Elden Ring How to Use & Equip Skills

In Elden Ring you can equip Skills and Affinities to your weapons and use them like special combat moves. They are also called Ashes of War. This quick guide explains everything there is to know about Skills in Elden Ring.

How to Unlock Skills in Elden Ring?

Skills are unlocked through items called Ashes of War. You find these just about everywhere: bought from merchants, as rewards from bosses, or in the form of glowing item pickups.

See Elden Ring All Ashes of War Locations.

You can view the ones you found under Equipment > Ashes of War. Here’s an example of what they look like in the inventory:

How to Equip Skills

First you will need the key item Whestone Knife. This unlocks the ability to equip skills and affinities. It is found very early in the game, in Limgrave – Gatefront Ruins. This is near the site of grace Gatefront. You need to find the stairs in the ruins leading underground, there you find a chest with the Whetstone Knife. See the images below:

This also unlocks the first Ash of War: Storm Stomp.

Now go to any site of grace and select “Ashes of War” from the menu. There you can assign the Ashes you found to a weapon.

Every Ash of War is a specific skill that can be equipped to specific weapon types. See the Ash of War descriptions in the menu for what weapon types they can be equipped to. Some can only be equipped to short melee weapons such as swords, while others can only be equipped to staffs and so on. Also note that some weapons come with a pre-equipped skill.

General Note: Always explore all Ruins you come across, they usually have some stairs leading down and a chest that contains a useful item!

How to Use Skills

Once you have a weapon equipped with a skill, press L2 (PlayStation) / LT (Xbox) to use it. The skill will also show on the left side when you press a directional button on the D-Pad.