Bloodborne Weapon Scaling Guide: Blood Gems and Upgrade Decisions

Weapons in Bloodborne don't grow on their own. Three systems decide how hard you hit - attribute scaling, blood gems, and blood stone levels - and the game barely explains any of them. That's fine early on, when any upgraded saw carries you through Yharnam. It stops being fine later, when enemies get fat health bars and your materials get scarce. So here's what the letters actually mean, which gems deserve your farming time, and where your chunks and your lone blood rock should go.

Reading Attribute Scaling

What the letters are telling you

Every trick weapon shows four stat letters: Strength, Skill, Bloodtinge, Arcane. The letter is a bucket, not a number. Behind it, each weapon carries a hidden scaling value, and the letter just says which range that value lands in.

| Letter | Scaling value | | --- | --- | | S | 1.10 or above | | A | just below 1.10 | | B | up to 0.85 | | C | up to 0.65 | | D | up to 0.55 | | E | up to 0.30 |

The math underneath

Bonus damage works out to base damage times the weapon's scaling value times a percentage pulled from your stat level. Two things fall out of that. First, a high base damage weapon with a B can out-hit a flimsy weapon with an A, so don't chase letters alone. Second, the stat side has its own curve, and it's steep in the middle:

• about half a percent of scaling per level up to 10
• about 3% per level from 11 to 25
• about 1.4% per level from 26 to 50
• a 0.3% sliver per level past 50

Add that up and you reach roughly half of a weapon's total scaling potential by stat level 25, and about 85% by 50. That's why everyone calls 25 and 50 the soft caps. The usual rhythm: push a damage stat to 25, top up Vitality and Endurance, then come back for the 26 to 50 stretch. Past 50, levels cost a ton and buy almost nothing - stop there unless you're married to the build.

Upgrades move the letters too

Fortifying a weapon raises its base damage and its scaling values at the same time. A Saw Cleaver starts D/E in Strength and Skill and finishes C/D at +10. Ludwig's Holy Blade climbs from D/D all the way to B/B, and its hidden Arcane grade ends at A. The Whirligig Saw goes from B to S in Strength by +10. An underrated weapon with great letters can overtake your favorite once it's fed, so don't judge anything by its +0 screen.

The hidden Arcane letter

Nearly every pure physical weapon carries an Arcane letter that does nothing. The saws sit at D Arcane for the whole game, useless. That letter only wakes up when you slot an elemental gem, and when it does, Strength and Skill stop mattering on that weapon entirely. That's the entire arcane build in one sentence - full section on it below.

Bloodtinge gets its own corner of the stat screen. It drives firearms plus a short list of weapons like the Chikage (S Bloodtinge at +10) and the Bloodletter. It's a narrow, mean stat, and it's fine to ignore unless you already know you want it.

Choosing Blood Gems

Slots, shapes, and the tool you need

Gems need three things: the Blood Gem Workshop Tool (a side pickup in Central Yharnam, just before you reach Oedon Chapel), a weapon with open imprints, and a gem that fits the shape. Slots unlock as you fortify - the first at +1, the second at +3, the third at +6. That +6 mark matters more than people think, and it comes up again later.

Shapes: radial, triangle and waning on trick weapons, circle on firearms, droplet fits anywhere. Radials mostly roll physical effects and come out of Pthumeru chalices. Triangles lean attribute effects and drop in Isz. Wanings lean fire and bolt and come from Loran. Circles are for guns, and the bloodtinge gems that feed a Chikage build basically only exist in circle shape, off about four enemies in the whole game. Droplets are the rare flexible ones, and Winter Lanterns are their main source.

If a great gem doesn't fit your slots, there's a fix: Lost and Uncanny versions of every weapon hide in the chalice dungeons. Same stats, different slot layout.

The effects worth knowing

• Tempering - physical ATK up. The default good gem. Best farmable value is 27.2%.
• Adept - blunt ATK up or thrust ATK up, topping out around 32.6%. Great on a matching moveset (Kirkhammer two-handed is all blunt), wasted on the wrong one.
• Nourishing - boosts every damage type at once, for split weapons like the Holy Moonlight Sword or Logarius' Wheel.
• Fire, Bolt, Arcane - elemental percent. These convert physical weapons. More on that in the next section.
• Beasthunter and Kinhunter - damage percent against that enemy family, up to 32.6% on triangles.
• Heavy, Sharp, Cold, Warm - these raise a stat's scaling value instead of adding damage. The Heavy (Strength) and Cold (Arcane) abyssal versions add a fat +65 scaling and are endgame staples. Sharp and Warm are mostly filler.
• Odd gems - flat damage that never scales. Multi-hit weapons and low level builds love these.

Effects stack with themselves, and that's the point - three tempering gems on one weapon is the standard physical setup, not one of each flavor. Gems only buff the weapon they're sitting in, so a tempering gem on your saw does nothing for your pistol.

Cursed gems, quickly

Gems from cursed dungeons and Winter Lanterns roll a random curse from six options. Increased stamina costs is barely noticeable - the good one. Durability down is annoying but livable. Attack versus kin down costs almost nothing in PvE. Attack versus beasts down hurts, since beasts are half the game. HP drain is tolerable with decent vitality. ATK down makes the gem worse than a clean equivalent - toss it. The trade is real, though: cursed gems roll noticeably higher attack values than clean ones from the same dungeon.

Story-route gems: the Winter Lantern farm

Chalice gems are endgame gear. If you're still working through the story, Winter Lanterns drop the best gems you can get without a ritual:

| Location | Best cursed tempering | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | Nightmare Frontier | up to 11.6% | lowest tier, good practice | | Nightmare of Mensis | up to 19.8% | lanterns near Micolash's arena in Mergo's Loft | | Fishing Hamlet | up to 22.3% | best story gems in the game |

Roughly a third of kills drop a gem, about 87% of those drops are droplets, and tempering is the most common effect they roll. Bring a stack of Sedatives - the gaze builds frenzy even when you're just running past - and kill them fast.

Endgame gems: depth 5 chalices

The ceiling lives in depth 5 root chalices with the fetid and cursed rites added (FRC in community shorthand, usually with rotted too). Rating 19 and 20 gems only drop there. A few proven farming glyphs from the wiki's best-setups page:

• pwmf22gu - FRC Pthumeru Ihyll, layer 1 Merciless Watchers: 27.2% tempering radials, plus adept drops
• 5pwujscd - FRC Isz Gravestone, layer 1 Watchers: 27.2% tempering triangles, also the 27.2% fire, bolt and arcane triangles
• ksgqnycq - FRC Pthumeru Ihyll, layer 3 Headless Bloodletting Beast: the Heavy Abyssal (+65 Strength scaling)
• kkvk8gsj - FRC Pthumeru Ihyll, layer 3 Pthumerian Elder: Cold Abyssal (+65 Arcane scaling)
• 758v8txa - FRC Lower Loran, layer 3 Watchdog of the Old Lords: 24.8% fire waning with +15 fire
• 6q77zr9h - FRC Lower Loran, layer 3 Abhorrent Beast: 22.5% bolt waning with +33.8 bolt

Amygdala drops the best nourishing gems for split weapons, around 21.5% all-ATK with a flat secondary. Glyph codes are community-shared and can go stale, so if one fails, the wiki keeps a live list. Out-of-shape drops (a tempering triangle out of Pthumeru, say) happen about 2% of the time - nice when they land, not worth planning around.

One farming myth to kill: Eye runes and Discovery raise whether a mob drops a gem at all. They don't change a gem's rating, effects or curse. Wear them for materials, not quality.

Upgrading Weapons With Blood Stone

The whole bill, up front

| Levels | Material | Per level | Total | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | +1 to +3 | Blood Stone Shard | 3, then 5, then 8 | 16 | | +4 to +6 | Twin Blood Stone Shards | 3, 5, 8 | 16 | | +7 to +9 | Blood Stone Chunk | 3, 5, 8 | 16 | | +10 | Blood Rock | 1 | 1 |

You also pay echoes at every step, and the price climbs as you go. Sixteen of everything and one rock - that's a maxed weapon.

Where the materials live

Shards show up as treasure in Central Yharnam, Cathedral Ward and Old Yharnam, and early mobs drop them steadily. Twin shards start appearing in Hemwick Charnel Lane and pile up in the Forbidden Woods, where the large huntsmen and church giants drop them reliably. Once you grab the Cosmic Eye Watcher Badge, twins go on sale for 10,000 echoes each, and after the Blood Moon rises they cost just 2 insight in the insight shop.

Chunks are the choke point, because three weapons at +9 want 48 of them. They sit as treasure in the Forbidden Woods, Cainhurst, Blood-Moon Yahar'gul, Lecture Building 2F and the Nightmare of Mensis, and they show up in the insight shop late in the game. If you own the DLC, there's a famous trick with the Wandering Nightmares around Research Halls and Nightmare Church: kill them repeatedly without looting, then loot the whole pile at once. Hunters report something like 140 chunks in 75 minutes that way. It works once per playthrough, and dying mid-process resets your progress.

Blood rocks

Two come from the story. One waits in Mergo's Loft: Middle, down the tower shaft where the Brain of Mensis hung - send the brain down first, then drop in after it. The other sits in the cave by the Lighthouse Hut in the Fishing Hamlet. After Mergo's Wet Nurse dies, the insight shop sells rocks for 60 insight apiece. Down in the chalices, depth 5 root dungeons hide rocks in chests (a limited number per dungeon) and hand them out as rare end-boss drops, which is unlimited if you're patient.

What to actually do

Push your main weapon to +6 before any serious gem farming - a third slot is worth more than a stack of half-good gems crammed into two. Take it to +9 when chunks allow, and hold the rock until you're sure which weapon deserves it. Small bonus: fortifying a weapon also repairs it for free.

Comparing Physical and Arcane Paths

How conversion works

Slot one fire, bolt or arcane gem into a pure physical weapon and the whole thing converts. Every point of damage becomes that element, and it now scales with Arcane alone - your Strength and Skill stop counting on that weapon, whatever the letters said. That hidden Arcane grade (D on the saws, C at +10) suddenly does all the work.

Not everything converts. Weapons that already carry a second damage type are locked in: Tonitrus, Chikage, Bloodletter, Holy Moonlight Sword, Boom Hammer, Logarius' Wheel, Kos Parasite, Burial Blade, Blade of Mercy, Simon's Bowblade, Amygdalan Arm, Rifle Spear. Split weapons like those want nourishing gems instead, built around their native scaling.

One more wrinkle. Buffable weapons - the pure physical ones like the saws, Ludwig's, the Kirkhammer, the axe, the cane - can use Fire Paper, Bolt Paper and Empty Phantasm Shell. A converted weapon can't be buffed at all. And a weird gotcha: put an elemental gem in your firearm and you can't buff your right-hand weapon either, even if it's clean physical.

The matchup argument

Physical damage is steady. One number, applied everywhere, nothing to track, and paper buffs cover a weakness when you need one.

Elemental damage swings with the matchup. Beasts are the first two thirds of the game, and nearly all of them burn - Cleric Beast, Vicar Amelia, Blood-starved Beast, most of Old Yharnam. A fire saw makes those fights feel broken. Kin show up late (Rom, the Celestial Emissary, Ebrietas, brainsuckers) and they fold to bolt, plus thrust. Bolt has dead zones, though: darkbeasts and a lot of Loran enemies shrug it off. Arcane rounds out the set, and plenty of chalice locals take it hard.

Then there's serration. The Saw Cleaver (short mode), Saw Spear (both modes), Whirligig Saw (buzzsaw mode), Beast Cutter and Church Pick (both modes) and Threaded Cane (whip mode) all deal 20% bonus damage to true beasts. That stacks with fire weakness, so a fire-converted saw into a beast boss is one of the biggest damage multipliers the game allows short of gems.

Gem targets per path

• Physical: two 27.2% tempering radials plus a 27.2% triangle. Strength builds often swap one radial for the Heavy Abyssal (+65 Strength scaling) and come out ahead.
• Fire: Cold Abyssal radial, 27.2% fire triangle from Isz, 24.8% fire waning from the Watchdog.
• Bolt: same skeleton, with the 22.5% bolt waning from the Abhorrent Beast.
• Arcane: two Cold Abyssal radials plus a 27.2% arcane triangle.
• Split weapons: nourishing drops from Amygdala.

Why arcane players put up with the hassle

Hunter tools. Blacksky Eye (16 Arcane), Augur of Ebrietas (18), Executioner's Gloves (20), Tiny Tonitrus (25), Accursed Brew (30) and A Call Beyond (40) all scale hard with Arcane - every one of them grades out at S - and they eat quicksilver bullets instead of inventory items. Community testing says tools keep gaining damage well past the level 50 wall that stops weapons. Arcane also raises your Discovery as it grows, which quietly helps every farming run you'll ever do.

The honest comparison: physical is simpler and always on. Arcane starts weaker and stays that way until you find conversion gems and level the stat, then it's stronger more often - every boss hates some element, and you get ranged spells on top. First playthrough, physical or quality is the smoother ride. Arcane shines on repeat runs, when you already know where the fire gems live.

Avoiding Expensive Build Mistakes

Material mistakes

• Sixteen chunks per weapon. Upgrading three weapons to +9 costs 48 chunks, and chunks are the rarest common material in the game. Pick a main and maybe one backup, and let the rest wait.
• Don't rock the maybe-weapon. Rocks are scarce - two fixed pickups per run plus 60 insight apiece after Mergo's Wet Nurse. Spending one on a weapon you might replace hurts twice.
• The starter saw slot trap. The basic Saw Cleaver and Saw Spear carry a waning third slot, which is weak for physical gems. Their Uncanny versions have two radials and a triangle. If you love your saw, the fix exists in the chalices - but don't park your upgrades waiting for it. Slot shapes are an endgame refinement.
• Buy twins instead of panicking. 10,000 echoes each after the Cosmic Eye Watcher Badge is a fair price, and a couple of Forbidden Woods runs pay for it fast.

Gem mistakes

• Don't convert a Strength or Skill weapon on a physical build. The conversion is total - those stats stop counting, so a modest fire gem on a Strength build is a downgrade, not a sidegrade.
• Check the curse before you celebrate. A 27.2% tempering gem with ATK down is worse than a clean 22%.
• Match adept gems to the moveset. A blunt gem on a thrust weapon is three slots of nothing.
• Gems are free to move. Unlike materials, they never get consumed. Pull them, test on real enemies, rearrange. The expensive part was farming them, not using them.
• Don't grind depth 5 gems on a +4 weapon. Two open slots means half your setup doesn't exist yet. Get to +6 first.
• Bloodtinge gems are circle-only, so they belong in guns - or in a Lost Chikage, which keeps a circle slot on the trick weapon side.

Farming smart

• Eye runes for material drops, Moon runes for echoes, and neither one improves gem quality.
• Sedatives before any Winter Lantern run. Frenzy doesn't care how much HP you have.
• The insight shop is a real shop. Two-insight twins after the Blood Moon and 60-insight rocks after Mergo's Wet Nurse mean insight is a currency worth budgeting, not just a number on your stat screen.

Last thing, and it saves more echoes than anything else here: an early upgrade level beats an early stat level, pretty much every time. Base damage applies to every hit, and the first few fortify steps are cheap. Get to the workbench before you start dumping echoes into levels, and keep the full bill in your head - sixteen shards, sixteen twins, sixteen chunks, one rock, three gems. That's a finished weapon.