Sanguine was your training wheels; One-Handed weapon Jagged Steel is your first taste of playing dirty in Phantom Blade Zero. Dropped by the boss in Weeping Creek Valley, this battered, rusty cleaver completely shifts your battle approach from basic posture trading to aggressive damage-over-time pressure via the game’s powerful Bleed mechanic. Here’s how to get Jagged Steel, weapon stats, abilities, upgrades, and Soul Tempering effects.
Jagged Steel Overview and Base Stats
- Weapon Type: One-Handed Sword
- Base Damage: 240
- Base Status Effect: 124 (Bleed)
- Standard Combo: 5-Hit Chain
- Sha-Chi Combo: 3-Hit Enhanced Finisher
- Power Surge Ultimate: Jagged Steel Rampage (1 Sha-Chi Essence)
Every successful slash with Jagged Steel inflicts Bleed, filling the red status meter in the bottom left corner of the screen. When that gauge gets full, it triggers Blood Loss, which detonates a massive chunk of the enemy’s health pool.
By default, though, Bleed has zero effect on mechanical Puppets, Golden Bodies, and Phantom Bodies. Hitting an automaton with Jagged Steel deals basic physical damage and nothing else. To bypass this immunity and force bleed buildup on non-flesh enemies, you need to equip the Livingwood Talisman accessory.
How to Get Jagged Steel
You can get this serrated weapon by defeating Jagged Steel, the Frenzied Brute, the aggressive boss you encounter behind the waterfalls in Weeping Creek Valley during the Against the Flow main quest.
Reach the Broken Puppet Valley bell and eliminate the Agonized Brute along the way. Dropping this mini-boss collapses the Red Thread Barrier, and you can then go past this barrier toward the Rushblade Pavilion bell, which leads to a flooded river clearing behind the waterfalls.
Jagged Steel Weapon Combos and Moves
Jagged Steel keeps the steady parry windows of the one-handed weapon class, but it puts some aggressive push behind the slashes.
Standard Combo (5-Hit String)
A series of low, angled cleaves that leave targets bloody in a hurry. The fourth and fifth strikes have a wide spread, which is what you want to catch a human dodging left-right or clip a whole wave of grunts standing too close together.
Sha-Chi Combo (3-Hit Finisher)
You can branch into your heavy Sha-Chi moves right off any swing in the standard combo. Spend a part of your yellow Sha-Chi bar and the combo turns into hard chops that deal heavy posture break and spike the target’s bleed buildup.
Power Surge: Jagged Steel Rampage
Power Surge consumes 1 Sha-Chi Essence to unleash a fast, unblockable storm of spinning slashes. This attack completely ignores enemy block and builds almost a full Bleed Gauge on its own. Fire it off right after a boss misses and is recovering to force immediate Blood Loss.
All Jagged Steel Weapon Upgrades
| Upgrade Level | Unlocked Skill | Skill Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Level 5 | Blood Blade | When an enemy is Guard Broken, press Heavy Attack (Triangle / Y) to execute a powerful bloodthirsty slash. This deals heavy damage, floods their Bleed Gauge, and grants 1 stack of Blood Blade that increases your damage and bleed rate for 5 seconds; it can stack up to 3 times. |
| Level 10 | Relentless Bleed Lv. 1 | Slightly increases baseline Bleed Gauge buildup rate on all attacks. |
| Level 15 | Blood Blade Charge | Hold Heavy Attack (Triangle / Y) to charge your sword, generating stacks of Blood Blade up to a maximum of 3. Release the button to perform a deadly lunging cleave. |
| Level 20 | Relentless Bleed Lv. 2 | Moderately increases baseline Bleed Gauge buildup rate. |
| Level 25 | Frenzied Blood Blade | Press Power Surge + Heavy Attack (L1 + Triangle / LB + Y) to sacrifice 15% of current HP in exchange for an instant 3 stacks of Blood Blade that last 15 seconds. |
| Level 30 | Relentless Bleed Lv. 3 | Greatly increases Bleed Gauge buildup rate, triggering Blood Loss in just a few basic swings. |
Soul Tempering: One Wounds
Once you reach Chapter 4, you can perform Soul Tempering with the Myst NPC in Pangzhen. It’s not like the normal upgrades from the blacksmith, because Soul Tempering permanently changes a weapon’s innate properties using rare boss remnants.
- Required Catalyst: Iron Butcher Mask + Remnant Dust.
- Unlocked Trait (Open Wounds): Your attacks build the enemy’s Bleed Gauge even when they block.
Open Wounds completely counters defensive, turtle-heavy opponents. Blocking enemies will watch their status bar fill up through their guard until Blood Loss detonates, breaking their defense outright. Soul Tempering cannot be reversed or refunded, so commit to the upgrade only when you are certain Jagged Steel will be a part of your permanent build.
To explore alternative loadouts and compare its base stats against the rest of Soul’s firearms, check out our list of all weapons and their stats.
