Shadow of the Erdtree dropped over 100 new weapons on us, which sounds like a paradise of choice, but then you realize that the internet collectively decided within 48 hours that the Backhand Blades are the best thing since sliced Erdleaf Flower, and everyone else fell in line.
Bloodfiend’s Arm went nuclear. Messmer’s Impaler got its moment in the sun. Rellana’s Twinblades became a staple of every fashion souls build worth its salt.
Meanwhile, a handful of genuinely excellent weapons have been quietly sitting in a corner of the Realm of Shadow, waiting for someone to notice them. This is that article. Here are six Shadow of the Erdtree weapons that deserve way more time in your loadout and why most Tarnished keep walking right past them.
The Bloodfiend’s Fork
A spear for the patient and the bloodthirsty
Let’s start with the one that’s arguably the most overlooked purely because of how it’s obtained. The Bloodfiend’s Fork has just a 3% drop rate from the Bloodfiends that actually carry it, but most Bloodfiends don’t. So right out of the gate, casual players either never find it, or give up farming after a few attempts.
That’s a shame, because this weapon punches well above its weight class. It scales with Strength, Dexterity, and Arcane, making it a natural fit for Bleed-oriented builds. It comes with Barbaric Roar as its default skill – a buff that substantially increases physical damage and converts strong attacks into a savage combo chain lasting 40 seconds for 16 FP, and can be swapped out for other Ashes of War if you prefer.
Here’s what players miss though: the Fork isn’t just a budget Bloodfiend’s Arm for players who couldn’t be bothered to get the colossal club. It’s an infusable spear with innate bleed buildup that scales with Arcane – meaning it benefits from the same elemental infusion tricks that make other Arcane weapons terrifying. Slap a Faith-scaling infusion on it and you’re getting strong physical damage plus bleed on top, from a safe poke range that most melee weapons can’t match.
If you want to squeeze even more out of Barbaric Roar, keep a Highland Axe in your off-hand and slot the Roar Medallion as one of your talismans. The axe passively boosts Roar heavy attack damage by 10% just by sitting in your hand slot (no stat requirements needed) and the medallion stacks a further 15% on top. That’s a 25% combined increase to your Barbaric Roar combos for essentially zero downside. If you’re not already across how Roar buffs stack, our full Roar Buffs guide has everything you need.
If you want to farm it efficiently, Prospect Town in the Gravesite Plain is your best bet – there are multiple fork-wielding Bloodfiends in a Spirit Ash-friendly open area. The area near the Ruined Forge Lava Intake also has two nearby if you want an alternative route.
Minimum requirements: 14 STR / 8 DEX / 13 ARC
The Greatsword of Solitude
Colossal damage in a sensible package
This one gets dismissed almost entirely on vibes. You look at it and think: generic greatsword, boring moveset, probably outclassed by a dozen flashier DLC weapons. You keep walking.
Wrong move, Tarnished.
What makes the Greatsword of Solitude special within its weapon class isn’t immediately obvious from the description. Damage at lower upgrade levels is actually modest – sitting below competitors like the Iron Greatsword – but at +10 it overtakes even the Iron Greatsword, which is widely considered the highest base-damage option in the greatsword class. You end up with output that rivals Colossal Swords wrapped in greatsword speed.
Its guard boost and physical damage negation are also extraordinarily high for its weapon class – on par with a Colossal Sword or a weak medium shield, which is unheard of for a regular greatsword. Stack the Greatshield Talisman and Deflecting Hardtear on top of that and you’ve built a machine for punishing aggressive bosses: block, guard counter, stagger, repeat.
Its weapon skill, Solitary Moon Slash, performs a sharp downward slash that sends an arc of light forward, with a follow-up lunging attack available on a strong attack input. It’s not pure magic – it’s a physical combo with a ranged component tacked on, which makes it genuinely useful for punishing enemies at mid-range and for gap-closing when you need to get in fast.
You get it by defeating the Knight of the Solitary Gaol in the Western Nameless Mausoleum, reached by heading west from the Scorched Ruins Site of Grace. It’s one of the first proper bosses you can reach in the DLC, meaning this weapon can carry you all the way through the Realm of Shadow from the very beginning if you invest in it.
Minimum requirements: 27 STR / 13 DEX
The Pata
The fist weapon that forgot it was supposed to be short-range
Fist weapons in Elden Ring have always lived with one crippling constraint: they’re fast, they hit hard in quick succession, and they’ll never, ever reach anything that isn’t already in your face. The entire class is balanced around that range limitation. The Pata ignores this completely.
This DLC fist weapon functions as both a traditional fist and a straight sword – it can be swung like either, giving it the reach of a thrusting weapon while retaining the speed and paired-weapon mechanics of the fist class. In practical terms, that means you’re landing the fast multi-hit combos that make fist weapons appealing for talisman stacking builds, from a distance that should be completely off-limits for the weapon type.
That range advantage is doubled down on by its default skill. Impaling Thrust is one of the most underrated weapon skills in the game – it deals solid damage, excellent poise damage, and costs very little FP. On a weapon that already outranges everything in its class, having a poise-breaking thrust that can be spammed cheaply is a significant bonus, particularly against the DLC’s heavily armoured boss lineup.
The numbers back it up too. At Standard+25 the Pata reaches 254 physical AR – the highest of any infusion on this weapon. If you’re running a pure DEX build, Keen+25 gives you B scaling in Dexterity, though at the cost of some raw AR. Either way, you’re getting respectable damage figures for the class.
Most players walk straight past it because they see “fist weapon” and assume it’s for the committed brawler niche. It isn’t. You’ll find it on a corpse at the top of a cliff just outside the Church of Benediction – early enough in your DLC run that it can genuinely shape your entire build if you spot it.
Minimum requirements: 13 STR / 15 DEX
The Smithscript Cirque
The Backhand Blade that does everything
Everyone who tried the Backhand Blades in Shadow of the Erdtree will tell you they’re exceptional. Fewer people can tell you about the Smithscript Cirque – a variant that takes the already-great Backhand Blade formula and adds something genuinely novel on top of it.
The Smithscript Cirque is throwable: execute a heavy attack and it launches from your hand in a curved trajectory before returning, giving you a spammable ranged option on top of an already effective close-range melee moveset. On a Keen affinity, it achieves S scaling in Dexterity.
Why doesn’t it get the same attention as the standard Backhand Blades? Mostly because it’s tucked away inside the Ruined Forge of Starfall Past. The weapon sits on a corpse next to the sewage waterfall, past a series of lever-operated iron gates and Golem Smith ambushes. It’s not a weapon you stumble across – you have to want it.
The Smithscript Cirque pairs close-range Backhand Blade combat with a throwable heavy attack option, making it unusually versatile: you can apply pressure from range when you need breathing room, then close distance immediately via the Blind Spot Ash of War to capitalize on openings up close. That combination of pressure tools in a single weapon slot is genuinely rare, and most players never give it a serious chance because they already have the regular Backhand Blades doing the job just fine.
The trade-off worth knowing: heavy attacks go into throwing mode, meaning charged heavies and guard counters lose some of their stance damage potential. For players who prioritize mobility and sustained pressure over stagger, though, the Cirque is a better fit than most of the DLC ever gives it credit for.
Minimum requirements: 9 STR / 14 DEX / 11 INT / 11 FAI
The Star-Lined Sword
The intelligence build life raft you didn’t know you needed
If you ran an Intelligence build into Shadow of the Erdtree and felt slightly shortchanged on the weapon front – you weren’t imagining it. Faith builds received a disproportionately large number of new weapons in the DLC compared to other stat focuses.
Enter the Star-Lined Sword, a katana that occupies a genuinely useful niche for DEX/INT hybrids despite being mostly ignored. It scales highest with Dexterity, reaching B-tier at max upgrade, while Intelligence and Strength stay lower – meaning it rewards investing in Dex first before dumping points into Intelligence. It’s a melee-forward weapon for builds that want sorcery access alongside physical output, not a pure INT weapon wearing a katana costume.
The reason the community tends to dismiss it isn’t really about building it wrong, though. The Ash of War, Onze’s Line of Stars, has zero hyper armor throughout its animation. Against the DLC’s aggressive bosses, that means any hit during the combo will interrupt it entirely – making the skill far more useful against regular enemies than boss encounters, where its long animation and lack of poise resistance become genuine liabilities.
That’s a real limitation worth knowing before you commit. But for DEX/INT players who’ve been starved of weapon options in the DLC, the Star-Lined Sword is still a worthwhile pickup – just learn to use the Ash of War selectively rather than as your primary damage tool against bosses.
Minimum requirements: 10 STR / 23 DEX / 21 INT
The Death Knight’s Longhaft Axe
The gap-closer that everyone’s twin-axe-brained friend forgot about
Here’s what happened. Players found the Fog Rift Catacombs, fought the Death Knight there, picked up the Twin Axes, turned themselves into a bolt of lightning, and decided that was the end of the story. It wasn’t. There’s a second Death Knight. He’s harder. And almost nobody talks about what he drops.
The Death Knight’s Longhaft Axe is found at the end of the Scorpion River Catacombs, reached by following the path north of Temple Town Ruins – a dungeon that sees dramatically less traffic than Fog Rift because it comes later and sits off the beaten path. That obscurity alone explains most of why this weapon gets ignored.
What you’re getting for the trouble is a Greataxe that deals both physical and lightning damage and comes with the Blinkbolt: Long-hafted Axe skill – a unique ability that transforms you into a bolt of lightning, rushing you forward across substantial distance before chaining into a heavy follow-up attack. The skill’s dash provides invulnerability frames during the charge, meaning it doubles as both a gap-closer and a way to blow straight through the kind of aggressive attacks that punish slower, heavier builds.
It scales with Strength, Dexterity, and Faith, making it a natural fit for Faith-forward builds that typically struggle with the DLC’s highly mobile bosses. The problem those builds always face is getting into position – swinging a massive weapon is only useful when you can actually reach something. Blinkbolt: Long-hafted Axe solves that problem in a single button press.
The community fixated entirely on the Twin Axes because the dual-wield lightning aesthetic is immediately obvious and satisfying. The Longhaft Axe’s appeal takes slightly longer to appreciate – it’s a tool for a specific problem, not a flashy all-rounder. But if you’re running a heavy Faith build and finding yourself constantly outpaced by DLC bosses, this is the gap-closer you should already have in your loadout.
Minimum requirements: 23 STR / 10 DEX / 17 FAI
Stop Sleeping on the Weird Stuff
Shadow of the Erdtree threw eight entirely new weapon categories at us alongside over 100 individual armaments. That’s a lot of surface area for genuinely solid picks to fall through the cracks .
The weapons above aren’t here because they’re secretly broken or because some content creator found an exploit. They’re here because they’re legitimately good, frequently ignored and in some cases better than what most players are currently running. Give them a proper try. Build around them. The Realm of Shadow is more interesting when you’re not copying the same meta loadout as everyone else.
Your Tarnished deserves better than a spreadsheet-approved build. Probably.
Enjoyed this? We’re thinking about putting together dedicated level 150-200 build guides for each of these weapons – starting with the Bloodfiend’s Fork. Stay tuned.
Leave a Reply