User talk:BigCalm

I've now figured out how talk pages are supposed to work.

I want to do a thing on secondary weapons, but the information that remains out there appears to be inaccurate, but I don't know if I'm missing something. What used to happen (in the level-19-as-max days) was that you'd calculate alert combat bonus from +72. So Shadowspawn, back when it was the best secondary, gave a whopping +26 bonus, to give you +98 alert. Most rogues ended up using stone dagger, which gave +24, or the sai, which gave +22 but was lighter. Then Draqisfang came along to give +28 and a reason for rogues to keep their knife skill high. Then Flaw came in, with her non-unique main gauche (+28 too) and that was more attainable than Draquisfang, so people used that. And then the mirrored knife arrived, which also gives +28, isn't unique, and can be obtained after the most ludicrous and confusing fights since "Packrat picks up the Starblade. Packrat leaves up.". And then came the sharp butcher's knife. Anyway, I appear to have got to the age at which I ramble, and I realise that GRD was in all of this too (probably came in before Flaw), but my point is that with all the various bonuses to parry that are knocking around, and the bonus per level to alert parry for rogues, it's quite tricky to figure out what the actual weapon-specific bonuses are.

I should mention at this point that I'm writing this down as an aide memoire, but please, if you can modify my list below to make it more accurate, then please do so.

I've cribbed Levek's old list (http://levek.macrotera.net/aainfo/secondaries.html) which, to all appearances, is really wrong (alert bonuses almost always increment by 2, so I have no idea how he got odd numbers in there), but who doesn't love Levek? So I've borrowed it as a thing to fix with what I know, delete what I don't.

Number within brackets relates to the total parry bonus to a level 19 rogue using alert combat.

+31 (+103) to +41 (+113) - need to check this. There's a big gap between this and the next best thing, though. Sharp Butcher's Knife

+29 (+101) Gemmed Rondel Dagger (I think. I rarely bother with this, but the problem is that it gives a bonus to your alert combat which presumably raises the bonus to parry, which makes it difficult to understand which numbers mean what).

+28 (+100) Solid ground. I'm sure of everything from here down to +20. Draqisfang, Mirrored Knife, Main Gauche

+26 (+98) Shadowspawn

+24 (+96) Stone Dagger

+22 (+94) Knife of the Defender (treasure hunt knife), Sai, Rondel Dagger (?)

+20 (+92) Hunga-Munga, treasure hunt knife (non-defender), Vicious Knife

+18 (+90) Gleaming Dagger, Razor-Sharp Dagger, Vicious Dagger

I think the floor is +6 - the bonus you get from using any secondary - but I need to check this with a small knife or something.

On the subject of GRD - presumably if +1 in alert gives +0.72 in parry bonus, then having 120 alert would give you 84ish. Which means that GRD on its own would have a +17 bonus, which would presumably put a plain rondel dagger at +89ish. Again, must test.

Ok, so this is interesting. My alert defense parry bonus without a secondary is +116. small knife +121 (+5) scalping knife +121 (+5) Hunga Munga +139 (+23) Vicious Knife +139 (+23) Rondel Dagger +139 (+23) Sai +145 (+29) Main Gauche +147 (+31) Stone Dagger +150 (+34) Sharp Butcher's Knife +158 (+42)

So that's interesting. It looks like: a) Stone Dagger got modified at some point. b) either secondary bonuses have been changed generally, or the bonus from secondaries is affected by level.

If we assume that there's a +3 bonus coming from somewhere, then that normalises a few. small knife (+2) not what I said, but makes sense. Hunga Munga, Vicious Knife (+20) in line Rondel Dagger (+20) makes sense. Sai (+26) definitely better than historical. Main Gauche (+28) in line. Stone Dagger (+31) significantly better and higher in the hierarchy than historically. Sharp Butcher's Knife (+39) would have given a bonus of +111 back in the day. Right ballpark, that specific number doesn't ring any bells.