Best daggers in Elden Ring
Go Rogue in The Lands Between with these brutal daggers.
The best daggers in Elden Ring are often underrated compared to other weapon types, demanding fast reactions to dodge around enemy attacks and get in close before carving them up with rapid slashes, backstabs and parries. But our best dagger picks embrace their excellence as highly agile weapons, able to land brutal backstabs and high critical damage before your opponents have a chance to react.
Given their nimble nature, it’s perhaps no surprise that daggers in Elden Ring largely rely on your character’s Dexterity. However, some of the best daggers combine their physical attack with elemental damage or status effects such as Bleed, opening up the possibility to build your character around the dagger that suits your play style with a melee or magic-user. The lightweight nature of daggers also makes them ideal for dual-wielding, either as a pair of the same dagger for a focused barrage or a combination of different blades to inflict a mixture of deadly effects on your foes.
This guide will tell you all you need to know about the best daggers in Elden Ring, including where to find them, the minimum stats you’ll need to wield them, and their unique attributes.
Best daggers in Elden Ring
Exchanging the reach of standard swords for lightning-fast attack speed and especially deadly critical attacks, daggers are the ideal Elden Ring weapon for players looking to get up close and personal with their enemies. Leaning into their classic place as the favoured tool of rogues and assassins, the best Elden Ring daggers rely on high Dexterity and their low weight to complement characters who prefer staying light on their feet, dodging incoming blows - or parrying them - before landing backstabs or critical strikes on vulnerable foes.
While daggers can be equipped alongside a shield or another type of weapon, they’re often used to dual-wield alongside another dagger. Doing so enables the ability to powerstance, accessing a new set of moves that unleashes attacks with both weapons in your hands. If you’re a fan of powerstancing, daggers are among the most effective - and fun - weapons to roll with, so read on below for our top picks for the best daggers in Elden Ring.
Miséricorde
The Miséricorde isn’t just one of the best daggers in Elden Ring, it’s also one of the first you can find in the game. While exploring Stormveil Castle, you can use a Stonesword Key to access an armoury room where a corpse holds the blade.
Requiring just 7 Strength and 12 Dexterity to wield - which most characters should have from the beginning of the game - the Miséricorde scales its raw physical damage with additional points in each stat, particularly benefitting from extra Dex.
Like many daggers, the Miséricorde comes with Quickstep as its default weapon skill, allowing for a handy way to dodge around your enemies and line up backstabs. While backstabs are potent with most daggers, the Miséricorde is especially deadly thanks to boasting the highest critical damage value in the game, maximising attacks delivered to vulnerable opponents. It might lack a Blood Loss effect, but when it comes to characters looking to parry and backstab their way to Elden Lord, no dagger has a sharper point.
Reduvia
This jagged blood-dagger is dropped by its suitably crimson-stained owner Bloody Finger Nerijus, who wields two Reduvia daggers when invading the player close to Murkwater Catacombs in Limgrave. It’s the fight in which Bloody Finger Hunter Yura will help you out.
As its bloody origins imply, Reduvia is a dagger that specialises in bleeding your foes dry by inflicting Blood Loss - both with its standard attacks and its unique Reduvia Blood Blade skill. The weapon skill fires out a barrage of flying slashes that act like projectiles, causing physical damage and building up Bleed even faster than normal attacks.
The Reduvia requires 5 Strength, 13 Dexterity and 13 Arcane to use, with additional points in Arcane helping to increase both its standard damage and the rate of its Bleed effect. Even if you favour Strength and Dexterity, you’ll still benefit from increased damage. With Blood Loss being such a powerful status effect and Reduvia able to quickly trigger its effects, the dagger ranks as one of Elden Ring’s top weapons for Bleed and Arcane builds as a whole. The only shame is that you’ll need to start a New Game+ to dual-wield two, as you can only acquire the dagger once per playthrough.
Black Knife
The Black Knife is the best dagger for characters looking to build around Faith as well as Dexterity. The assassin’s blade can be obtained by defeating the Black Knife Assassin outside Atlus Plateau’s Sainted Hero's Grave dungeon, who shows off its powerful unique moves and weapon skill.
Once you have the 8 Strength, 12 Dexterity and 18 Faith required to wield the Black Knife, you’ll be able to make use of its unique Blade of Death skill, which swings the player into the air before launching a slash of holy energy at their enemy. On a hit, the skill causes holy damage - boosted by additional points in Faith - and both reduces the target’s maximum health while draining their HP. The blade’s mixture of physical and holy damage can be inflicted at brutal speed using its alternate heavy attack to many other daggers, which rapidly slashes the target with a series of blows.
Its unique moves, powerful weapon skill and holy damage make the Black Knife excellent for many character builds, but especially those focusing on investing in Faith. Thanks to its reasonable other stat requirements, you could even combine it with another bigger primary weapon for its health-sapping ability alone.
Glintstone Kris
Requiring 16 Intelligence, 5 Strength and 12 Dexterity stats, the Glintstone Kris is arguably the go-to dagger for players looking to complement their magic build with some close-range melee. It requires a bit more work to obtain than other weapons, being offered as a reward for allying with Sorceress Sellen in her fight against Witch Hunter Jerren during her questline. That also requires defeating both Radahn and Rennala, meaning you’ll need to progress a far way into the game before you're able to get it.
The Glintstone Kris boasts a unique weapon skill that casts a magical bolt similar to the Glintstone Pebble spell when tapped, or can be charged into a more powerful blast similar to the Comet spell that can then be followed with a sliding stab from the blade. The magical skill scales with Intelligence, making the dagger incredibly powerful in the hands of magic-users.
Aside from its skill, the Glintstone Kris deals a good balance of physical and magical damage that can also be scaled by Dexterity and Strength to a lesser degree, although its lower critical strike value when attacking in melee means that it’s best used for its magical skill.
Scorpion's Stinger
If demolishing your opponents with horrific scarlet rot is your way to play, look no further than the Scorpion's Stinger dagger. This blade pairs the scarlet rot status effect with effective Dexterity scaling for a mighty threat to bosses and players alike.
The Scorpion's Stinger requires just 6 Strength and 12 Dexterity to wield, scaling especially well with extra points in Dexterity. It can be picked up from a chest in the underground Lake of Rot’s Grand Cloister, close to the portal leading to the Astel, Naturalborn of the Void boss fight.
Offering solid attack power but a lower critical strike value than other daggers, with no ability to infuse it with additional elemental damage or other Ashes of War, the Scorpion's Stinger is best used for its rot-inducing effect, which will whittle away an enemy’s health with damage over time when triggered. Using the dagger’s default Repeating Thrust weapon skill can help do that quickly, delivering multiple fast jabs to an opponent.
Erdsteel Dagger
The Erdsteel Dagger is an unassuming contender for one of the best daggers in Elden Ring. Offering modest damage at first, its unique ability to boost its attack power by investing points in Faith can make it one of the most essential weapons for Faith builds.
The dagger requires 7 Strength, 12 Dexterity and 14 Faith to wield. You can pick it up very early in the game by emptying Fort Haight of its monsters and speaking to the nearby NPC Kenneth Haight, who offers it as a reward. A second dagger - useful for dual-wielding - can be found much later in Leyndell.
While the dagger can scale with Strength and Dexterity, its attack power is amplified directly by Faith, making it the only Elden Ring weapon we know of that increases its base physical damage with the stat. If that wasn’t enough, the Erdsteel Dagger can still be infused with additional elemental damage, allowing it to cater to Faith builds combined with other core stats. Or simply infuse it with fire or holy damage to benefit doubly from a focus on Faith. The Erdsteel Dagger is undoubtedly the best dagger in Elden Ring for Faith builds looking to wield a blade, using its one-of-a-kind damage scaling to become a powerhouse of physical damage.
Bloodstained Dagger
The Bloodstained Dagger is another Elden Ring dagger that excels in causing Blood Loss by delivering fast strikes to your opponents, triggering the Bleed effect to quickly drain their health.
The dagger requires low stats to use - just 9 Strength and 12 Dexterity - before scaling best with additional Strength. On top of its physical damage, it applies Blood Loss with each hit, which can be greatly increased by adding a Blood infusion - making it a good dagger to pair with the Reduvia or a Bloody Great Knife. Alternatively, you could make use of its high Intelligence scaling with the Cold affinity applied to cause both Frostbite and Bleed, helped by the evasive speed of its default Quickstep weapon skill, which can also be swapped for another Ash of War.
While its minimum stats are easy to achieve, obtaining a Bloodstained Dagger can be more tricky. It only drops occasionally from Demi-Human Chief enemies found across The Lands Between, requiring luck and/or patience to acquire.
Need more help? Jump back to our list of best Elden Ring builds or our Elden Ring walkthrough.