Learn what the Ashes of War in Elden Ring are and how to use them, how to find the Whetstone knife and apply Skills to your armaments!
What are Skills in Elden Ring
Before you understand what Ashes of War are, you need to understand Skills. Skills are special combat abilities that can be activated by using LT/L2 or Shift + RMB (while not mounted).
Skills are bound to armaments, and each armament can have a Skill. Since you can hold up to two armaments at once, you can only use one Skill at a time and which Skill is used depends on how you hold things.
How to use Skills
If you are holding two items with Skills, pressing LT/L2 or Shift + RMB will typically use the Skill on the armament in your left hand, though there are a couple of exceptions.
If the item in your left hand does not have a Skill, pressing LT/L2 or Shift + RMB will trigger your right hand’s Skill instead.
It also seems to skip over Staves and possibly Seals if those are in your left hand, even if they have a seal.
If you’re two-handing an armament, you’ll trigger that armament’s skill, even if it is a staff or probably Seal as well. You cannot activate Skills while mounted.
If you are not familiar with the Elden Ring PC and Consoles Controls, check out this guide. It also shares suggestions for how to remap some of them and also shows you hidden control combinations.
Elden Ring’s Skills are most similar to Weapon Arts from Dark Souls 3, though their effects are not always directly linked to the weapon itself. Skills almost always cost FP, though there are some exceptions like Parry and Kick.
What are Ashes of War in Elden Ring
Not to be confused with the spirits from Ashes (the Pokemon you can summon), Ashes of War let you apply different Skills to your armaments, thereby changing the effect of LT/L2 or Shift + RMB.
Ashes of War can also almost always alter the stat scaling of a weapon in a single way. This works just like Gems from the Dark Souls series.
The stat scaling is optional, so you can still use an Ash of War just for the skill if you like the scaling it already has, though this does mean that you can’t just pick whichever scaling you want for each weapon anymore if you want a specific Skill.
To summarize: each Ash of War contains a Skill and can alter the stat scaling of the weapon in a specific way.
Where to find Whetstone Knife
The Whetstone Knife is an item you will need to obtain to be able to change the Ash of War on your armaments in Elden Ring.
The item is located in a basement in the Gatefront Ruins near the beginning of the game. The closest Lost Graces are Agheel Lake North, Gatefront, and Groveside Cave.
The entrance is on the south side of the road. You can opt to sneak past the guards or fight them all. Be careful about the two guys with horns. They can use them to alert all others when they spot you.
There’s no door to open, nor any other limiting factors that can stop or slow you down from sneaking in.
Underground there are no enemies. At the bottom of the basement, you’ll find a chest containing the Whetstone Knife and your first Ash of War, Storm Stomp.
The Whetstone Knife is not a weapon. It’s designed to give you the ability to change your armament’s skills by swapping an Ash of War with another.
How to change Ash of War and Stats Scaling
You can swap the Ash of War to another weapon at a Lost Grace (AKA Bonfire). Changing Ashes of War requires that you have an item in your possession called the Whetstone Knife, which can be found near the beginning of the game.
Ashes of War usually only apply to a subset of armaments. For example, some can only be applied to weapons but not shields.
Each Ash of War will tell you what it can be applied to and when modifying a specific armament, you will only be shown Ashes of War that can be applied to that specific armament.
You cannot apply Ashes of War to armaments with Unique Skills, which usually drop from bosses.
A single Ash of War can only be applied to 1 armament at a time, though you can copy the Ash of War if you find Lost Ashes of War. If you remove an Ash of War from an armament, the Skill and scaling will revert back to what they were originally, allowing you to experiment with different Ashes of War to your heart’s content.
Where to find Ashes of War items
The Ash of War are items that you can get as a reward for defeating a boss, you can loot them from NPCs and chests or get them as rewards for completing something. For example, you get the “Storm Stomp” from the same chest where you find the Whetstone Knife.
You can find vendors selling Ashes of War for Runes. It’s important to note that vendors are not intended to be a primary source for Ashes of War. You will find the best ones as loot drops.
A great source of information is our Ultimate Beginners Guide to Elden Ring. I highly recommend you to check it out if you are new to this type of game.
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