapons in the game.

KEY: p = Physical damage, m = Magic damage, f = Fire damage, d = Dark damage, l = Lightning damage

Enhancement Example

Infusion Example

* Poison Longsword has 33 Poison effect.* Blood Longsword has 33 Bleed effect.

Weapon Reinforcement Explained

Now that you know how scaling works in a general sense, how do you use that information in a practical way? To help answer this, we’ve created a table that shows the end-point for all of the weapons in terms of their damage output and stat scaling. Knowing the properties of the fully scaled weapon will help you decide which items to invest in.

The stats below show the final values of weapons when they’ve reached +10 reinforcement points, or +5 in the case of items that max out with Twinkling Titanite or Titanite Scales. If you look at the raw values between the base attributes of each weapon type, you’ll find that the bonus for weapons is similar regardless of their end point. Thus, items that cap at +5 still get double their base damage just like items that cap at +10. It’s just a matter of which materials you need to gather.

Weapon Damage & Scaling at Maximum Reinforcement

More on Scaling

The base damage of a weapon—except for crossbows--is usually just half the story. Other weapons get their full damage by combining your base damage and scaling from one or more of your attributes. As you probably know, scaling goes from S Rank (the best), down through A, B, C, D, and E. Your scaling is only as effective as the attribute from which it builds. Thus, having high Strength on a weapon with E Strength scaling isn’t too powerful. You need to combine good scaling and good attributes to see a major bonus to your weapon damage.

In the early levels, high base damage or a single focused push toward a single attribute results in the most damage possible. Thus, you want to look for something that scales well with the first attribute that you’re increasing, or look for weapons that you can Infuse with the Raw trait in order to get that high base damage and don’t worry about the scaling.

This quickly becomes weaker as the game goes on. At later levels (even in your first run through the game), you get so much benefit from scaling that Raw weapons become sidelined or outright worthless. Once you have a solid build coming together, look for scaling that benefits the most from that. You want to get at least a B scaling with your primary attribute, even if it means giving up scaling on everything else.

As your character hits (and passes) level 100, it becomes much easier to have 40 in a couple of attributes and that’s a very strong point for most builds. During runs in New Game +, you’re likely to get the most out of your weapons by looking for ways to scale your damage off of two or even three attributes.

Be careful about splitting your types of damage (between Physical, Magical, Fire, etc.). The game treats each of your damage types almost as its own attack. This means that the defending player/monster reduces damage of every type with their armor and base resistances. Essentially, weapons with multiple damage types never really go as much as it looks like on paper, and this factor gets worse at higher levels as monsters and players get better resistances across the board.

As always, these tables only give you a theoretical insight into the potential with each weapon. Something that looks incredible here may have a variety of limitations. The move set might be tricky to execute, the swing animation time may be too long for your taste, or the damage might be divided into too many categories.