Board Thread:Dark Souls III/@comment-28216787-20160510140353/@comment-27606387-20160512200829

If you want a weapon that will let you do real decent damage in the first half of the game, just go with the Astora Straight Sword. It's in a chest in the same room as the great-axe hollows that are guarding the estus shard and key to the cell you find that thief guy in.

Basically, there's a pathway hidden by barrels. Just smash those, and walk across it, and roll through the debris at the end to drop to the second level. This is the only way to actually find this sword, and it's in a chest as dark as the shadows it's hidden in. You might just walk right past it, I know I did the first time.

Anyway, the secret to the weapon is the Raw path. It's better than any other weapon that has scaling because it has such high damage for such a fast swinging weapon. Up until about +6 it dishes out more damage than most A rank scaling weapons. After +6 it starts to lag behind, but you'll have enough resources at your disposal you can choose a successor to that weapon without much difficulty.

The main benefit of using a weapon with no scaling is that you have more points to put in Vigor, Endurance, and attunement. From there, you can explore spell casting all you want without hampering yourself in the melee department. Not only that, Raw is easily buffed, and available at the start of the game.