level 1 run ideas?

[KASS!]

Of course I know you start as wretch. The big question is what weapon to use? I know the serpent hunter takes no stats to use, but Radagon's soreseal gives me some stats to work with. Thanks!

[half a green doctor pepper]

broadsword

[Basarab Laiota]

I saw a guy on 4chan claim he used dual torches to clear the earlygame and midgame. So there's an idea?

[LuckyCheshire]

Dual Noble's Slender swords would probably do well. You only need one extra point of dex to wield them, and they take infusions well.

[Urist Microcline]

Zweihander!

[Butcher]

Black flame incantation since it eats % of hp. You can use turtle pope if you don't want to teleport to roundtable or talk with Malina. With items you can cast on level 0 as wretch.

[Xengre]

I just used a bunch of swords because they were decent and easy to get several early on then applied respective ash of war / elements as necessary. Ex. Sacred Blade, Flaming Strike, etc. There are better options like Noble Slender's or, say you want a strike weapon for a given enemy/boss, but these are a nice all-rounder option yo can get in bulk and get used to using. I farmed them at the first camp because I wanted to get rid of my club, but there might be a better mass buyable weapon early on that I don't remember (that I wasn't aware of at the time because I farmed these so early).

When not doing bleed or cold (or both) I often found Sacred Blade & Flaming strike, both of which can be gotten early, very good due to their unusually high attack value and many enemies are weak to one of the two (Holy is actually extremely strong despite the bad name it gets online, with mainly later core bosses being resistant but much of the game Holy dominates and where it doesn't bleed / cold often beat fire except on weaker mobs that die in only a few hits before proc is relevant). This is because they have both their base physical + elemental dmg + a strong buff that can be layered for further elemental dmg to counter a weakness. This can be especially powerful because there are not many pure elemental dmg melee weapons in the game, especially early on, and ash of war spam / magic spam of strong elemental attacks isn't as viable at RL1.

Further, you can boost it with various talisman and buffs. For example Sacred Charm can be gotten in Limgrave and you can use the Holy Mixed Physicks to further boost it. Same for fire mixed physicks and Flame Grant me Strength (boosts physical & fire). Fire charm is much later though at Mt. Gelmir. The fire Mixed can be gotten very early while the Holy isn't too far in, but definitely not as early if doing quests as the fire one.

Obviously, weapons with inherent bleed are great, and work well with cold as well such as the early Uchigatana. You can also use them with the blackflame weapon buff to deal a good DoT dmg to compensate for lack of dmg somewhat. Another option is the fire bleed based weapon buff on one of your weapons because it helps offset the much weaker bleed stat if also beating game with no weapon upgrades as the DoT helps maintain bleed preventing it from decaying between chances to attack.

Other buffs can be your friends. Don't forget to be nice to the guy selling Crab and buy up his stock. This plus the right talisman/buffs can make almost nothing 1-shot you at level 1.

I also used other weapons as needed. For example, if there was an NPC invader that I found had obnoxious attacks I might just set talisman / mixed physicks buff to have enough equip load to wield a great sword which would let me reliably stagger and poke the NPC making it a much easier lazy fight.

Misericorde is pretty godlike in a RL1 +0 weapon run. It has some really nice dmg and is quite early. So many basic mobs you can backstab to 1-tap (or close to it then finish) and because of its dmg and how crits work you often don't have to get complicated swapping weapons like on those tanky stone miners because you can just backstab 1-shot them. It is great for bosses you stagger, too. Imo, it was by far my favorite option if I could setup a riposte/backstab.

Beast-Repellent Torch is a nice convenience grab early just to reduce tedium. Then on enemies that it effects you can charge attack (or jump charge) to stun them then riposte.

The poison art of war was also a good one to setup on bosses (often works in 1 cast) to add to your overall DPS. Early on, at last before you get some dmg boosting buffs/talisman/crit boost talisman, it can out dps a riposte so for something like the Crucible bosses I would poison instead of riposte for greater overall dmg then on subsequent staggers riposte them unless poison wore off. Deadly poison might be even better but I never tried it as I kind of moved beyond DoTs after a point and mostly forgot they exist, except Blackflame, but in hindsight they should be really strong even when not cheesing with them as an indirect DPS boost.

[󠀡󠀡󠀡⁧⁧frieda]

iron balls/star fist, alabaster lord's sword (don't even have to meet int requirement), death's poker if you like looking at big numbers

[Yal]

Pulley Crossbow with bleed/frost bolts is amazing for applying status ailments, it's what carried me through Godskin Duo on my run. (Maybe also the Serpent Bow with Serpent Arrows for poison, or just buy a big stack of poison stones from the Caelid highway merchant)

Overall don't sleep on consumables, some of them are really good and you aren't gonna spend the runes on levelups anyway so you might as well put them to other uses. In particular Volcano pots are AMAZING once you unlock them.

[Stoque]

This doesn't exclusively have to be a rune level challenge, but I've always wanted to do a run where I can't equip any armaments whatsoever: no weapons, shields, staffs, seals, bows, or crossbows. Any damage would have to be done by falling, bare fist punching, or consumables with no incantation or AoW buffs.

[SuperXtreme500]

Originally posted by Stoque:

This doesn't exclusively have to be a rune level challenge, but I've always wanted to do a run where I can't equip any armaments whatsoever: no weapons, shields, staffs, seals, bows, or crossbows. Any damage would have to be done by falling, bare fist punching, or consumables with no incantation or AoW buffs.

This actually might be way easier with how powerful some consumables can be. However without this this run would be utter hell.

[Honk1]

I've never done a lvl 1 run, but when I played a low level run with low weapon level, I used a Bleed-infused Antspur Rapier with Poison Mist against bosses not immune against these status effects. That way, you have three status effects on one weapon and the damage over time really helps if your weapon damage is lacking.