Great Katana
Great Katana is a Shadow of the Erdtree weapon found beside the lake in Gravesite Plain. It establishes the great-katana class with long reach, innate blood loss, ordinary reinforcement, affinity freedom, and the stance-based Overhead Stance skill.
Key Takeaways
Great Katana is a Shadow of the Erdtree great katana built around reach, heavy melee commitment, and innate blood loss rather than the lighter handling of the original katana class.
DLC weapon
It is available only in Shadow of the Erdtree, so characters without the expansion cannot obtain or use it.
Long-reach katana
Its extended reach gives it stronger spacing and lane control than many standard katanas, while its larger frame demands more commitment between attacks.
Bleed pressure
Innate blood loss makes repeated hits especially relevant against enemies vulnerable to hemorrhage, though the weapon remains dependent on landing sustained attacks.
Overhead Stance
Its default weapon skill, Overhead Stance, gives the weapon a distinctive attack option instead of treating it as only a larger version of a normal katana.
Flexible progression
The Great Katana uses the standard reinforcement path and can be customized with compatible Ashes of War and affinities, allowing different attribute and damage approaches.
A deliberate alternative
Compared with a conventional katana such as the Uchigatana, it favors reach and heavier attacks over lighter weight and faster handling.
Overview
Great Katana is a standard great-katana-class melee weapon added in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. It extends the familiar katana role into a heavier, longer-reaching form, combining innate Bleed buildup with a more committed attack style and the Overhead Stance weapon skill. Unlike named DLC great katanas, it is the regular, customizable member of the class and can serve as a flexible foundation for several builds.
The Great Katana occupies a middle ground between conventional katanas and much heavier sword classes. Its defining advantage is reach: it can threaten enemies from farther away than many ordinary katanas while retaining the katana family’s emphasis on repeated slashes and Bleed buildup. That reach does not make it a fast sidearm, however. Its attacks demand more commitment and spacing discipline than a typical katana, so the weapon rewards deliberate openings rather than constant, low-risk pressure.
Its default Overhead Stance gives the weapon a distinct combat identity. The stance supports an overhead attack and a broader follow-up option, allowing the user to choose between a more direct strike and a wider attack pattern. Because the skill is tied to the weapon’s standard presentation rather than a named legendary effect, the Great Katana is best understood as a customizable platform: its identity comes from its size, moveset, reach, and innate status effect, while its Ash of War and affinity can be adapted to the build.
The weapon is part of Shadow of the Erdtree’s expanded arsenal, so it is relevant primarily to characters entering or progressing through the expansion rather than to a fresh base-game starting route. It does not replace every ordinary katana. A conventional katana remains the more natural choice when speed, lower commitment, or an established katana moveset is the priority; the Great Katana is the alternative for players willing to trade some agility for reach, heavier-feeling attacks, and a broader melee presence.
The plain Great Katana should also be separated from named weapons such as Dragon-Hunter’s Great Katana and Rakshasa’s Great Katana. Those weapons have their own identities and should not be treated as variants of this weapon for purposes of skills or progression. The regular Great Katana instead provides a general-purpose entry point into the class: its innate Bleed supports status-focused play, while its customizable weapon setup leaves room for different attribute priorities and combat preferences without turning one build into a mandatory use case.
Statistics
Elden Ring publishes no 0–100 stat bars, so this page lists the verified requirements, scaling and handling figures instead. Taken from the project's verified weapons database, not from generated text.
- CategoryGreat Katanas
- Damage TypeSlash
- Primary ScalingDex C
- Weight9
- SkillIaijutsu
- Str Req16
- Dex Req26
- How to ObtainBase weapon of the Great Katana class, Shadow of the Erdtree
Figures verified against Consolidated Game Weapons Database.
Compared to similar great katanas
| Weapon | Str Req | Dex Req | Weight | Primary Scaling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great Katana | 16 | 26 | 9 | Dex C |
| Dragon-Hunter's Great Katana | 16 | 26 | 9 | Dex C |
| Rakshasa's Great Katana | 18 | 20 | 10.5 | Str D / Dex C |
Requirements, scaling grades and weight are the game’s own published figures. From Consolidated Game Weapons Database.
How to Obtain
- Shadow of the Erdtree DLC access and entry into the Land of Shadow; no specific quest, boss defeat, vendor purchase, or story-progress requirement is needed.
- The weapon is a fixed pickup in the DLC area and is normally obtained once per playthrough; it can be obtained again in New Game Plus.
- 01Enter the Shadow of the Erdtree region and travel through the Gravesite Plain to the lake north of the Abandoned Ailing Village. The Great Katana rests on a corpse in the shallow water, in the area associated with the nearby Ghostflame Dragon.
- 02Loot the corpse to collect the Great Katana. This is a guaranteed world pickup rather than an enemy drop, vendor purchase, quest reward, or boss reward; defeating the Ghostflame Dragon is not required. The pickup is available independently of the area's quests and remains obtainable while exploring the region.
Availability
Requires Access to the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.
The Great Katana is DLC-exclusive; it is not part of the base-game weapon pool. No separate vendor price or difficulty-specific availability is established here.
Mechanics and Handling
The Great Katana is a large katana-class weapon from Shadow of the Erdtree. Its handling trades some of the quick recovery associated with standard katanas for greater reach and heavier-looking commitments, making spacing and attack selection more important than simply chaining light attacks. Its innate Hemorrhage buildup gives successful hits an additional status-pressure role, although the weapon still relies on repeated attacks to trigger it.
Long-reaching slashes with heavier commitment
The regular attack chain uses broad katana-style cuts that cover a generous area in front of the wielder. This reach helps the Great Katana connect from outside the comfortable range of many shorter melee weapons, but its slower rhythm makes missed attacks more costly. The heavy attack provides a more committed overhead strike; charged attacks are best used when an opening is long enough to accommodate the wind-up and recovery. Jumping and running attacks extend its approach options without changing its basic identity as a reach-focused melee weapon.
Overhead Stance and Ash of War flexibility
The Great Katana is supplied with Overhead Stance. The skill raises the weapon for a deliberate overhead attack, with follow-up inputs allowing the stance to convert into additional attacks rather than functioning as a passive damage bonus. This gives the default setup a direct way to punish an exposed target, but the weapon is not locked to that skill: its Ash of War can be changed where the selected Ash and affinity are compatible. Replacing Overhead Stance therefore lets the same weapon emphasize another attribute, status, or spacing tool without changing its base moveset.
Hemorrhage rewards sustained contact
The weapon's innate bleed buildup makes repeated, reliable hits more valuable than isolated trades. Its reach can help maintain contact while staying just beyond a shorter weapon's preferred distance, but Hemorrhage should be treated as pressure rather than a guaranteed result: enemies with resistance, short encounters, or frequent evasions reduce the practical value of the status. The Great Katana has no firearm-style ammunition or reload loop, and its main resource considerations are the stamina and positioning required by its committed attacks and skill.
Upgrades and Variants
Strengths, Weaknesses and Best Uses
Strengths
- Longer reach than the standard katana class helps the Great Katana control spacing and punish attacks from outside shorter weapons’ preferred range.
- Its innate blood-loss buildup gives repeated hits a status-pressure role without requiring an affinity or Ash of War to add that effect.
- The weapon’s Overhead Stance provides a distinct committed attack option, giving its moveset a punish tool beyond ordinary katana swings.
- It retains access to Elden Ring’s flexible Ash of War and affinity systems, allowing its physical damage and utility to be adapted to a build.
Weaknesses
- Its larger frame and heavier attacks demand more commitment than ordinary katanas, making missed swings more costly and reducing the safety of constant trading.
- The longer weapon is less convenient in cramped spaces, where its spacing advantage is harder to use and attacks can be obstructed.
- Its status pressure depends on landing repeated close-range hits; enemies that resist blood loss or deny melee uptime reduce one of its main advantages.
- Overhead Stance is a deliberate skill rather than an instant defensive answer, so using it predictably can leave the wielder vulnerable during its commitment.
Best uses
- Use it as a spacing-focused melee weapon when reach matters more than the faster handling of a regular katana.
- Choose it for bleed-oriented builds that want innate blood-loss pressure while retaining control over Ash of War and affinity selection.
- Use its longer attacks and Overhead Stance to punish recovery windows, provided there is enough room to complete the committed animation.
- It suits players who want a katana-family weapon for aggressive PvE melee or deliberate PvP spacing, rather than a low-commitment sidearm for rapid trades.
Compared With Similar Weapons
| Weapon | Class and role | Skill and customization | Key distinction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Great Katana | Overhead Stance; standard reinforcement path with changeable Ash of War and affinity | The flexible baseline for comparing the DLC's Great Katana weapons | — |
| Dragon-Hunter's Great Katana | Dragonwound Slash; unique weapon with a fixed skill and non-customizable affinity | Trades the Great Katana's customization for a dragon-focused skill and weapon identity | — |
| Rakshasa's Great Katana | Weed Cutter; unique weapon with a fixed skill and non-customizable affinity | Its unique passive rewards offensive use but also increases the danger of taking damage | — |
| Nagakiba | Unsheathe by default; standard weapon with changeable Ashes of War and affinities | A lighter, more familiar katana option with less commitment than the Great Katana | — |
Used In
- Shadow of the ErdtreeGreat Katana is found in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.
- Gravesite PlainThe weapon is obtained as a corpse pickup in a lake in Gravesite Plain, near the Ghostflame Dragon encounter.
- Ghostflame DragonThe corpse containing Great Katana is located near the Ghostflame Dragon encounter; defeating the boss is not required to obtain the weapon.
Lore and Design
The Great Katana’s item text places it within the martial tradition of the samurai of the Land of Reeds. Its unusually large blade distinguishes it from the standard katana class, while the description emphasizes a thin, sharp profile rather than presenting it as a crude heavy sword. This gives the weapon a clear cultural and visual identity within Shadow of the Erdtree’s expanded weapon roster.
Its lore significance is modest but specific: the weapon connects the Land of Reeds’ samurai tradition to a substantially larger katana form. The game does not, in the available documented text, establish a named wielder, a unique character relationship, or a developer-confirmed real-world design source for the Great Katana. Claims that it directly represents a particular historical sword should therefore be treated as interpretation rather than canon.