Demon's Souls players have a lot of options when it comes to their playstyle. The game encourages players to experiment with a flexible character leveling system that can turn any starting class into any type of build. For those that have opted for a magic-based approach, a good catalyst is vital to their success. Catalysts allow characters to cast spells that they've memorized, and each one has a magic adjustment rating that determines how much damage spells will deal. Typically, the higher this stat is, the better, but they often come with other drawbacks that must be considered as well.
As a predecessor to the Dark Souls franchise, it's clear that Demon's Souls was still exploring certain concepts. One example of this is the variety in terms of catalysts. In Dark Souls 3, players have 17 different options for tools they can use to cast spells, but in Demon's Souls, there are only four available. While the lack of options may be disappointing to those coming over from Dark Souls, it does allow for each catalyst to be made different from the others, so there really isn't a best option overall. Different builds will want to make use of different catalysts.
Wooden Catalyst
The most basic catalyst in Demon's Souls is the Wooden Catalyst. This wand doesn't have any kind of auxiliary effect but is reliable as it has a very high Magic parameter. This means that as players level their Magic stat, this catalyst will get exponentially stronger alongside them. When compared to other catalysts, it offers better damage than the Silver Catalyst, but far less than the Insanity Catalyst. Depending on the character's stat investment, it may not outperform the Talisman of Beasts but doesn't require any Faith to use, making it ideal for mages that want to focus on casting a lot of damaging spells.
All of this paired together with how easy it is to obtain a Wooden Catalyst make it an incredibly useful tool in any mage's arsenal. Players will likely feel the urge to upgrade to another option once they acquire one, but that isn't always necessary. Players that want to keep things simple will be better off sticking with the Wooden Catalyst and boosting their Magic stat as high as they can, as that's how they'll get the most out of this wand and the sorceries they learn throughout their journey.
Silver Catalyst
Like the Wooden Catalyst, the Silver Catalyst is relatively easy to obtain, with the Royalty class even starting the game with it. The biggest differences between these two catalysts is that the Silver Catalyst doesn't get stronger as the player increases their Magic Stat. With that in mind, this is the Catalyst of choice for players that want to use magic to augment their other abilities, relying on buffs or effects that don't scale on the character's magic strength. This is the choice for players that want to get great mileage out of things like Warding and Light Weapon, and will even work great on damaging spells early on.
To top it all off, the Silver Catalyst increases the wielder's maximum MP while it's equipped. This means players can fire of more spells or apply their buffs more often than if they were to use the Wooden Catalyst, all at the expense of less magic power at high Magic levels. The MP boost from the Silver Catalyst again makes it a great option for non-dedicated spellcasters, as they'll be able to cast more advanced spells even if they'd typically lack to the Intelligence required to have enough MP.
Insanity Catalyst
While the other two are easy to get, the Insanity Catalyst requires players to beat worlds 2-1 and 2-2 to defeat the Flamelurker boss and then 3-1, 3-2, and 3-3 in order to get the soul required to craft it. As a payoff for that struggle, this catalyst has the highest Magic scaling in the game, and will easily allow the player to do more damage than any other option. Naturally, there's a tradeoff that ensures that this isn't the all around best catalyst to go with. Players that equip the Insanity Catalyst will have their maximum MP cut in half, especially problematic for characters with relatively low Intelligence.
Players wanting to use the Insanity Catalyst will need to invest in Intelligence quite a bit in order to counteract this huge drawback, but the result will be damaging spells that really lay the hurt on enemies. Other ways to get past the MP deficit is to wear mana boosting items such as the Silver Coronet. Alternatively, players can instead opt to stock up on Spices from the Mind Flayer enemies in world 3-1, as enough of these will allow players to maintain their mana even as they blast out spell after spell. This catalyst should be reserved for characters that are going all in on a spellcasting build.
Talisman of Beasts
Though it may seem strange that a Talisman has made the list of best catalysts, it's because the Talisman of Beasts has the unique property of being able to cast both Miracles and Magic Spells. In addition to this oddity, the magic damage players deal with this talisman scales off of both Faith and Magic stats, meaning to get the most out of it players will want to level up both. For dedicated mages that only want to have a few Miracles to support their playstyle, the best thing to do is raise the Faith stat to 18 and then bump Magic all the way up to 40.
At this point, the damage of the Talisman of Beasts is almost able to rival that of the Insanity Catalyst, with the added benefit that it doesn't drain the users' maximum MP. This Talisman would easily be considered the best catalyst in the game if not for how difficult it is to obtain. In order to get it, players either have to get through quite a bit of Mephistopheles' quest line or kill Black Phantom Scirvir in Stonefang Tunnel. For either of these, players need to get their tendency to pure black, something that can prove difficult especially for first time players.
Demon's Souls is available now on PS5.
