Spells

Spells in Dark Souls III are items that unleash various magical effects when cast. They can be bought, sold, and found throughout the world, much like other, regular items. Spells can be:

Attuning Spells

All spells need to be attuned (i.e. equipped) at a Bonfire, before they can be used in combat. Attuning a spell requires free Attunement Slots, which can be unlocked by raising the Attunement attribute when leveling up.

Casting Spells

Casting a spell requires an appropriate Spell Tool, as well as sufficient Focus Points, Intelligence and Faith.

Casting spells does not consume Stamina, but they pause stamina recovery during the cast animation.

Casting and Movement

Certain spells can be cast whilst moving. These are:

[*] Unique animation while walking including sprinting and rolling attacks.

Casting Speed

Casting Speed in Cinders starts from 1 Dexterity and caps at 99. Some equipment may help boost this, these are:

Spell buff

Spell Buff is a multiplier applied to your spell's base value.

Consider the miracle Divine Pillars of Light. It has a base value of 200. Let's say you are using a Talisman with a Spell Buff of 150.

To apply your Spell Buff, divide the value by 100 and then multiply the base value of Divine Pillars of Light with your result.

$FinalValue = (SpellBuff / 100) \cdot Base Value$

For our example, this would be (150 / 100) * 200, resulting in 300 damage.

Common Spells

Common spells like Darkmoon Blade affected only by the main stat from the spell school.

These are the general rules of spell scaling for common spells affected by spell buff:

  • Common Sorceries scale with Intelligence.
  • Common Miracles scale with Faith.
  • Common Pyromancies scale with both Intelligence and Faith.
  • Common Dark Spells scale with both Intelligence and Faith.
  • None of the common spells from any class scale with Luck.

The rest of spells use the full spell buff of the spell tool, no matter if they scale with Intelligence, Faith or Luck.

Damage Affinity

Each spell tool has affinity to one damage type (Physical, Magic, Fire, Lightning or Dark). This affinity grants a 10% damage boost to its damage type, while spells that use other damage types will do their normal damage.

Having spell tools in each hand with different affinities will null any damage boost they would normally grant for their damage types (i.e. having a Court Sorcerer's Staff in one hand and a Manus Catalyst in the other will cancel both the magic and dark damage affinity boosts they have).

If both spell tools have the same affinity, then they will apply the damage boost once to both of them (i.e. having a Sorcerer's Staff in one hand and a Court Sorcerer's Staff in the other will apply a 10% magic damage boost when casting spells with either of them).

Ascended Spells

Spells can be upgraded through Spell Ascension by their respective spell masters. This grants them additional effects or attributes over the base version.

Spell Hold

Most spells can be put on hold while pressing the cast button similar to how it happens when casting Great Heal.

The player can also run while holding a spell, and it's compatible with the Censuring Palm and Dashmaster's String.

Information here is accurate for version 2.15.

page revision: 125, last edited: 14 Feb 2022 16:33
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