Adder Fang | Salt and Sanctuary Wiki

I'll start this post by clearing a misconception I mentioned from time to time: the belief that a good physical weapon under the effect of pessmud is a better choice than any of the poison weapons themselves.
This is false, and I see it mainly coming from a lack of understanding of how weapon buffs work in this game. The majority of the physical weapons don't have a base damage high enough to surpass the fully scaled poison damage of a poison weapon, and this is without taking into account that the later can equally be buffed with pessmud, improving their natural poison further.
To put this into perspective, the Tachi, a sword with the highest buff factor in its group that also hits almost as fast as a dagger, couldn't actually "outpoison" the Pessklaw, the weakest of the poison weapons.
Great weapons have much higher buff factors, so they could actually work... if it weren't for the fact slow movesets are awful for building up and "feeding" the poison status.
At the end of the day poison weapons remain the best at what they do, pessmud or not.

So, after this has been clarified, the spear right here is without a doubt the weapon of choice for a build focusing on poison.
I tested every melee poison weapon maxed out in NG+, and every other alternative has some glaring flaw:
-the Pessklaw is fine as an early poison option, but contrary to what most people seem to think, its higher speed is not enough to offset its low damage. Other than being fun to use, it gets outclassed by the rest of the poison family.
-the Scorpion Tail is... well, it's a whip: the damage is ok on paper, but the complete lack of an actual moveset means it's worse than anything that's not a Pessklaw.
-the Arbelos does a lot of poison damage per hit, but it's slow, very slow. Too slow to safely take advantage of tight attack windows, and too slow to efficiently build/keep the poison around compared to the rest.
-then there's the Scimitar: this one is honestly good. Pretty decent damage combined with the versatile moveset of a 1h sword. But the damn thing scales off both STR and DEX. And in this kind of build you'll want to prioritize DEX because Wraithfangs also scale with it. I guess it's still worth considering if you're using a strength weapon in your second loadout, but dual scaling like this will be costly.

Meanwhile, the Adder Fang shares none of these problems: good damage, it's quick, has reach, scales purely off DEX, its heavy attack actually BEATS the Arbelos in poison damage, and its weapon family also gives you access (helping saving on black pearls) to two fantastic pure DEX poleaxes that will help you decimate those smaller enemies on which poisoning would be a waste of time.
The only downsides are the upgrade path, and the fact that spears sometimes struggle to hit aerial enemies.
Still this can be an amazing weapon when buffed with Pessmud and supported with Poison Gas and a few Wraithfangs.

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So from what I could gather; this, for me, right now, as the highest poison build up per hit at high dex. I'm at about 53 dex, mind. The downside is that it doesnt feel terribly fast and doesn't have good stagger. THe scimitar with poisoncan stagger a lot of enemies in one hit, if memory serves me right.

(It probably isnt "Slow", it's probably because after using the tachi for an entire playthrough everything feels slow.)
Though, that being said, most of the poison weapons poison in 2 hits with the Mireheart Charm. As can the Poison Throwing daggers you get from Stone Roots. So I don't entirely see the point of buffing your poison weapon /with/ poison if daggers can do it better. That said, poison on a normal melee works fine enough for adding to the chip poison damage.

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The thing with this weapon is that 1- You get it from the stench most foul tooth. But you can also make a gun with said tooth. And If you personally ask me Guns>Spears any day. 2- Twisted heart upgrade path. You get only 1 per playthrough anyway. So for a poison build on NG, I would pick the gun and would have to wait til NG+ to get this spear, but by then, Im very likely to have found better poison to match with the gun. Or any wpn with the twisted heart path that would be better for that matter.

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Its not the best poison wpn If im being completely honest, but it's fast strikes enable the poison to stack relatively quick, but its Extra blunt makes it pair very well with a gun. That being said, I absolutely hate this upgrade path and the scarcity of its materials.

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This weapon is garbage on its own unless you're trying to use poison because of its terrible base damage, but because of Extra Blunt it destroys bosses weak to strike when paired with a gun.

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Naginata VII with vile charm instead of mireheart charm with poison buff incantation or pessmud.

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If you spam the strong attack against non-flying bosses with limited mobility (e.g. Sodden Knight, Cyclops, Skourzh, Carsejaw and more if you use Poison Gas), then this will easily outdo any other Poison weapon damage-wise. They will go down quicker than Mai Valentine after a couple of martinis. Just make sure you don't get hit so you can keep stacking as quickly as possible. Mossy charm HIGHLY recommended.

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Underwhelming =( As a dex character I was to use this for the blunt and S scaling. Utterly disappointing when an upgraded version hit so much less than the greathammer and I have almost no strength.

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