Introduction
Hi. Well, it's January, so that means two months of everyone airing out their throwaway ideas they weren't brave enough to upload during the holidays.
I think I've thrown around enough ranking guides for a while, I'm tired, so now I'm gonna go through the same phase I always do where I suddenly start posting analytical posts about mathematically intensive subjects no one gives a damn about.
I did it with Hollow Knight,
I did it with Bloodborne,
and guess what?
This game has one of the most dedicated modding bases[www.nexusmods.com] I've seen in years, so you better believe I've got the tools to make the algebraic parts of your brain ♥♥♥♥ their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pants.
You ever wondered why weapons like Loretta's War Sickle and the Crystal Knife hand out paper-cut adjacent damage all the way up to the endgame, but suddenly start performing miles above most other options a couple NewGame+ iterations later?
How about why Bloodblade Dance needs 56 attack IDs?
Well, I'm sure gonna explain some of that, hopefully.
Damage Types
I'm anticipating this to be a somewhat shorter video-
[30:47,403]
and we're fuсkеd.
Yes, sorry.
Alright, let's just start by outlining all the basic types of damage you're going to find.
I am not going to be spending a long amount of time on this section because I'm already the 58,000th channel on this hellbound platform that dares make a number-crunching video about Elden Ring's damage system.
So if you know this already, just skip to the next chapter or something, I don't really care.
Physical damage is split into four main categories:
standardstrikeslashpierce
Katanas, for instance, deal slash damage, but most have heavy attacks that deal pierce damage.
And the general rule of thumb for most common weapons is that if it looks like it deals pierce damage, it does.
If you're thrusting your sword forward in a stabby motion, you're probably dealing pierce damage.
Not true 100% of the time, but we'll unclog that mess later.
But there are also some less obvious examples like the Lucerne and Warpick not dealing pierce damage, despite their design.
And you can even find subtypes of physical damage on certain incantations like Beast Claw.
Elemental types are divided into:
FireMagicLightningHoly
I don't think I need to explain this part.
It's a surprisingly convoluted system, but again, generally, if something is on fire, throwing a fireball at it probably won't do a lot.
Fire and Lightning scale with Faith,
Magic scales with Intelligence,
but on weapons, the Fire affinity scales with Strength,
Lightning scales with Dex, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥...
You guys already know this, who cares.
Alright, this is boring, let's talk about flat defense.
Flat Defenses & You
Alright, so let's take a popular weapon like the Nagakiba for instance.
The Keen Nagakiba has a scaling of 1.6, which is a moderately high AThe cutoff point between A and S scaling is 1.75At +25 with 60 Dex and minimum strength, the Nagakiba will do a total of 540 physical damageLightning Nagakiba also scales with Dex, but significantly less so at a scaling of 0.78, which is a moderately low CHowever, even with this lower scaling, the Nagakiba will hand out:307 physical damage
and 317 lightning damage,
totaling out to 624 base damage
Hоlу shіt, that's a huge gap.
Oh, fuсk the Keen affinity then.
Why even use anything except the lightning affinity?
Nope.
Guess what?
There's an answer to that question, and it's perfectly reasonable.
All enemies in the game have a certain amount of defense against each subtype of damage, including elemental, and having two or more damage types on a single weapon just means you're pushing through two of those flat defense numbers, and not just one.
Now, this is also something you've heard multiple times from me and many others, but I don't think anyone's ever properly explained why that works the way it does.
How much flat defense?
Are they all the same flat number?
Is there an absolute minimum instance of flat damage where it literally never goes any lower?
This becomes significantly more important when you're starting a fresh new game.
Take these two longswords, for instance.
One has a fire affinity, and the other has heavy affinity.
Fire LongswordHeavy LongswordAttack PowerPhysical = 84 + 7Fire = 84 + 10Attack PowerPhysical = 99 + 19Attribute ScalingStr = DDex = EAttribute ScalingStr = C
The fire longsword very obviously does more overall damage, despite its lower scaling, but hitting this grafted scion with either sword results in the exact same damage number of 52.
This is the proof of the enemy's flat defenses working against your weapon, and towards the beginning of the game, they're extremely difficult to burst through.
Again, this isn't new information.
This is the whole reason why multi-hit spells seem to do very insignificant damage in most early game cases.
Here's a tangible example.
Tree Sentinels have different damage negations for each subtype of damage.
They have:
20% magic damage negation.
40% holy,
40% fire,
and 0% lightning.
The Astrologer staff starts out with a sorcery scaling of 115.
I set all enemy defenses to 0 in this demonstration.
With a flat defense of 0 and a magic absorption of 1, which is basically just 0% magic damage negation, Glintstone Pebble deals 158 magic damage to this Tree Sentinel here.
And the reason I'm using magic damage is because it kept fuсkіng raining whenever I tried to film this footage, and rain affects both fire and lightning damage, and I was too lazy to go and find the special effect and deactivate it.
So you're dealing with what you got.
Normally, the tree sentinel has a flat magic defense of 100, as seen here, and a magic absorption rate of 0.8.
This is a multiplicative modifier, which means any amount of magic damage done to this enemy will be reduced to 80% of its normal value.
Just think of this number as 20% magic damage negation.
Now, I'm going to reactivate these one at a time so we can see how each variable affects the final damage of the Pebble.
Turning on the defense modifier first, the damage of the pebble is lowered down to 107, meaning the tree sentinel has a flat magic defense of around 51, not including rounding down or up from a certain decimal point.
Turning on the magic damage negation reduces it to 86, which is roughly 20% of 107.
It's actually 85.6 exactly, which indicates that the game just rounded up.
Now, the damage negation is always measured by a percentage of damage you're dealing, which means that no matter how many new game plus cycles you run through, you're still going to feel its effects pretty heavily if you don't know which enemies are strong versus which kind of damage.
20% of 158 may be a pretty negligible number, but 20% of 1900 means quite a lot when you're trying to beat someone over the head with the elbow of a Tree Avatar.
The defense, on the other hand, pulls more weight in earlier parts of the game, since it is a flat number, and therefore unchanging.
Not only does this result in multi-hit spells and weapon skills suddenly getting a massive boost in performance later into the game, but some single-hit spells and skills you relied on beforehand might even start coming up a bit short for seemingly unknown reasons.
More Percentage Defenses
Cannon of HaimaCannon of Haima does a lot of magic damage at once, and it is one of the stronger sorceries in the grand scheme.Charging it gives a base magic damage of 332.
It is not a bad sorcery by any means, but like most other single-hit abilities, they quietly get left behind as the general preference slowly begins to shift over to options like Ancient Lightning Strike and Meteorite of Astel, or weapon skills like Bubble Shower and Bloodboon Ritual.
It's honestly incredibly rare for a single-hit anything to be considered by Elden Ring's community as one of the greatiest in their categories.
And if they are, it's usually because their motion values are so absurdly high that it doesn't even matter.
This is a direct result of most single-hit abilities suddenly becoming very burdened by an enemy's late-game damage negation.
If we take a look inside Map Studio and we go to NpcParam, we get a full view of every enemy's damage negation and defense amount.
One thing you'll notice is that the damage negation multipliers aren't nearly as simple as you would assume.
It's more than just ones across the board and then... maybe 1.2 or something versus a single damage type to indicate a weakness.
I found a lot of information I just didn't expect to find, such as Crucible Knights having 40% magic damage negation, or the Knights Cavalry having 20% damage negation against Light... Lightning.
Lightning (thunderDamageCutRate) = 0.8
Hang on a minute, what?
Lightning is supposed to be their weakness, right?
Well, technically no, because they also have 40% negation against all other elements and 35% negation against all physical types of damage except for thrust (10%).
Standard(neutralDamageCutRate)0.65Slash(slashDamageCutRate)0.65Strike(blowDamageCutRate)0.65Thrust(thrustDamageCutRate)0.9Magic(magicDamageCutRate)0.6Fire(fireDamageCutRate)0.6Lightning(thunderDamageCutRate)0.8Holy(darkDamageCutRate)0.6
It's not that «Knights Cavalry units are weak to Lightning», it's that they're just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ strong against everything else that Lightning damage becomes your best option.
Every enemy has damage negation of some sort, and even if there's a perceived weakness, it's usually just because that percentage is lower, not gone entirely.
And we'll also touch on this a bit later, but yes, this is also the reason why bosses suddenly start becoming unreasonably tanky around NewGame+5 or +6.
It barely has anything to do with a massive health pool.
Their defenses are just that large.
Motion Values
The phrase "motion values" has appeared hundreds of times over the past few videos of mine and many others, to the point that some might even wonder why the sudden fixation on them came about, since any video of mine over a year ago had no mention of them.
But this is actually not a term exclusive to Elden Ring.
This ♥♥♥♥'s everywhere.
Monster Hunter, Genshin, it's actually a very common means of calculating damage.
There are motion values for every single instance of damage in the game.
Blocked attacks, parries, staff bonks, throwing pots, throwing knives, torches, even falling on somebody's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ head by complete accident technically has a motion value assigned to it.
The motion values of most normal attacks are either 100 or really close to it, since it's based around a percentage.
The 5-hit sequence of light attacks from a straight sword are 100, 101, 102, 103, and then 110.
Essentially, the first hit of the sequence deals the sword's exact damage.
The second hit takes that damage.
And multiplies it by 1.01, then 1.02, so on and so forth.
A +25 heavy broadsword at 60 strength has a total damage of 520.
So, this will be the exact number of damage the first attack in the sequence will hit for.
Followed by 525, 530, and then 536, with the final hit in the sequence hitting for 572.
Alright, seems simple enough.
Well, let's take something a bit more complicated, like a twinblade for instance.
Twinblade motion values, specifically its two-handed motion values, have a large clump of attacks that are all set with an MV of 50.
These attacks deal half (Base DMG / 2) of the weapon's total damage.
And this is because twinblades, when two-handed, have a noticeable increase in total weapon strikes.
The first, second, and fourth animations in the two-handed twinblade sequence all have two separate weapon strikes, and the final hit even has three.
The motion values are set this way so that twinblades don't completely dominate the competition, like they already sort of do in most cases.
This is the damage of a +25 twinblade, with its normal MVs (50)And this is the damage of a +25 twinblade, with all its MVs set to 10028383958
A very noticeable difference.
Right underneath the set of attack-related motion values, you will find a set of status motion values, which measure the amount of status any individual hit will count for.
The same rules apply here, where 100 is basically the normal amount of status.
You can see the same reduced values being used here on the status MVs as well, with some of the weapon hits having a status MV of 50, while others are left at 100.
This is probably the largest reason why twinblades are so ridiculously efficient at building up status.
Even with its reduced MVs, you're still getting 50% more buildup out of each attack in the sequence, just because most of the attacks involve multiple hits.
Unlike attack motion values, status motion values almost never climb above 100 in any instance.
Looking at each weapon's heavy attacks gives you a good example, where most charged heavies have attack MVs around the 160 to 180 range, while the status MVs remain at 100.
The attack MVs on weapon skills cover an incredibly large range for obvious reasons.
Almost none of them look the exact same.
Some of them have large MVs by themselves,
some of them may have multiple hits with two smaller MVs and then a much larger one,
some of them may have a quantity of attacks that rival the list of rules on the average Discord server with plenty of different MVs that don't even seem to have a recognizable pattern.
Like, like Bloodblade Dance.
Some Examples
Okay, so let's just look at Unsheathe first, so we don't give ourselves a headache.
Unsheathe has four IDs in total, each of which are very straightforward.
The first and third ID marked here are the stanced light and heavy attacks respectively, and the second and fourth ID represent the same attacks when deployed with no FP.
300000560[AOW] UnsheatheLight300000561[AOW] UnsheatheLight (no FP)300000565[AOW] UnsheatheHeavy300000566[AOW] UnsheatheHeavy (no FP)
The stanced light has an attack MV of 190, while the stanced heavy has an attack MV of 235, and I suppose this is also a good time to look at some of the other MVs, such as the poise MV.
Poise damage, alternatively called «stance damage», or «break damage», is largely dictated by this motion value.
A standard longsword deals five poise damage on basic hits, but its poise damage for certain attacks and skills are enormously increased due to its poise MV.
It's not at all uncommon for heavier attacks to have a poise MV of 600 or above, and I think the reason they're so comparatively high might have to do with the fact that stance damage is regenerated over time.
The stanced light and heavy attacks of Unsheathed have poise MVs of 300 and 600, enabling you to deal 15, or 30 points of poise damage in a single attack, and the stanced attacks on Square Off have poise MVs of 600 and 800, and considering straight swords deal five poise damage by default, these two attacks are measured at 30 and 40 points of poise damage respectively.
You generally see higher poise MVs on attacks that take a longer time to connect, which explains why the poise MVs of Unsheathe are noticeably lower.
The weapon skill of the Serpent Hunter sports a poise MV of 900 for the first attack, and then 600 for the follow-up.
Spears deal a base poise damage of 5.5, meaning the Great Serpent Hunt, when deployed in its entirety, hands out a total of 82.5 poise damage, which I'm pretty sure can stagger literally anything that isn't a boss.
Inconsistency In Scaling
Alright, so now let's look at something a little more confusing.
Ghostflame Ignition has 11 different attack IDs in total, and because they're all disorganized as ♥♥♥♥, I'm gonna go through each string and point out which IDs belong to what.
303401300Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401301Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401302Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401303Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401304Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401305Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401306Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401307Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401308Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401309Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition303401310Death's Poker[AOW] Ghostflame Ignition
The initial L2 uses — 1st, 4th, 5th ID,
the R1 follow-up uses — 2nd, 6th, 11th ID,
and the R2 follow-up — 3rd, 7th IDs.
N-None of this is even remotely important, and there's no reason to include this part, but it made me upset, so I'm leaving it un-
The L2 by itself, when left to expire, detonates for 140 magic damage.
However, we're dealing with an entirely different beast here, because this number is not a motion value, but rather an instance of Flat Magic Damage.
The follow-up R2 has a flat damage modifier of 200 and the bullets from the R1 each deal a flat magic damage of 150.
The reason this is so important is because this vastly affects how the unique skill scales with certain stats.
Attack motion values are multiplicative and inherently tied to the overall damage of the weapon itself.
Leveling the appropriate stat still makes the skill stronger, sure, but that's only because scaling affects the entire weapon and not just the skill.
If a skill has something that is represented by a flat damage value in one of these categories here, that means it's independent from the weapon's damage and receives that much more power from leveling the appropriate stat.
The damage of Ghost Flame Ignition is almost entirely made up of flat damage numbers, meaning a very large chunk of its potential power will be determined by your character's intelligence.
And this is where I finally get around to contextualizing the video's title.
The intelligence scaling on Death's Poker is listed as a D.
Whereas the scaling for Strength and Dexterity are listed as C and B respectively.
Leading players into believing intelligence is the least important stat for the weapon, while never explicitly stating anywhere that the skill's damage benefits mostly from high Intelligence.Str = C
Dex = B
Int = D
Ghostflame Ignition is far from the only example of this.
Envoy's Greathorn owns Cs in both physical stats and a D in Faith, yet its unique skill is represented by a flat damage number.Str = CDex = CFai = DDamage: Holy (atkDark) = 315The Sacred Relic Sword only has a C in Faith, while Wave of Gold is obviously mostly influenced by the player's Faith stat
Str = DDex = BFat = CDamage: Holy (atkDark) = 250
There's a lot of little instances like this that by themselves are far from a big deal.
But when it happens multiple times, and especially with so many high profile weapons, you start losing trust in the game's scaling system and wondering if you're missing out on something even though you're following the game's directions and leveling what you're being told to level.
And then you have skills like Ordovis's Vortex.
Str = ADex = EFai = CStr = 25Dex = 13Fai = 15
The skill's damage comes entirely from attack motion values, which sort of bottlenecks the power of the skill's because there aren't any flat damages on the side to help it out, but the scaling of the Greatsword is represented accurately by the weapon requirements.
Strength is its highest requirement, and also its strongest scaling, which makes the weapon feel very consistent in performance.
And the extra holy damage feels more like a helpful accessory than it does something you have to pay attention to in the build.
And this means we can be confident that the scaling isn't trying to pull one over on us.
It's a simple system, but it works.
I think a great example of a skill that doesn't lie to you is something like Regal Beastclaw.
Attack Correction = 80
Damage: Physical (atkPhys) = 186
It has both attack motion values and a flat 186 physical damage that comes from the shock waves, making it very friendly towards stat investment.
But because the flat damage is physical, it also scales the way you would assume it would, benefiting mostly from strength and then secondarily from dex and faith.
This makes it a wonderful weapon to carry into NewGame+ runs because a high stat investment is that much more important.
And you're going to need an ace in the hole because NewGame+ ♥♥♥♥♥ up everything.
NG+ Fuсks Up Everything
The modifiers exclusive to NewGame+ iterations are found in ClearCountCorrectParam, where the IDs are sorted neatly into NG+0 all the way up to NG+7.
NG+0 has everything listed as, well, 0, and NG+1 has everything listed as 1.
This does result in a pretty noticeable increase to everyone's defenses and damage negation, and on a +25 weapon, you'll notice a general deficit of around 15 to 20 damage per hit, at least on a basic enemy.
Heading into NG+2, all defenses are multiplied by 1.025, which is an extremely negligible increase that's barely worth noting.
You lose out on about 3 damage per hit here.
But heading into NG+5 is where things start getting interesting, because all defenses are now being multiplied by 1.15.
That is a 15% increase to all flat defenses, and it gets even more ridiculous heading up into NG+7, where the defenses are boosted by a full 30%.
The gap between NG+1 and NG+2 is barely 3 to 4 damage lost, depending on which weapon you're using.
But the difference between NG+6 and NG+7 is enormous.
You're losing out on about 10 to 11 damage over a single game cycle.
But keep in mind we are talking about a 30% increase to the flat defenses of every enemy, not the damage negation.
30% more damage negation on everything would just be stupid.
NG+ 7 also increases the HP of every enemy.
It increases the HP of all enemies by 40%, which is really only a huge deal against in-game bosses like Fire Giant and Placidussax.
But in NG+7, even pushovers like Godrick and Renna la feel so much sturdier than before.
However this sturdiness is not solely due to the large health pool, it's honestly not even the biggest variable in the equation.
30% more flat defense doesn't really sound like a lot, but it's enough to force you to pay more attention to the weaknesses of who you're fighting.
Otherwise that 332 base magic damage is gonna feel like hitting a brick wall with a toothbrush.
The poise multiplier of 1.9 probably doesn't help things either since everything is now staggering significantly less often, resulting in less enemy downtime and therefore more time you spend dodging and looking for windows and whatnot.
Something else I thought was weird about how damage modifiers change through multiple game cycles was how physical damage is treated.
Not your physical damage, but the physical damage inflicted to you by enemies.
We have to remember that physical damage is kind of its own category of damage with 4 subtypes.
This is why in the clear count correct param, physical damage is multiplied more and more with each cycle through the game, while strike, slash, and thrust damage have been unmodified.
NG+0NG+7Physical0.001.45Slash0.001.00Strike0.001.00Thrust0.001.00Standard0.001.45
Oh only… hang on…
Standard damage also gets multiplied.
Ok, well there's no way I was understanding this correctly, so I went into the game and tested it, and…
well that'll be ♥♥♥♥♥♥.
So intentional or not, standard physical damage gets modified twice.
Standard physical damage from any source, including dragons, tree spirits, and any damage that doesn't fall into the other three subtypes.
And these modifiers are multiplicative, mind you.
Without either modifier, the tree sentinel's opening attack upon standing too close to him hits for 223 damage, and I'm wearing the Crucible Knight armor set in this example, so take armor damage negation into account as well.
Then you turn one of them back on, they're the same amount and we're testing the same attack, so which one you turn on first shouldn't really matter, and the tree sentinel's damage expectedly gets increased dealing 357 in opening attack.
Then I turned on the standard damage subtype modifier, increasing the damage of the opening attack by a second 45%, totalling out to 552 damage.
Noticing this made me feel very discomforted because this is the one single reason why everything suddenly gets as strong as it does towards later game cycles, and I'm not even sure if it's intentional.
The standard damage subtype gets modified in new games plus 2 through 6 as well, and, I dunno, it'd be a little weird to make the same mistake six times, so I can only assume this was on purpose.
Resistance multipliers are also here in this param, but since status ailments can be so quickly applied with so many different builds, they're largely unimportant.
ResistNG+0NG+7Poison0.001.09Scarlet Rot0.001.09Hemorrhage0.001.09Blight0.001.09Frostbite0.001.09
Especially since the highest modifier is a 9% increase.
That's like one extra hit with a dagger.
Like, cool.
One thing I did notice though, near the resistances, was an unused section in the params that looks like it was made to modify the damage done when afflicted with Frostbite, Bleed, and Madness.
They're not exactly unused, you're certainly able to modify them by yourself if you want, but in every NG+ cycle, they all remain set at a 1, which essentially just means 0%.
It kinda sucks they didn't use this to be honest.
Like, I get ignoring the damage of Madness, that'll only help you against NPC invaders, but I think an opportunity was missed here to weaken the Frostbite and Bleed effects a little in later game cycles.
Didn't have to be too big of an adjustment, but it would certainly help give NG+ players a bit more variety, since people tend to gravitate towards status builds in NG+7 anyways.
Area Scaling
I think this might be my favorite section to dive into, and I love introducing people to these numbers because it's just never what you think it is.
I was curious how the game separated areas by scaling, but a little confused when I didn't see a specific param for it.
All the NG+ iterations got their own, so why not area scaling?
And then I realized they could be found in the special effect params with all the other effects in the game that didn't fit in anywhere else.
Starting at ID 7000, you can see a cluster of effects that are all labeled area scaling, followed by a tiered number, and again, just so we're on the same page, this is Map Studio 1.10 I'm working off of here.
You can find a download link here if you want to look at it yourself:
https://github.com/soulsmods/DSMapStudio/releases
Each area has a parenthetical next to it that highlights what exact area corresponds to a single ID.
I honestly didn't think Stormveil and Weeping Peninsula would have had their own separate scalings.
Looking at them, I was surprised by how different they were.
The enemies in Stormvale Castle are a good deal stronger, but I don't think Stormvale and Weeping Peninsula would have had their with around 30% more attack power across the board, and it looks like 37% more HP, give or take.
7020 - Tier 03 (Weeiping Peninsula)7030 - Tier 04 (Stormveil Castle)Power %: Physical1.2021981.494506Power %: Magic1.2021981.494506Power %: Fire1.2021981.494506Power %: Lightning1.2021981.494506Power %: Holy1.2021981.494506Max HP %1.2811.656
Of course, most of the enemies you find in these two areas are just soldiers and Kaiden, so I suppose it is pretty hard to tell in game.
Siofra River is the 6th tier of scaling, with an HP modifier of 1.953, and if you're confused on what any of that means, this basically just means they took all the enemies and boosted their total HP pools by around 95%.
Base Limgrave Exploration has an HP modifier of 1.141, so a giant crab found in Siofra is going to have about an 81% bigger HP pool than the ones in Central Limgrave.
I also really like all the info in this set of IDs because it gives you a lot of extra perspective on the natural route of progression the game ideally wanted players to follow.
Leyndell might be the 11th level of scaling, but the sudden jump in enemy stats from tiers 9 through 11 is astronomical compared to any tier before it, suggesting that heading into Leyndell was meant to be a pretty large spike in difficulty.
7080 - Tier 09 (Altus Plateau)7100 - Tier 11 (Leyndell / SE Caelid)Power %: Physical2.002.472528Power %: Magic2.002.472528Power %: Fire2.002.472528Power %: Lightning2.002.472528Power %: Holy2.002.472528
Which it was, so that checks out.
The next big jump is easily seen in the power section of the IDs, between ID 7110 and 7120, where the 12th level of scaling has enemies hitting with 267% of their default power, and the 13th level where enemies will hit with 324% of their default.
7110 - Tier 12 (Volcano Manor / Deeproot Depths / Nokstella)7120 - Tier 13 (Mountaintops)Power %: Physical2.673.24Power %: Magic2.673.24Power %: Fire2.673.24Power %: Lightning2.673.24Power %: Holy2.673.24
We aren't exactly where late to end game damage complaints start popping up, but it is around here where the damage taken by your character starts getting a little difficult to manage.
The next huge jump will be the single largest difficulty check in the game, which is found between ID 7130 and 7140.
Here, the enemy HP modifier jumps from 548% to 656.
Enemy attack power has also been increased all the way up to 352% of their defaults.
7130 - Tier 14 (Moonlight Alter / Leyndell Sewers)7140 - Tier 15 (Farum Azula)Power %: Physical3.243.53Power %: Magic3.243.53Power %: Fire3.243.53Power %: Lightning3.243.53Power %: Holy3.243.53Max HP %5.486.56
ID 7140 sets the scaling in the Farum Azula area, and around here is where the late game damage starts getting pretty ridiculous, according to most players.
This is where you'll notice a lot of bigger enemies, and especially when you're in the middle of the game, and you'll notice that the trolls and golems taking quite a bit of time to put down if you haven't made significant build adjustments by this point.
Endgame Areas
Most scaling tiers after this one are surprisingly linear.
There aren't any huge leaps or discrepancies in scaling between here and the end of the game, but that's not to say it doesn't add up quickly, because the areas remaining are significantly smaller and take less time to explore, such as the Haligtree and Mogwyn Palace, respectively represented by tiers 18 and 19, where enemy HP is adjusted to 720% of their defaults, and attack power has been boosted to 380, meaning even crowds of albinaurics can now pose a significant threat if you let them.
7180 - Tier 19 (Haligtree Roots)Max HP %7.203Power %: Physical3.795604Power %: Magic3.795604Power %: Fire3.795604Power %: Lightning3.795604Power %: Holy3.795604
The two remaining tiers encompass all of Elphael, the Haligtree's brace, and the Malenia fight got its own scaling ID for some reason, which I thought was really funny.
The reason this has anything to do with the overall damage done by your character is that in each of these scaling IDs, there's another set of values a little further below, which are defense multipliers.
These are not damage negation multipliers, but they're not damage negation multipliers, and they're not damage negation but rather multipliers to an enemy's flat defense.
And, well, just look at how small these are in comparison to everything else.
The final level of scaling just barely goes above a 23% increase, and I can't help but think this set of values has quite a lot to do with the phenomenon I explained earlier, where multi-hit spells and abilities just start getting really good out of nowhere.
In fact, I'm getting really curious about this now, so I'm just gonna try something.
Let's go back up to Stormveil, which I assume will adjust the stats of Godrick.
Uh, hmm, okay, these can go below 1, right?
I mean, everything else can so far, so let's just try it.
Defence %: Physical1.0390.77Damage dealt176244
Okay, so it didn't make as big of a difference as I was maybe looking for, but it did make the adjustment I thought it would.
I'm casting Starshower with a +0 Astrologer staff and 16 Intelligence, so 176 versus 244 damage is actually not a small difference at all.
This is a further testament to just what an enormous impact enemy flat defenses have on, basically everything at the beginning of the game.
I have no idea what would constitute a normal-looking amount of damage for Starshower or Crystal Barrage or something at this point in the game, since I never use them, but for anyone currently working on a scaling overhaul mod, uh, start here, I guess.
You're welcome.
Damage Negation
Welcome to the final section of the guide, and probably the shortest one, hopefully.
Damage negation from armor fortunately isn't as complicated a subject as NG+ modifiers or figuring out an enemy's flat defenses, but it does have some weird anomalies I wasn't expecting to find.
First, taking a trip to the Param labeled EquipParamProtector gives you a list of every single armor piece in the game, and some unobtainable ones.
After highlighting an armor piece, scroll down a bit in the right-hand section, and you'll see a set of values named Absorption.
These variables should look familiar.
They operate under the same rule set by damage negation modifiers, which is that a flat 1 equals 0% absorption, and a 0 would mean 100%.
We know this because, the in-game modifiers classify all of these numbers as damage negation.
Just a big, big ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bold-faced heading right at the top of the menu.
You'd honestly be really surprised how many people missed this.
Keeping those rules in mind, we can see that the Ronin's chest piece negates physical damage by 10.5%, slashes negated by 11.2%, and strike and thrust by 10.5% as well.
Physical = 0.895 | 10.5%Slash = 0.888 | 11.2%Strike = 0.895 | 10.5%Thrust = 0.895 | 10.5%
This is why so many people tell you that armor matters in Elden Ring.
Because it does.
This isn't even one of the heavier pieces.
Where are the armor pieces that matter the most in Elden Ring?
Well, bearing some of the heavier armors can function similarly to just having a second Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman, if not very close to it.
The Fire Prelate armor, for instance, gives you a total of 41.2% physical damage absorption, not including subtypes, if wearing the full set.
And during later game cycles, this obviously matters quite a bit.
In the second clip here, I decreased all the physical and holy absorption of the Fire Prelate set down to 0, resulting in over 100 extra damage taken from the exact same attack.
And these damage numbers may seem negligible, but only because I'm testing versus the second boss in the game.
Luckily for us, there's another boss we know of who always opens with the exact same attack, so let's head to Yellow Onyx and see what numbers we come up with.
Nox MirrorhelmAzur's Glintstone RobePreceptor's GlovePreceptor's Boots6.7%15.4%3.6%8.3%
Now, this clothing combination offers you the highest possible magic damage negation in the game.
Totaling out to 34% negation exactly.
Now, we're pretty late in the game, so this is probably going to hurt.
After taking down all my magic negation to 0, this single attack ended up hitting for over 400 more points of damage than it would've normally.
This doesn't even take into account that we're testing with a level 300 character, so my natural defenses are already very high.
Again, when people tell you armor matters, listen to them.
Epilogue
Uh, I think that's everything.
If I misinterpreted any variables or params in this video, feel free to correct me in the comments.
Otherwise, I've laid down all the groundwork I need to confidently assert that Elden Ring's damage system is ♥♥♥♥♥♥.
But it's not irreparably ♥♥♥♥♥♥.
It obviously makes enough sense to work, and in most cases, that's more than enough.
You're not really meant to go into the veins of the game like this and dissect which variables lead to which balancing consequences, but I dunno, it's just fun to know more about the game I've spent almost two years with now.
There's no shortage of information in these params, so anyone worried that I'll run out of ideas soon?
Uh, don't.
Do not worry.
There's plenty to talk about here, I promise.
———————————————
📝 Other Elden Ring Guides
Elden Ring Rankings:
Ranking All 16 Elden Ring Daggers From Worst to Best
Ranking All 18 Elden Ring Staves From Worst To Best
Ranking All 25 Elden Ring Bows From Best to Worst
Ranking All 47 Elden Ring Gestures From Worst To Best
Ranking All 64 Elden Ring Spirit Summons From Worst To Best
Ranking All 70 Elden Ring Sorceries From Worst To Best
Ranking All 88 Elden Ring Unique Skills From Worst to Best
Ranking All 91 Elden Ring Talismans From Worst To Best
Ranking All 91 Elden Ring Ashes of War From Worst to Best
Ranking All 101 Elden Ring Incantations From Worst To Best
Ranking ALL 308 Elden Ring Weapons From Worst to Best
Oh God, Now He's Ranking The Elden Ring Great Runes...
Other
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006733096
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3045134910
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3155117973
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