Weapons

A witcher carries two swords and a crossbow, and every fight in The Witcher 3 starts with choosing between them. Steel is for people, nonhumans and beasts, silver for monsters, and the crossbow for whatever flies or swims. Below: the weapon classes side by side, the rarity tiers, and the runestones and runewords that finish a sword.

Builds

A build in The Witcher 3 is skills, a mutation and a set of gear working together, and the swords are the half of the set that hits. Each of the six witcher schools makes a matching steel and silver sword, and each leans one way:

Signs. Griffin swords add sign intensity, in a medium armour set built around Yrden.
Fast attacks. Feline swords add critical chance and bleeding, in a light armour set.
Adrenaline and Quen. Ursine swords add adrenaline gain and critical damage, in a heavy armour set.
Hybrid. Wolven swords spread their bonus across signs, adrenaline, criticals and bleeding.
Alchemy and bombs. Manticore swords add armour piercing, in the set that gives every alchemy item an extra charge.

The set bonuses are on the Witcher Gear page.

Remastered rebuilt the skill trees and reset every skill point, and published builds from before 29 September 2026 use the old tree. The patch notes name skills rather than gear, so the gear figures here are the last published ones.

All Weapon Categories

The Classes

Class	Weapons	Variants	Used On	Slots
Steel Swords	153	234	People, nonhumans and beasts	Up to 3
Silver Swords	104	149	Monsters and magical creatures	Up to 3
Crossbows	11	19	Flying monsters, and anything underwater	-
Bolts	8	14	Loaded into the crossbow	-

A variant is one way a weapon exists: the same name can be a crafted sword, a quest relic and loot copies at lower rarities, each with its own figures.

Rarity

Rarity	What It Means
Common	Base stats only
Master	One random bonus
Magic	Two random bonuses
Relic	Fixed, named bonuses, and usually 3 slots
Witcher Gear	An item class of its own rather than a rarity, shown in green: fixed stats, upgraded tier by tier, and part of a school set

Witcher gear is upgraded from Basic through Enhanced, Superior and Mastercrafted to Grandmaster, the last tier added by Blood and Wine. Each step needs its own diagram, usually found on a scavenger hunt, and a smith good enough to make it: a journeyman up to Superior, a master for Mastercrafted, a grandmaster for the last.

Upgrades

A blacksmith sockets runestones into a sword's slots. Each comes as Lesser, standard and Greater.

Runestone	Effect
Chernobog	Attack power
Veles	Sign intensity
Perun	Adrenaline gain
Svarog	Armour piercing
Dazhbog	Chance to burn
Stribog	Chance to stagger
Triglav	Chance to stun
Morana	Chance to poison
Zoria	Chance to freeze
Devana	Chance to bleed

Removing a runestone destroys it; dismantling the sword gives it back.

Runewords came with Hearts of Stone. The Ofieri Runewright at Upper Mill, near Oxenfurt, enchants a sword with all three slots, replacing the runestones with one stronger effect. A sword holds one runeword, and upgrading a witcher sword to its next tier loses it.