Elden Ring Ashes of War explained

Elden Ring Ashes of War add abilities to your weapons, altering their scaling, adding new attacks and more. Used well, these are powerful damage modifiers that can open up the combat options of anything you can apply them to. It's a powerful tool in Elden Ring that will let you get the best from weapons, or even adapt them to builds they aren't initially suited for - how about adding magic scaling to a strength based weapon? 

It's not a complely obvious system though, meaning you might need some help mastering the Elden Ring Ashes of War options. Especially as you'll have to go out into the Elden Ring world to find them - you can only use the one's you find/have and while you'll come across some easily enough, some are tucked away in odd places.

It can be worth taking the time to track some of them down however, especially if you want to adapt a weapon for a build it wasn't meant for. While some Ashes of War add new attack or defence moves, some can link a certain stat to a weapon and make it scale accordingly. So if you've put all your points in Faith or Intelligence you can still wield strength based things effectively. We'll explain how Elden Ring Ashes of War works below. We'll also cover various Whetblade locations and how to use this additional tool to alter weapon Affinities.

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What are Ashes of War in Elden Ring?

Elden Ring Ashes of War are basically enchantments. However you can take them off and reapply them as much as you like to whatever weapon you want at Sites of Grace. While these Ashes of War can be changed freely, any given Elden Ring weapon can hold only at a time. 

Each Ash of War adds a Weapon Art - some sort of special ability that we'll explain how to use further down - and an Affinity that affects it's damage scaling stats. When you apply them to a relevant piece of gear, they do the following:

• Change the weapon's Affinity to raise certain stats and scaling and lower others.
• Replace the existing Weapon Skill, if it has one, with a preset skill.

It's also worth keeping in mind that Elden Ring Ashes of War are limited to certain weapon and gear types. For example, the Ash of War: Thunderbolt can only be applied to melee weapons, not any other equipment. Similarly, the Ash of War: Parry skill only works on shields and certain small armaments.

Let's say you acquire the Ash of War: Holy Ground, either because you're the Prophet Class or you beat the Tree Sentinel and take it off them. You can remove it from any shield at a Site of Grace and put it on any other one. When you do, it'll boost Holy Damage, increase certain stats, but penalise others, including physical damage negation. It also takes away the shield's specific skill - likely the Parry, if it's a standard shield - and replaces it with a unique skill called Holy Ground, which allows you to create a circle in which you and all allies regenerate health.

Just to clarify, it's important not to confuse Ashes of War with Spirit Ashes, the Elden Ring summons items that create NPC allies and can be bought from various merchants or found. Despite very similar names, there's no real overlap between the two item types beyond being magical in some way.

How to use Elden Ring Ashes of War on weapons

It's simple enough to apply Ashes of War to your equipment in Elden Ring - when you're at a Site of Grace, rest next to it and select the 'Ashes of War' menu option to manage all your owned Ashes. Here you can remove or apply them to any compatible gear you have. This process is free and can be done whenever you want. It's also useful to know that any gear you remove the Ashes from will return to its default state, so to carry on the above example, the shield you take Holy Ground off will get the Parry skill and standard stats back.

In this menu you can also see how different Weapon Arts work and what their FP cost is (that's the blue bar between your health and stamina). More powerful weapon skills will obviously cost more FP, so bear in that in mind. You'll also be able to see how you weapon damage scaling changes based on the Affinity that gets applied - further down, we've got a section all about the different Affinities, so look there for more advice.

With an Ash of War equipped, you can use its Weapon Art skill by pressing the LT/L2 on your controller. However, it's important to know that certain you can only ever use one Ash of War as some can override others depending on your equipment loadout. Your active Ash of War is always shown on the left of your screen above your equipment slots.

For example, if you're using a sword and only a sword, pressing LT/L2 will always use the sword's skill. Although, if you're using a sword and a shield with the parry skill, the parry will always override the sword. To avoid this, you can either remove the Parry Ash of War from your shield, quickly put away your shield, or two-hand your weapon to also put away the shield. 

Elden Ring Ashes of War Affinities explained

As previously mentioned, Ashes of War give Elden Ring weapons a Weapon Art skill and an Affinity. The Affinities other than Standard will generally improve one particular damage scaling stat and will reduce the others, making your weapon very specialised to a particular stat. Bear in mind that not any weapon can take any affinity - it'll depend on the weapon itself. Here are all the weapon Affinities as well as what they do:

• Standard: Default damage scaling that is generally balanced across several attribute stats.
• Heavy: Boosts Strength damage scaling. Good for large weapons.
• Keen: Enhances Dexterity damage scaling. Good for lighter weapons.
• Quality: Slightly boosts Strength and Dexterity. A nice improvement over Standard scaling - if you don't know what else to pick, pick this one. 
• Magic: Lowers default scaling but adds Intelligence damage scaling and splits weapon  damage to Physical and Magic damage types.
• Sacred: Weakens default scaling but adds Faith damage scaling and splits weapon damage to Physical and Holy damage types.
• Fire: Reduces default scaling but splits weapon damage to Physical and Fire damage types.
• Flame Art: Weakens default scaling but adds Faith damage scaling and splits weapon damage to Physical and Fire damage types.
• Lightning: Weakens default scaling but boosts Dexterity scaling and splits weapon damage to Physical and Lightning damage types.
• Poison: Enhances Strength, Dexterity, and Arcane weapon damage scaling, and adds Poison build-up to attacks.
• Cold: Lowers default scaling but boosts Intelligence scaling and add Frostbite build-up to attacks.
• Blood: Reduces default scaling but adds Arcane scaling and Bleed build-up with attacks.
• Occult: Weakens default scaling but adds Arcane damage scaling and prevents undead enemies from being revived.

Elden Ring Whetblade locations

Affinities are tied to Ashes of War, but by finding special items called Whetblades you can expand your options, each one essentially adding two or three new Affinities to your roster. Find them all and you'll effectively be able to add any Affinity to any compatible weapon. We've listed their locations below for you to check out.

How to get more Ashes of War in Elden Ring

Elden Ring Ashes can be found in all manner of ways, much in the same way that weapons and armor can be found all over the place. Here's how you can happen across or buy Ashes of War in Elden Ring:

• As rewards for defeating bosses or unique enemies.
• Found in hard-to-reach areas blocked by enemies.
• Pre-equipped on certain weapons.
• Can be bought from certain merchants, such as Bernahl at the Warmaster's Shack in Limgrave
• You can duplicate Ashes of War you already own by providing Smithing Master Hewg with Lost Ashes of War.

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