Mortal Shell 2 Sidearms: Every Secondary Weapon Explained

Sidearms in Mortal Shell 2 are the ranged half of your kit, and they matter a lot more than the tutorial tooltip suggests once you start pairing them with Seals and Break Damage. There’s already a guide on this site covering primary weapons and their locations, but nobody has broken down secondaries on their own — this fills that gap: what a sidearm actually is, every one confirmed so far, and how the choice you make changes the rhythm of a fight far more than the item description lets on.

Sidearms in Mortal Shell 2 are secondary offensive equipment used to inflict damage against enemies and bosses, usually fired from a ranged distance, as opposed to the melee attacks of primary weapons. There are different sidearm types, each with unique properties and attacks that give it a distinct playstyle, and they’re obtained as part of story progression or picked up in various locations, usable by all Shells and the Harbinger. That last part matters — a sidearm isn’t tied to one character build the way some Shell abilities are, so it travels with you regardless of which body you’re wearing.

Sidearms are described as Bloodborne-esque tools that can be extremely useful in a pinch, letting you inflict extra damage as well as attack from range. If you’ve already gone through the site’s weapon locations guide, sidearms are the armaments you probably walked past without realizing they weren’t just another sword variant.

Attacking enemies, parrying their attacks, and dealing Break damage to them fills up a yellow meter below their health bar that staggers them when it’s full, letting you step in for a Riposte and serious damage. The confusing part is where sidearms fit into that meter, because the honest answer is “it depends on your Seal.” The Sidearm contributes to Break Damage on every attack rather than only on perfectly timed defensive inputs once a specific Seal is active — outside of that setup, current sources don’t confirm sidearms reliably chip Break on a plain, unenhanced shot.

The Slayer Seal specifically changes what sidearms can contribute to a fight — with it equipped, sidearm attacks deal Break Damage. That means a ranged hit isn’t just damage from a safer distance, it can also help expose a target for a Riposte. To trigger the Gloomslayer ability you just fire any sidearm to partially fill the enemy’s Break bar, then activate Slayer Punch to follow it up.

Resolve is the resource that ties all of this together. Sidearms are fueled by the player’s Resolve, a resource that’s part of the Harbinger’s stats, generated by attacking enemies with the primary weapon or by destroying glowing effigies that drop it. In practice that means Resolve is rebuilt by landing melee hits, so sidearm shots spend a resource earned back in melee — every shot has an opportunity cost, not free damage from a separate ammo pool. If you’re deep into the no-stamina rework covered in the site’s Resolve and Seals breakdown, this is the same meter — sidearms just give it a second outlet.

Costs vary that widely by ability, so the honest cost of running a sidearm-heavy loadout is that you’ll spend a chunk of every fight’s Resolve pool on ranged pressure instead of melee specials or Harden — there’s no way to have both without landing enough hits to refill the meter mid-fight.

There are a total of 16 sidearms and melee weapons scattered across the map, and two gear pieces show up during the prologue, six are in the region of Fainweald, and the remaining eight sit in the region of Mammon — though those location reports don’t specify exactly which of those 16 are sidearms versus primary weapons in every case, so treat individual pins as a starting point rather than gospel. The GameSpot weapon and sidearm location guide and the Fextralife sidearms page are both worth cross-checking if you’re hunting a specific one.

Of the named sidearms, the Forgotten Crossbow can be found in the Flooded Village dungeon, just northwest of the Blackridge Pass beacon. Locations for the Salvaged Trebuchaxe and Troubadour’s Lute aren’t pinned down with the same confidence across sources, so don’t take any specific coordinate as final until you’ve confirmed it in-game.

Every weapon and sidearm can be upgraded further via the Tarforge in Marrow Keep, provided you’ve got enough coins and smithing-stone-type materials to spare — the same currency grind covered in the site’s Gloom farming guide and the Tarforge upgrade breakdown.

Best Against a Crowd

Something built around homing or spread coverage does more work when you’re facing multiple weaker enemies at once, since single-target burst is wasted on targets that die in one or two melee hits anyway. The Troubadour’s Lute leans this direction through its Hand of Rock ability, though the full kit of options here is still thin in public breakdowns.

Best Against a Single Elite Target

The Salvaged Trebuchaxe is described as unmatched in pure single-target damage, easily one-shotting most regular enemies when aimed properly — that makes it the pick when you’re staring down one dangerous target instead of a group, particularly if you’re also running Break-focused Seal setups.

Myth: Sidearms Always Deal Break Damage

They don’t, at least not reliably. Sidearm contribution to Break Damage on every attack, rather than only on perfectly timed defensive inputs, is specifically tied to a Seal setup — run a different Seal and that guaranteed Break tick isn’t confirmed to be there in the same way.

Myth: Sidearms Have Their Own Ammo Pool

There’s no separate clip or ammo counter to manage. Sidearm shots spend the same resource earned back in melee, which gives every shot an opportunity cost rather than being free damage from a separate pool.

Myth: The Slayer Seal Is Just a Free Damage Upgrade

It’s a real trade, not a strict upgrade. Equipping it removes your ability to Harden or Parry, on top of permanently disabling achievements on that save file, which isn’t reversible by unequipping it later.