Whether you like it or not, samurai are dominating Elden Ring. It’s a good class, with some solid base stats and starting gear that can see you through the end of the game if you treat them right and level them up. The uchigatana is an especially excellent beginner weapon, but there’s another sword that has a growing fanbase singing its praises: the Moonveil katana.
The Moonveil looks much like the Rivers of Blood and uchigatana. That is to say it’s styled like a katana, traditional Japanese-style curved blade and all. Getting it is tricky, though. You gotta defeat a giant fire-breathing, sword-wielding salamander called Magma Wyrm in the depths of Gael Tunnel, which is on the border of Limgrave. That’s a tough fight. Magma Wyrm is big and the circular arena is small, so navigating it sucks. The camera can also get stuck against the wall if you’re not careful, and Magma Wyrm has some attacks that kill you in one hit. It’s an exercise in frustration.
If you manage to put an end to the ferocious Magma Wyrm, though, you’ll score a dragon heart as well as the coveted Moonveil. And let me tell you, this sword looks cool in action! It’s a magic-based katana with high blood loss buildup and solid damage output that scales with Dexterity, Intelligence, and Strength. But what makes it so sought-after is its weapon skill: Transient Moonlight. Much like with the uchigatana’s weapon skill, holding the left shoulder button sheathes the blade in preparation for unleashing a quick strike, but on top of that devastating physical attack, drawing drawing the Moonveil katana also launches a blue projectile wave. This gives your Tarnished a melee weapon that can play at range.
Transient Moonlight is what makes the Moonveil deadly. Even after FromSoftware stealthily nerfed it in a recent patch, the katana still quickly builds up the blood loss status effect, hits hard when upgraded, and shoots out a Vergil-from-Devil–May–Cry-style blade wave. In PvE, the weapon skill is a nice way to get a few hits in while maintaining distance. In PvP, it’s a godsend. The skill allows you to keep the pressure on at close range and lets you interrupt most casting animations at long range.
Being on the receiving end is such a nuisance that there’s folks on both sides of the blade. Some adore the Moonveil, saying it helped them kill multiple bosses and invaders back to back. Others call it broken because players spam Transient Moonlight too often. There are even folks that apparently hate the Moonveil so much, they named their Tarnished to convey this hatred to other players. Now that’s extreme.
I get it. Contending with a weapon that, in an instant, shoots out a high-damaging projectile must be frustrating in PvP. But at the same time, as a devout katana user, I’m totally getting the Moonveil. It’s the kind of weapon that inspires the otaku in me, letting me role-play my dreams as a ronin like Rurouni Kenshin or even Elden Ring’s very own samurai, the Bloody Finger Hunter Yura, instead of some raggedy Tarnished. Now, if only my ghost pups and I could kill that damn Magma Wyrm…