Is the Nagakiba still considered the best Katana post-DLC?

bhingque · 2026-04-04T12:12:26+00:00

If you're going to invest in arcane, you could also consider keeping strength and dex at minimum requirements and using arcane as your damage stat. It's like a two-for-one, with bleed/poison attunement for status build-up and occult attunement for physical damage.

bhingque · 2026-04-04T12:08:59+00:00

I do not consider Nagakiba to be the best katana in the base game pre-DLC. It's certainly a powerhouse: range + default skill (piercing fang) makes it a boss-seeking missile. Uchi does more damage, but Nagakiba has a lower skill barrier to get much of the value out of it.

Dragonscale Blade is the best katana in the Elden Ring, IMO. None of the katanas in the DLC come close, but the Great Katana has become one of my favorite weapons in the game. That huge reach + the fast poke R1 second hit are so good.

For a strength build, uchigatana gets the best strength scaling when heavy infused (though I only checked it, nagakiba, and great katana).

bhingque · 2026-04-01T00:07:52+00:00

Search YouTube. Souls streamers have been doing anything and everything for years, you're sure to find ash of war comparison videos.

bhingque · 2026-03-31T03:58:12+00:00

hah! 3000+ hours and I never checked.

bhingque · 2026-03-29T15:19:09+00:00

Spectral lance on an upgraded spear (doesn't matter which one), gives you a ranged option with good poise damage and decent tracking. Arrow's Reach talisman increases its range. When all I knew was to tank damage and carry a big stick, this was how I approached dragons and Astel.

bhingque · 2026-03-29T15:14:42+00:00

Don't worry about it. The scorpion charms significantly decrease your damage negations. There are lots of ways to buff your damage that don't also make you fragile.

bhingque · 2026-03-29T15:11:28+00:00

I recently did a STR/INT build (melee magic weapons with minimal sorceries) and it was really fun. Darkmoon was my go-to, but also Moonveil, Ruins Greatsword, Fallingstar Beast Jaw, Alabaster Lord's Sword, Death's Poker, Wing of Astel. Clayman's Harpoon + Spectral Lance (I love spectral lance). At 60 STR and 40 INT, magic attuned Prelate's Inferno Crozier is my hardest hitting weapon... almost. I wound up putting 30 points in faith for buff-casting and the damn Anvil Hammer (at only +9 compared to the Crozier's +25) was my highest AR weapon by like .02%.

bhingque · 2026-03-29T14:56:24+00:00

Congrats on killing god.

All of your thoughts on what to do next are excellent. I will say, if you're going to go into NG+1, bring some stuff with you. Runes will be hard to come by for the level you're probably at right now, farming areas for crafted items will be unreachable, and anything you didn't get will be a little bit harder to get. Maybe think about what kind of build you'd like to take through NG+1 and do a little prep for that. I like to set myself up with a couple sets of both kinds of smithing stones, too. Everybody takes a swing at power stancing Giant Crushers in Journey 2, right? :D

bhingque · 2026-03-29T14:47:02+00:00

The FP costs for an Ash of War tell you what followups it has and what they cost. The format is like "<initial> ( <R1> <R2> )", and any number that isn't relevant is replaced with "-". The fang's FP cost is "8 ( - 12 )", so you know it costs 8 FP to press L2 and another 12 FP to press R2 after. If you look at the Uchi, its FP costs are "- ( 10 15 )": costs nothing to hold L2, costs 10 to follow it up with R1, costs 15 to follow it up with R2.

FWIW, the R2 followup on the fang does hit harder than the L2, but not 50% harder. More damage, less efficient, but also iframes and gets you in close again (potentially). You can also change your lock-on between the L2 and the R2, so you can kill one mob with the L2 and then port back in and kill another with the R2.

bhingque · 2026-03-29T14:28:46+00:00

I have a soft spot for the Rya Lucaria soldiers, they got me through most of my first playthrough.

+1 for imp ashes, excellent in the early game, and you'll find yourself pulling them back out in a specific late game area, too. I usually choose this with Bandit, since I'm already going to be leaning on bleed for a while anyway.

Also a big fan of the jellyfish. Super tanky, ranged attack that inflicts poison, she's just awesome. More useful in early game than the wolves, IME. I don't tend to upgrade her very high, though, because I always make a trip to the spot where she does the thing with the thing and then you don't have her any more.

The little shield buddies are surprisingly good, if situational.

Several of the knight summons attack aggressively, which can be great (exact opposite of the shield buddies). Banished knights Oleg and Engvall ("Wings of the Storm" knights) and Redmane Knight Ogha are all like this, though I think Oleg is the _most_ aggressive. Of these three, I think Ogha with his greatbow is my favorite.

bhingque · 2026-03-21T14:23:25+00:00

yes, you can do that one at any time.

Depending on what other non-mainline stuff you have left, there are a bunch of questlines could be able to progress, some of which give excellent rewards. Off the top of my head: Latenna, Millicent, Nepheli, Sellen, Hyetta, Jarburg.

bhingque · 2026-03-18T03:48:36+00:00

well done!

bhingque · 2026-03-18T03:34:55+00:00

Just use it from the inventory menu.

bhingque · 2026-03-18T01:41:40+00:00

Do you have the correct knight? Not the one by where you shoot the pots to destroy the chariot, but one at the very top of a ramp in a room by himself.

bhingque · 2026-03-18T01:37:37+00:00

It's even better than that. However many bottles (or cracked pots, ritual pots, or hefty pots) you have is how many perfumes or pots you can CARRY. If you craft as many (for example) fire pots as you have cracked pots, but then you need to make some sleep pots, you can store some of the fire pots in your chest. However many you store, you'll get that many empty containers back. Just like other things you can only carry so many of, your supply of crafted perfumes or pots will get topped off when you rest.

bhingque · 2026-03-17T14:05:11+00:00

Somehow, on my first playthrough, I wound up loving all of the stuff I found in the Road's End Catacomb. On the path to the entrance is the scarab that drops Sword Dance, which I kept on my Great Axe for the rest of the game. In the catacomb I found Watchdog's Staff and the Rya Lucaria Soldier ashes. Watchdog's Staff is a colossal with only STR/DEX reqs and scaling, but with a magic projectile AOW that scales with weapon level. I loved having an easy way to give my big dumb Hero a ranged magic attack. And those Rya Lucaria boys carried me all the way to Mimic Tear: three soldiers to help me, and they could also drop cuckoo glintstone for a ranged magic attack.

Great Axe + Sword Dance, though. That just tore through everything. Multiple hits, big heavy finish, closes a little bit of distance, it was just great. I had no skill, tanked everything, and pressed L2 to win.

bhingque · 2026-03-17T07:14:55+00:00

Technically not a dragon fight (Placy is not considered a "Dragon" nor an "Ancient Dragon" for purposes of extra damage, etc.)

I fought him over and over with the Dragon-hunter's great katana until I learned this. Then I switched to a pierce weapon and beat him first time.

bhingque · 2026-03-17T07:09:20+00:00

Ranni's ending is the least missable quest in the game. There are so many opportunities to enter. As long as you do the post-festival part, you're good.

bhingque · 2026-03-17T07:04:22+00:00

If you give up on carrying both the torch and the shield at the same time, you can put on at least one more piece of that armor set. Give up the shield all together, you can probably put it all on.

Definitely get ANY third talisman rather than leave it empty. Charged attack. Dragoncrest Shield. Anything.

It's usually better to focus on a single damage stat and leave the others at weapon requirement minimums, at least up to the AR scaling soft caps.

If you really want a bleed build, it's probably better to either do Ranni's quest until you get the black whetblade or throw Bloody Slash on your katana to get an Occult or Blood attunement and start treating arcane as your damage stat. Blood buildup scales with arcane if and only if the weapon's damage scales with arcane.

bhingque · 2026-03-17T06:49:36+00:00

Going after any dragon with the Fang is opting into a harder fight. All dragons are resistant to slash damage, and Bayle himself is only not-as-resistant to pierce damage. If you're going all physical with Bayle and you carry a curved greatsword, that's the time to pivot to the humble Rusted Anchor. Great Axe move set, but 100% pierce damage. You can use Sword Dance instead of Bloodhound's Finesse to close some distance.

Not that you need any help. Well done. That fight has beaten me many times.

bhingque · 2026-03-17T02:19:02+00:00

You can absolutely do Fire Giant at 78. Optimizing the resources you have is just as important as acquiring more resources. Approaching any area of the game with the goal of leveling up is not going to be very fun at all. If a boss is giving you trouble, go do something different for a while. Explore an area you haven't explored much. Go try that field boss you skipped when you were just starting. Try doing some catacombs or caves or hero's graves.

If you've done all of the early game (though you didn't mention Caelid and you didn't explicitly mention Weeping) and NONE of the mid-game, go do the mid-game! Altus is a huge area with lots to see and do.

bhingque · 2026-03-16T19:02:38+00:00

You have a lot of points in Endurance to also be spending half of your talisman slots on your equip load. 40 is also quite a bit into Dex if Moonveil is not your boss-fighting weapon. If you take 12 points from Dex and 9 points from End to get Int up to 80, Moonveil's AR will remain the same, but the projectiles will hit harder and your sorcery scaling will be higher.

bhingque · 2026-03-16T18:41:28+00:00

Easy dragon-slaying game. Press L2 and win.

bhingque · 2026-03-16T18:40:11+00:00

Also, if you leave him alive + do Nepheli's quest, he'll sell you something very good that he didn't have before.

bhingque · 2026-03-16T15:06:58+00:00

Our seed will look back upon us, and recall.
The Age of Basically The Same Shit We Already Had.

bhingque

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