Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Weapons, Relics and Arcana Explained

At a glance

Your kit has three layers: the whip, which is both weapon and movement tool; weapons and Relics, which you equip and combine; and the Arcana, a set of tarot abilities you earn by beating bosses and improve through challenges.

The whip

The Vampire Killer is the one tool the game builds around. KONAMI describes cracking it to move "like a trapeze artist", and the traversal side is as important as the damage: anchors placed around Paris let Rose swing across gaps, and enemies can be used as grapple points. If you find a route blocked by a gap that no jump clears, the answer is usually the whip rather than a missing upgrade.

Weapon categories

Beyond the whip, KONAMI states that weapons span seven distinct categories, and that you combine what you find to build your own playstyle. The game's own marketing frames combat as something to plan rather than button-mash, because the weapon in hand changes your reach, speed and options. What KONAMI does not publish is a list of every weapon or its numbers — so any "all weapons" list or damage table you read elsewhere is third-party, and often incomplete at launch.

Relics

Relics are the passive layer: KONAMI describes them as triggering "powerful effects through both offense and defense". A well-known example is Family's Grace, which is one of the items bundled with the Midnight Edition rather than found in the normal course of play — worth knowing, because it means a Midnight buyer starts with an extra relic. Beyond that, the specific effect values are not published by KONAMI.

Arcana, Works of Mercy and Gifts

This is the signature system, and it is a three-step loop rather than a single mechanic:

1. Defeat a boss. Many bosses are sealed into Rose's tarot cards as an Arcana, each granting a spell and a special action.
2. Complete that Arcana's Works of Mercy. These are in-world objectives — kill a set number of enemies a certain way, find a set of matching weapons, and so on — and completing one earns a Blessing.
3. Assign the Blessing to unlock a Gift. The Gift is the upgrade to that Arcana, and different Blessings push it in different directions, so the same Arcana can end up looking different between two playthroughs.

The practical consequence is that collecting Arcana is not enough on its own — the card you just won is at its weakest until you have done its Work of Mercy. That is also why "beat every boss" and "unlock all Blessings" are separate achievements in the game's own list.

What is not official

• Every weapon, Relic and Arcana by name. KONAMI names the systems and the category count, not the contents.
• Damage, scaling and tier numbers. Not published, and anything you read is third-party.
• Whether any gear is exclusive to an edition. Family's Grace is bundled with the Midnight Edition; whether anything else is edition-bound is not set out as a full list.

This page describes how the systems fit together, which KONAMI does document. It deliberately does not list items or quote numbers, because doing so would present third-party data as fact.