Your faithful companion from start to finish, a good solid melee weapon is vital to success in Dark Souls III. There are a huge number of weapons to be discovered out in the world. Some can be found while exploring, some come from enemies, others can be created using Soul Transposition, a special process of creating items from powerful Souls by the NPC Ludleth in the Firelink Shrine.
The Blacksmith in town is also important for your weapons, as he can upgrade their power, and for mundane weapons, infuse them with special Gems to give them new abilities.
The majority of melee weapons require some level of Str or Dex to equip and use effectively, though there are are also weapons that require Int or Faith (sometimes 3 or even all 4 attributes!).
At the beginning of each weapon category is a chart showing a breakdown of every weapon in the game in that category. You can see a weapon’s name, it’s damage type, what skill it possesses and how much that skill costs to use in FP, and its weight.
The Power column shows you the base power of a weapon, with short abbreviations in the comparison table for damage type, p for Physical, m for Magic, f for Fire, l for Lightning, d for Dark, and finally for weapons that have a non standard Critical value above 100, c for Critical. For the few weapons that can act as Catalysts for spells and have the Spell Buff stat, this is also shown as sb.
The Additional Effect column indicates if a weapon has any Bleed, Poison, or the rare Frost damage (b, po, f r), while the Scaling and Requirements columns are both ordered as Str/Dex/Int/Faith. Scaling indicates how much a weapon benefits from a high attribute level, ranked from E on the low end to S at the highest. Weapon scaling improves as you enhance a weapon at the Blacksmith.
Finally the Material column shows what type of Titanite a weapon requires to be enhanced. Normal mundane weapons only require ‘normal’ Titanite, and reach reach an enhancement level of +10, while unique Soulbound weaponry requires rare Twinkling Titanite, and Soul-transposed weaponry requires even rarer Titanite Scales, both upgradable to +5. Neither Soulbound nor Soul-transposed weapons can be infused by the Blacksmith, the price you pay for their inherent power.
Weapon Bonus Damage
A rare few weapons deal bonus damage to certain enemy types, summarized in this table.
Bonus Damage
| Weapon | Bonus Damage vs. Demons | Bonus Damage vs. Reanimated | Bonus Damage vs. Hollows | Bonus Damage vs. Abyssal Foes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black Knight Greatsword | 20% | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Black Knight Sword | 20% | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Black Knight Greataxe | 20% | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Black Knight Glaive | 20% | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Anri’s Straight Sword | 0 | 10% | 0 | 0 |
| Any Blessed Weapon | 0 | 20% | 0 | 0 |
| Hollowslayer Greatsword | 0 | 0 | 50% | 0 |
| Farron Greatsword | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20% |
| Wolf Knight’s Greatsword | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20% |