What’s So Great About the Dark Sword?
Quick disclaimer, by best I mean the most useful and versatile. Almost every infusion for the Dark Blade is useful and worthy of making a build for. I’m 40 Hours in and I haven’t found a single weapon with more potential or better stats. The Dancer’s Blades are close but it has D scaling in four stats. A build for this weapon could be awkward or spreading your stats too thin, plus it’s best used for dual wielding which rules out shield use. Plus if your stats are spread too thin you might have to risk some other crucial stats like Health, Stamina, and Carry Weight.
The Dark Sword may only start and cap out with a C Strength and D Dexterity scaling, but with certain infusions it can get S scaling and my favorite two B scaling. This weapon is good no matter what build you’re currently using as most of its infusions are amazing! Also what the Dark Sword has on the Dancer Blades is that it uses normal Titanite to upgrade (Shards, Large Shards, Chunks, and a Slab). I’ll get more in-depth about the infusions and the scaling in the infusion section.
That’s not all that’s great about the Dark Sword either. It has a rare weapon art (LT, or L2 while two handing) Stomp, this move raises your Poise and sets you up for a heavy attack (always vertical even out of stomp). Once the stomp starts it’s hard to get knocked out of it, then with the heavy attack you can break the guard of other players and enemies. This ability is rare because it’s used almost exclusively on large Two Handers like Claymores, but the Dark Sword is a Straight Sword (One Hand). That’s another great thing, because it’s a Straight Sword it’s one of the fastest weapon classes in the game and you can use a shield with it.
That sounds great but how do I get it?
Well getting it isn’t fun but compared to killing the Dancer of Boreal Valley it’s a cakewalk. You need to get the Abyss Watcher, Farron Keep Perimeter, or Keep Ruins Bonfire. The directions for farming these is a bit different for each one you use. So for the sake of simplicity let’s just use the Farron Keep Perimeter Bonfire. From the bonfire you want to head in the direction the game spawns you facing towards. It’ll take you down a hallway and you should walk out the doorway at the end of it.
Outside that doorway to your left is two humanoid enemies with full black armor and long black hair will walking up a path going right past you. These guys are who you are farming, they are called Dark Wraiths and they are tremendous jerks. They attack almost relentlessly and do a ton of damage. You can try and kill them but two is too many to take on. Instead of fighting two at once you can wait patiently outside the doorway and one will chase you into the Farron Keep Perimeter. But you can also do the patient thing and wait for them to keep walking past you and up the path.
At the top of the path is the fog doorway to the boss fight the Abyss Watchers. The Dark Wraiths will continue to walk all the way there and fight every enemy in their way. First there are two beastmen (Ghru is what their weapons are called, I don’t know what they are called) and a beast man in a dress. The Dark Wraiths will often finish these three without taking a hit. Just keep waiting, if you want to spy on them use the wooded area to the right of the doorway you just came through.
After the first group they will probably split up, one going to the right and one to the left. The one to the right will attack a sleeping Ghru, you can kill that one if he is far away from the other. Ol’ Lefty Wraith will keep going and fight two Ghru Spearmen, he might die or not but he will lose at least half his health bar to the spearmen. Kill him when he is done with the spearmen or jump them all while they are fighting. You can also use this as a soul farming method as once you trigger the Wraiths they will kill most of the enemies on their own. Just activate, wait for the Souls then bonfire and trigger again.
What I do though is I peek out the doorway until one spots me and chases me, then I run inside the Farron Keep Perimeter and face him alone. Then I let the last one die to the Ghru outside. Do this enough times and you will get a load of Cracked Red Orbs, Several Pieces of Dark Wraith Armor, and if you’re lucky and the Lord of RNG blesses you a Dark Sword. The sword is a very rare drop, so I would use coins to increase drop rate or if you have the crystal rapier sword have that out when the Wraiths die (you don’t need to kill them for items to drop, they just have to die). Sadly, the only way to get this sword is to fight the Dark Wraiths but these two are the easiest because of the environment.
Infusions
As you have notice or read by now the Dark Sword’s Scaling is dreadful, pretty much every Straight Sword gets this scaling and some better. The part where the Dark Sword “Gits Gud” is now. So you have quite a few options here and which one you should do depends completely on your build or what you are going for. I have pretty good Dexterity and Strength because my main is my “Playing With Everything” character. So the one I use is the Refined Dark Sword, it’s a refined sword for refined gentlemen such as myself. The only time I wouldn’t suggest using a refined version is when you have a load of one stat but next to nothing in either Strength or Dexterity. At that point you should go for one of the Element Variations.
Refined Dark Sword
After about Rank 5 the Refined kind gives you B Scaling in both Strength and Dexterity. This one has the highest potential damage as two B scaling can be higher than one A. Also the S Variants have elements which can be resisted heavily or just made useless. Every point you put into either Dex or Strength raises the damage by 3 points (unless you are like 60+ in one stat).
Heavy Dark Sword
This version of the Dark Sword focuses on only Strength, at rank 10 it’s A but until then it’s only a B. I wouldn’t use this version as for it to be better than the Refined version you would have to have at least 30 more Strength than Dexterity.
Sharp Dark Sword
Like refined but only C scaling in both even at max rank. So let’s pretend this one doesn’t exist.
Fire or Deep Dark Sword
Takes away all scaling but gives you 181 to both physical and its element damage. I’d only use this one if your Intelligence and Faith are too low to get a lot of use out of the Chaos version.
Raw Dark Sword
Takes away all scaling but gives you 287 physical damage, only do this one if you are a 100% dedicated mage and you don’t want a version with elements.
Crystal Dark Sword
C Strength, D Dexterity, and S Intelligence scaling with physical and magic damage. This one would be great in almost any situation except for Magic resistant enemies and bosses.
Simple Dark Sword
C Strength, D Dexterity, and A Intelligence Scaling with physical and magic damage. Why use this one over Crystal? Because this one can regenerate FP so you can cast more magic and miracles or use stomp more.
Chaos Dark Sword
Ooh spooky name, C Strength, D Dexterity, B Intelligence and Faith with physical and fire damage. If you are having a hard time choosing between fire and chaos just keep in mind, it’s element can be resisted. The scaling stats are great but the base damages are 50 lower, so if you have 30+ plus in both Int and Faith it might be good. It could be better than the Dancer sword as it has higher scaling, plus all the elements in one sword.
Lightning Dark Sword
Just like the Crystal Dark Sword except it has S scaling in Faith and Lightning Damage with no Intelligence scaling or magic damage. It’s good if you’re big on miracles but its usefulness is limited as one of the harder bosses resists lightning.
#Blessed Dark Sword
What a messed up name, Blessed Dark Sword? Make up your mind Dark Sword, nobody has time for your riddles! It’s like the Simple Dark Sword but scales with Faith. It sucks horribly other than it has a HP regen effect. It might be worth getting a second sword of any kind with that effect.
Dark Dark Sword
So nice you say it twice, it’s worth it for the “lols” if you ask me. Just like the Chaos Sword but it does Dark Damage, which is horrible because almost everything has some dark resistance.
Bleeding and Poison Dark Sword
Both C Strength and D Dexterity with 39 bleed or poison. Poison builds up until it causes the slow poison effect, which is not worth it as it is very slow. Bleeding is a good one and only a couple bosses resist it but for the scaling it’s bad. You would be better off with a Katana.
Thank you all for reading, watching, and the support. For more guides on various games stick around here on my blog. I got a few more and I am always working on finding new stuff. Or if you are a watch and not read person then you should check out my YouTube, every one of my guides has a companion video. These text guides are just for more numbers heavy stuff and other things that could make the video go on forever.
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