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)Riven disposition 4 of 5 (1.25): a Riven mod rolls 25% stronger than the 1.00 baseline on this weapon. Four dots means the weapon sees little use, so DE lets Rivens roll high on it. The dots measure how much a Riven helps, not how good the weapon is, and DE re-tunes them with every Prime Access. How Rivens work · The full disposition list |
| 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.
Pistol
Pistol
Pistol
Pistol
Pistol
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Pistol
Pistol| 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.