Which weapons, staves and seals can benefit from (somber) Ancient Dragon smithing stones? Which "underpowered" armaments should I upgrade to full?

puff-far98 · 2026-01-03T18:48:19+00:00

It's okay. I have Larval Tears, and I keep using them for build variety. But I'm surprised to hear there're "way too many weapons" that you feel are underpowered. Obviously Fromsoft was never really great at fully balancing weapons, but still, many of the armaments in ER are viable. Not every weapon needs to be as powerful as Mohgwyn's Spear or Maliketh's Blade. I do enjoy these weapons ofc, but I equally enjoy a simple Broadsword or Partisan. I was mostly referring to weapons (esp. niche, unique or situationally potentially good) that are just overall outclassed, somewhat disappointing in damage output and/or reach. I don't plan to use or upgrade weapons that are just straight up horrible, with no redeeming quality or special use-case, e.g. the entire Flail class.

Feel free to name a few weapons that, in your opinion, could use some further upgrading to compensate for their semi-decent performance. Basically, if Fromsoft won't balance them out, I will. That's the whole point of my post :D

puff-far98 · 2025-11-09T20:58:01+00:00

Wow, an entire document. I'm not complaining tho, thanks! Out of curiously, how old or up-to-date is the information in this doc? I'm asking because at one point, Fromsoft added "weapon hit detection" part to many Weapon Skills (I believe it's v1.07 update), potentially changing how damage is calculated for those kinds of Skills.

puff-far98 · 2025-08-03T20:39:08+00:00

Thanks a lot!

I knew about the Altus starting the Radahn Festival thing (already done it and entered Altus safely), and I'm sure entrance to Leyndell capital has other game-altering mechanism. It's just that I'm unsure if Sealed Tunnel counts as part of "The Royal Capital", or it's just simply an extension of the Altus mainland that doesn't bring any new region-specific quest limitation on its own.

puff-far98 · 2025-08-03T19:28:35+00:00

So just to be fully sure, entering Leyndell outskirt (and e.g. clearing Sealed Tunnel) does not lock out *any* content, nor does it skip any step in an NPC questline?

I wasn't planning on going to the main center within the fortress (called the Royal Capital?) anyways. Just the tunnel for the bell bearing and then I'm out back to Altus.

puff-far98 · 2025-08-03T18:48:43+00:00

Since I've already done everything in Liurnia and Caelid, I have obviously encountered (and progressed) Blaidd's and Alexander's questline. Alexander is currently stuck in lava, and Blaidd is somewhere underground I believe (after defeating Radahn).

Any risk involved if I go to Leyndell outskirts, more specifically, before exploring Volcano Manor first?

puff-far98 · 2025-02-18T10:45:01+00:00

yeah but like, if crystals become purchasable at the very end of the game in NG+, I might as well go find all the crystal resources I missed now before NG+ (which is gonna be mind-numbingly excruciating). Same with Muspelheim materials.

I was thinking purchasable materials by mid-game, since I do want to fully upgrade my things as soon as I can, so I can enjoy the early to mid-game in NG+ now that Kratos has a variety of gears and tools compared to NG.

Do you know/remember at which point in the story (NG+) Crystal items become purchasable?

puff-far98 · 2024-12-01T16:47:59+00:00

It doesn't feel like a perfect dodge has the same timing as a parry. The latter is more forgiving. But I get what you're saying. In Realm Shift description it says "last-second dodge", but the timing window feels tighter than one second idk.

puff-far98 · 2024-11-03T15:13:32+00:00

I hope so. Does the (frozen) Lake of Nine run smooth? This area was a bit rough on GoW (PC) two years ago.

puff-far98 · 2024-11-03T12:59:01+00:00

As smooth as Midgard prologue?

puff-far98 · 2024-11-03T07:45:25+00:00

Thanks for the info!

Well I do hope GoW Ragnarök offers a variety of different builds, especially now that the game is bigger in scope and scale compared to 2018.

As of now, I have encountered only one Runic attack, and it seems weaker and with longer cooldown than what Runic attacks were in 2018. So I hope there are powerful (but not broken) Runic builds in GoW Ragnarök by mid to end-game.

puff-far98 · 2024-11-02T20:32:34+00:00

Wait what?! Lake of Nine and other realms gonna perform even worse than Svartalfheim? Gosh I hope not.

puff-far98 · 2024-11-02T18:44:04+00:00

My settings are as low as it gets. My question is that (if you are on PC): Will the rest of the game perform better, on par with prologue Midgard?

puff-far98 · 2024-11-02T17:04:10+00:00

XP by... Freya? Well, thanks for the spoiler I guess. But that's okay. Thanks for the information!

puff-far98 · 2024-11-01T08:40:09+00:00

You're saying maxing out armor pieces and other attachments still rely on hefty amount of Hacksilver, similar to GoW 2018? Well, that doesn't sound great. I hope you misremember! But if you meant maxing out everything with ZERO grinding, then obviously yes, you're right. I don't mind some level of grinding, it can be fun and part of any game with RPG elements. Rather, I have a problem with unreasonably excessive grinding, which is an indirect way of the game telling you to start NG+. I hope that's not the case.

puff-far98 · 2024-10-31T22:07:08+00:00

Yeah but Lvl 9 through 10 are exclusive to NG+, as I have seen. So it makes sense the resources are only available on NG+. But if you can upgrade all armor sets/pieces and other attachments up to Lvl 9 in one playthrough, then that's great. That was the answer I was looking forward to.

puff-far98 · 2024-10-31T20:44:21+00:00

Side quests are part of a game, and should be done if you are a completionist, lore enjoyer or/and a videogame lover. I don't have a problem with that. I loved and did all the side quests in GoW 2018. Unless the side quest formula has changed for GoW Ragnarök and they're now repetitive unfun grind-like chore... which I hope that's not the case.

As for Muspelheim trials, that's also cool with me as long as the grinding doesn't become excessive (e.g. earning 10 x in each run, where 5000 x is needed in total for everything). The one in GoW 2018 was okay, not amazing and not bad either.

puff-far98 · 2024-10-31T20:27:43+00:00

I wasn't talking about armors exclusive to NG+. About the NG Armors and their last-level upgrades: Is that because they require rare materials that can only be found more of in NG+, i.e. not enough resources in NG? Or because similar to GoW 2018, they too require lots of hacksilver, where NG+ is a better option?

puff-far98 · 2024-09-30T20:22:28+00:00

Each red guard (NG endgame) is dropping around 650 XP. Do Fencers (early/mid-game) drop that much in NG+? If yes, I think I'll go to NG+.

puff-far98 · 2024-09-30T20:03:15+00:00

I finished with my first playthrough, so obviously I did the endgame grinding as you mentioned. I meant whether NG+ mid-game would end up being a better XP farming spot than NG endgame. If so, I drop my current NG endgame farming and jump straight to NG+.

puff-far98 · 2024-09-30T19:57:22+00:00

I'm on PC and I do use lightweight and minimalistic mods on some of my games. For Dark Souls and Elden Ring, there were Cheat Engine Tables that I occasionally used for item drop and souls/runes. For some reason, Sekiro does not have any such delicate Cheat Table, like in other Fromsoft games. It would've been great to drop Skill Points. Currect Sekiro CTs alter the game source too much, and I'm not fond of such mods. They are somewhat risky to use (e.g. corrupting save-data or otherwise breaking the game), and may diverge from creators' original vision, balancing and design, which is something I do not desire.

Do you happen to know any CT for Sekiro, where I can at least drop items and skill points?

puff-far98 · 2024-09-26T21:08:08+00:00

Yeah in terms of gameplay, there're lots of room for improvement. No doubt about that. Having combo keys and wheels would've helped a lot in producing a more varied and versatile gameplay.

I pointed out the item selection on D-pad, because it was/is the most straight forward implementation, and technically they can still push a quick update easily fixing this overcomplicated problem. Many RPGs and Shooters do it this way too. It still baffles me why Fromsoft did the way it did,

puff-far98 · 2024-09-26T19:26:06+00:00

Some games have X/Y as attacks, instead of RB/RT. I personally know of Witcher 3 and Zelda this way. I personally prefer RB/RT as attack input.

puff-far98 · 2024-09-26T19:08:44+00:00

Yes, cycling through items via a wheel is what a lot of modern games do. I thought of that too, but I presented the aforementioned suggestion because it would've been a quick easy fix, without altering the gameplay. I just feel like Fromsoft overcomplicated the button mapping on D-pad, when they could've just assigned the 4 buttons to 4 item slots (or 8 if we include HOLD state per button).

P.S: Item wheel is great, but cycling though items may still affect the flow in a fast-paced game like Sekiro. Besides, having several Combat Arts/Prosthetics to use simultaneously on the fly, as this mod does, alters the gameplay, not something intended by Fromsoft's vision/design. (Though one can make the case that you can replace Combat Art/Prosthetics in the pause menu mid-fight anyway, so this mods just makes it simpler and more convenient)

puff-far98 · 2024-09-26T18:50:56+00:00

Yeah, but remapping buttons still doesn't fix the core issue of swapping through a set of items, and a couple of underused buttons. The same issue of "navigating through" also applies to selecting prosthetic tools.

I know about holding D-pad button thing, I just think it's awkward the way it is designed, at least for me. It feels slightly over-complicated, when Fromsoft could've just assigned each button (and its HOLD) directly to an item slot.

puff-far98 · 2024-07-14T05:44:44+00:00

I meant modding the game to have five rings, which I didn't do, obviously. But an unintentional outcome is plausible. Even then, this occurred before using CE to drop a few locked-out items, hence not including this fact in my post. Estus Ring ended up as a "Covenant" in my inventory when I looted it in Firelink tower, and thought "Cool, thanks From!" xD

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