Alright, so a number of pages back I whinged about the un-viability of taking random drops and beating the game with them. Basically that everybody min/max's and just picks what is the best weapon based on numbers and that's mainly because you can't grab the Broken Straight Sword and win the game with it with the same general difficulty as most other weapons. This ignores of course that as the game goes on you should be finding better weapons but still. Enough of that shit.
So I said:
And was met with the response:
Which led me to investigate if a Corvian Greatknife run was viable. After a small amount of number-crunching and brainstorming, I decided to give it a go. So here's the first part of my chronicles of trying to beat the game with the Corvian Greatknife.
First of all, I needed to figure out and plan the most effective way to do the run. So first, the weapon itself. I'll talk about what I figured out before playing with it and go on to how it was in practice once I actually get to having it.
The Corvian Greatknife is the 2nd strongest knife, 1st if you discount the Tailbone Short Sword which upgrades to +5 with Twinkling Titanite. It is basically a short sword and has the range of one, maybe longer than almost any other dagger (even the Harpe) but attacks with the moveset and speed of daggers like the Rotten Ghru Dagger or any that have a Stab as their 1st R2. That is to say that it's R1 attacks come out FAST and have very good range for such a fast weapon. It does, however, have miserable scaling. At +10 it has D scaling in Strength and Dex with 184 base damage. So infusing it is probably a better idea. However, the only two infusions that give it any sort of decent scaling in Int or Faith is Lightning and Crystal at C for their respective stats. So...not really good at all. That also drops it's Str/Dex scaling to E and the base damage at +10 to 73 with 100 base infused damage. So it more than likely looks like infusing it with something that removes all scaling is the best bet as no build gives you scaling that will make a big difference. And, after examining every infusion and seeing which at +10 seems to do the most damage, it turns out to be Raw. At +10, the Raw Corvian Greatknife deals 230 base damage. Which sounds...low. BUT. It is the highest of all the daggers by a fairly large margin (other than the aformentioned Tailbone) while still keeping their quick moveset. Now, since Raw is like...the first Gem you get it's super easy to set up your Corvian Greatknife for the rest of the game.
Onto the character.
In order to get the knife as fast as possible I went Assassin. This starts me with the Estoc which lets me beat the game without switching weapons if I wanted to and Spook which lets me skip a ton of shit. To use the Corvian Greatknife I need 12 and 16 for Strength and Dex respectively. Assass starts at 10 and 14 so...easypeasy. Now, since we're going Raw we don't need any more than that which means I can put my stats into other areas. I am of two minds of this:
1. Dump everything into Vigor/Vit/Endurance. This gives a lot of survivability since fights will be taking longer due to your smaller damage. Vig and End are self-explanatory, Vit might need a bit more. I specifically am looking into raising it a bunch so that I can keep my % under 30 for quick rolls while still equipping at least decent armor and not a waistcloth. The idea is to not get hit but be able to survive if I do. This also means I can equip the Flynn's Ring for some damage boost, which isn't significant because the Ring does at max 15% more damage at it's best. This is not exactly great damage but if my dagger attacks 4 or 5 times in a row than something like 10% more damage can really add up over time. From there I would use item buffs like Resins to boost my damage, or maybe even use Great Magic or Carthus Flame Arc for a bit of a boost.
2. Dump my stats into Int/Faith up to 30 each then the rest into Vig/End. Worry less about quick rolls and Flynn's Ring and instead get my stats up so I can use Crystal Magic Weapon, Lightning Blade and shit like that to boost my damage and exploit weaknesses. This will give me much better damage output, reusable for mobs and getting to bosses. I...do not like the stat investment though. It may be a good build but also it might be hard to reach that point without dumping into Vig/End. This is the second choice if my first does not seem to be as effective and my damage output starts dropping at some bosses.
So that's the basic set up for the build. Nothing fancy, keep it simple.
And here's how it went!
Let's skip to the good stuff; you only need to kill Gundyr and Vordt to get to the Greatknife. Get to Undead Settlement, run through to the Church with the elevator, go down and avoid the asshole and come to the R. There is a simple loop to kill 3 Corvians and rest back at the bonfire but I didn't even need to because I got my Knife on the 2nd Corvian.oad of Sacrifices
Infuse with Raw and level it a tad and we're all set.
Now, here's what I learned about the Greatknife when I started to use it.
It deals damage FAST and that damage adds up very quickly. It also comes out very quick so I can normally get off an attack before an enemy hits me which means for enemies with low poise I can prevent them from ever attacking. It does REALLY well against dogs because it comes out so quickly and does not knock back so you can step to the side of it's attack and hit it twice to kill it before it can hop away. That was pretty impressive. It doesn't do a ton of poise damage but I did find out some fun things about it such as rapidly attacking a blocking enemy drains it's stamina QUICK. I managed to stagger Lothric Knights just by hitting their shield...4 times? I think. Which you can viably do because your attacks are so quick and have little rebound penalty. Enemies with big wind-ups you can almost always stagger by hitting them enough times before the attack comes out. The stake dudes in Ccan be staggered out of their charge attack hitting them 4 times (which is also enough to kill them so...). Now the big problems come from enemies with high poise that do not stagger easily. Those fuckers you normally want to punish their whiffs with one or two attacks then back off. You can do that with the Greatknife but it takes much longer and makes the fight not a ton of fun. So most of the time it's about baiting out attacks and hitting before dodging around and hitting more. It's much harder than normal enemies. I'm still working on how best to deal with them but it seems to be by being riskier and getting in as many hits as you can before dodging.rucifixion Woods
The dagger absolutely DESTROYS NPCs and phantoms. I fought B, Yutcher Knife Girland the two dudes in front of Cellowfinger. I dismantled them all HANDILY. The attacks come out so fast they get bounced around, if they roll anywhere but backwards they roll right into my stream of attacks and they can barely get attacks off. For every swing I avoid I can punish with something stupid like 8 to 10 hits.athedral of the Deep
Now, I'll skip past any kinda boring stuff in the levels and maybe I'll post interesting things I found out. Most of the info and interest comes from how it does in boss fights. So let's get to the boss fights.
First, CRABS.
This has no relevance, I just like crabs.
First boss up:GCurse-rottedreatwood
Surprisingly difficult, at least much more than my other 2 playthroughs (by which I mean I died twice). This comes from low stats due to focusing on getting to my Greatknife. Since it is a gimmick fight and my actual output doesn't matter much, this plays out much like a normal fight. I did notice something fun though. Thanks to being able to come out with attacks so quickly, I could pop his bubbles on his limbs really quick and on my 2nd attempt popped his left arm and leg and crotch before he even crushed the ground which was like...almost half his life. That made me laugh pretty hard.
So. Curse-rotted Greatwood down.
Second boss up: CSrystalage
Holy shit. I might have set a speedrun record on this. First try, I put Magic Weapon on before entering and start running to reach him before he casts anything. Well. He casts homing mass as I start LAYING into him and doing stupid damage to him. The homing mass hits me once, I start attacking again, he uses the raining attack which I tank through and keep on hitting and finally FINALLY he teleports away after being brought down to 40% of his life! He comes up with clones and I rush the real one and smash it to the ground, tank a soul spear and kill him before he teleports away.
All in all it took me maybe...45 seconds. I was kinda shocked.
Crystal Sage down
I saved after so I will continue on once I have some time.
First impressions, at least early game, is that against bosses or enemies with big wind-ups/whiffs or longer lulls between attacks I will completely eviscerate them. The difficulty will be in high poise enemies and bosses with shorter windows to attack, making my battles with them longer due to my low damage per hit.
Stay tuned for the further adventures of the Little Red Corvian! Baby, she's much too fast.
This is an interesting development. I think, because the knife is quick, in a game where speed in attack will give you a great advantage, it makes it worthwhile.
I might also recommend going for a Hollow/Luck build with the knife. If it has evenly distributed scaling between strength and dex, then Hollow has the chance to have a higher attack value than any other. Not to mention the scaling with Luck. Buff it with Carthus Rouge and you might have a secretly OP dagger.
