Demon's Souls English Wiki: Items and Equipment

1: The damage types the weapon deals. From left to right Pure Physical, Blunt, Slashing, Piercing. Different enemies are strong or weak to the various damage types. Pure Physical damage is ok against everything, but not strong or weak to any particular enemy. Some weapons can deal multiple damage types. Each attack from a weapon only inflicts one category of damage. For example, straight sword will use pure physical for normal attacks, and will use piercing for a strong R2 attack; daggers likely use slashing for regular attacks and piercing for strong and backstabs.

2: The weapon type. This affects the actual attacks you perform by pressing R1 or R2, and if it can parry or block when used in the left hand or two-handed. Some smaller light weapons also deal more damage from parry counters or backstabs.

3: A weapons actual Physical attack power. The first number is the weapons base, inherent attack power. The second number after a "+\-" is the bonus damage it is gaining from your statistics (see 6: AddedParams). In the example shown above, the "+4" is the small damage bonus for that character using that weapon.

4: A weapons Magic attack power. Some weapons deal inherent Magical damage. If a weapon does NOT already deal Fire or Magic damage, you can enhance it with Sticky White Stuff or one of the weapon enhancement spells to give it a powerful temporary Magic damage boost. Again, as with physical attack power, this inherent damage may be boosted by AddedParams.

5: A weapons Fire attack power. Some weapons deal inherent Fire damage. If a weapon does NOT already deal Fire or Magic damage, you can enhance it with Turpentine or Black Turpentine to give it a temporary (but powerful) Fire damage boost. Fire damage is only very rarely boosted by AddedParams.

6: AddedParams is the bonus damage your weapon receives from your statistics. From left to right, the 4 symbols are for Strength, Dexterity, Magic, and Faith. A weapon can have a rank of S, A, B, C, D, or E in any, all, or none of these attributes! The higher the rank is, the greater the bonus it derives from your stats. This damage is added on to the base damage of the weapon as shown in 3:, 4: and 5. So, as an example, either a Thief or a Priest could wield the Moonlight sword and perform attacks exactly the same way, but the Priest will expect do significatly higher damage because the weapon AddedParams indicate a strong bonus from the Faith attribute where the Priest should excel.
- Note that the AddedParams bonus damage values for Strength and Dexterity generally affect the Physical attack power item 3, and the Magic and Faith AddedParams the intrinsic Magic attack power item 4.
- Weapons with high AddedParam ranks scale well with high statistics, In the case of some weapons with high AddedParam bonuses, they may actually be weaker than a weapon with high base damage attributes and low or no AddedParam bonuses until your statistics reach a higher level. This makes them stronger weapons for high level characters, but possibly worse at lower levels.

7: Special attack properties. From left to right: Bleeding, Poison, Plague, and Critical Strike. The higher the number, the better the chance of inflicting that status ailment. Bleed, Poison, and Plague all inflict damage over time. Poison and Plague also cut the effect of healing items, with Plague being the stronger of the two. Critical strike may deal a highly damaging blow.
- According to JP wiki, these damages act over 60 seconds, and divide by 60 to damage per second. For example, 360 Bleeding of Makoto if victim lost blood (heart beat sound) will affect 6dmg/sec for 60 sec
- Critical maybe adds directly when you do backstab/parry/critical attack move dmg, since it does not create critical effect in other cases??

8: DamageCut %% is the percentage of Physical/Magical damage absorbed when you block with a weapon (this also applies to shields). If you are holding a large weapon in the offhand and block, or two handing a weapon and block, these are the percentages of physical/magical damage that will be soaked. Unsurprisingly, most weapons are greatly inferior to shields for this purpose. An exception is the Large Sword of Moonlight, which has a huge 80% Magic damage cut.

9: HitRes is the impact resistance of a weapon (or shield) while blocking. The higher this number, the stronger a hit you can take without being staggered or having your guard blown back. Blocking an attack essentially trades the HP damage for Stamina, so the highest HitRes you can get is good not just for withstanding more hits, but also because it more efficiently dissipates the damage (less stamina hit per damage absorbed)

10: ReqXP shows the required statistics to use this piece of equipment. From left to right the 4 symbols are for Strength, Dexterity, Magic, and Faith. You may be able to two hand it and get past a slightly low Strength stat score by pressing Triangle (this gives you effectively 1.5 x Strength). If you do not meet the requirements for weapons, the only penalty is reflected in a negative damage bonus as you will see reflected in the numbers shown above. However, this damage penalty is quite high, and you may find that being even 1 point short in an attribute results in such a severe penalty that almost any other weapon is a better choice. For shields, not meeting the requirement will result in a larger stamina impact when blocking, and the shield bash damage can be affected. [?? Exact effect of insufficient stats for catalyst/talisman??]

11: Duration really is Durability, shown as "Current/Max". The offensive or defensive power of a piece of equipment does not degrade slowly as it is worn down, but as durability approaches zero the item may break, which makes it dramatically less effective. Some pieces have exceptionally low or or high durability, so expect to pay often and a lot to repair your Silver Coronet or Blind and katanas, but a Tower Shield can take a lot of abuse. All can be repaired at the blacksmiths in the Nexus or in the mines at 2-1, and any hand-held item can be repaired in the field using the "Ed's Grindstone" consumable item. Besides normal use and abuse, there are places your equipment can be degraded dramatically, such as the acid spew from the face bugs in the Latria swamp. Get into the habit of visiting Boldwin whenever you return to the Nexus to get your gear back in peak shape.

12: Weight. Most important for characters with low Endurance scores, some weapons or pieces of gear are exceptionally heavy, and may impede your movement speed.

page_revision: 30, last_edited: 1258534375|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z (%O ago)

Demon's Souls English Wiki