Bloodborne Arcane Build In-Depth Guide by dr_raza A guide for Arcane builds from beginning to the end Walkthrough: Pick Cruel Fate Pick Saw Cleaver, then find. To get this gem, you must first defeat the Bloodstarved Beast. Special thanks to EMonaghan (TurquoiseWaters) for her contribution. Quite simply, most players wouldn’t know where to start for an arcane build and might struggle needlessly without a resource such as this. Allowing it to scale would make some weapons severely unbalanced, namely LHB, Hunter Axe and Kirkhammer (which all make amazing arc weapons). @Astrichthyes_ I think we all know that elemental loses to straight physical. Even an experienced player like me learned something; namely, that Nourishing gems affect visceral damage. Will you use all of them? So, if Arcane is so gimped early-game, how do you even proceed then? If you were to have three tempering gems at 27.2%, your physical AR on your weapon would get 2.058 times its gemless physical AR. They need an element on them. This straightforward Guide equips you with everything you need for your Arcane build, BEFORE The Old Hunters Expansion is released! It’s worth mentioning that, unlike mage builds in Souls, arc builds have fewer stats to manage than phys builds. Looking at that list, there are a lot of weapon options and they’re soon to grow! The Rosemarinus works similarly, dealing double the damage to “Undead” enemies such as the Pickaxe Miners found in the Chalice Dungeons, and is excellent at bypassing high fire defenses, as seen on the Watchdog of the Old Lords and Keeper of the Old Lords. At this point in the game, the Nourishing gem is probably the best Triangular gem you have because not a lot of enemies are weak to Arcane at this point in the game. It’s not very impressive at first glance, but 2 of those Hunter gems multiplies my AR by 1.6 and suddenly I have 630 Physical AR and 146 Arcane AR against the Beast/Kin I’m fighting. Categorically broken down, we can see how they work to your advantage: Let’s say for example, I’m using the Logarius Wheel for my 25Str/50Arc build, and I slot in 3 Nourishing gems. Augur is uninterruptible once the tentacles come out, and ACB has it when the nebula forms and right up until the stars are ready to fire. I guess we should look at the meta a little bit and analyse what people wear most of the time…, If you were making an arcane build to specifically use the Kirkhammer, you’d want 16 str and 10 skl to meet minimum reqs. 7) After defeating The One Reborn, proceed to the Lecture Building and pick up the Augur of Ebrietas. It’s not even worth the cost since it only adds about 10 damage per hit in pvp for 3 bullets. Fire or bolt? I resigned myself to viscerals being useless for my arc builds apart from health/QS regen. It allowed you to keep playing, but with new weapons, and not have to restart the game or farm. Many players I know tried the build type at some point in their playtime on Bloodborne, but it seemed like few understood it. Cainhurst enemies in particular are also weak to holy/righteous/whatchamacallit damage, and an arcane LHB or Threaded Cane in cane form will turn gargoyles, bloodlickers, and ghosts into dust faster than a fire saw spear kills beasts. Use it to your advantage and you can most certainly succeed with this underused build type! Arcane builds and gun-focused Bloodtinge builds are the only ones who don’t gain any benefits from Beasthood, and so only get the defense drops. That said, Fire Paper with physical gems on your Saw Spear may be more effective overall until you can stack at least 2 gems or have 25+ Arcane. Run through the Nightmare of Mensis, collecting all loot that you deem necessary at this point, and defeat Micolash. Very obscure and potentially irrelevant fact, but just in case: the game handles Beasthood as if it were a status effect, except that fully filling the bar does nothing in particular and changes occur at set breakpoints as you increase it. I really wanna make a full 99 Arc pure mage, and the DLC seems like the best time to do it. You’d be hard-pressed to get 3 decent matching elemental gems from the Watchers while tempering are readily available.The guaranteed drops from Watchdog, Ebrietas, and Abhorrent/Darkbeast are unlikely to be as good as the Watchers’ elemental gems or an equivalent of the Tempering gems. The damage is negligible but you still need a gun for some fights and PvP. We also have a Bloodborne Single-gem Fight Club filled with skilled and dynamic players. More often than not, you’ll get the answer of “the best Elemental gems you have”. Any pure physical weapon – not including. Make sure you become familiar with and make use of the following Spells. This simple firearm is extremely helpful until you can find decent gems, knocking boss HP bars down quite a bit to compensate for a lack of Melee power. Edit: Oh, completely forgot: Augur of Ebrietas is excellent for stunlocking strong enemies to death. Beast/Kin gems can also be used to supplement your Elemental weapons in the same way. If we dig a little deeper however, Arcane builds can make a lot better use of some gems than other builds. Once he teleports, you can simply circle him and use your sprayer at his side. The unfortunate part of using an Arcane build is that it is greatly hindered by a lack of Elemental Gems in the main game. The gem quality just isn’t there without the proper glyphs and a lot of luck. I’d like to add that going past 50 Arc still gets good returns on damage for the hunter tools due to their S scaling. So the claim that gems are not as easy to get for arcane isn’t unfounded in the least. Boom Hammer deals no Fire damage without priming it first, be aware of that. So, if you’re an arcane build or another non-physical setup, on the off chance there’s a DLC enemy or boss who can inflict Beasthood, it might pay to stock up on Sedatives so you can remove Beasthood buildup. The only weapons they cannot effectively – or efficiently – use are Chikage, Rifle Spear, Reiterpallasch, Beast Claws, Blade of Mercy, and Burial Blade. Or EPS on a flat-arc wheel. I’m curious as to why the article states that the Saw Spear is more versatile than the Cleaver? The serration bonus combined with a fire weakness makes for some hefty combos without relying on consumables. Ludwig’s Rifle while high damage without the Blt investment it’s kinda annoying to use due to the higher reload delay. In the hundreds of hours of farming that I’ve done in total (probably in excess of 600), for all of my builds, I have only ever found less than 4 perfect gems of each element from the Watchers, and never matching in a way that allows me to use them all on one weapon. To maximize your damage per bullet, remember that it costs 1 bullet minimum every time you spray and that you get 3 tics of damage per bullet. So, essentially, Arcane builds must go through hell and back to get gems, proving that they are truly the baddest of the badasses in BB. Making it easier to slaughter the ToH PvE challenges through weakness exploitation? Out of hard bullets? Sometimes, he will not react for a long time except to pivot, allowing you to rack up some serious damage. So where can you find these gems? Arcane gets single scaling by itself. Physical often gets dual scaling that stacks from Skill and Strength. The beasthood buildup from the transformed state of the Beast Claws does not affect elemental damage, neutering your potential damage output. That new Gem you just got is a great asset on the Tonitrus, which can make the upcoming battle against The One Reborn much easier. It’s as much as 100-350 AR difference. It’s all a matter of finding them and knowing when to use them. Its sole use is a little extra damage for phys builds. You can farm weak Waning Fire and Bolt gems from the Loran Silverbeasts in Nightmare Frontier and weak Triangular Arcane gems from the Small Celestial Emissaries in the lower part of the Forbidden Woods, however the lack of Gem shape variety severely limits the amount of gem-stacking you can do. Use it to your advantage and you can most certainly succeed with this underused build type! Now I’m stuck with using those unless I roll the game (which I really don’t want to). The only Elemental Gems you get are 8% Waning Fire (found in the alleyways below the Cathedral Ward), 10.5% Triangular Arcane (in the poison cave between Central Yharnam and the Forbidden Woods), 16.5% Waning Bolt (in post-Rom Yahargul), and 18% Droplet Arcane (in the Nightmare of Mensis after pulling the lever to drop the Brain of Mensis into the Abyss). The opinion on this matter differs from player to player. The transformed state of the Wheel multiplies your Physical AR by 0.7 and your Arcane AR by 4.0, resulting in about 350 Physical AR and 520 Arcane AR (a total of 870 AR). If you could buff elemental weapons, I believe it could make them more powerful than pure physical. Fire is your best bet against the Yahargul and Executioner sets, Bolt is excellent against the Cainhurst set, and Arcane is great against a plethora of commonly used sets, such as the Hunter’s set and the Bone Ash set. The Chikage, Reiterpallasch, and Rifle Spear do not accept an element, making them almost useless to Arcane builds.