These are our picks for the best daggers in Elden Ring. Short blades like these are very underrated among the player base, and I aim to encourage you into trying these daggers as secondary weapons. Or if you’re truly into these compact yet deadly blades, you can dual-wield them to great effect.
If you’re doing a build that focuses on Parrying, it is possible to put the Parry Skill on the non-unique daggers. Other than those, I will also include some powerful unique daggers on this list.
Wakizashi
A deadly swordsman named Okina used to wield this dagger in his off-hand as a secondary weapon. He masterfully wielded the fearsome Rivers of Blood Katana with his main hand. If you’re doing a Samurai build, you cannot go wrong with this blade. It scales with Dexterity mainly and grants a C scaling at Max Standard Level. With each strike of this blade, the Blood Loss gauge fills, dealing a lot of damage with consequent attacks.
For a pure Dexterity build, the Keen upgrade path may be the way to go.
Misericorde
This straight-bladed dagger with a menacing dark finish is special in a way. Other than the usual damage output of a dagger, the Misericorde has 140 Critical damage. This is the highest critical damage out of all the daggers -no, out of all the weapons in Elden Ring. The critical damage of any dagger in the game is multiplied by x4.0 in general. That’s assuming it has 100 Critical damage. With 140 Critical damage, you can utterly destroy foes with ripostes and backstabs. You can use any Ash of War (with exceptions) on it as well because it’s not a unique weapon.
Great Knife
This knife may seem quite ordinary at first, and its damage output is only decent. But the scaling with Dexterity is where this weapon shines. With the Keen affinity, the Dexterity scaling for this blade is S. That’s the maximum Dexterity scaling. While some other weapons may outclass this in certain ways, this is a worthy item, especially for backup.
Reduvia
Reduvia is similar to Rivers of Blood in a way, because it deals damage that fills the Blood Loss gauge, fast. Its unique Ash of War, Reduvia Blood Blade, deals even more Blood Loss damage. This dagger can make quick work of many enemies, especially when paired with some other powerful weapon in your main hand. It also scales with Arcane and with higher Arcane Levels, the Blood Loss of the dagger will increase.
Black Knife
This is a very important weapon in terms of Elden Ring lore. It deals great damage at the Max level of +10 Standard, and also scales with Faith. Its Critical damage is 110, which is quite good. The Blade of Death Ash of War deals damage that will temporarily reduce the Health of your opponent, similar to the Destined Death Ash of War. Because of the Ash of War, this weapon is very powerful even when not upgraded.
