Sword of Darkness

Sword of Darkness is a melee armament in ELDEN RING ⁽²⁰²²⁾.

Description

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Sword of darkness, pulled from its stone scabbard at an altar.

From the quick of the root, wandering coils of darkness coalesce and release, their eddies and vortices giving form to the dark blade.

祭壇に捧げ、石鞘を取り去った闇の剣

有機の根元から生じた幾筋かの揺らぎが
歪みながら集散し、時に渦を巻きながら
暗い刀身を形作っている

Acquisition

• Take the Stone-Sheathed Sword or Sword of Light to an altar at either Fog Rift Catacombs or Ruins of Unte.
  • WARNING: Once either the Sword of Darkness or Sword of Light has been acquired, though the two forms can be freely switched between by traveling to their assigned altars, the Stone-Sheathed Sword itself cannot be reacquired until you enter the next new game cycle.
  • See the page for the Stone-Sheathed Sword for all 3 altar locations.
  • If the Stone-Sheathed Sword was taken from Fog Rift Catacombs or Ancient Ruins of Rauh the altar at Ruins of Unte should be used. If it was taken from Ruins of Unte the altar at Fog Rift Catacombs should be used.

Notes

• The unique skill, Darkness, sprays streams of Holy darkness in a rotating circle around the user. This takes about 4 seconds to cast and reduces the Holy damage negation for any enemies hit by 20% for 60 seconds. Since this casts quite slowly, taking about 4 seconds to complete, it's best used in an ambush to strengthen any Holy damage attacks used afterwards.
  • The debuff inflicted does not stack with any other defence or attack debuff, with the exception of Frostbite. This includes the two moon sorceries Rennala's Full Moon and Ranni's Dark Moon, the Shriek of Milos of the Sword of Milos, Acid Spraymist, and the Soul Stifler skill of the Winged Greathorn.
  • Since the Sword of Light's skill, Light, works as a Body Buff these two skill work well together to greatly raise the damage of Holy attacks.
• Has identical statistics to the Sword of Light. Only their unique skills and appearances distinguishes one from the other.
• A single sword switched between Sword of Darkness, Sword of Light, and Stone-Sheathed Sword forms always has the same level.
  • This means that if the Stone-Sheathed Sword is upgraded to +3 before switching to Sword of Darkness you will gain a Sword of Darkness +3. If it's then upgraded to +7 it will become a Sword of Light +7 when switched.
• Incredibly bad damage negation when blocking, even for a Straight Sword.
• Note that all swords currently held in ones inventory switch forms when the respective altar is interacted with. Thus, keeping one sword in the item box allows for the dual-wielding of the Sword of Darkness and Sword of Light.
• Scales the best with a pure Strength build but due to scaling becoming less effective when stats are leveled above 54 a hybrid Strength/Faith build performs almost as well. The second, hybrid build will also deal more damage with the skill.
  • For comparison (unmentioned stats are at the minimum required level): 80 Strength grants 638 Attack Power (AP), and 45 Strength and 45 Faith grants 622 AP.
  • Note that the high levels of Faith required just to wield the sword, a hybrid Strength/Faith build effectively has 14 more levels to work with. These could either be put in other stats such as Endurance for more Equip Load or Stamina, or Mind for more FP, but they could also be put into Strength and Faith for more AP. Doing this would put both stats at 52 and grants 642 AP.

Upgrade Information

• Upgraded with Somber Smithing Stones.
• Cannot have its Affinity and Skill changed.
• The upper number in the Atk column denotes Physical base damage while the lower, colored number in the Atk column denotes elemental base damage: red for Fire damage, yellow for Lightning damage, orange for Holy damage, and cyan for Magic damage.
• See the Weapon Scaling page for what the scaling values mean.

Level	Atk	STR Scaling	DEX Scaling	INT Scaling	FAI Scaling	ARC Scaling	Grd Boost
+0	93	D 0.35	E 0.20	-	E 0.23	-	31
	93
↑/Lv	+14.4%	+8.0%	+8.0%	-	+7.8%	-	+1%
+10	227	C 0.63	D 0.36	-	D 0.41	-	34.1
	227

Trivia

• Was originally cut content from the base game.