Brand of the Inferno

The sword swings like any broadsword and sets things on fire often enough to notice, but the reason to carry it is the second button. With any shield in an accessory slot, and the Huntress's Buckler is the one that does not qualify, the activate button raises that shield. It then does two completely different jobs depending on whether you hold it or time it.

Held up, the shield gives a large flat block of defense for as long as you keep it raised, which is a way to eat a hit you can see coming and cannot dodge. Timing it is the real move: catch the attack in a narrow window just before it lands and the damage is cancelled outright, the enemy is thrown back, and you get a stretch of invincibility that a Cross Necklace doubles. The enemy has to physically collide with the shield for this to register, so you parry into the attack rather than away from it.

The attacker takes its own contact damage back at double strength, but that is the smaller half of it. A successful parry also leaves you with a short buff that makes your next melee hit land for five times its usual damage. The play is to parry with this and immediately swap to whatever you actually kill things with. One slow, heavy hit like the Psycho Knife turns a single correct read into a visible chunk off a boss health bar.

• Contact damage only. Projectiles cannot be parried, which rules the trick out of most ranged boss fights.
• It does work on enemies that normally ignore dodge effects, the Dungeon Guardian included.
• No parrying while mounted, and none at all with Journey mode godmode switched on.
• There is a brief cooldown between attempts. A particle flash and the mana refill sound tell you it is ready again.
• The reflected damage is cut by that enemy's banner, cut harder in Expert and above than in Classic, shifted by your luck, and capped outright, so the reflect will never carry a fight by itself.

Ogres drop it during the Old One's Army, and the odds are better on the middle tier than on the last one. If the sword is all you want out of the event there is no reason to push into the harder waves for it, and the middle tier is survivable much earlier in a run.

It arrived with the Dungeon Defenders 2 crossover and carries the same name in that game. The loops of the blade look hollow in your inventory and catch fire the moment you swing, and those flames stay fully lit in the dark.