The Dark Moon Greatsword is Elden Ring‘s version of a longstanding FromSoftware weapon: the Moonlight Greatsword. Indeed, the weapon’s Ash of War is called Moonlight Greatsword.
If you’re familiar with previous iterations of the weapon across Souls games, it’s much the same, though it shares most of its traits with the Dark Souls 3 variation. Thankfully, the Dark Moon Greatsword is better than Dark Souls 3‘s, and it has some additional abilities that make it one of the more robust versions of the weapon.
Getting your hands on the Dark Moon Greatsword in Elden Ring is quite the task, as we’ll outline the steps to take in this guide.
How to Find the Dark Moon Greatsword in Elden Ring
To get the Dark Moon Greatsword, you need to complete Ranni’s questline. Then, once you’ve put the ring on her finger and sword yourself as her consort, she’ll appear to speak to you before vanishing again.
The screen will fade to black, and when the light comes up, there will be a shiny item where she was sitting.
This is the Dark Moon Greatsword. Simple, right? Not really, considering what it takes to get there, but that’s how you get this storied weapon.
Dark Moon Greatsword Passives & Abilities
Every swing of the Dark Moon Greatsword does a moderate amount of Frostbite buildup. When that bar fills, the enemy will explode in a burst of ice, dealing significant damage. More importantly for PvP, those afflicted with Frostbite see a substantial reduction in their stamina regeneration. PvE enemies and bosses have effectively infinite stamina, so this secondary effect of the Dark Moon Greatsword doesn’t do much to them.
Your standard R1/RB attack uses the traditional greatsword moveset. R2/RT is the charge attack, also as usual. It isn’t until you press L2/LT that the Dark Moon Greatsword comes alive, and you use its Ash of War, Moonlight Greatsword.
You bathe the blade in additional frost, increasing the Magic damage the weapon deals and enabling the legendary sword beam with charged R2/RT attacks. The beam’s range is longer than the weapon in both Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 but doesn’t have nearly as much utility as Dark Souls 1‘s version.
With the proper stat allocation, the beam can deal upwards of 800-1,000 damage, uses no additional Focus Points, and does a large amount of stance damage, allowing for more frequent ripostes.
Dark Moon Greatsword Stats
Here are the Dark Moon Greatsword’s base stats.
- Damage type: Standard/Pierce
- Ability: Taker’s Flame (FP cost — 23)
- Weight: 13.5
- Attack Power
- Physical: 82
- Magic: 98
- Fire: 0
- Lightning: 0
- Holy: 0
- Critical: 100
- Guarded Damage Negation
- Physical: 42
- Magic: 63
- Fire: 31
- Lightning: 31
- Holy: 31
- Guard Boost: 36
- Attribute Scaling
- STR: D
- DEX: D
- INT: C
- Attributes Required
- STR: 16
- DEX: 11
- INT: 38
- Passive Effects
- Causes frost buildup (55).
And that’s how you get the Dark Moon Greatsword in Elden Ring. Getting to its location is almost all of the battle, and it’s a later-game weapon. But it’s worth picking up, especially for PvP. If you don’t know how to invade other players, here’s our primer on that mechanic. You’ll likely want to upgrade it, and you’ll need Somberstone to do so. For more weapon locations, boss tips, and other walkthroughs, head over to our expansive and growing guides hub.
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