Getting the most damage output out of fights in Phantom Blade Zero comes down to more than just swinging blindly at bloated health pools. For top-tier DPS, you need to break enemy posture, chain your weapon skills, stack passive multipliers, and work the Sha-Chi combat to your advantage. Here’s how to increase the damage in Phantom Blade Zero, upgrade your gear, and get the most out of your weapons.
- Break Posture to Trigger Brutal Executions
- Collect Blackstone Shards to Increase Permanent Stats
- Invest in Core Damage Nodes on the Skill Tree
- Upgrade Weapons to Rank 5 and 10 to Unlock Skills
- Swap Weapons Mid-Combo to Refill Sha-Chi Meter
- Stack Offensive Accessories and Talismans
- Exploit Elemental and Weapon Weaknesses
- Use Medicines to Increase Damage Uptime
Break Posture to Trigger Brutal Executions
Direct health damage against blocking opponents or bosses is heavily penalized. Enemies have a yellow Sha-Chi meter directly beneath their health bar. As long as this meter is intact, standard attacks deal negligible chip damage.
You want to use heavy attacks, weapon arts, and Sha-Chi combo finishers because they inflict massive Guard Break damage. When an enemy’s Sha-Chi drains to zero, their posture breaks. They lose the ability to block, every incoming strike staggers them, and a prompt appears to execute them in one go. Striking beasts then triggers an execution animation or gives you a few seconds where your deadly combos deal unmitigated damage to their health pool.
To defeat tough targets as soon as possible, stop worrying about their health bar and just focus on depleting their guard gauge instead.
Collect Blackstone Shards to Increase Permanent Stats
Exploration pays off because you can find Blackstone Shards in every region that increase your baseline combat power. If you manage to get four Blackstone Shards, they can be combined into a single stone that permanently increases your Attack Power and Guard Break by 10%.
Open your map and press the prompt to inspect collectibles. Weeping Creek Valley alone spawns four Shards, and tracking them down early gives you a solid passive edge before you deal with major story encounters.
Invest in Core Damage Nodes on the Skill Tree
Soul’s skill tree is divided into offensive paths, defensive utility, and Phantom Edge enhancements, and if you want to increase your damage output as high as it goes, invest Remnant Dust into these crucial nodes:
- Keen Edge: Found on the damage branches, each rank provides a flat +2% to Attack and Guard Break, stacking up to a +20% total increase once you reach max rank.
- Fluid Form: Unlocked early on the tree, this ability lets you press light or heavy attack immediately following a perfect parry, perfect dodge, or guard break to perform an instant Quick Pursuit dash. This closes the gap to far targets, eliminating downtime between defense and counter-offense.
- Boundless Capacity: Adds extra accessory slots to Soul’s equipment loadout. Every slot you unlock lets you equip another offensive trinket.
- Endless Renewal: Makes assassinations and executions restore health and Sha-Chi, so you have the resources under the belt to roll heavy attacks immediately onto the next target.
Because skill points can be completely refunded for free at any Bell, reset your nodes whenever you need to adjust your build toward raw attack power.
Upgrade Weapons to Rank 5 and 10 to Unlock Skills
Weapon upgrades do a lot more than leveling up your baseline damage stats. If you look at the Advanced Skills tab at the bottom of any weapon inspection screen, you’ll see the specific abilities that unlock at higher upgrade tiers.
| Weapon | Upgrade Tier | Unlocked Combat Perk |
|---|---|---|
| Sanguine (One-Handed) | Level 5 | Chi-Infused Blade (+Damage & +Sha-Chi Depletion / 40s) |
| Sanguine (One-Handed) | Level 10 | Phantom Execution Lv. 1 (High-Damage Gap-Close Slash) |
| Jagged Steel (One-Hand) | Level 5 | Blood Blade (Hemorrhage / Bleed Buildup on Break) |
| Sanguine Twin (Dual) | Level 5 | Chi-Infused Blade (+Attack Speed & Shield Pressure) |
Activating weapon enhancements like Sanguine’s Chi-Infused Blade gives a serious boost to your outgoing damage and posture depletion that lasts quite a while. Level 10 milestones unlock passive bonuses that apply to the entire weapon archetype, such as all one-handed swords or all dual-wield weapons, which largely increases your overall combat ceiling.
You can freely revert weapons back to Level 1 at no cost up to Level 10 with a 100% refund on all invested Remnant Dust and upgrade metals. That means you can test weapon upgrades up to Level 9 before you have to commit rare reforging talismans for higher tiers.
Swap Weapons Mid-Combo to Refill Sha-Chi Meter
Sha-Chi fuels your heavy combo branches and weapon arts, and if you let it run dry, your offense becomes useless just when you need it the most and leaves you vulnerable.
- Swapping your active primary weapon in the middle of a fight does restore your Sha-Chi meter to full.
- Dump all Sha-Chi into an aggressive combo with your first weapon, instantly switch to the secondary firearm to refill the bar, and you can continue the assault without breaking momentum.
- Equip accessories that reduce weapon-swap cooldowns by up to 50% to chain resource-heavy attacks back-to-back against bosses.
Stack Offensive Accessories and Talismans
Accessories provide percentage based offensive bonuses that stack with your base stats and weapon ranks.
- Hunter’s Insight increases damage dealt and enemy Sha-Chi depletion by 7% against attacking targets, which rewards aggressive counter-hitting.
- Battle Wraps provides a +5% damage increase across all basic attacks.
- Shieldbreaker Talisman increases damage dealt to shield durability by 50%, making short work of heavily armored vanguards.
- Status Talismans: When your Soul wields bleeding weapons like Jagged Steel, equip bleed-rate talismans to trigger Hemorrhage bursts way faster.
Exploit Elemental and Weapon Weaknesses
If you bring the wrong weapon to a fight, you’ll just make it harder than it needs to be and drag out the fight. Greatswords like Juggernaut and blunt tools like the Bashpole destroy shields and heavy armor more quickly than nimble blades. Or if you’re against fast, lightly armored enemies, fight with fast dual weapons like Sanguine Twin or White Serpent & Crimson Viper to bury them under a ton of strikes.
Phantom Edges are offensive—you’ll want to use high-damage secondary tools to exploit certain enemy weaknesses. Throw out fire options like Flaming Mane to build burning gauges on fleshy beasts, or deploy Tiger Cannon and Lion Dance projectiles to chunk down boss posture from a distance before you finally close in to finish the battle.
Use Medicines to Increase Damage Uptime
Don’t forget to carry consumable medicines for temporary stat boosts to increase your damage uptime. Snake’s Reflection generates Sha-Chi for 15 seconds while restoring your health at the same time, which lets you spam your best Sha-Chi combos without running out of resource pool. Then there’s Merciful Dew, which increases the natural Sha-Chi recovery speed by 150% for 10 seconds—it’s perfect to use right before a boss fight to keep the pressure on.
