With the latest 1.12 patch applying changes and nerfs in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, which weapons still retain their strength? In this guide, we list the top 10 most overpowered weapons to wield after the patch, as well as the methods for obtaining them. 

Best Elden Ring DLC Post Nerf Weapons - Top 10 Overpowered New Weapons Post Patch for Shadow of the Erdtree

Are you looking for a new weapon to main? Maybe you want something strong, but you're tired of the more obvious options, maybe you were using the silliness of the perfume bottles before they got nerfed and you've decided it's maybe time to use something just a touch less cheesy, a touch less prone to be nerfed. Maybe you would prefer to have an actual fight with the bosses. Just one where have a bit of a solid advantage because the weapon you're using is just playing good. These are the weapons that are far above average, sometimes for very unique reasons or just ones that aren't talked about or known a whole lot and they are some of the strongest things in the entire DLC aside from the obvious ones despite barely being talked about at all in comparison to their much more popular counterparts. Let's check out these Elden Ring DLC post patch weapons!

#1. Lizard Greatsword

This thing aside from having reasonably high AR with heavy or occult scaling specifically is most notable because of its unique heavy attack, which makes it almost like a hidden bonus Smithscript weapon as it fires out the tongue of the lizard as a projectile as part of a thrusting attack. However, unlike Smithscript weapons, this actually functions rather powerfully because the tongue projectile counts as a separate hit instance than the heavy attack itself. So both of these happen when you press the button meaning that you can hit enemies with both the weapon itself and the projectile in the same motion. 

Elden Ring DLC Lizard Greatsword Location: How to get Lizard Greatsword?

To get one for yourself, this one is an RNG drop from the fanged Imp enemies that wield it in the catacomb dungeons. The first of which and the easiest to farm is within the Fog Rift Catacombs which is just Northwest of the Castle Front Sight of Grace and Front of Castle Ensis. Inside of this dungeon then, it is just about 10 feet forward from the grace itself. Kill the enemy if the weapon drops, if not, rest at the grace and repeat second. 

#2. Serpent Flail

This is really powerful falil, what makes it special is its unique Ash of War, it bathes the weapon in a heavy fire damage buff that stays applied for around 30 seconds for all of your light attacks. But if you do a heavy attack or a roll attack, a jump attack, any attack that makes your weapon collide with the ground, the buff will explode in a large pop of bonus fire damage and consume itself going away. It costs an extremely low amount to FP to use the skill, so you can spam just apply the buff and heavy attack. And this just allows for some interesting combos. For example, you can run this as a charged heavy two-handed build, you can power stance them and do a double buff jump attack build. It's definitely a bit more management heavy than just hitting with a broken weapon itself once or twice. But it is a really fun unique way to play and it is a flail that is quite solid.

Elden Ring DLC Serpent Flail Location: How to get Serpent Flail?

To get this one for yourself, it is in the Fog Rift Fort area which is access from above in the Scadu Altus Region, the closest grace is Scadu Altus, West. 

#3. Black Steel Twinblade

This one is a bit rarer to find and thus a bit lesser known. What it actually is then is a twinblade with the Godkin peeler heavy attack move set meaning bonus hits per input especially on things like the sprint attack which is just Godly. And on top of that it has base physical and holy damage while also still being infusible with other elements or with ashes of war, so you can even put things like bleed on the weapon or just apply blood flame blade as a buff to it, then do hit-and run tactics with it. 

Elden Ring DLC Black Steel Twinblade Location: How to get Black Steel Twinblade?

As far as how to get this one, it comes from a specific Black Knight enemy at the top of the hill in the Scadu Altus Region. This area is accessed from the back left side of the main Mesmer Soldier Camp outside of the Shadow Keep. Specifically from the back left corner of the camp, you will find this little way up the hill and you can just wrap around. And then at the top of this by the tents, you will see the Knight enemy waiting to be killed, so that he can drop this weapon for you.

#4. Smithscript Cirque

It is a pair of backhand blade weapons and if you haven't tried this weapon type yet, both of the backhand blade exclusive weapon skills in the DLC are absolutely incredible. But then while this weapon cannot be given weapon buffs as far as things like blood flame blade, it used to as well before the recent patch have the same bug as most Smithscript weapons where you can set it to flame art scaling through the affinity system and it would barely lose any of its physical damage. So it basically just gained a ton of bonus damage as fire. But this was patched to make it much less prominent that said the same patch increased the range pretty specifically of this exact weapon, because this is the only backhand blade with throwing options. You do lose some parts of the move set to achieve it, but what you gain is double hit throne projectiles on your heavy attack, your sprint heavy, your dodge heavy, your back step heavy, your jumping heavy, just any variation of a heavy attack with this weapon will throw both blades forward in a bit of an arc. And that just lets you play around with a lot of funky ranged versions of concepts that would normally be locked to melee like a sprint attack build or a jump attack build. As well, due to it being a curving projectile rather than a straight line, it also has quite silly tracking on the throne attacks compared to the other Smithscript weapons which just fire where you're originally aiming. 

Elden Ring DLC Smithscript Cirque Location: How to get Smithscript Cirque?

To get this one for yourself then, it is in the Ruined Forge of Starfall Past located just Southwest of the Moorth Ruins Site of Grace in Scadu Altus Region. 

#5. Dancing Blade of Ranah

It Is boostable by a ton of different sources, but the main advantage here comes especially if you use the iron jar aromatic to give yourself neared infinite poise while using the momentum of the spin attack to cross gaps while also using multi-hit talismans on the ridiculously quick and consistent hits of the weapon. And suddenly just have a very strong and capable build just based around a really good pair of weapons with a skill completely unique to themselves. 

Elden Ring DLC Dancing Blade of Ranah Location: How to get Dancing Blade of Ranah?

If you want these, they are from the Southern Nameless Mausoleum which is just off of the Cerulean coast west Site of Grace. 

#6. Red Bear's Claw

It does have a lot of advantages, it scales better with strength than the other beast claws even when they are set to heavy, it has base bleed on the weapon with a relatively fast hitting move set to begin with. And the unique skill red bear hunt hits the perfect amount of times across all three inputs to activate the final bonus of the successive hit talismans and it does a lot of attacking quickly to help apply bleed too. Though it does take quite a large opening to get the full three inputs out. Outside of that, the move set of beast claws is really solid, they have a ton of forward momentum on most of their attacks and you can even cancel out of charged heavy attacks with a roll to do a faint attack that has its own unique animation which just adds even more options to your move, set to make the weapon much more adaptable. 

Elden Ring DLC Red Bear's Claw Locatoin: How to get Red Bear’s Claw?

As far as how to get this one for yourself then, this comes from the northern nameless Mausoleum found on the cliff on your map, from the Ancient Ruins Base Site of Grace, it is just a short horse ride to the Southwest until you reach the actual cliffline. Then you need to walk past the blocked Spiritspring and up the hill to find the rocks that need to be hit to clear it up. Then head back to the Spiritspring, ride it up to the second level to find another Spiritspring and this second one will take you to the top of the cliff line where the mausoleum is waiting for you.

#7. Flowerstone Gravel

This is a pretty unique weapon being an Arcane scaling lightning weapon quite specifically seeming to have its lightning damage, actually only scale with arcane. But while most of the weapon is a relatively standard hammer, the unique weapon skill is what makes this one quite special. This works a bit like the honed bolt spell from the base game, hold the weapon up lightning strikes on your target location. The main difference though is that this is red lightning and that it also applies a debuff to any enemy that is hit that lowers their lightning damage degation by around 10%, meaning that you do 10% bonus lightning damage after hitting an enemy with this. You can then either use that to then just use the skill even more on them and make the same weapon skill, do more damage afterwards or you can pair it with just about any other possible source of lightning damage in the entire game as a way of boosting other things. Even just a regular lightning incantation build based around that can get a damage boost from running this as a debuff machine like in your offhand. 

Elden Ring DLC Flowerstone Gravel Location: How to get Flowerstone Gravel?

As far as getting it, this one is really simple. Once you have defeated Bale The Dread in the Jagged Peak, you can find this simply waiting for you on the floor beside the Grand Altar of Dragon Communion SiTe of Grace in the Jaged Peak Region. 

#8. Sword of Night 

It has the Serpentbone Blade Katana moveset which is multi-hit heavy attacks which are great for its natural bleed buildup. It has only B deck scaling at max upgrade, but it has high base damage on both the physical and magic side of things. And the real kicker of this thing is that it just damages most of the way through blocking. It just completely counters people using shields. This makes it more of a PVP weapon than anything else and a niche one at that. But as well as that, any enemy any NPC that uses blocking, this will absolutely shred. It basically functions like a mini hand of Melania. Outside of that with a relatively strong unique weapon skill that is somewhat similarly hard to dodge as Waterfowl Dance and it has the special effect of letting it break recovery frames directly into the lightattack combo, which is quite a killer idea for PVP specifically.

Elden Ring DLC Sword of Night Location: How to get Sword of Night?

As far as how to get Sword of Night weapon, it requires the entire sorcery story line. Go to the Cathedral of Manus Metyr, talk to Count Ymir inside, then go to the center of the Southern Finger Ruins and blow into the Finger hole. Then go back to the Cathedral and talk to Count Ymir once again, then you want to go to the Northeastern Finger Ruins and blow the hole on the finger in the middle of that one. Then go back to Count Ymir one more time, exhaust his dialogue, have a rest and then interact with his chair to have it reveal a secret path that leads to the boss of this questline. And then after some drama plays out in the cathedral afterwards, you can choose to give Jolan The Swordsman of Knight, either an Iris or of Grace for a spirit summon reward or an Iris of Occultation which will get you this Elden Ring DLC post patch weapon 1.12.

#9. Ansbach's Longbow

This one is broken in the most literal of ways, this is a relatively plain mainly dexterity scaling Longbow outside of having a unique weapon skill, fan shot. This fires out an arc of 8 shots, but the game doesn't treat it like it, it treats it like a cone of damage. If you hit an enemy with just one of these arrows from fans shot, it counts them as being hit by all 8 of them. It increases the damage as if they were hit by all 8 of them and then applies status buildup as if they were hit by all 8 of them. If you like the idea of a bow build, this is the best one to currently do it with, as it's arguable that even a broken bow build isn't completely game shattering, it just makes it a viable play style, that doesn't hurt you to actively use. That said, it does still consume 8 arrows to use the effect, so it's not necessarily easy to use on repeat. 

Elden Ring DLC Ansbach's Longbow Location: How to get Ansbach’s Longbow?

To get this one, it requires some NPC storyline progression. Once you are in the Scadu Altus Region, exhaust horn sense dialogue at the high road cross Side of Grace, then talk to Needle Knight Leta, she will suggest that she should hunt someone down either choose hornscent or choose to suggest no one. Then go rest, and then the next time you talk to Leta, she will claim her target is now hornscent. You can either help her in her invasion of hornscent which would be done down in the courtyard of the elevator from the store house first floor Site of Grace in the Shadow Keep. Or you can confront Messmer in the dark chamber. Either one of these will progress the story state forward to the next step and move Leta on to her next target which is Ansbach. This will only happen after you have found the secret right scroll on the fourth floor of the Specimen Storehouse and give it to Ansbach. And if all of these prerequisites have been met, talking to Leta again at the high road cross will have her mention that will be going for Ansbach. And when this happens, there will be summon signs that appear in the room that he used to be standing in in the storehouse library. 

#10. Barbed Staff-Spear

This is an incredibly unique weapon in a number of ways. It is just pretty much a pure faith scaling weapon. What makes it special is that it has base bleed buildup on the weapon and it has a unique skill that fires out an absolute reign of holy arcs. And the fun part is for whatever reason, these do seem to apply the weapons bleed buildup at range. So you can fire out a barrage of holy arcs that also apply bleed to your enemies with a weapon that scales extremely well with faith as a main stat. The only real negative for this one then is despite firing out like 20 or more arcs every time you cast it, that does seem to be an internal cool down on how frequently an enemy can take damage. So even if every one of these visually connects with the enemy, they will only take damage in around 5 chunks. Most players will get this one eventually as it is just a required fight for entry to the Abyssal Woods Region. 

Elden Ring DLC Barbed Staff-Spear Location: How to Get Barbed Staff-Spear?

Specifically it comes from Jori Elder Inquisitor, the boss of the Darklight Catacombs dungeon, located in the lower area of Shadow Altus on the way out from the Castle Watering Hole coffin exit.