This is a page about an overhaul of a vanilla blade. The page on that blade itself can be found here.
This is a page about an overhaul of a vanilla blade. The page on that blade itself can be found 
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The Arkhalis in use, reflecting a projectile.
The Arkhalis is a rare melee weapon that appears to be a sword, but behaves unlike any other weapon. It is quite rare, only obtainable from the unique background object found in an Enchanted Sword Shrine or very rarely in the Caverns layer. This background object has a 33% (1 in 3) chance to contain a "true" breakable sword item rather than a discolored "false" sword. When this item is broken, it has a 10% (1 in 10) chance to drop the Arkhalis rather than an Enchanted Sword. This means that on average, the chance of an Enchanted Sword Shrine dropping an Arkhalis is 1/30. The sword that the item gives is determined at the time the background object is broken, so there is no way to determine which sword the player will be given.
The Arkhalis does not present an actual blade when used. Instead of an overhead broadsword swing or a shortsword stab, the Arkhalis appears as a series of blurred slashes aimed in the direction of the cursor. This damaging area has a rather wide spread, even attacking behind the player for a very short distance.
The Arkhalis's unique means of attack is unaffected by any size and speed modifiers.
The best modifier is Godly.
Overhaul Changes
In Terraria Overhaul, the Arkhalis is much more powerful, as it can reflect all enemy projectiles that the slash comes into contact with. When a projectile is reflected, you can aim where the reflected projectile goes toward with your cursor.
To balance this power, the Arkhalis now cannot auto-swing, similarly to many other Overhaul weapons.
Tips
- The Arkhalis emits a large amount of white light-emitting particles for a short distance, making it useful for peeking through cave walls.
- Though its base damage is low, its high attack speed and multiple attacks per hit make it effective well into Hardmode.
- Since they have a 1/10 chance to replace the Enchanted Sword in a shrine, an extremely effective way to obtain an Arkhalis is to find an Enchanted Sword Shrine, then switch autosave off, and then keep force quitting Terraria until the Enchanted Sword that you found turns into an Arkhalis.
Trivia
- The weapon is named for Arkhayla, the Quality Director at Re-Logic. Its tooltip, "I didn't get this off of a Schmoo", refers to the means of obtaining a Crissaegrim in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Crissaegrim is Arkhayla's favorite sword, and her namesake weapon's appearance and function are modeled after it.
References
Arkhayla: Yeah, it's a reference to how you obtain my favorite sword in the game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Terraria official forums, 4 Aug 2015