ELDEN RING – Misconceptions about Starter Equipment and BiS Weapons

This guide aims to address some of the misconceptions I’ve seen about equipment you either start with, or can acquire early.

Starter Equipment and Best-in-Slot (BiS) Weapons

TLDR:

• Lots of the best weapons can be found early.
• Late-game weapons aren’t neccessarilly better than early game weapons.

Firstly, the misconception that weapons acquired later in the game, are simply better than the weapons acquired early game. This is simply false. Many weapons found within the first 45 minutes of the game are some of the best-in-slot. So what does this mean? Best-in-slot refers to the best weapons within their respective weapon class. Some of the criteria to determine this include damage, scaling, or special factors like status build up, or damage-type.

Basically, it all boils down to “how good is this weapon, compared to other weapons of the same class, who do the same thing?”. In some weapon classes, there’s weapons that are fairly similar in terms of effectiveness, and which one is better for you, will depend on what build you’re using. Below I’ll include a list of weapons that are found early, and that I deem to be best-in-slot, and why I believe it to be the case.

BiS Weapons List

Here’s a list of weapons, that I deem to be best-in-class, and can be found within the first 45-minutes of the game.

Daggers:

• Reduvia – This weapon has an excellent ash of war, and is a powerful bleed weapon for early game.
• Misericorde – This is the best dagger for criticals in the game, when elementally infused.
• Cinquedea – Best strength dagger

Straight Swords:

• Broadsword – Highest innate-damage straightsword, low requirements.

Greatswords:

• Knight’s Greatsword – High damage, fast greatsword, dex oriented.
• Banished Knight’s Greatsword – High damage, fast, strength oriented.

Colossal Swords:

• Greatsword – Highest damage, buffable, collosal sword (you can put giant hunt on it).
• Zweihander – Better dex scaling, less heavy than greatsword (you can put giant hunt on it).

Thrusting Swords:

• Cleanrot Knight’s sword – Highest innate damage

Curved Greatswords:

• Bloodhound’s fang – High innate damage, buffable, fast upgrade-path

Katanas:

• Uchigatana – High innate damage, buffable, more stat efficient than other katanas

Axes:

• Stormhawk axe – High innate damage, excellent ash of war.
• Iron cleaver – Fast, strong R2.

Greataxes:

• Rusted Anchor – Pierce damage (otherwise underwhelming weapon category)

Hammers:

• Stone club – High damage, good moveset, good scaling.
• Morning star – Decent damage, bleed build up.

Flails:

• Nightrider flail – High damage, bleed build up.

Great Hammers:

• Pickaxe – Pierce damage

Colossal Weapons:

• Lol – lmao, even.

Spears:

• Pike – High damage, long, pierce.
• Cross-Naginata – High damage, bleed, pierce.

Halberds:

• Nightrider glaive – High damage, pierce.
• Dragon Halberd – High damage, good skill, fast upgrade-path
• Guardian’s swordspear – High damage, good scaling.

Reapers:

• Grave scythe – High damage, bleed build up.

Whips:

• Hoslow’s Petal whip – bleed build up.
• Urumi – Strong R2 with pierce damage, good scaling.

Fists:

• Venomous Fang – Highest DPS in the game, when not accounting for status.

I sincerely hope this was helpful. Good luck to you!