Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s Perfume Bottles Are a Game-Changer

Summary

Outside introducing an entirely new map, additions to the in-game lore and story, and several new white-knuckle boss fights,Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtreemakes some major shake-ups to the title’s combat sandbox. FromSoftware was careful not to completely throw out the existing meta forElden RingwithShadow of the Erdtree, instead focusing on making meaningful additions rather than subtracting the effectiveness of certain items or builds. One of the more exciting additions that Shadow of the Erdtree introduces are the new Perfume Bottle items, which transform a consumable from the base game into a non-FP-consuming magic item with massive power potential.

Players will likely discover their first Perfume Bottle by accident while exploring the campsite just across the Great Bridge connecting the Gravesite Plain with Castle Ensis, but there are a total of 5 to collect. Each of thenew Perfume Bottle weaponscan be wielded as a player’s main weapon or as an offhand item, and in either case, they have incredible utility as magic items. Considering that using Perfume Bottles doesn’t consume a player’s magic resources and that many enemies and bosses have specific elemental weaknesses, few of the new pieces of equipment introduced in Shadow of the Erdtree can match their effectiveness.

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The Addition of Perfume Bottles to Elden Ring’s Combat Sandbox Has Far-reaching Implications

Given the traditional requirements for using magic, such as making sure to slot valuable skill points into stats like Intelligence or Faith to use incantations or Mind to have a reasonable enough resource pool, the introduction of permanent-use Perfume Bottles is quite literally game-changing. Players can find up to 5 Perfume Bottles in Shadow of the Erdtree, with each one adhering to a specific elemental weakness. Two of the most powerful and useful of these, the Lightning and Firespark Perfume Bottles, can even be further enhanced with the newRolling Sparks Ash of Warfor massive destructive potential when wielded as a main weapon.

But even beyond their use as a primary offensive option, Perfume Bottles now allow players utilizingShadow of the Erdtree’s melee buildsto have an incredibly useful elemental magic option in the offhand. Even better, there’s no real need to invest skill points into the magic-affecting stats when using Perfume Bottles as offhand weapons, as they still provide a decent quick damage option to target enemy weaknesses even without proper scaling. With the addition of Perfume Bottles, melee-focused players can now enjoy the benefits of exploiting enemies' and bosses' elemental weaknesses whereas before, it required consumables to enchant weapons.

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Shadow of the Erdtree Players Have Already Created a Broken Build Using Perfume Bottles

As one might expect, the introduction of a powerful new item into the existingElden Ringmeta has already given way to innovative players discovering ways to craft entire builds around it. The Perfume Bottles are already useful as potent non-magic magic items, but their effectiveness is only multiplied when paired with the Rolling Sparks Ash of War. Specifically, the Lightning Perfume Bottle, when paired with the Rolling Sparks Ash of War and the right stats, Talismans, andCrystal Tearsfrom the player’s Wondrous Physick, is proving to be a game-breaking build capable of one-shotting even the DLC bosses.

The trick to utilizing the Lightning Perfume Bottle build to its maximum potential rests in the fact that the Rolling Sparks Ash of War creates a series of explosions. Under normal circumstances, these explosions fan outward in an arc and can hit multiple enemies. However, observant players quickly noticed that it was possible to cluster the explosions by aiming at the ground, resulting in absurd amounts of damage output in a single attack. FromSoftware will likely nerf the build in an upcoming patch, but for now the Perfume Bottles represent one ofthe Shadow of the Erdtree DLC’s most potent new items.