Strength (Dark Souls)

For other uses, see Strength (disambiguation).

Strength is a stat in Dark Souls.

Description[]

Strength is an attribute used to meet requirements and increase damage to weapons that scale with Strength. Major softcaps are 27 when two-handing, and 40 overall. Some weapons like Great Club and Murakumo would benefit from having 28 strength instead of 27 since that is their one handed requirement.

Your Strength level is given a 1.5x multiplier when two-handing your right hand weapon for the purposes of weapon scaling and requirements. Anything higher than 27 is usually unnecessary outside of reaching the requirement to one hand your weapon. This is because at 27 strength, two handing will reach the optimal scaling soft cap of 40 (27 * 1.5 = 40.5, rounded down to 40). This is why 40/40 quality builds are generally not attainable or advisable in the first NG cycle, as the 13 points invested into strength is wasteful when you can just two hand.

Notes[]

Bows do not benefit from two-handing for the purposes of requirements or scaling.
Apart from extra damage due to bonus strength scaling, two-handing a weapon also changes its moveset to use two-handed moves, which tend to have higher damage modifiers at the cost of increased stamina cost and lowered attack speed, although some large weapons actually benefit from increased attack speed. This damage modifier is called Motion Value and increases damage for two handed attacks on all weapons regardless of scaling. Only Strength scaling weapons gaining increased damage via the boost to scaling and Motion Value simultaneously.
The weapon with the highest strength requirement, Smough's Hammer, requires 58 strength to be wielded in one hand.
The highest Strength scaling weapon in the game is Demon's Greataxe when on the Standard path and Crystal infused at 125% Strength scaling.

Weapon Scaling[]

The following are weapons that scale with strength, and their level of scaling, when not upgraded. Weapon scaling may change when upgraded. Diminishing returns for Strength scaling begin at 40 effective Strength.

A[]

B[]

C[]

D[]

E[]

Footnotes[]

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 Obtained in the Artorias of the Abyss DLC.

[DLC-1] 1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 Obtained in the Artorias of the Abyss DLC.

[Note 1]