Infusing your weapons is a big deal in Dark Souls.
It improves damage, increases scaling, and overall enables your builds to kill the big bad guys you come up against.
While every infusion is useful to some capacity, there are easily weaker options for any given scenario, and it may not always be obvious which to go for.
So we’ll be looking at every infusion in the game, grouping them together where possible, and providing a comprehensive ranking for the best ones to look out for!
10. Poison
Poison is, generally speaking, the worst choice.
It reduces base damage and scaling, and in return grants your weapons poison build-up – which, when procced, will damage enemies by a base value of 3 damage per second.
I doubt I need to explain why this is often useless – why reduce base damage and scaling for damage over time, when the damage you’re giving up will be far higher and more instant than slow poison damage?
It sees fringe uses in PvP as poison damage is much stronger there. But it’s still our least recommended choice, and takes our bottom slot easily.
9. Raw Infusions
(Fire, Deep and Raw)
Raw infusions have three forms, each dealing a different type of damage.
Generally speaking, raw is considered best, as it can still be buffed by resins or spells.
Regardless of choice, the downside for each of these is the same – complete removal of all scaling on the infused weapon, meaning the damage will not be affected by your stats at all.
But believe it or not, this is really useful early-game!
Before your stats get decently levelled chances are they’ll have very little impact on your damage, so infusing your starting weapon with a raw infusion is actually very recommended!
Beyond early-game, however, you should be switching to a weapon with scaling.
8. Blood
On the other side of the status effect coin, we’ve got blood infusions.
Similar to poison, blood will reduce base damage and scaling – but add the (much more useful) bleed auxiliary – which, once procced, will deal 15% max health damage to your target!
Sadly, blood weapons cannot be buffed, and it’s often better damage to simply use Carthus rouge on a physical-infused weapon.
7. Simple
Simple infusions scale with intelligence – though not as well as crystal.
In return for the reduced scaling, however, simple infusions have a unique passive of slowly regenerating your FP!
This is great when put on an off-hand choice, as the lesser damage is meaningless and the FP regeneration still applies, leading to an extra skill use or spell cast per encounter!
That being said, FP is typically not an issue – unless your build has low attunement, so it’s less useful than other choices most of the time.
6. Dual-Scaling Magic Infusions
(Dark and Chaos)
Dark and chaos infusions are functionally identical, but one adds dark damage and the other fire, allowing the player to choose based on preference or situation.
The damage these grant is absolutely fantastic when paired with a hybrid build! However there is a downside.
Dark and chaos weapons cannot be buffed, and hybrids will have access to basically every weapon buff in the game!
This does damage their usefulness, as, similar to blood infusions, it’s often better to use a physical infusion and cast a buff spell instead.
They can be swapped to in a pinch if your weapon buff expires mid-combat and you don’t have time to re-cast, but you should usually be aiming to end encounters before that happens.
5. Hollow
If you’ve read any of my other lists, you can likely gleam that I love luck builds.
Hollow infusion do just that – add luck scaling! And also grant a passive luck bonus if equipped when hollow.
What’s more, they can still be buffed! Leading to some really fun hybrid builds that may not be the most viable to play but are still an absolute blast!
4. Single-Scaling Magic Infusions
(Lightning and Crystal)
Single-scaling infusions include lightning and crystal, which increase faith and intelligence scaling, respectively.
The numbers these can dish out is truly fearsome, with many weapons hitting S-scaling on their respective stat!
However, similar to the dual-scalers, they can’t be buffed, and magic builds will inherently have access to some great buffs…
Again, it’s recommended to stick to a physical infusion, and only switch out to these if needed in the thick of it.
3. Refined
Refined is the dual-scaling physical infusion, increasing scaling in both dex and strength!
For 40/40 ‘quality’ builds, this is going to be your go-to, as it will make basically any weapon viable.
It gets trumped out by the other physical infusions however, as 40/40 builds often don’t lend themselves to the use of good weapon buffs, so their damage can be lower in comparison.
Still, it’s a great choice for players who want their build to be very versatile, and will make any weapon capable of destruction!
2. Blessed
The faith counterpart to simple infusions, blessed infusions also have a regeneration passive- however this time it’s HP!
This is so much more useful in most scenarios, and the HP regen also gets faster the higher the weapon level is, giving 3 HP every 1.5 seconds at +10!
This also stacks with all other forms of HP regen!
Blessed is typically what you want to infuse on your off-hand slots, regardless of the faith scaling they have. The passive healing can be a total lifesaver and really encourages enemies to play recklessly in PvP!
1. Single-Scaling Physical Infusions
(Heavy and Sharp)
The cream-of-the-crop choice, heavy and sharp infusions will increase strength and dex scaling, respectively.
These should be your go-to on almost every character.
When paired with a good weapon buff on a hybrid build, these physical infusions will give you the most damage bang for your buck.
They also enable single-stat builds, such as pure strength or dex, which are total monsters for first playthroughs and early-to-mid-game PvP!
They’re simple, effective, buffable, and versatile.
A game animator by trade, Tom’s insight into the game development world gives him a strong appreciation for the art form that is video games. Kicking off at the age of 3 with Spyro: Year of the Dragon on the PS1, Tom’s tastes in games has hardened over the 19 years he’s spent playing them. He now lives for the challenge that titles such as Monster Hunter, Dark Souls, Dead Cells, and many more offer him. Enjoying nothing more than a session of number-crunching game data and another platinum trophy on his PlayStation account, Tom is dedicated to leaving no stone unturned in even the most brutal of gaming content.
