Mortal Shell 2 Weapons

What Balance Patch 1 changed about weapons

Playstack's first balance patch materially reshuffles weapon advice — four of its lines touch this arsenal directly. One caveat surfaced a week later: the Great Martyr's Blade buff announced here did not actually ship with this patch (Playstack's own Week 1 admission — see the next section). If your weapon assumptions predate the Week 1 Update, re-read the notes below: two sidearms lost the resolve floors that used to gate their fire rate, and the forge economy got dramatically cheaper.

• Great Martyr's Blade +20% attack damage — announced for this patch but "didn't actually make it in the last patch"; the real, stronger buff shipped in the Week 1 Update (below). The Proxima Lightning pick stands either way
• Troubadour's Lute +100% attack damage — the support-flavored pick doubled its damage; re-check it before dismissing it as a meme
• Caged Hystrix & Triarch Repeater: resolve minimums removed — both now fire at any resolve level instead of holding fire below a threshold, which changes sidearm budgeting in long boss fights
• Tarforge smelting −75% Gloom — mid-run weapon swapping becomes cheap experimentation rather than an NG+-length commitment

What the Week 1 Update changed about weapons

The Week 1 Update (live August 29, 2026) is the largest balance pass since launch, and it corrects this page's record in the process: the Martyr's Blade buff the Balance Patch 1 notes promised arrived here instead — heavier. Per Playstack's official notes:

• Great Martyr's Blade deals more damage — for real this time — official wording: "It was a pity it didn't actually make it in the last patch, to make up for it, it's even stronger now." The +20% figure above describes what was announced for August 20; the shipped buff landed August 29 at a higher value (exact percentage not published)
• Obsidian Hammer — full balance pass — it "now hits substantially harder"; the brutalist chunk of obsidianite graduates from curiosity pick
• Heavy weapons in general — poise and damage pass — the whole heavyweight class trends up, which best build pairings lean into
• Salvaged Trebuchaxe: Tarred Fragment redesigned — officially "simultaneously overpowered and broken"; its signature fragment works differently now
• Axatana — the ability now grants invulnerability frames and inflicts Fragile stacks, and its combat Tarstone active triggers correctly
• Weltcap is stronger in both its active and passive forms
• Riposte overhaul (all weapons) — player riposte damage now scales with enemy health, so executions keep up in late game, NG+, and Night Mode; invulnerability windows last through the end of the animation; many recoveries hand control back sooner
• Enemy aggression and disengage ranges retuned — mid-fight weapon pacing from the launch window shifts slightly across the board

All 8 weapons in the launch build

Mortal Shell II ships with eight obtainable melee weapons, and the first one is handed to you: The Iconoclast is acquired during the prologue. The remaining seven are found across the world. Each has its own identity, from the pairing of a thief's axe with a dagger to a spear stolen from the Twiceborn.

• The Iconoclast — exceptionally light two-hander; your prologue starter
• Axe and Dagger — a thief's tool paired with a northern axe
• Great Martyr's Blade — the reforged weapon of the First Martyr Tarsus
• Veteran's Battle Axe — solid steel, quenched in the blood of the Revered
• Clockwork Scythe — the instrument of a madman or a genius
• Axatana — exquisite forged blade that once bore the name Dream Thresher
• Black Needle — a Twiceborn spear with implausible reach and speed
• Obsidian Hammer — a brutalist chunk of obsidianite

Where to find each weapon

PowerPyx's location guide walks all seven findable weapons; the routes below follow their numbering. Two of them hide behind the same boss as a shell — the Chamber of Becoming duel with Sariel also yields the Clockwork Scythe (see the boss guide), so you can double-dip one trip.

• Axe and Dagger — walk through the arch facing the burning pyre south of Mushroom Village to summon the statue holding the Chapel Key, then open the Shrine of Trials dungeon northwest of the village
• Veteran's Battle Axe — The King's Crypt cave northwest of the Shattered Beacon dungeon; on a body right beside an enemy after the long drop
• Great Martyr's Blade — Martyr's Prison dungeon at the northeast corner of the castle from Gloomshade Grove Beacon (or via the well from the Holding Cells); clear the four enemies in the locked room
• Obsidian Hammer — Obsidianite Mines under the Deserted Slums southwest of the Outskirts of Mammon Beacon; guarded by the miniboss Prophet of Profane Infinities
• Black Needle — reward for defeating Twin Sesters and Stray Sesters inside the Sester's Gate Beacon area
• Axatana — behind the Bone Gate at the highest northeastern point from The Silent Steps Beacon; press the button on the tower's back to open the gate
• Clockwork Scythe — Chamber of Becoming, after defeating Sariel the Endless twice and breaking all four tombstones that revive him

Every moveset is unique

According to Game8's launch guide, each weapon defines its own complete moveset — Mortal Shell II has no weapon subtypes borrowing shared animations, so swapping weapons genuinely swaps playstyles. Ranged sidearms (like the Triarch Repeater or Ballistazooka that appear in build guides) extend that identity further.

Weapons feed your resolve

The arsenal does more than deal damage. Per Game8's weapons explainer, melee hits also recover resolve — the same currency that pays for your defensive skills and sidearm discharge. A weapon you swing well is a weapon that keeps your whole toolkit funded, which is why build guides treat weapon choice and resolve economy as one decision rather than two.

Tarstone upgrades and the Tarforge

Weapons are modified using Tarstones — the upgrade stones scattered across the world — at the Tarforge. Game8's build tables slot named Tarstones like the Duality Stone, Rupturing Stone, or Acolyte's Stone directly into loadouts, so collecting the right stones for your weapon is as much a part of a build as the shell wearing it. Exact per-tier upgrade costs are still being verified against the launch build.

• Mechanism: Franz runs the Tarforge in Marrow Keep; upgrading burns materials plus Coin, with a Muradean Actuator tied into the process per Fextralife's upgrades guide
• Cost ladder: five materials in five-level tiers — Ventrium (+1–5), Laterite (+6–10), Dorsalite (+11–15), Thoracium (+16–20), Ossinite (+21–25), costing 1/3/6/9/12 pieces per step respectively
• Total bill: a full +0 → +25 journey consumes 185,650 Coin alongside the material ladder
• Damage curve: shared across all eight weapons — ×1.00 at +0 rising to ×1.80 at +16, while stagger-type stats keep climbing to ×2.00 at +20; the only per-weapon exception is Great Martyr's Blade's Guard Meter multiplier
• Post-patch discount: smelting costs dropped 75% under Balance Patch 1, so the real Gloom price is far kinder than launch-era guides told you
• New stone class (Week 1): Fragile Tarstones wear down as you use them and break — dropping a tarcore when they do — and are not unique, so multiple can be found per playthrough; Tarstones also now yield more tarcores when broken, and pre-patch saves received a compensatory cache

Why won't my Tarstones gain experience?

If a Tarstone's experience bar dies after a level or two and never moves again, you are not imagining it — tarstone leveling stalls are the most-reported weapon-system problem right now. Three separate threads hit the game's Bug Reports board within two days (September 8–9), and moderators pinned the largest one to the top of the board — the closest thing to an official "we see it too" short of a patch note. The reported pattern: a stone levels once, then gains no further experience no matter what you kill; one player's stall hit right after that first level-up, and the stone also stopped appearing in Franz's menu; another player reports the stall blocking a permanent-infusion unlock; a restart temporarily revived progress for one player and then never worked again, and another suspects already-maxed stones sitting in your equipment are involved.

Patch status: the September 5 update fixed Fragile Tarstones — they now properly grant Tarcores when they break (see the patch notes) — but says nothing about experience or leveling stalls, so no fix has shipped for this one yet.

One lead is circulating unconfirmed: a reply in a related thread claims the player had missed a tarstone upgrade key item until reaching their fourth gate area — which would make some stalls a missing-prerequisite problem rather than a bug. No wiki or official source currently confirms that item or its role, so treat it as something to check, not an answer. Beyond that, the honest state is: no confirmed cause and no confirmed fix yet — add your case to the pinned thread with your build number (pause menu, bottom right) and watch the patch notes for a tarstone line.

Does killing the blacksmith double your upgrade costs?

No. It's a fair soulslike worry — the Steam players asking this exact question note that 'everything doubles' is what the first game's lore and the genre's shopkeeper rules taught them to expect. But in Mortal Shell II the blacksmith's death is a scripted story event, and when it happens, upgrade costs stay exactly the same — no doubling, no penalty to your Tarforge bill. So if the plot takes him from you, your weapon upgrade budget is untouched — and it is already 75% kinder than launch pricing thanks to Balance Patch 1's smelting cut.

The eight sidearms

The ranged half of the arsenal holds eight sidearms, and per PowerPyx's locations guide they mirror the melee roster's rules: Naylesshotte (your first), Forgotten Crossbow, Salvaged Trebuchaxe, Troubadour's Lute, Triarch Repeater, Ballistazooka, Cursed Child, and Caged Hystrix. Collecting all eight unlocks the trophy “Guns. Lots of Guns”, none are missable, and Merrick in Marrow Keep sells their map markers like he does for weapons. The build guide shows which sidearm each shell's loadout prefers.

Pairing weapons with shells

Because every moveset is unique and every shell has its own kit, the interesting question is never “which weapon is best” — it’s which pairing you can pilot. The Iconoclast you start with becomes Eredrim's Break-gauge machine; the Axe and Dagger serves three different gameplans on Tiel, Gragu, and Smert. The pairing logic behind all eight shells is laid out in the best build guide.

Posture damage and critical strikes

Consecutive melee strikes build posture damage on the target. Enough of it staggers tough enemies, opening them up for critical execution strikes — the payoff rhythm the whole combat system is built around. Build guides lean into it: the shell-and-weapon pairings in the best build guide are largely organized around who breaks posture fastest and who capitalizes on the break.

• Chain melee hits to build posture damage
• Posture break staggers tough enemies
• Staggered enemies can be finished with critical execution strikes

None are missable

Per PowerPyx's location guide, no weapon is missable: all eight remain collectible after the final boss while you explore in free-roam, before entering New Game+. Their locations can be bought as map markers from the merchant Merrick in Marrow Keep — handy, but not required.

Do sidearms pass through eel-type enemies on purpose?

It reads like a bug, not design. Steam threads report Triarch Repeater shots phasing through the heads of eel-type enemies — projectiles visibly connect but deal no damage — with similar echoes appearing across player reviews around launch. The Week 1 Update fixed several projectile-registration bugs (weak-point hits and wrong-target picks among them) but named no eel-specific fix, so until a patch note says otherwise, treat ranged hits on serpentine models as unreliable and switch to melee rather than wasting resolve on refused hitboxes.

If your sidearm seems to stop working entirely, rule out the other usual suspects first: post-patch there is no resolve floor left on Caged Hystrix or Triarch Repeater (both fire at any resolve level), so a gun refusing to fire is more likely animation lock or ammo state than the removed threshold mechanic.