Demonbrandt

This will be old news to many I know but it's news to me and might be news to some newer players to the game.

I knew all about the Northern Regalia sword and the dedicated build etc. but never thought much about the Demonbrandt or even took a swing with it until recently.

I started a new co-op playthrough with another forum member. I killed Doran (yes, cheesy backstab method lol) asap for his ring and armour. Literally a day or two later I realised that I had gotten PWCT very quickly and very early on from co-oping and getting lucky once or twice against a kind invader who offered to make our playthrough more authentic.

Anyway I started as a Temple Knight so I satisfied the Faith requirement for the Demonbrandt right off the bat. You're gonna two hand the sword so the chances are you can also do that right off the bat or at least get there with a couple of point investments in Strength. But here's the thing - even without meeting the DEX stat requirement this sword is by far the strongest weapon available this early in the game.

The penalty only affects the physical damage so the magic damage was still all there and maxed out due to my CT. It was doing 240+ per swing. This is at SL20 and could have been even earlier if I gone to kill Doran earlier (although it's very tedious killing him with weak weapons).

I then put a few points into DEX to see how strong it actually gets and it's ludicrous for a weapon 'available' so early on. I killed the Tower Knight in 2 swings (after he fell down) and I backstabbed a miner in Stonefang for 1200.

I've actually stopped using it as it's not really 'fun' and I'm going with a Strength build anyway.

Sorry to go on a bit but my point is without Flamelurker's soul, without farming for upgrades and with fairly minimal stat investment you can get an end-game strength weapon if you get PWCT. And even before you satisfy the stat requirements it might well be better than any other weapon (that I am aware of) this early on provided you can get PWCT.

It's a strong starting weapon indeed, even with neutral character tendency.
If you use it against bosses (anything that holds a demon soul, the maiden in black as well), it will even out-perform the Nortern Regalia. The added bonus against bosses is something like +40% damage, can't remember the exact number.

I actually had a demon's souls character named '1-1 limbo', it was a base level temple knight with a demonbrandt who never killed the Phalanx. It was made for testing purposes only, because I wanted to see what kind of weaponry and ore I could farm without killing the first boss. I only used the boss to farm all the hoplites around it. Killing Doran also changed wt to black, so I could farm the two black phantoms in front of the mausoleum as well.

I was actually wondering about the 'demon' bonus damage and how that worked. Interesting, thanks.

Funnily enough I was also wondering recently what is the earliest you can obtain Large Shards of any type. Is it possible in 1-1?

As regards weaponry I got a PFS from the Red Knight at the mausoleum recently which I never knew was a possible drop - always thought you could only get it from the Dragon's nest.

No large shards (this is what I did the test for), so it's only possible to upgrade weapons to +3?
From what I can remember, rare weapons you can farm in 1-1 are: PFS, kite shield, knight shield, knight sword, guillotine axe, winged spear.