Confirming my understanding of weapon advancement

Hey folks...
So I'm making my way through Dark Souls. Finished Demon Souls, but that was quite a while ago. I had been using the Drake Sword, but began to suspect that my stats are to where I'd benefit from using some stat scaling weapon instead of the Drake Sword. So last night I upgraded my Iaito to +5, and at my current dexterity it seems to be incrementally better than the Drake Sword. So far so good. The real question is how to proceed further. Given the following details:
- I depend heavily on a bow as well, also dexterity based
- I've focused most of my levelling into dexterity
- I'm really not a fan of PvP, so I play most of the game hollowed and am not too concerned about that environment

My hunch is that the right answer is to continue upgrading both the bow and the Iaito on the normal path up to +15 rather than ascending to a different type. Is my understanding correct? It just seems if I'm pumping dexterity and using weapons that scale well with dexterity, ascending the weapons to another type almost has to be a step in the wrong direction. Yeah?

Thanks in advance...

take dex to 40 no more than that. try to farm for the balder sword from knights in church, its one of the best dex weapons, specially when buffed. also try the spears specially ricards rapier, that thing destroys bosses in less than a min when buffed.

Hmm. So the Balder sword loooks like it starts out with less damage than Iaito, doesn't have the bleeding effect, and both look like they scale the same with dexterity. What about that sword makes it better than Iaito? Is there some other variable I need to consider?

The other part of the question remains: with any of these dexterity weapons, is the right answer to just keep upgrading them up the normal path rather than ascending them to a different type?

It depends on your levels. If I had 14 Strength and 14 DEX I would do better with a +10 Fire Uchigatana then I would with a +15 normal Uchi.

So it's not so much the weapon, but rather your character's stats that matter.

yeah if you have hight dex like 40 goo with +15 if you have low dex go with elemental.

PAINTING GUARDIAN SWORD!!

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Sorry, don't know what got over me there. But seriously, that weapon is awesome! Terrible reach, but it's the strongest dex weapon for damage per second, and it bleeds.

You're right about upgrading: go to +15, no other branch. Just be careful what you spend your slab on, since there are very few of them. The difference between +14 and +15 isn't terribly huge, but it's annoying to waste a slab. Also, like Rant said, don't raise Dex above 40.

If you want more suggestions on Dex weapons, check the builds link in my sig and look at the list of weapons I use with the Jackal. Have fun!

RantFromRant wrote:also try the spears specially ricards rapier

i think you made a little confusion back there :shock:

lol he'll figure it out.