Power and Agility are two core stats to consider when choosing a weapon in Steelrising, particularly on your first playthrough. In Souls jargon, those are Strength and Dexterity.
Your Power weapons are liable to be bigger, slower, and hit harder, making them ideal for players who already know what they’re doing. Agility weapons are faster but don’t hit nearly as hard. They’re best for first playthroughs when you need to learn as much as possible, and longer fights are assured either way.
We’re covering the best Agility Weapons you can find in Steelrising, plus the best support option in the entire game.
Best Starting Agility Weapon: Armoured Fans
The Armoured Fans are fast, easy to use, and, most importantly, comes with the Shield special move. There are few ways to stagger enemies in Steelrising, but the Shield ability will cause any non-boss enemy to stun for a couple of seconds, allowing you to get in some free hits. Even bosses will have trouble dealing damage to you, and while you will still take some damage to both Health and Stamina with the Shield up, it can save you in a pinch.
Be mindful that the Shield move does not cover areas to your side or behind you, so don’t expect to block anything from outside its intended use. There’s a brief recovery animation when you come out of the Shield, so if you aren’t careful, you can get caught trying to reset.
The fans aren’t the best Agility weapon out there, but it gives an excellent introduction to how they work.
Best Overall Agility Weapon: Falchion and Sabre
While the Falchion and Sabre isn’t a pure Ability scaling weapon, with only a C Agility bonus at level 4, it more than makes up for that deficiency with its moveset. The basic light attack provides a lot of forward momentum. Both it and all the follow-ups have minimal recovery, meaning you can easily dodge away if something goes awry.
The weapon’s heavy attacks aren’t as immediately practical. Still, because you’re using two blades at once, you do tons of Immobilization damage, which is your primary means of stunning everything in the game.
Combine its useful attacks with the Blade Tornado Special move for a really good time. The move uses a lot of stamina and has a long recovery, but if you stun an enemy with regular attacks or elemental effects, it’s a free full combo.
Best Elemental Agility Weapon: Frosted Fans
Elemental effects are exceedingly powerful in Steelrising, but the frozen status is borderline busted. Once you build up an enemy’s full frost meter, they will freeze for well over ten seconds, allowing you all that time to attack.
The Frosted Fans are the best of both worlds, offering good damage and Agility scaling with the ability to apply passive frost buildup through its Invocation of Ice Special move. It has the same moveset as the Armoured Fans but lacks Shield, so you’ll need to stay on the offensive, but if you were comfortable with the starting weapon, transitioning won’t cause much issue.
Best Support Weapon: Charleville 1789 Shield Musket
There is no better weapon for applying the frozen condition than the Charleville 1789 Shield Musket. You don’t need to upgrade it much to get good use out of it, and it’s usable from the beginning of the game to the end.
Both its light and heavy attacks apply frost to enemies, but fully charged heavy attacks apply between a third and half of an enemy’s frost buildup bar. Most enemies in Steelrising will also give you ample time to apply the status, and following a freeze up with a Blade Tornado or a few fully charged heavies from the Falchion and Sabre will send anything you fight flying onto their backs.
The only limitation to the Charleville 1789 Shield Musket is ammunition. You need Alchemical Capsules to use it, which you can only get by defeating regular mobs and off of the occasional Automat corpse.
If you have enough of those, you don’t need to worry about the Musket’s damage, as its primary purpose is applying statuses, which it does with aplomb, allowing you to cheese almost every enemy in Steelrising that isn’t innately resistant to ice damage. Which is most of them, so enjoy!
