Lies of P weapons explained: blades, handles, scaling and weight

Two parts: blade and handle

In Lies of P, a weapon is a blade mounted on a handle. The tutorial for Weapon Assemble sums it up: you can separate your weapons into blades and handles, then put them back together into new weapons that suit your fighting style, and a weapon's features depend on that combination. Assembly is done through Eugénie at Hotel Krat or at the Stargazers.

Not every weapon can be taken apart. Special weapons cannot be assembled with other weapons or disassembled; a loading-screen tip adds that some weapons are meant to be used as they are, to appreciate their elegance and beauty. The others, the normal weapons, can be split and recombined, which is why the same blade can end up on very different builds.

The blade: attack power and element

The blade carries the attack power. Upgrading it raises the weapon's ATK: Eugénie takes care of it at the hotel in exchange for Moonstones (Crescent, Half and Full Moonstones, among others), and some blades can only be upgraded with a special Moonstone.

The blade also decides the element. In the game files, a handful of blades carry an elemental attack value on top of their physical one: Fire, Electric Blitz (the game's name for electricity) or Acid. On Liesofpdle, the Element column only reflects that built-in value, which is why names can mislead. The Fire Axe, for instance, is listed as None, because its base attack is purely physical.

The handle: scaling

The handle decides how the weapon grows with P's stats. Lies of P has six stats: Vitality, Vigor, Capacity, Motivity, Technique and Advance. Handles scale with the last three. Motivity is the strength stat, Technique the dexterity stat, and Advance the third option, which matters most for elemental weapons, as the numbers below show.

Eugénie can alter a handle once with a Crank (Motivity, Technique or Advance Crank) to change what it favors, and a Balance Crank resets the change. On Liesofpdle, the Scaling shown for a weapon is the dominant grade of its original handle: Motivity, Technique or Advance, or Balanced when the grades are tied.

Fable Arts, staggering and durability

Each blade and each handle comes with its own Fable Art, a special technique: the blade's has its own button, the handle's is used while guarding. Fable Arts consume Fable slots, which you charge by hitting enemies with your weapon, and the stronger ones cost more slots.

Fable Arts also open enemies up. When a white outline appears around an enemy's HP bar, a charge attack or a Fable Art can leave it Staggered, and a Staggered enemy is open to a Fatal Attack, a blow that deals heavy damage.

Weapons wear out, too. Durability drops as you fight and a Grinder repairs it, but the game warns that once it reaches zero, ATK decreases and the Grinder can no longer fix the weapon. Keep an eye on the gauge.

Weight

Weight counts against P's load: the heavier your equipment, the slower your movement and your Stamina recovery, and reaching the weight limit slows you down a lot. On Liesofpdle, a weapon's weight is the sum of its blade's and its handle's weights.

What the data says about the 51 weapons

Here is what the data of version 1.12.0.0 shows for the 51 weapons of Weapon mode.

• Scaling: Technique (17 weapons) and Motivity (16) lead, ahead of Advance and Balanced (9 each).
• Element: 45 weapons have no built-in element. Only 2 carry Fire, 2 Electric Blitz and 2 Acid.
• ATK: from 53 to 174, with half of the weapons at 119 or more. The top value belongs to Live Puppet’s Axe.
• Weight: from 5.9 (Tyrant Murderer’s Dagger) to 31.1 (Frozen Feast), with half of the weapons at 14 or less.

Three patterns stand out.

1. Elemental blades have the lowest ATK. The six weapons with a built-in element hold the six lowest ATK values in the table, from 53 to 68. The column counts physical attack only, and these blades carry a second, elemental attack value of a similar size in the game files (from 46 to 65).
2. Every elemental weapon scales with Advance. All six have Advance as their dominant grade, and only three Advance weapons have no element at all.
3. Motivity weapons are the heavy hitters. On average they reach about 137 ATK for a weight of 19.7, against about 113 ATK and a weight of about 12.5 for Technique and Balanced weapons. Among weapons without an element, ATK and weight rise together very closely: all six weapons above 150 ATK weigh more than 20.

How Weapon mode works

In Weapon mode, Liesofpdle shows the whole official icon of a weapon, and you type names until you find it. Each guess is simply right or wrong: there are no colored columns as in Boss mode, and the suggestions in the search field have no pictures, so you cannot just compare thumbnails. Guesses are unlimited. Once you find the answer, its data appears: Scaling, Element, ATK and Weight.

There is one weapon per day, the same for everyone, with a new one at midnight UTC. Practice mode lets you play extra rounds whenever you like.

Reading an icon

The picture is the weapon's blade icon, not a drawing of the full weapon. In most cases you see the blade alone, drawn diagonally with its tip toward the upper left and the bare connector at the lower right, where a handle would go. A few icons show the blade and its handle side by side instead. Some habits that help:

• Think in blades, not in weapons. A bow, for example, is represented by its arrow.
• Start with the outline: long and thin (spear, rapier), broad and heavy (greatsword, axe, hammer head), round (a disk, a ring) or hooked.
• Look for mechanisms such as coils, valves, saw teeth or canisters: many names describe them literally.
• Use color with care. The two fire blades glow orange and the two acid blades are made of blue-green crystal, but icy crystal does not mean an element: Frozen Feast has none.
• Remember that built-in elements are rare, so a plain steel blade is the normal case.

The weapons section of the codex gives every name in English and French, and Practice mode is the easiest way to learn the shapes.

All 51 weapons

The table lists every weapon of the mode in alphabetical order, with its name in the other language underneath. ATK and weight come straight from the game files.

To go further, the Legion Arms guide covers P's left arm, the amulets guide explains the other half of a build, and the glossary translates every term on this page.