In Elden Ring, Dragonwound Grease will increase the damage you do against dragons. However, it cannot be applied to all types of weapons. You can only use Dragonwound Grease on a basic weapon or one with a physical affinity.
The damage calculations in this article come from wielding a Heavy Brick Hammer +23 as the control weapon. The total attack power of this weapon is 678 when wielded with two hands.
Table Of Contents
How Much Dragonwound Grease Increases Your Damage Against Dragons
To test the damage both with and without Dragonwound Grease applied to the control weapon, the lesser dragon closest to the Dragonbarrow West Site of Grace in Caelid was used. Furthermore, it is the damage done to the legs of the dragon that are used as values to find out how effective Dragonwound Grease actually is.
Damage Test Data
Without Dragonwound Grease, the Heavy Brick Hammer +23 does 394 damage against the lesser dragon’s legs with normal two-handed attacks. However, with Dragonwound Grease, the damage done to legs using the same kind of attack now deals 512 damage. This is a damage increase of 23.05%.
Additionally, attacks from horseback were also performed to check if this damage increase is consistent. Mounted attacks without Dragonwound Grease did 356 damage to the lesser dragon’s legs. Interestingly, mounted attacks with Dragonwound Grease did 465 damage to the lesser dragon’s legs. This is a damage increase of 23.44%.
Conclusions on the Usability of Dragonwound Grease Against Dragons
Although it is minimal, there is still a difference between the mounted and unmounted damage increases. It seems that the Dragonwound Grease buff favors mounted attacks for some reason, albeit only slightly. It’s almost always better to fight dragons from horseback in this game, so the better buff while mounted is a positive trait.
In summary, since most dragons in Elden Ring possess moderate to high defensive stats against most damage types, Dragonwound Grease is objectively the best weapon coating to use against them.
Does Dragonwound Grease Work on Other Enemies?
Using the same testing method as on the lesser dragon in the Dragonbarrow, damage tests were done against the crystalian enemy closest to the Altar South Site of Grace in Liurnia of the Lakes.
Both with and without Dragonwound Grease, the damage against the crystalian was the same: 548 per hit. As before, only two-handed normal attacks were used to gauge attack effectiveness.
Conclusions on the Usability of Dragonwound Grease Against Non-Dragons
A crystalian enemy was chosen for this test due to their high overall defensive stats. If Dragonwound Grease affected enemy damage absorption instead of increasing weapon damage, it would result in noticeably more damage done against a crystalian.
However, following this test, it’s clear that Dragonwound Grease applies a damage increase to your weapon—like all other weapon coatings. But it only works on dragons. As such, you should not bother using Dragonwound Grease on any enemy besides dragons.
What Kinds of Weapons Can Be Buffed By Dragonwound Grease?
The only kinds of weapons that you can buff with Dragonwound Grease are those with a physical affinity. As such, you can only use Dragonwound Grease on standard, heavy, keen, and quality armaments.
If you possess a weapon with a different affinity, you won’t be able to apply Dragonwoud Grease to it. To be specific, the item will appear grayed-out in your quick-use slot.
What is the Best Weapon for Dragon-Slaying?
On average, weapons that do pierce-type damage can deal the most hurt to both dragon and non-dragon foes. As such, these armaments are arguably the best to use for dragon-slaying. Their natural ability to get by enemy defenses stacks nicely with the effects of Dragonwound Grease.
How to Make Dragonwound Grease
Before you can use ingredients to craft Dragonwound Grease, you’ll need the recipe! The recipe for Dragonwound Grease is found in the Ancient Dragon Apostle’s Cookbook [3]. You can find this item in the Cathedral of Dragon Communion in the south of the Caelid region. The tome is located on a corpse that is under the body of the dead dragon.
The Ingredients for Making Dragonwound Grease
To craft Dragonwound Grease, you’ll need equal parts Root Resin, Beast Blood, and Gravel Stone. For one unit of Dragonwound Grease, you’ll need one of each of these crafting materials. As with other weapon coatings, you can only hold 10 units of Dragonwound Grease at a time.
Thankfully, there’s a much higher limit to how many crafting materials you can carry. You can carry 999 of each crafting material in Elden Ring. Like with other items, the excess will go to your storage chest. You can access this chest while resting at any Site of Grace.
Where to Find Dragonwound Grease Ingredients
You can find Root Resin pretty easily while exploring. Root Resin nodes appear in small groups around the trees and roots of many locations. You can find it outside in the woods, near Erdtree roots, and other natural areas. Furthermore, Root Resin respawns every time you rest at a Site of Grace. For this reason, you can farm it liberally.
Beast Blood will be a bit more difficult to come by. It is only found as a drop from carnivorous enemies. As such, this will mostly involve fighting beasts with large teeth and claws. The best enemies to farm for Beast Blood are the fierce lesser runebears. You can find these foes in abundance within the Mistwood forest in Limgrave. Thankfully, regular bears can drop Beast Blood as well, albeit less often. You can also find normal bears in the Mistwood forest.
Easily the rarest of ingredients for crafting Dragonwound Grease is Gravel Stones. In their description, it’s mentioned that they are found in lands “beset by ancient dragons”. This vague hint means Crumbling Farum Azula. Since this is an end-game area, it will be hard to make lots of Dragongrease until then. However, you can find a big patch of Gravel Stones in Caelid. From the Deep Siofra Well, you can head a bit north to find a bunch of Gravel Stones at the feet of the first sentinel archer. These will respawn, which makes farming them easy. This is the best spot to get renewable Gravel Stones.
