Ranking All 16 Elden Ring Daggers From Worst to Best

This guide is a text version of the corresponding video from Rusty:

• Ranking All 16 Elden Ring Daggers From Worst to Best
  
• Elden Ring Patch 1.10

Introduction

Happy patch 1.10, everyone!

Get your daggers and thrusting swords ready, because that's all anyone's going to be using for the next three weeks.

• Crit damage increased,
  
• recovery time after crits decreased,
  
• increased poise damage after missing a crit,

so apparently even if you just suck at backstabbing, this patch still gives you something to work with.

№ 16 — Ivory Sickle

Thankfully, Dead Last was a breeze for this one. It's the Ivory Sickle.



Most of you don't even know it exists, and the ones who do know are incredibly jealous of your burdenless life.

• Split damage this early in the game is already off to a bad start, because that just means it has to muscle through two enemy defenses at the same time,
  
• can't be enchanted or buffed or swapped with any other Ash of War, so have fun with all that ankle training,
  
• it tops out at a C for dex and int scaling at plus 25,
  
• and yes, it demands you upgrade it with regular-ass smithing stones despite every other characteristic of this dagger suggesting it's a unique weapon.

I can't even make a good case for it in PvP, because they just nerfed Quickstep too.
It's one of the only daggers without a critical modifier, which makes no sense, because I had a fishhook caught in my thumb when I was seven.

I know this ♥♥♥♥ hurts, don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lie to me.

It's an albinauric weapon that contextualizes their dedication to the Haligtree, and it scales with every stat except Faith and Arcane.

Th-th-th-this has to be a joke.

I've tried to rationalize my way to an explanation, but I'm fully convinced how this weapon works is just an oversight, and the only reason it hasn't changed is because no one's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about it.

№ 15 — Crystal Knife

Same deal with the above.

• Can't enchant or buff it,
  
• can't infuse it,
  
• and Quickstep isn't exactly hot ♥♥♥♥ right now.

The stat requirements seem to favor Dex, but it isn't until you upgrade it all the way at the tippity-top when you realize Strength is just barely more useful.

Yeah, whatever, we can just give it a B in Int scaling so no one will care, right?

And daggers with Strength in Int scaling really just confuse me.

Like, you're leveling yourself into ♥♥♥♥ like the Ruin's Greatsword, Falling Star Beast Jaw, Meteoric Ore Blade, just real murder machines, you know?

And you decided this broken-off, pre-chewed blueberry-airhead-looking ♥♥♥♥ was gonna be the thing that carries you to Lord status?

Knife used by the Glintstone Miners to mine rock?
Why?
And no, it's not.

Every single one of these guys I've seen use either their staff or one of those massively oversized pickaxes.

I have not seen this weapon a single time other than right here in this chest.
What are you talking about?

№ 14 — Celebrant's Sickle

♥♥♥♥ you for making this weapon this hard to find, and ♥♥♥♥ you for putting just enough sickles in the game for it to not warrant its own category.

Giving a passive Rune Gain per hit on an enemy to a weapon I'm being forced to farm in the first place feels like a prank.

It feels like a practical joke.

You can say it penetrates blocking enemies all you want, but that becomes a pretty hard sell when you find out it recoils off anything bigger than a cutting board.

I may be willing to argue a small case if I'm going Keen Affinity on this one,since the damage does get pretty decent after a very long while, but decent on the best of days is all it'll ever be.

There's still plenty of daggers that overpower it.

№ 13 — Blade of Calling

I want this weapon to be good so badly, but it just isn't.

Split holy damage is already one strike against this weapon, but with the majority being physical damage, I didn't see it as too big a deal.

Still, it seems to just barely tail the Black Knife in AR, regardless of the player's Faith or Dex.

And although the weapon's skill consumes less FP than its alt goth counterpart, it's also considerably less useful.

The knockback on the bullet can easily launch people off the sides of cliffs and such, so I guess there's a small argument to be made in favor of it being an invasion weapon, but I think that's honestly me just looking for competence where there is very little.

It has suboptimal range even for a class of weapons with particularly little reach, and all the little drawbacks add up over time to the point where it just feels like choosing this over Black Knife or Erdsteel ends up being a losing battle.

№ 12 — Scorpion's Stinger

I know I'm not the first person that's asked this.
Why is there a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wolf on the pommel?
Wh-wh-wh-why is there a wolf on the pommel?



I feel like this was a Red Wolf dagger at some point, but just ended up being repurposed as a Rot weapon.

This is another dagger that would have benefited significantly from being able to replace the default skill, especially so because an Ash-like repeating thrust on a weapon that already has a quick enough moveset is a little pointless.

And if I'm going for a status build, whether or not the moveset is quick enough to proc is going to matter more to me than a few extra points of AR.

Even if a poison affinity would be kinda useless and redundant, it's not exactly a stretch to think that a Rot-aligned weapon would be infusible to some extent, considering there are no affinities that give you that particular status.

It only inflicts 50 Rot buildup, which is far from substantial, even for a dagger.

The deck scaling is nice, but even then, the AR still ends up getting left behind by other options, even though it has the best deck scaling of any unique dagger.

Nothing about this weapon makes sense.

• Why is there a wolf on the pommel?
  
• Why is repeating thrust the default weapon Ash
  
• when something like Quickstep would have given it more flexibility?
  
• And most puzzlingly, why can't we infuse it despite there not being a Rot ailment infusion?

№ 11 — Dagger

It's easy to be swooned by a 130% crit modifier and an S scaling in decks on keen affinities.

The damage certainly does work, but this dagger is an exemplary case of high damage not always being indicative of a good weapon.

The largest problem you're gonna run into is the hitbox.

The dagger is the shortest of any in its class, which is quite the setback when we're already talking about some of the shortest weapons.

Whiffing standard R1s is not uncommon.
Bigger enemies can just move slightly and completely exit your reach.

It's got some flexibility with different ashes of war, but that's really the only remarkable thing about it.
Additionally, with a 4% drop rate from highwaymen and regular foot soldiers, you're liable to run into at least five of these before even remembering you have them in your inventory.

It's very average.
It's as average as a morning commute to the office and it's about as remarkable as a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dentist appointment.

№ 10 — Wakizashi

This one's just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weird, man.

In terms of raw damage, Wakazashi actually works insanely well as an offhand weapon.

If you run all the infusible daggers through a build calculator and measure them up against each other, the Wakazashi takes the competition pretty consistently.

It's single-handedly the highest DPS infusible dagger.
If you aren't power stancing them.

Because Wakazashi is technically a short sword, I guess.
And not a dagger.

This weapon is only power stanceable with other katanas or a second Wakazashi, which massively bottlenecks DPS when dual wielding.

At which point it becomes laughably bad compared to other options.

But using the weapon this way allows you to access the parry ash of war of dual katana builds since you wouldn't be able to put it on a katana normally.

And as far as daggers go, the reach is actually pretty decent.
It's the fourth longest dagger in the game.

But it still ends up just feeling awkward because the general length of katanas is so ridiculous in comparison that setting yourself up with dual katanas might just lead to you whiffing attacks with the Wakazashi.

Also, not a dagger.
Like, it's just not.

The tanto is what you're looking for here.
I don't know why that bugs me, it just does.

№ 9 — Black Knife

This one's always elicited mixed feelings from me.
I don't dislike the Black Knife.

On the one hand, the unique skill demolishes big health bars, making it invaluable on challenge and low-level runs.

And despite it being split between physical and holy damage, I don't ever feel like it underperforms that egregiously.

On the other hand, the skill is downright useless in anything related to PvP because of how telegraphed it is.

In addition to there being a magical sweet spot where, if the other person knows how to exploit, the bullet is pretty much guaranteed to miss.

It needs 25 FP to perform, so you really can't afford to whiff that much.
And holy damage is holy damage at the end of the day.
Sprinkle gold and dust on a turd, it's still gonna smell like ♥♥♥♥.

However, you'll get much better use out of this than Blade of Calling if you're building Dex and Faith.

It has slightly longer range, and no matter how you split your stats, the Black Knife always seems to edge past Blade of Calling in terms of raw AR.

The only exception being if you're leveling Strength instead of Dex, but there's already a much better option for Strength-Faith anyways.

I'm willing to give so much slack to this weapon because of how much it helped me in earlier playthroughs of the game.

And despite it having some pretty glaring weaknesses, I can still appreciate that it's able to pull its weight in situations where it counts.

№ 8 — Misericorde

This is the stunting dagger.

Not practical by any means, gets lackluster results from pretty much every affinity, and it has low base damage even for a dagger.

It somehow ends up having the lowest Dex scaling of any Keen Affinity dagger in the game, too.

It has the longest range of any dagger, despite being obviously built for backstabs and parries.

A lot about this weapon doesn't seem like it makes sense, but this is all done in an effort to mitigate that 140% critical modifier and make it as reasonable as it can possibly be.

Because if you didn't have all those extra setbacks traffic-jamming the ♥♥♥♥ out of its damage, there would be zero reasons to use any other dagger.

It would be the dominant choice for all situations.

This puts this dagger in a very weird place where it functions fine enough as a combat weapon,
but only ever sees its maximum potential in a very specific playstyle.

It's only really usable in straightforward combat if you keep it equippable in your main hand and then quickly switch to it when your opponent is stance-broken.

But feeling like I'm trying to open a padlock every time I find a crit window gets tiring after a while.

Luckily, patch 1.10 has given an edge to backstabbing bastards with all of its various buffs to critical hitting and even critical missing, and it's clear that the Misericorde deserved a little better than just being a parry run tool.

And I think after these changes, it's finally to a point where it's heading in an okay direction.

№ 7 — Erdsteel dagger

I feel like I should publicly apologize for a lapse in judgment here.
I used to hate this thing.

It has the lowest total damage of any dagger in the game on more than a few different affinities,
including Heavy, Fire, and Poison or Blood affinity pretty much just turns it into a joke.

No matter what my stats were, I could never get it to do any significant damage.

Even tried going for the Keen and Sacred affinities like people suggested, and I just couldn't get it to pull any weight.

That's when I discovered the secret to making this dagger pop.
The Flame Art affinity.

All that faith scaling that torques this weapon's AR into the aether without the unrewarding chore of using holy damage.

This is the single affinity to place on this weapon.
Nothing else even matters.

This makes it unusually strong against certain enemies and unnecessarily restrictive against all others.

I'm not even exaggerating to be funny here.
I cannot stress how large this AR gap is.

The Occult affinity gives you 401 damage on a plus 25 with an 80 in all your stats.
That's a 600 plus attack difference.

№ 6 — Parrying dagger

A keen parrying dagger has one of the highest deck scalings of any weapon in the game, but the extremely low base damage ultimately prevents it from being too outstanding.

On the plus side, the parry itself is actually very good.

It has nine active frames, which isn't exactly enough to match the efficiency of small shields, but still more than what you'll find on any other weapon.

This gives it really good synergy with the Misericorde, but since most daggers have critical modifiers that exceed 100, you can just as comfortably power stance it with other daggers, or offhand it with the Rapier or the Executioner's Axe.

But you know what?
Don't let me tell you how to live your life.
Power stance it with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hairdryer if you want.

I don't give a ♥♥♥♥.

The design of the dagger gives plenty of cosplay value, since it's more visually inviting than parrying people with a kitchen strainer, with the added benefit of people in PvP seeing you dual wielding daggers and just assuming you're some cheeky status build, making the parry that much juicier.

I can't consistently recommend it over more efficient options, and I still feel like the dagger's lack of compatibility with other parry ashes like Carrion Retaliation or Golden Parry was a bit of a missed opportunity, but it's competent enough with some style points to boot, and I think that's enough.

№ 5 — Bloodstained Dagger

One of the very few strength options for daggers the game ever actually gives you, and I'd feel like complaining more about how little sense that makes if this dagger wasn't so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good.

It's a rare drop from Demihuman Chiefs, which is, I think, the single most annoying characteristic of this knife.

Demihuman Chiefs aren't plentiful.

There's a few of them hanging around, sure, but it's not exactly the kind of mob I can find gatherings of at a time.

But this is one of the few instances where it actually feels like the farming is somewhat worth it, because the Bloodstained Dagger is one of the most underrated non-unique weapons in the game, in my opinion.

Innate status buildup is enough to shove any weapon into the top third of any list, but the Bloodstained Dagger has another trick that makes it even more valuable.

This is THE dagger for fire ashes.

Fire scales with Strength, and although the Heavy Affinity has an A in Strength scaling, Fire Affinity still ends up being much more valuable.

Not to mention you've got access to ashes like Flaming Strike and Flame of the Redmanes,
two skills that should honestly be illegal on this kind of weapon.

№ 4 — Great Knife

I have no idea how this ended up on one of the starting classes.

Innate bleed, flexible, good base damage, S-scaling for decks with Keen Affinity,
♥♥♥♥'s sake, I mean Dante didn't start with his Devil Sword in the first ♥♥♥♥♥♥' mission, he started with a pair of peashooters and a half-eaten bag of chips.

You have a status ailment that scales with max HP available from the start of the game, which gives you plenty of room to plan an expedition to Fort North ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the late game and, I don't know, kill a giant immobile dragon that'll set you up with enough runes to unlock sandwich-making simulator difficulty for the first third of the game.

Keen and Blood Affinities tend to be the two most popular choices for this one, but I personally think the Occult Affinity is the best way to squeeze out as much as you can from this weapon, and sure, you miss out on around 30 blood buildup per strike, but it also gives you an A in Arcane Scaling, so you can still hold on to some of the damage Blood Affinities usually sacrifice.

Not a huge fan of the toothpick-sized reach, but it power stances pretty comfortably with Reduvia, so I guess it doesn't really matter too much.

№ 3 — Cinquedea

On strength builds, this dagger consistently ends up with the highest physical damage out of any
other.

It's the second longest dagger in the game, which I'd hope so, because it's technically not a
dagger.

I'm stuck with Quickstep on a dagger that I probably would've slapped Quickstep on anyways, because the fact that it powers up bestial incantations means I'm gonna be sliding around and spamming lots of rocks at people.

I get that people may not like the flexibility of unique weapons that don't allow you to change the ash, but Quickstep is not the worst skill to be stuck with on a dagger, even if it did get nerfed.

Backstabbing can be done a little more comfortably, and I feel like going for risky criticals is something we're gonna be seeing a lot of here for the next few weeks, so I suggest taking advantage of it.

The Cinquedea's value lies in more than just having the highest physical AR.

The recovery time of Bestial Sling, being as astronomically small as it is, means it can be cast in between dagger strikes to flinch small enemies.

It stacks multiplicatively with the Clawmark seal, making Stone of Gurranq even more of an oppressive force than it already is.

And the negligible dead time between casting and whipping out an R1 means it shreds HP and catches rolls in PvP pretty easily.

№ 2 — Glintstone Criss

You know that over-decorated butter knife that everyone says looks cool?

Yeah, what if we gave it a weapon skill that rivals the damage of Comet while costing less FP, and then gave it a follow-up stab that just mulches anything in a specific direction?

Wonderful idea.
Welcome to Ubisoft.

I can't ♥♥♥♥-talk this dagger.
I'm in love with it.
It's probably my favorite in the game.

The design is outstanding, the base damage is already high even with it split between physical and magic, and it just keeps getting stupider the more you level yourself up.

And I don't feel the need to replace the Ash on it because why would I?
This is the ultimate ganking weapon.

You can either one-shot ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ from 22 HP with maybe one or two basic buffs and a bit of stealth, or you can delay the follow-up stab slightly to confuse people in duels.

I don't even need to explain to you how quickly the weapon skill can just fry ♥♥♥♥ in PvE.
If you've ever used it, you just know.
This is what the Crystal Knife should have been.

Very similar damage and scaling across the board, but just a little bit of finesse on the weapon skill makes all the difference it'll ever need.

Don't be like Crystal Knife.
Crystal Knife lives with his mom and never cleans his sheets.

№ 1 — Reduvia

It's the Reduvia. Yep, that's what it is.

Most dagger rankings you see are gonna have superhero movie-level predictability.

I wish I could've prepared a bigger surprise for you, but when the largest part of what decides the
best non-unique dagger is focused on how well it powers-dances with the Reduvia, there's very little room for nuance.

So I'm just gonna assume you knew this going in.
Simply put, nothing comes close to this dagger.

It has the physical AR of Tsinkwadea, an iteration of the Blood Blade Ash that doesn't mulch your HP when you spam it, enough bleed buildup to compete with Blood Affinity weapons in its class without the damage compromise, and be in Arcane scaling when fully upgraded.

No matter what build you're running, as long as you're focusing Arcade, Reduvia consistently ends up being the second or third highest in physical damage.

If you're a Dex-Arc build, Reduvia beats them all.
If you're a Strength-Arc build, comparing it to Heavy Affinities, Reduvia still beats them all.
If you're a Pure Arcane, comparing it to Occult Affinities, Reduvia beats them all.

When using the weapon skill, the swipe of the dagger is an attack all on its own, which also
inflicts bleed, meaning you can reasonably proc in a single hit if someone's mentally crammed
enough to stay in your face.

You don't even need to do that much heavy lifting to get it, you can just head to where Nerijus invades you, use Yura as a decoy, and the dude practically beats himself.

And yes, it's pronounced Nerijus.
I found out it's a Lithuanian name, in English it translates to Without Swallowing.

There, write the punchline of this joke in the comments.

———————————————

📝 Elden Ring Wiki and other Steam guides

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3352516135
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3347915674
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006733096

[Sparkbag]

some enemies resist bleeding, but no enemy is immune to the blade of death...
sorry, but the black knife is obviously top 1 for me

[bAllu]

you clearly never met a black knife spammer in pvp

[Luzmiere]

There are actually two Reduvias to aquire in a single run

[RobinRobout]

Honestly Wakizashi should be higher as aside from the Cinquedea at 99 strength it is the highest damaging and decently long ranged dagger. And while you lose the potentially okay powerstancing moveset of daggers you gain a weirdo moveset only possible with a wakizashi and another dagger of constantly using the first L1 into R1 repeatedly which was surprisingly good in my knife only run.

Also Parrying dagger is pretty underwhelming because aside its ash of war is usable on every other infusable knife to the same effect, meaning its only upsides are damage value and range which are fine but nothing exceptional. It has no niche other than a fashion piece when you could be using a parry on a knife that might actually benefit you if you swing it or crit with it.

[WhiteBoy]

fuck outta here

[Krazy Wallet]

Every time... I want the Blade of Calling to be better. Every time, I'm disappointed

[Ludvig_the_Red]

nice guide