Upgrade the Carian Sorcery Sword to +10 after patch 1.17 and it hits softer than before. Take it to +25 with 60 Intelligence, 15 Strength and 20 Dexterity, and its physical attack rating climbs from 156 to 195. Both numbers are real. Here’s which one matters for your build.
The patch notes never mention it, but the new Intelligence scaling is only as good as the sword’s upgrade level. At +10 it can’t make up for what the patch took away. At +25 it more than does.
Why It Looks Like a Nerf at +10
The Carian Sorcery Sword comes from the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, so you need the expansion to use it. Patch 1.17 changed it in two directions at once. Its base physical damage fell from 69 to 38. In return, Intelligence now boosts every damage type the sword deals, where before it only boosted magic.
If you try the sword in the middle of a playthrough, you see the downside first. At +10 with 15 Strength and 20 Dexterity, its physical attack rating used to be 127 no matter your Intelligence. After the patch it’s 96 at 30 Intelligence, 117 at 60 and 126 at 80. You lose damage below 82 Intelligence, where the two versions tie, and anyone testing it at that point would call the change a nerf.
The sword takes regular Smithing Stones, though, so +10 is nowhere near its ceiling. Each upgrade makes the Intelligence scaling stronger, and by +25 it outruns the lost base damage. We covered the raw patch values in Patch 1.17 by the Numbers, and this piece picks up where that one stops.
Swinging It at +25
At full upgrade, the patch turns into a buff for most Intelligence builds. Before 1.17 the sword’s physical attack rating didn’t care about Intelligence at all, so it sat at 156 whatever you invested. Now every point of Intelligence adds to it. The numbers below assume an Intelligence-leaning hybrid with 15 Strength and 20 Dexterity, just past the sword’s Dexterity requirement.
Below the break-even point you still lose damage. A character who meets the 16 Intelligence requirement and stops there swings for 39 less than before. Magic attack rating didn’t change at any Intelligence level, so all of the change sits on the physical side.
Carry more Dexterity and the break-even moves. Strength and Dexterity boost the sword’s base damage, and the old version had more base damage to boost, so it gains more from them. With 30 Dexterity you need 38 Intelligence to come out ahead. A build with 20 Strength and 60 Dexterity needs about 45.
At 60 Intelligence the patched sword still wins for every one of these builds, but the lead shrinks from 39 points to 22 at 60 Dexterity. The extra Dexterity pays off on the casting side instead, because it also lifts the sword’s scaling for physical sorceries, up to 299 at 60 Dexterity.
Casting With It
The sword is also a sorcery catalyst, and that side gained far more than the swings did. Before 1.17, only magic sorceries got anything out of your Intelligence. Everything else was stuck near the bottom of the scale.
The dashed line shows why. A regular staff has always scaled every element with Intelligence in the same way, so a Rock Sling cast from a basic Glintstone Staff never lost anything. The sword was the odd one out, and 1.17 fixed that. You’ll feel it with sorceries that deal physical damage, such as Rock Sling, and with the magma spells, which deal fire damage. Gravity Well and Collapsing Stars don’t count, though, because they deal magic damage. The sword’s lightning and holy scaling went up too, but no regular sorcery deals either type.
If you picked the sword for Carian Slicer and the other Carian sword spells, 1.17 didn’t touch them. They deal magic damage, and the sword’s magic scaling is exactly where it was. The same goes for Stonedigger sorceries like Rock Blaster and Shatter Earth. The patch only pays off for physical and fire sorceries.
Where It Ranks Among the Staffs
Next to the staffs, the casting side looks more modest. Lined up against every sorcery staff at full upgrade, the Carian Sorcery Sword lands squarely in the lower middle of the field.
The gap to the top grows with your Intelligence. At 80 Intelligence, Lusat’s Glintstone Staff scales more than 40 percent higher, and the Carian Regal Scepter is ahead by 82 points. At 60 Intelligence the sword edges out both DLC staffs, and at 80 it ties the Maternal Staff. It also outscales the Meteorite Staff and Gelmir Glintstone Staff, though staff passives aren’t part of this comparison.
Physical sorceries are a small bright spot. Strength and Dexterity also feed the sword’s physical scaling, so at 80 Intelligence its physical sorcery scaling reaches 301, ten points above its magic scaling. That moves it past Prince of Death’s Staff for physical sorceries.
Where to Get It
The sword sits in a chest in Castle Ensis. You reach that part of the castle from above. Start at the Highroad Cross Site of Grace in Scadu Altus, head west past the waterfall and drop off the cliff edge into the castle. The chest is right after the landing.
Who Should Pick It Up and How to Play It
The sword makes the most sense for a hybrid character who wants to swing and cast without switching weapons. You need 10 Strength, 19 Dexterity and 16 Intelligence to wield it properly. With modest Dexterity, the patched version out-hits the old one from roughly 35 Intelligence on, and every point above that widens the gap. Dexterity-heavy builds need closer to 45.
It also suits anyone who wants physical or fire sorceries without dedicating a slot to a staff. Its physical sorcery scaling now sits right next to its magic scaling, which was never true before 1.17.
A pure caster has no reason to switch. Lusat’s Glintstone Staff and the Carian Regal Scepter still hit noticeably harder with every sorcery, and so do several other staffs.
If you’re wondering about New Game Plus, the answer doesn’t change. Upgrade levels and scaling work the same on every cycle, so the sword is as good or as bad on NG+7 as on your first run through the Realm of Shadow. What matters is your Intelligence and how far you’ve upgraded it.
These are the spells that profit, with the Intelligence they ask for:
- Physical: Rock Sling (18), Meteorite (30) and Meteorite of Astel (55), with the two Meteorites partly magic. From the DLC, Cherishing Fingers (36) and Blades of Stone (48).
- Fire: Magma Shot (19), Roiling Magma (21), Gelmir’s Fury (28) and Rykard’s Rancor (40). Each also wants 10 to 18 Faith.
- Unchanged: Gravity Well, Collapsing Stars, Gravitational Missile and the glintstone and Carian sorceries deal magic damage. They cast exactly as strongly as before, which is about as strong as the physical ones now. The patch just didn’t add anything there.
A sensible target is 40 or more Intelligence, 15 Strength and 20 Dexterity, plus some Faith only if you want the magma spells. Take the sword to +25 before you judge it, because at +10 it still looks like the nerf it isn’t.
In your hand, it doesn’t play like a normal sword. It has no heavy attacks. The heavy attack button casts the sorcery in your active slot, and held in the off hand, the skill button casts instead. Pressing both attack buttons together still gives you a guard counter. The skill is fixed to Impaling Thrust, because the sword takes no Ashes of War, and greases or weapon-buff spells don’t work on it either. Impaling Thrust hits for 187% of the sword’s full attack rating, physical and magic alike, so the patch’s physical gain shows up there as well.
So if you tried the sword at +10 after the patch and shelved it, give it another look once you have the stones for +25. With 40 or more Intelligence it swings harder than it ever did, and Rock Sling and the magma spells finally hit almost as hard from it as from a basic Glintstone Staff.
How We Got the Numbers
All values come from the game’s own regulation data for patch 1.17, run through the open-source Elden Ring Weapon Calculator. The calculator’s entry for the sword matches what we read directly from the regulation files: base physical damage 38, the new scaling profile and the upgrade path to +25.
- Character stats: 15 Strength and 20 Dexterity. Faith and Arcane sit at 10, or at a staff’s requirement when it needs more.
- Every catalyst is compared at its maximum upgrade: +25 for regular Smithing Stones, +10 for Somber ones, +0 for the Meteorite Staff, which can’t be upgraded.
- The 1.16.1 values use the sword’s old base damage and old scaling profile. They reproduce the +10 numbers from our patch analysis exactly.
- Values are cut off to whole numbers, so the game may show a figure one point higher.
- Passive effects of staffs aren’t included. Some staffs boost a specific school of sorcery, and the ranking above ignores that.
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