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Why the same weapon appears several times

Crypt Slicer is in the list four times, and the four are genuinely different weapons. Here is what tells them apart.

Scroll a ranking and you will find the same weapon more than once — Crypt Slicer four times, some others twice. That is not a duplicate. Those rows carry different numbers because the weapon in your hand can be in different states, and the list would be lying if it pretended otherwise.

Two things vary, and each row tells you which it is: how far up the Weapon Proficiency tree you are, in the badge at the top right of the sprite, and whether it carries an elemental imbuement, in the coloured dot at the bottom left and the pill beside the name.

Read down and the proficiency level climbs. Read across the middle and the weapon is imbued — which is where the attack values visibly split, half the physical becoming earth.

Proficiency levels

Proficiency perks change what a weapon does, so a weapon at level 7 is not the same tool as the same weapon at level 3. Only the levels worth grinding to are listed: the tree has seven, most of them are small, and listing all seven would bury the list in rows nobody chooses between.

Which levels those are is a judgement about the game rather than something the data can answer — reaching level 6, let alone 7, is a serious commitment, and it is worth showing precisely because it can change which weapon actually wins.

The perks themselves come in two shapes, and only one is counted here. Where a level offers a single perk with no alternative, every player carrying that weapon has it, so it is part of the weapon. Where a level offers two or three and you pick one, it belongs to some builds and not others, and counting it would credit a weapon with something you may well not have taken.

Elemental piercing, and why it is strongest where you would least expect

The main thing proficiency buys a damage build is elemental piercing: it raises how much of that element the target lets through. But the game only pays full value up to neutral — the part of the bonus that carries a creature past 100% counts for half.

Which inverts the intuition. Piercing is worth most against a creature that already resists your element, because there is room below neutral for the whole bonus to land. Against something already weak to it, half of what you ground for is wasted. If you are choosing where to take a piercing build, take it somewhere it is currently unwelcome.

Elemental imbuement

An imbuement converts half the weapon's physical attack into its element. That is the split visible in the figure: 58 physical becomes 29 physical and 29 earth. Nothing is gained or lost in total — it is the same attack, pointed somewhere else.

So whether it helps is entirely about what you are fighting. Against a creature that resists physical and burns, it is a large gain. Against one that is immune to your element, you have just thrown away half your weapon. This is why the imbued and plain rows of one weapon can sit far apart in the same list.

The Crypt set adds a wrinkle worth knowing: its tree offers armor penetration on the same levels it offers elemental piercing, so the two paths are exclusive. A plain build takes the penetration and stays physical; an imbued build takes the piercing. Same weapon, two different plans, and both are in the list.

Elemental Bond is not the same thing

Easy to conflate with an imbuement, and it behaves differently in the way that matters: Elemental Bond moves all of the attack into its element, not half. It is a property of certain fist weapons rather than something you apply.

That makes it the sharpest bet in the game. A bonded weapon against something weak to its element is exceptional; against something immune, it is holding a stick. There is no physical half left to fall back on, which is exactly what an imbuement keeps.

Which of these can you change today

Worth separating, because the list mixes them. An imbuement you can buy and change between hunts, so an imbued row is a decision available this evening. Proficiency is a grind, so a high-level row is a target rather than an option. Elemental Bond is the weapon — you either have that weapon or you do not.

A practical way to read a ranking: find the highest row whose state you can reach today, and treat the ones above it as what the grind is worth. The gap shown beside each row is exactly that answer.

Where these numbers come from

What each weapon carries is the wikis' — and the proficiency trees come from the Portuguese one, which records them where the English pages do not, read only in those gaps so the two can never disagree. How piercing and imbuements behave is what CipSoft has published. Which proficiency levels are worth listing at all came out of hunting, because "worth grinding to" is a judgement about the game and not a number in a table.

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