On the New Weapons (Build 0.6.1.19)

[Meeky]

I may go create a company called the Hammer Brothers.

Firstly: the two-handed hammer is GLORIOUS. The first swing I ever took with it obliterated the armor of three orcish warriors and made a couple of them lose morale. Wonderful weapon. Combined with the Full Force perk from the Offense tree, you can do some serious damage to your opponents. Once they’re weakened, you swap to a different weapon, like the greatsword or longaxe. Pretty good.

Speaking of the longaxe, it certainly does its job. Its damage numbers are good, and its armor effectiveness is solid. It can chop up shields, which is really nice. It’s generally a solid weapon. Given that you need to chop shields apart more often than you need to pull someone into a ditch, I think the longaxe might be a safer bet for a weapon to bring along than a billhook. But…

The billhook is definitely good at fighting armor now. It’s not all THAT much better than the longaxe, I think, but it’s got enough extra punch that if I KNOW I’m facing orcs I’m going to bring billhooks instead of longaxes. The pike also has its obvious niche, just as planned; I’d give it to less trained warriors, but I’d probably “upgrade” them to a billhook or longaxe later in their career. Its pretty weak in comparison to the other two, but that accuracy is important early on.

The warbow is… Well, it’s an upgrade. It’s definitely a viable weapon. It’s still not a crossbow, however, and the crossbow will always be better at the crossbow’s job: punching through armor. But the warbow seems to be better for peppering crowds of unarmored or lightly armored opponents, such as bandits, goblins, ghouls, and werewolves… which basically just tells me “It’s a hunting bow, except better.” And that’s the point. It’s worth the cost to buy the upgrade, and I’ll definitely use it.

I’ve gotten no experience with the new spear yet, but frankly I’m not a spearwall guy. I also haven’t tried the lower tier crossbow yet, since I decided to quickly test things out with an old company rather than a new one. I’ll be making a new company to try them both out soon; however, I’m pretty certain the best weapon to come from the weapon update is the hammer.

The hammer freaking ROCKS.

As the current toughest opponents in the game are orcs – say, a swarm of 20-24 orcs, largely orc warriors – you’re going to want weapons that smash through armor. Weapons that smash through armor will also be very effective versus Fallen Heroes, another super-tough opponent, and you don’t need high-damage weapons against goblins; you just need to HIT goblins. This favors weapons like the two-handed hammer, which carries enough oomph on its own to be powerful against armor, but becomes deadly when combined with Full Force (which, in my case, added 30 max damage to the weapon). Let me give an example:

I have a specially-built level 11 smash-your-face-with-two-handed-weapons guy named Leif the Wild. He’s a Wildman. He’s got a two-handed hammer, scale armor, Full Force and Perfect Focus. He’s got 108 fatigue with all his armor on.

Leif is standing in front of 3 orc warriors. He presently has used 0 fatigue (or maybe 4 or 8, since he might have walked a tile before). Leif decides to go all-out.

Action 1: Perfect Focus. Leif has 10/108 fatigue.

Action 2: Swing at all three orc warriors with his hammer. Each of them will take between 132-264 damage to their armor if hit, and each will also take 0-48 damage to their HP. Of course, this assume Leif hits, and the two-handed hammer has a whopping -10% penalty to hit when swung like that, but Leif also has 75 attack and could easily have the Confident morale bonus at this time. He’s got a fair chance of hitting all of them. By the way, he has a 33% chance of staggering his orcish opponents. 70/108 fatigue.

Action 3: Now that Leif has made a sweep with his hammer, he goes for a single-target move against one of the wounded orcs. He deals 176-308 armor damage, which mostly likely is enough to finish whatever armor the orc he targets has left, and also has 0-70 damage which ignores armor. If he’s attacking someone who’s unarmored, he’s got a chance of murdering ’em outright thanks to Full Force making his vs. unarmored damage equal 80-140. Also, anyone hit by this WILL be staggered. 100/108 fatigue.

Leif really needs someone to toot a horn for him right now, but hey: that’s a terrifying amount of potential damage for ONE guy with a two-handed hammer. Of course, he’s a level 11 (max level) character, so he should be terrifying, and now the orcs might be turning their vengeance on him… but thus far, this is working out beautifully in my game.

In short: Holy CRAP, I think the two-handed hammer is my new favorite weapon. It feels so wonderful to crunch orcish bones with it.

[Meeky]

Just found the new Fighting Spear. That’s… Yeah, that’s very underwhelming for 2k+ crowns of expense. Every other weapon thus far has been exciting and made me want to use it, but the Fighting Spear just seems… Blegh.

[Sarissofoi]

Meeky wrote:

Just found the new Fighting Spear. That’s… Yeah, that’s very underwhelming for 2k+ crowns of expense. Every other weapon thus far has been exciting and made me want to use it, but the Fighting Spear just seems… Blegh.

Sadly must agree on that.
It is upgrade but cost compared to stats make it really not economic at all. If at last durability was higher or equip fatigue lower with maybe some bonus armour pen or small dmg buff. Or maybe if it has range 2.
With 2 range it would be really interesting weapon. Or maybe range one for Thurst but range 2 with impale(if used without shield?).
Now its just not worthy.

[Danubian]

Tried most of everything new.

Bow meh.

Crossbow meh.

2 handed hammer, meh. Ok, ok, i guess its not bad, but doesnt suit into my strategy; too much fatigue, its just… Meh.

2 handed dane axe, meh. Im still toying with it, and im still trying to figure out why i should be breaking shields instead of dealing damage.

1 handed spear? Havent used it, didnt feel like buying it after i saw the price, durability and stats. Its a joke.

[Meeky]

The two-handed hammer works VERY efficiently. It costs the same amount of fatigue to swing as anything (15 fatigue, just like ALL two-handed weapons that aren’t orcish), so as long as you’re using a couple of hornblowers, you’re fine. Essentially, realize that it’s a two-hander with the same effectiveness vs. armor as a warhammer AND that it can hit 3 guys at once. Yowza.

The longaxe is a good pole weapon that can split the shields of any opponent which bunkers up too much. My one complaint about Split Shield – and this is always the case, really – is you need multiple guys to break the shield together to make it efficient, and THEN have them go for the throat with much higher chances to hit. But if you’re using multiple longaxes, you can do just that thanks to their reach… It’s nice.

[Wargasm]

Danubian wrote:

im still trying to figure out why i should be breaking shields instead of dealing damage.

A new recruit (who doesn’t need to deal that much damage to get to the next level-up) can smash shields from a safer distance while more experienced fighters (who need to deal lots of damage to get to their next level-up) will have a much better hit chance and will therefore be able to wield more destructive weapons. If they happen to miss or fail to finish of their foes, the longaxe-wielders get a chance to finish them off on ensuing turns. Or: level-11 veterans who no longer gain experience points can smash the shields and the ones who are still gaining can grab the glory (but the veterans with their high skills can still do a lot of damage as and when required). Or: if you have good enough defences and the tier-2 utility perks that reduce/replenish max fatigue, it’s not all that fatiguing to smash shields and then patiently work away at your enemies’ armour and hit points over many turns. The cumulative damage is the same.

[Author]

Posts