Building a character in Elden Ring is all about focusing on the important stats to snowball your character's power. While many people focus on the other stats available, Arcane is often overlooked. Arcane influences item discovery, but more importantly build-ups.

Related: Elden Ring:Best Halberds, Ranked

Arcane is needed to wield some weapons that have heavy build-up effects but is worthwhile with the damage bonuses that come with leveling up the stat. Here is a list of the 10 weapons you should get for your Arcane build.

Updated By Joshua Leeds On January 25, 2023: Status effect builds have been big contenders in the Elden Ring meta, both for PVP and PVE. With so many arcane scaling weapons to choose from, it's important to find the one that fits best with your build, to deal damage efficiently but also play the game with the weapon class you want.

15 Clinging Bone

Player Dual-Wielding Clinigng Bone

The Clinging Bone deals both physical and magic damage to enemies, but gets the real boost from arcane with its skill. This weapon requires 8 strength, 22 dexterity, and 16 arcane to wield, scaling most from the player's dexterity and arcane.

This weapon comes with the skill Lifesteal Fist, and cannot be infused with other ashes of war. This skill does high damage to a humanoid-type enemy and has the user recover about a third of their health. This skill is incredibly useful for long journeys around the Lands Between and can be used as an efficient healing method without using your flask.

14 Ripple Blade

Player Blocking With The Ripple Blade

The Ripple Blade is an incredible arcane weapon despite not having its own status build-up to work off of. This weapon requires 11 strength, 11 dexterity, and 20 arcane to wield, scaling purely from the player's arcane stat, and nothing more.

This weapon comes with the skill Wild Strikes, and cannot be infused with other ashes of war. This weapon acts a clean slate for players to use magic and items to temporarily give this weapon whatever status effect they want. While this does require players to constantly cast spells or use items, it is very worthwhile for high scaling at very high levels of arcane.

13 Varre's Bouquet

Varre's Bouquet In Menu Description

Varre's Bouquet is a hammer that only does a moderate amount of damage, but finds its full potential in its bleed build-up. This weapon requires 8 strength, 16 dexterity, and 24 arcane to wield. This weapon scales most from a player's arcane, and decently from their dexterity.

Related: Elden Ring: Best Daggers, Ranked

This weapon comes with the unique skill Blood Tax, and cannot be infused with other ashes of war. This ability offers a decent bit of life steal for the player, while quickly building up the target's bleed effect with the quick strikes. This weapon has one of the higher bleed stats than other weapons but does fall off a bit for its lack of damage.

12 Regalia Of Eochaid

Regalia Of Eochaid Skill Being Used

The Regalia of Eochaid deals both physical and magic damage to enemies. This weapon requires 12 strength, 18 dexterity, and 15 arcane to wield, with it scaling equally from players' arcane and dexterity stats.

This weapon comes with the unique skill Eochaid's Dancing Blade, which throws the blade in a spinning fashion to deal damage to enemies. While this skill looks cool, there are many other options for ranged attacks such as this that deal more and different elements of damage.

11 Dragon Communion Seal

Dragon Communion Seal In Menu

The Dragon Communion Seal is used to cast incantations and offers a bonus to Dragon Communion spells, all of which use and scale from your arcane. This seal requires both 10 faith and 10 arcane, scaling most from the player's arcane.

There are many different dragon communion spells that deal high amounts of damage. Each of these spells requires and scales from arcane, and offers an additional bonus when cast from this hand seal, making it very ideal for faith/arcane builds.

10 Reduvia

Player Wielding Reduvia In Right Hand

Blood Loss is one of the greatest build-ups you can use in this game. Being a dagger it has a very quick attack speed, so its lower build-up stat is quickly added up with a flurry of blows. Leveling up your arcane won't boost the weapons base damage to a staggering level, but reaching the build-up limit quicker helps your overall damage incredibly.

This weapon's unique skill: Reduvia Blood Blade launches blades of blood a short distance in front of the caster causing bleed buildup and damage. These blood blades make up for the dagger's shorter distance allowing you to fight outside the melee range of most weapons.

9 Ripple Crescent Halberd

Enemy Holding Ripple Crescent Halberd

The Ripple Crescent Halberd is one of the few weapons that can be upgraded to an "S" level of scaling. While it doesn't offer any added status build-up, a high arcane stat can make this weapon pack a serious punch.

This weapon is locked to the ability Spinning Slash, perfect for dealing with groups of enemies. This is also one of the few arcane scaling weapons that can be buffed or have affinities added using consumables.

8 Bloody Helice

Player Holding Bloody Helice Two Handed

Bloody Helice is a thrusting weapon, allowing it to do large amounts of damage very quickly. This weapon also has a bleed buildup, and multiple quick attacks help you reach the limit of that build-up quickly.

Related: Elden Ring: Best Incantations, Ranked

With its unique skill, Dynast's Finesse is perfect for a quick-moving build. Its animation starts as a dodge backward, followed by a lunge forward, perfect for dodging a close enemy or jumping forward to close a gap. During the dodge portion of this art, your character is also immune to damage.

7 Hoslow's Petal Whip

Player Holding Hoslows Petal Whip

This whip offers solid damage at a distance longer than most average melee weapons. With the added bonus of bleed buildup, you're able to give the status effect on enemies as they approach or to those too timid to jump right into the combat.

Your arcane stat scales how much build-up occurs, making a high stat perfect for quick distance pokes in PVP for enemies who try to keep their distance. This weapon's ash of war is Kick but can be switched to something else to match your playstyle.

6 Serpent Bow

Player Holding Serpent Bow Close Up

A bow that adds a status effect to any arrow already makes it a top-tier ranged weapon. The Serpent bow adds a slight poison buildup, no matter how cheap the arrow. The status effect builds off of any other effect from special arrows, allowing you to perform multiple status effects on an enemy or double up on poison for quicker results.

Your arcane stat does not affect the overall damage to this weapon, only the buildup of poison. This weapon is locked to the Ash of war: Mighty Shot, but this skill does help with the potency of the poison buildup causing more effect than a regular arrow.

5 Marais Executioners Blade

Player holding the Marais Exectioner's Sword (Elden Ring)

This is the smallest greatsword in the game, doing both physical damage and magic damage. As this weapon doesn't scale from Intelligence, it allows arcane builds to use higher magic damage without investing into a different stat to get effective damage.

Related: Elden Ring: Best Strength Scaling Weapons, Ranked

The damage of this sword does scale from your arcane stat and strength, making it do incredibly high damage with a high Arcane. Its Unique Skill, Eochaid's Dancing Blade, has you throwing the weapon and pulling it back like Thor's hammer. This does considerable damage, offers a good range, and just looks super awesome.

4 Eleonora's Poleblade

Player using Eleonora's Poleblade one-handed

Eleonora's Poleblade does physical damage, and fire damage, and causes a bleed build-up. Its fast attack style means you will be assaulting your enemy in many ways and will be attacking at one of their weak defenses. Its damage and build-up scale with your arcane stat, making this weapon devastating with a high enough stat.

Its unique skill: Bloodblade Dance, has you jump at your target attacking many times with spins and slices. With an additional command, this whirlwind of attacks ends with your jumping a safe distance back, making it the perfect hit-and-run combo dealing massive amounts of damage.

3 Mohgwyn's Sacred Spear

Player Holding Mogwhyn's Sacred Spear Two-Handed

This is the longest greatspear in the game, allowing long distances, and incredible damage. Arcane scales both the physical and fire damage from this weapon, adding in a bleed build-up. This makes an arcane build much more effective, as your strength stat only benefits the physical damage.

It has a unique skill: Bloodboon Ritual, a wide AOE attack dealing fire damage and blood buildup. This art allows up to three attacks, each hitting multiple enemies and dealing very high damage to each. This AOE attack is great for PVP as enemies hiding behind barriers take high damage and suffer more bleed buildup

2 Morgott's Cursed Sword

Player Using Morgott's Cursed Blade Unique Skill

The weapon of Morgott, the Omen King. This weapon has very high base damage for a status effect weapon. It also has one of the highest bleed build-up stats of any weapon. Further, scaling off your Arcane stat can lead to some of the quickest bleed effects while also dealing a high amount of damage.

Its Unique Skill: Cursed-Blood Slice leaves a trail of blood in the air that then ignites with fire hurting nearby enemies. This skill offers a different damage affinity, while also furthering the bleed effect. This skill can be worked into a combo for high damage to both physical, fire, then a bleed effect.

1 Rivers of Blood

Player using Rivers of Blood Unique Skill

Katanas in Soulsborne games are always at the top of the respective list. This weapon does an equal amount of fire and physical damage, with arcane scaling them both. Being a Katana it has quick attacks and an added bleed effect that makes short work of single enemies or small groups.

This weapon's unique skill: Corpse Piler, has the weapon coated in blood swinging in an "X" pattern in front of the user. The fire damage is greatly increased, and the bleed buildup is maintained from regular attacks. These attacks leave behind a trail of blood slightly ahead of each swing, increasing the effective range of this weapon.

Next: Elden Ring: Best Sorceries, Ranked