Elden Ring Phantom Fingers turns off scaling on summoned phantoms, making invasions more of a challenge right away

Invasion PvP in Elden Ring is inherently one-sided, with almost every instance pitting a single Red Phantom invader against at least two other players: a host and at least one summoned Yellow Phantom co-worker. Thanks to a password matching system, it’s possible for a host to summon someone much higher level than themselves, so to even the odds, yellow phantoms have downscaled their damage and defense. It was recently discovered that if an invader uses the Phantom Finger item to reposition themselves during an invasion, this downscaling disappears entirely.

YouTube user M created a video in which he tests the issue by invading another tester’s world as a level 25 character. To maximize the effect, the summoned yellow phantom was level 621, with 99 in every stat except arcane. The phantom named Baba used three weapons to hit M with a standard R1 attack: a standard greatsword, a cold greatsword, and a broadsword. The results before using the Phantom Finger were as follows: Greatsword downscaled damage was 330, Cold Greatsword downscaled damage was 332, and Broadsword downscaled damage was 190.

M then used the phantom finger and ran the tests again. The results were impressive: the Unscaled Greatsword’s damage was 932, the Unscaled Cold Greatsword’s damage was 940, and the Unscaled Broadsword’s damage was 592.

That’s an increase of 280% for the Greatswords and 310% for the Broadsword. It’s unclear exactly why this difference exists, but Peeve, a veteran Soulsborne PvP streamer, posits that this could be because using the Phantom Finger removes all buffs, and invading—rather than reducing the stats of summoned phantoms—applies a buff to the invader, reducing the damage of the cooperative partner. If scaling down is a basic buff on invaders defense, using finger will remove it.

It’s a theory that might carry weight, as M’s tests show that invader damage on high-level phantoms is unchanged when the finger is used. In other words, their defense will not scale down like players initially thought. It remains to be seen if FromSoftware will address this issue, but it has been around since the release of Elden Ring. The team has patched the game to independently balance the game between PvP and PvE, so there may still be some hope.