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Life is hard enough in the lands between. You might be caught in a demi-human ambush, surrounded by poison flowers, or worse, swarmed by basilisks that have returned from the depths of Lordran to ruin your day one more time. The threat of death is stressful enough without seeing the dreaded status effect bar pop up to tell you that not only are your enemies this close to costing you your runes, but they're just a flimsy progress bar away from making this fight that much harder for you, or ensuring that even if you survive, all the armor in the world won't guarantee that it will be for long.
Seven distinct status effects exist in the world of Elden Ring, and they're all their own brand of headache - but which will be the one to finally make you reach for the painkillers?
7 Blood Loss
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As status effects go, Blood Loss is at least one of the easier ones to deal with, provided you can afford to take a hit to your health once the bleed bar builds up. Unlike other status effects that make a lump-sum withdrawal from your HP, there are at least no other conditions attached, so what you see is what you get.
The curing bolus required to stop blood loss building can be purchased and crafted before too long into the average playthrough as well, so as far as effects go, there are much worse, and inflicting Blood Loss on enemies yourself is a very basic and extremely rewarding way to progress throughout the early-mid game. Why not give the enemies the headaches for once instead?
6 Frostbite
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Though there are certainly worse status effects, Frostbite will certainly make you wish you have a fair amount of paracetamol handy. If causing a chunk of your health to be lost wasn't bad enough, a reduced damage absorption and damaged stamina recovery also come with being Frostbitten, serving to differentiate your wintry woes from the effects of Blood Loss, and being cause to pray that you have a good shield on hand.
Sure it isn't necessarily debilitating on paper, but the catch is that you'll come up against it fairly often, and a branch of sorcery explicitly deals with applying frost damage, so don't be surprised if you find yourself catching a cold from an invading player.
5 Poison
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Poison is a status effect that can be deceptively easy to dismiss. Becoming poisoned causes your health to slowly drain over an extended period of time, which sounds like an awful status for adventuring Tarnished to have to deal with. However, the health drain really is slow, so players can find themselves carrying on in the hopes of discovering a new site of grace while they still have the healing supplies to balance out their losses.
This works well while your flasks can be replenished by groups in the overworld, but you might find a dungeon to be a slightly sturdier obstacle, and this problem is exacerbated with regard to less experienced players, who may find that their Crimson Tear flasks could have had far more valuable applications elsewhere. Being afflicted with Poison can go either way really, and can even be cured via incantation for those inclined towards Intelligence/Faith. Still, whether a hassle or merely a hindrance, at the very least it isn't Scarlet Rot.
4 Sleep
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Sleep is a difficult status effect to gauge how doomed you are when afflicted. While enemy mobs who put you under may not always be able to take advantage of the vulnerability that your nap causes you, NPC foes or invading players are given the opportunity to really ruin your day with a free critical hit - be warned they aren't sprinting at you in order to tuck you in.
The effects of this somnambulant status are shaken off fairly quickly once applied at the very least, so unless you're dealing with a particularly dangerous opponent, there's still room to recover from this one. Its potential to be utterly lethal, however, is what puts it above most of the other combat-induced status effects.
3 Madness
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The madness status effect isn't encountered in the environment until later areas of the game, but it's one you're not missing out on - especially if you're a caster. Madness causes your character to seize up, take a painful chunk of health damage, and lose FP in the process. The status can only be cured while building up, before affliction, so being quick on the draw with your Clarifying Boluses is a must.
Perhaps the most deadly aspect of Madness is the animation your character performs, as it can leave you open to further reprisals, and gives you a pain in your temples like you wouldn't believe. If your build relies on FP too? Oh no.
2 Scarlet Rot
Ahh, the rot. Even if you somehow managed to miss (or avoid) the entire Caelid region, you're still going to come across this wilting super-poison in your travels through the lands between - and if you do find yourself in Caelid, it's virtually impossible to avoid.
This festering plot poison causes your health to drop at a much faster rate than poison would do, and while Scarlet Rot has the good grace to last a far shorter time than its green counterpart, it can still kill you several times over before the status effect times out. If you catch the rot while exploring without any boluses, it might honestly be worth returning to the last site of grace. If you catch it while fighting for your life in a boss arena, pray.
1 Deathblight
It was inevitable that the curse status effect would return from the Dark Souls games in some shape or form. Deathblight will transform a heated fight into a scramble to escape with your life before the bar fills up.
Pray you can get away in time, or your character will begin their new life as a very nice tree ornament from which there's no return. The bar fills fairly quickly, drains slowly, and requires a rare variety of bolus to cure, so if your enemy starts inflicting this macabre malady and you're not quite ready to run screaming just yet, it might be worth giving your bow a chance.