How to Cure Madness in Elden Ring

Madness is probably the deadliest status effect in Elden Ring. Let your Madness bar fill completely, and you’ll take a good chunk of both Health and FP damage, plus you’ll be stunned for a good three seconds. Thankfully, the cure for Madness buildup, and thus preventing the affliction, is fairly easy to get.

How Madness Works in Elden Ring

Technically speaking, you don’t actually “cure” Madness as stop the buildup of your Madness meter. Let it fill completely and the status effect will trigger. Remove the buildup up to 99% and it won’t effect you at all. Once Madness activates, its gauge instantly decreases to zero, ready to start the process again. Provided you don’t die from it. Put another way, Madness is not like Scarlet Rot or Poison, where filling the bar activates the damage over time while the bar slowly depletes.

Depending on the source of your Madness buildup, its bar can begin to fill again — and quickly — after a damaging burst. Outside sources of madness, like enemy Frenzied Flame incantations or the frenzied eye summoned near the Frenzied Village will all cause the bar to fill again, as will using Madness incantations, especially if you’re using the Frenzied Flame Seal you get from Hyetta’s quest.

How to Cure Madness Buildup in Elden Ring

There are two ways to cure Madmess (or, more accurately, remove any Madness status buildup). The first and by far the best is to craft and consume Clarifying Boluses.

Like all Bolus items, Clarifying Boluses instantly remove any Madness buildup you’ve accrued. Their eating animation is also incredibly quick, and the materials you need to make them are fairly commonplace, save one: the Eye of Yelough. All the ingredients and their locations are:

• Dewkissed Herba: In and around both the Siofra and Ansel River areas underground.
• Crystal Cave Moss: Found in specific caves and mini-dungeons of Liurnia of the Lakes and elsewhere.
• Eye of Yelough: Found in areas afflicted by madness. The Frenzied Flame Village is the easiest place to get eleven of them at a time.

Unlocking the ability to craft Clarifying Bonuses follows the same pattern as every other craftable item in Elden Ring: you need to find a cookbook. The Frenzied’s Cookbook [1], to be exact. And luckily, it’s not hard to find.

Where to Find the Frenzied’s Cookbook [1] in Elden Ring

The Frenzied’s Cookbook [1] can be found at the Frenzied Village in Liurnia of the Lakes. It’s on a corpse in a house near the front of the village. However, actually reaching the village takes a bit more time than just riding up the eastern coastline of Liurnia.

• First, you need to get the Academy Glintstone Key from the western wetlands, guarded by a dragon.
• Then, you must make your way to the Academy Main Gate Site of Grace on the northern edge of the Raya Lucaria Academy.
• Use the magical seal north of the Main Academy Gate to teleport across the broken bridge to the northern landmass of Liurnia.

Once you’ve reached the Grand Lift of Dectus Site of Grace, head southeast up through the cliffs.

You’ll need to make a detour on your way up to kill the maddened nobles atop the tower on the east side of the upper area, as they’ll constantly summon a Madness ball that constantly increases your Madness bar and deals small but significant amounts of health damage. Once they’re dead, continue south until you round a corner and reach the Frenzied Flame Village. The first shack in front of you holds not only a few maddened enemies, but also the Frenzied’s Cookbook [1] on a corpse with a purple shiny loot item.

Clarifying Boluses Crafting Recipe

Once you have Frenzied’s Cookbook, you’ll need the following to craft Clarifying Boluses to mitigate Madness buildup: 

• 2 Dewkissed Herba
• 1 Crystal Cave Moss
• 1 Eye of Yelough

The second way to cure Madness takes quite a bit more effort to reach. You need the Lucitidy sorcery, and it will take you quite some time to unlock it.

Where to Find the Lucidity Sorcery in Elden Ring

You can’t access the area with the Lucidity sorcery until well in Ranni’s questline. Specifically, you need the Carian Inverted Statue, available only after you’ve reached the end of Nokron, Eternal City. As such, you’ll need to have defeated Starscourge Radahn and ventured deep underground.

From there, you need to go to the Carian Study Hall on the eastern landmass of Liurnia and place the statue on the altar in the main chapel area. Doing so will turn the whole tower upside down. Make your way to the large inner chamber where Preceptor Miriam, her ghostly guards, and a small army of little Fingercreepers waits.

Defeating Miriam (no small task) instantly earns you the Lucidity sorcery, and while it only takes 17 Intellgience to cast, that still more than any of the default classes provide, so you’ll either need to invest in a stat your build might not use or stick to Clarifying Boluses to cure Madness.in the Carian Study Hall in eastern Liurnia of the Lakes. You visit the location during the witch’s quest after visiting Nokron, Eternal City.

Lucidity itself “alleviates buildup of Sleep and Madness” and requires a sorcery staffto cast. It instantly removes any Madness buildup, no matter how small or large, and costs 14 FP. The casting time is relatively short, but don’t let your status meter rise too high too quickly just to be safe. If you’re not sure how to use Magic in Elden Ring, check out our primer for that right here.

How to Increase Your Madness Resistance in Elden Ring

While curing Madness is the only surefire way to never have to deal with it, the greater your resistance is to it, the more enemies will need to inflict it for the status to affect you. Madness resistance is governed by the Focus stat, which you can see in the bottom right of both your equipment and status screens.

The higher your Focus, the bigger your Madness gauge is and thus the longer it takes for the effect to occur. You raise focus via the equipment you wear, both your armor and certain Talismans. Every armor set provides a different amount of Focus, and you’ll need to check each of them for best results. IN a quick scan of armors I’ve collected, the following all are great for raising focus:

• Mushroom Set
• Braided Set (from Hornsent in Shadow of the Erdtree)
• Corhyn’s Set
• Solitude Set (from the Blackgaol Knight in Shadow of the Erdtree)
• Fire Prelate Set

Of the five, the only one I actually like the look of is the Solitude Set, but so does almost everyone else, making it a common enough sight in multiplayer. And while the Shield of the Guilty provides a massive bonus to your Focus, it looks awful and its stats are just as ugly.

That leaves the three Mottled Necklace Talismans, which give 50, 70, and 100 Focus for the standard, +1, and +2 variants, respectively. I find that there are much better Talismans for almost any build you could dream up, but if you absolutely must have the best Madness resistance in the game, a full set of armor, the Shield of the Guilty, and a Mottled Necklace are the way to go.

And that’s how you cure Madness in Elden Ring. You won’t come up against the status effect as much as you will some others, but it’s one of the deadliest outside of Scarlet Rot. Our guides hub has much more to help you through the Lands Between, such as how to complete Fia’s questline.