Skip it as a meta pick, build it only if you main Harrow or want a headshot skill-check weapon: Death Knell’s chained headshots grant free ammo and a stacking crit multiplier. The one real weakness is the 1-round mag (2 on Harrow): miss a headshot and you reload a gun with only 5% base status and no fallback damage.
A headshot grants a Death Knell stack: +0.5x crit multiplier, +20% status chance, and 100% ammo efficiency for 2 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. Chain headshots and Knell turns into a free-ammo, escalating-crit rapid-fire gun; break the chain and it reverts to base stats.
Knell is Harrow’s signature secondary from the Chains of Harrow quest, a scoped single-round pistol built around headshots, and in 2026 it still shows up in Harrow builds and Steel Path challenge runs even though S-tier secondaries like Laetum, Kuva Nukor, and Epitaph have passed it in raw output.
How to get the Knell
- Reach the point in the star chart where the Chains of Harrow quest becomes available and complete it; this unlocks Harrow and the Knell blueprint in Market.
- Buy the Knell blueprint from Market for 20,000 Credits (or the fully-built weapon for Platinum if you want to skip crafting).
- Build it in the Foundry: roughly 15,000 Credits, 2 Argon Crystals, 5,200 Rubedo, 3,800 Cryotic and 20,000 Salvage, with a 12-hour craft timer (rushable with Platinum).
- Mastery Rank 10 is required to equip it once built.
- If you want Knell Prime instead, check Varzia’s Prime Resurgence rotation or the in-game Relic screen for its current relics (these rotate, don’t chase a specific relic name from memory) and run Void Fissure missions, or buy the Prime parts on the trading market since those are tradeable.
Base Knell itself is untradeable; you have to buy the blueprint and build it yourself, no shortcuts via trade chat. Knell Prime’s parts ARE tradeable, so a lot of players just buy those outright instead of farming fissures.
Stats
| Class | Secondary |
|---|---|
| Mastery Rank | 10 |
| Trigger | AUTO |
| Noise | Alarming |
| Fire Rate | 4 |
| Accuracy | 32 |
| Magazine | 1 |
| Reload | 2 s |
| Critical Chance | 20% |
| Critical Multiplier | 1.5x |
| Status Chance | 5% |
| Riven Disposition | (1.25) |
| Damage | 150 total |
|---|---|
| Impact | 63 |
| Puncture | 69 |
| Slash | 18 |
Riven disposition is 1.25 (4 of 5 dots), decent odds, but only chase one if you’re committed to maining Knell specifically, since Knell Prime makes it a poor damage-per-plat buy.
Builds
Build Knell crit-primary: 20% base crit chance and a 1.5x multiplier, plus Death Knell’s up to +1.5x stacking bonus, reward crit damage mods over base damage, and the whole build lives or dies on landing headshots since that’s both your damage escalation and ammo economy on a 1-round mag. Run Cold/Toxin (Viral) to cover the weak 5% base status chance on 18 slash damage, since Viral is what lets your crit hits punch through Steel Path health pools.
14Hornet Strike
Pistol
12Primed Pistol Gambit
Pistol
14Primed Target CrackerPistol
11Barrel Diffusion
Pistol
11Lethal TorrentPistol
11Convulsion
Pistol
11Pathogen RoundsPistol
9Creeping BullseyePistol| Mod | Why it’s here |
|---|---|
| Hornet Strike | Baseline damage multiplier every pistol build needs before layering crit or status on top. |
| Primed Pistol Gambit | Pushes the base 20% crit chance high enough that headshots reliably crit and keep triggering Death Knell stacks. |
| Primed Target Cracker | Crit multiplier scaling stacks additively with Death Knell’s own +0.5x per stack, so a full 3-stack headshot chain hits exponentially harder. |
| Barrel Diffusion | Extra multishot means more pellets per headshot, each one able to land a weak point hit and refresh or extend your Death Knell window. |
| Lethal Torrent | The 4.0 base fire rate becomes brutal once Death Knell grants free ammo, and the multishot on top keeps stacks topped up. |
| Convulsion | Half of a Cold/Toxin pair that patches Knell’s weak 5% base status chance, which is otherwise too low to matter. |
| Pathogen Rounds | Completes the Viral combo with Convulsion, letting the weapon’s small slash component actually tick against high-health targets. |
| Creeping Bullseye | Adds more raw status chance since 5% base is too low to reliably land Viral procs even with two elemental mods; accuracy loss barely matters on a hitscan headshot weapon. |
Secondary Merciless (+30% damage per kill, up to 12 stacks) is the strongest pick since Knell’s headshot loop feeds it naturally, while Secondary Deadhead (+120% damage per stack, up to 3x on headshot kills) is the cheaper thematic alternative.
Reviewed September 2026.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Death Knell headshot loop grants free ammo plus a stacking crit multiplier
- 1.25 riven disposition leaves room for a strong roll
- High accuracy, hitscan, long effective range for a sidearm
- Cheap and fast to build (Credits and common resources only, no rare parts)
Cons
- 1-round magazine (2 on Harrow) punishes any missed headshot hard
- 5% base status chance is weak without dedicated elemental mods
- Outclassed across the board by Knell Prime, which most players run instead
- Absent from every current 2026 S-tier secondary list, purely a build-around/niche pick
Knell is for Harrow mains, headshot-accuracy players, and anyone who wants a skill-expression sidearm over raw meta numbers; build Knell Prime instead for less precision babysitting, or skip to Laetum or Kuva Nukor for current meta damage.