What does Arcane do in Elden Ring? Answered

There are multiple stats you’ll want to keep track of during your Elden Ring journey. These directly affect your gameplay, influencing your character’s build and the types of items and weapons you want to use in combat to be the most effective. A notable attribute you want to learn about is Arcane. In this guide, we will cover what Arcane does and how you can best use it in Elden Ring.

How does Arcane work

Multiple effects come with increasing your Arcane levels in Elden Ring. Here’s a breakdown of all those effects and how they work.

• Arcane levels increase your character’s Vitality
• Arcane levels increase your character’s Holy Defense
• Arcane levels increase your character’s Discovery
• Arcane levels increase your character’s power when using Arcane scaling weapons
• Arcane levels increase your character’s power when using certain Incantations and Sorceries that

Increasing your character’s Arcane levels does much more than making you more potent with any weapon, Incantation, or Sorcery spell you use in Elden Ring. It will partially increase your character’s Vitality, their health stat, making you more robust in combat. You will also see your character’s Holy Defense going up, protecting them against Holy Damage attacks, such as certain spells and weapons like the Black Knife or Coded Sword.

Your character’s Discovery levels will also increase as you add Arcane levels. Discovery dictates how often items drop from enemies, which means the higher up this goes, the more often enemies will drop specific items from their loot tables. For those who are consistently on the hunt for particular items, we recommend pushing this as much as possible to make looting mobs with rare items more common sights.

As expected, any weapon, Incantation, and Sorcery that requires and relies on Arcane will increase damage, making them more potent in battle. If you plan on using a primary weapon or series of spells that use Arcane, you want to increase this stat often to cleave through enemies. Plus, many of these weapons have Arcane requirements you will need to meet.

Arcane might not be for you, but increasing it by a few points is worthwhile for nearly any Elden Ring character.

About the author

Zack Palm

Zack Palm is the Senior Writer of Gamepur and has spent over five years covering video games, and earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Oregon State University. He spends his free time biking, running tabletop campaigns, and listening to heavy metal. His primary game beats are Pokémon Go, Destiny 2, Final Fantasy XIV, and any newly released title, and he finds it difficult to pull away from any Star Wars game.

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