Great Knife
Great Knife is the Bandit class starting dagger and a rare drop from dagger-wielding Demi-Humans. Its fast attacks, innate blood loss, high critical pressure, Quickstep, and ordinary affinity freedom make it a flexible lightweight sidearm for Dexterity and Arcane builds.
Key Takeaways
Great Knife is a fast, bleed-capable dagger that rewards close spacing and repeated attacks rather than extended reach or individual hit damage.
Starting weapon with another early route
The Great Knife is available as the Bandit’s starting weapon and can also be obtained as a drop from Demi-Human enemies that use it.
Innate Blood Loss
Its defining combat feature is innate Blood Loss buildup, giving rapid attack chains a status-based payoff alongside their physical damage.
Quickstep utility
The Great Knife has Quickstep as its default skill, supporting repositioning and short evasive movements during close-range encounters.
Short reach, fast commitment
Its speed makes it effective for staying on an opening, but its limited reach and dagger-scale individual hits make spacing and sustained contact important.
Customizable progression
As a regular weapon, the Great Knife uses the standard Smithing Stone upgrade path and can be customized with Ashes of War and compatible affinities.
Different role from critical-hit daggers
Compared with a critical-focused dagger such as Misericorde, the Great Knife emphasizes innate bleed and flexible skill customization rather than making critical attacks its defining feature.
Overview
Great Knife is a standard dagger in Elden Ring: a compact, infusible weapon built around rapid close-range attacks, critical hits, and flexible status-oriented builds rather than long reach or high per-hit commitment.
The weapon is most closely associated with the Bandit starting class, but it is not restricted to that origin and can remain useful well beyond the opening areas. Its dagger moveset favors quick attacks and short recovery windows, allowing a player to punish small openings without committing to the slower swings of larger melee classes.
Great Knife’s identity comes from combining dagger speed with a physical weapon that can be customized through Elden Ring’s normal affinity and Ash of War systems. That flexibility lets it support different attribute priorities and damage approaches, while its innate bleed buildup gives repeated attacks an additional threat when the user can stay close enough to maintain pressure.
Compared with other daggers, Great Knife is a practical general-purpose option rather than a fixed-effect or heavily specialized weapon. Its default Quickstep skill emphasizes repositioning and evasive movement, and the weapon can be adapted when a different skill or affinity better suits the character. These features make it more flexible than its modest size suggests, although its reach still demands deliberate spacing.
Great Knife belongs to the base Elden Ring arsenal and is usable in Shadow of the Erdtree without being a DLC-exclusive variant. It fits players who want a light sidearm for fast pressure, critical opportunities, or bleed-focused experimentation. It is less suitable for encounters where maintaining close range is unsafe or where a longer weapon’s reach and heavier stagger potential are more important.
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.
- CategoryDaggers
- Damage TypeSlash/Pierce
- Primary ScalingStr D / Dex D
- Weight4.5
- SkillQuickstep
- Str Req13
- Dex Req20
- How to ObtainBandit starting class / Sellia
Figures verified against Consolidated Game Weapons Database.
Compared to similar daggers
| Weapon | Str Req | Dex Req | Weight | Primary Scaling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great Knife | 13 | 20 | 4.5 | Str D / Dex D |
| Mantis Blade | 8 | 25 | 4 | Dex C |
| Reduvia | 8 | 13 | 3.5 | Dex D / Arc C |
| Black Knife | 10 | 18 | 3 | Dex C / Arc D |
| Wakizashi | 9 | 15 | 3 | Dex C |
Requirements, scaling grades and weight are the game’s own published figures. From Consolidated Game Weapons Database.
How to Obtain
- Bandit starting class for the guaranteed starting-equipment route; otherwise access to Coastal Cave in Limgrave.
- 01Choose the Bandit starting class during character creation to receive the Great Knife as starting equipment. This route is guaranteed, but it is available only when creating a new character.
- 02For an existing character, travel to Coastal Cave in western Limgrave and defeat Demi-Human enemies until the Great Knife drops. The weapon is a random enemy drop, so the kill is not guaranteed; the area provides a repeatable farming route.
- 03The Great Knife is not tied to a quest, boss reward, vendor purchase, DLC area, or New Game Plus requirement. Characters that did not begin as Bandits can recover it through Demi-Human drops, subject to the normal enemy-drop randomness.
Availability
Requires Choose the Bandit starting class.
This is a starting-equipment context rather than a vendor purchase; other starting classes can obtain the weapon during the playthrough.
Requires No DLC, NG+, or specific story-progression gate is required.
The Great Knife can also be obtained from its associated enemy drop, so it is not restricted to the Bandit starting class.
Mechanics and Handling
The Great Knife is a close-range dagger built around rapid attacks and repeated contact rather than broad coverage. Its short reach makes spacing important: it performs best when held close to an opponent, during openings, or against targets that can be pressured without trading into a longer weapon. Its attack animations are relatively quick, but the weapon does not provide the area control or forgiving reach of larger blades.
Fast dagger pressure and spacing
The normal attack chain uses quick slashing strikes suited to brief openings and successive hits. The short blade requires deliberate positioning; attacks that would connect with a sword or spear may miss if the Great Knife is used from the edge of its range. Its compact moveset is most reliable when the player stays close enough to maintain contact without committing blindly into an enemy’s retaliation.
The weapon can also be used in either hand and benefits from the additional attack patterns available when pairing daggers. This increases the value of sustained pressure, but it also reinforces the weapon’s main limitation: the player must remain within very close range. Jumping, running, and charged attacks should be treated as situational approaches rather than replacements for the quick grounded sequence.
Innate Blood Loss
The Great Knife has innate Blood Loss buildup. Repeated successful hits can fill an enemy’s hemorrhage meter, after which the status effect triggers; the timing depends on the target’s resistance and how consistently the attacks connect. A single hit is therefore not the whole mechanic. Missed swings, pauses, and defensive interruptions reduce the pressure needed to reach a bleed trigger.
Because the buildup is attached to the weapon, changing its affinity or Ash of War does not remove the Great Knife’s basic bleed identity, although the resulting damage profile and attribute scaling depend on the selected upgrade configuration.
Quickstep and customizable skills
The Great Knife begins with Quickstep, a mobility skill that lets the wielder rapidly reposition around a nearby target. It is useful for slipping to a flank, disengaging from a committed attack, or staying close enough to continue dagger pressure. Quickstep is movement utility rather than a damage replacement, and it does not solve the weapon’s limited reach.
The Great Knife is compatible with Ashes of War, so its default skill can be replaced when a different attack, buff, or utility effect better suits the build. The chosen skill and affinity should be considered separately from the weapon’s innate Blood Loss: changing the skill changes the weapon’s active option, while the dagger’s built-in status remains part of its baseline behavior.
Upgrades and Variants
Strengths, Weaknesses and Best Uses
Strengths
- Innate Blood Loss buildup gives its rapid attacks a status-pressure role without requiring an affinity change.
- Its dagger moveset has low commitment, making it useful for punishing short openings and retreating before a counterattack.
- As a standard weapon, it can be adapted through Ashes of War and affinities rather than being locked to one fixed skill or damage setup.
- Dagger-class critical attacks make it well suited to ripostes and backstabs when the user can reliably create those openings.
Weaknesses
- Its short reach makes spacing demanding and can cause attacks to miss against enemies with longer weapons or evasive hitboxes.
- Individual attacks have limited stagger pressure, so it is less reliable for interrupting sturdy enemies than heavier melee classes.
- Its low commitment does not remove the need to remain close; failed pressure leaves the user within range of counterattacks.
- Bleed-oriented value depends on repeatedly connecting attacks, making it less effective against targets resistant or immune to Blood Loss.
Best uses
- Close-range PvE pressure against enemies vulnerable to Blood Loss, especially when the player can maintain contact safely.
- A lightweight critical-attack option for builds that frequently create backstab or riposte opportunities.
- A flexible dagger foundation for experimenting with bleed, elemental or physical affinities and different Ashes of War.
- Dual-dagger or other fast-attack setups where repeated hits are more important than reach or poise damage.
Compared With Similar Weapons
| Weapon | Class and role | Distinctive mechanic | Main trade-off versus Great Knife |
|---|---|---|---|
| Great Knife | Innate Blood Loss buildup; compatible with Ashes of War and affinities | Baseline for a fast, customizable bleed dagger | — |
| Bloodstained Dagger | Innate Blood Loss buildup with a more flexible infusion role | Competes directly as a customizable bleed dagger; choice depends on moveset, requirements and preferred scaling | — |
| Misericorde | Very high critical emphasis among daggers | Lacks Great Knife’s innate bleed, but is the clearer choice for critical attacks | — |
| Reduvia | Unique Reduvia Blood Blade skill adds ranged blood attacks | Cannot be customized like Great Knife and has Arcane requirements, but offers safer bleed application at short range | — |
Used In
- BanditGreat Knife is part of the Bandit's starting equipment.
- Gatekeeper GostocGatekeeper Gostoc can sell the Great Knife at Stormveil Castle.
- Demi-HumansDemi-Humans wielding the Great Knife can drop it.
- Coastal CaveThe cave's Demi-Humans provide a relevant early location for seeking the weapon's enemy drop.
Lore and Design
The Great Knife’s item description presents it as a broad, curved knife whose thin blade is suited to slashing. It is associated with the vulgar militia men who serve as foot soldiers, giving the weapon a modest connection to the Lands Between’s common military forces rather than to a named hero, faction leader, or major quest. The description does not establish a deeper history for the weapon, and no documented developer commentary is needed to explain its design. Its significance is therefore mainly contextual: it is a practical sidearm linked to ordinary militia combatants, not a relic with an explicitly recorded legendary origin.