Shadow of the Erdtree: Best weapons Elden Ring guide, walkthrough

Maciej Bogusz, translator, over 130 hours in the game.

When I started my adventure with Shadow of the Erdtree, I knew that I would want to play aggressively. Especially since while watching the announcement of the expansion, I noticed a new type of weapon that the hero in the trailer was holding behind his back, as if parallel to his forearm. Once I got to the Shadowlands, I quickly found the Backhand Blade, which fit perfectly into my concept of the perfect build. These blades, which can be found near the sarcophagus, north of the Scorched Ruins on the Cemetery Plain, enable you to perform very fast attacks. Holding down a strong attack and landing a hit with it greatly disturbs our enemies' posture, giving us a chance to deal critical damage. The special skill of this weapon enables us to attack enemies in their "vital points", even if they are covering themselves with a shield, and also significantly damage their posture. The only weak point of this weapon (and its advantage) is that it requires a very aggressive play style.

Filip Melzacki, guide author, over 120 hours in the game.

Milady - the basic weapon from the Light Greatsword category does not disappoint - it is a fairly balanced blade offering long range, fast cuts, good damage and an extremely fun acrobatic moveset. It's a regular weapon, so you can modify it with any war ash and change its scaling to suit your build - I liked the Vacuum Slice ash, which gives the Milady a quick and cheap ranged attack. You will find this weapon on the tower in front of Castle Ensis.

Filip Melzacki, guide author, over 120 hours in the game.

Spear of the Impaler - Messmer's huge spear provides slow but powerful stabs, fire damage, and good posture breaking. The most unique element of this weapon, however, is its throwability - by pressing the strong attack button, you will throw the spear, which will return to you immediately after hitting the target. This enables you to keep your distance from enemies, and charging your throw will cause the spear to explode on impact, setting the enemy on fire. In addition, there is also a powerful special attack with the weapon, which covers its greatest weakness, because it is excellent at dealing with crowds of enemies.

Hubert "hexx0" Sledziewski, author, over 1,400 hours in the game.

As its name suggests, the Dragon-Hunter's Great Katana was created primarily to combat these powerful reptiles. The theory suggests that if weapons can cope with them, they will be able to handle smaller monsters even better. Practice confirms this. The weapon's enormous range makes basic slashes and thrusts effective at keeping enemies at bay, and powerful, sweeping slashes can damage several enemies at once. In fact, subsequent hits inflict bleeding, which makes it much easier to deplete the health bars of stronger opponents.

However, I was particularly enchanted by the ranged special attack of this katana. By performing Dragonwound Slash, which covers the blade with an "aura of jagged stones", the character jumps up while charging this skill. It takes literally a second, and it deals about twice as much damage as a non-fully charged attack, while absorbing only slightly more "mana" (it's still not much). Moreover, the action is accompanied by extremely impressive animation, which did not bore me for several hours, even though I hardly use any other weapons. The ubiquitous birds in the Land of Shadow have no chance and get defeated after one attack. Armored knights require 3 or 4 such hits, but the end result is the same. And the bosses? I will only mention that storms and lightning did not protect the Divine Beast Dancing Lion from death in the second attempt (and on NG+ 7).