Weapons

Original Sources: AA for dummies and Cosm's Happy Fun Time Yay Super Duper Anguish Site

Note: If weapon has a link, that means it is unique, has other special characteristics, or may be confused with similarly-named weapons. Click on it for more info. Difficulty ranges of artificer-forged weapons are available on a separate page.

The various types of weapons have pages with more details and lists.

Axe - Club - Curved blade - Exotic - Flail - Knife

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(T) = Throwable

Skill Range	Difficulty	Skill Range	Difficulty
0-5	Grandma	30-35	Moderate Skill
5-10	Ex. Easy	35-45	Difficult
10-15	Very Easy	45-55	Mod. Difficult
15-20	Easy	55-65	V. Difficult
20-30	Some Skill	65-85	Ex. Difficult
85-100	Ex. Skilled

General Advice

    Spoo says: i have never agreed with aa for dummies skill recommends 
    Spoo says: i think its too aggressive 
    Spoo says: puts ppl in too diff weps too soon 
    Spoo says: an awesome addition to a wiki would be the str to wield each weapon 
    Spoo says: then let em put a multiple on it, 4 or 5 or 6 prolly, dependiong 
               on weapons weight and any specials it has 
    Spoo says: 5 average tho, 5 x str to wield 
    Spoo says: rule o thhumb for skill to use 
    Spoo says: you gotta learn to fudge it based on weights a little 
    Spoo says: and just use stuff and count the miss:hits 
    Spoo says: if you not hitting 2 out of 3, you need something else fast 

So, as to sum it up, evals below are rough progressions that may or may not be 100% accurate for your skill. Rely on strength to wield more when the number is available, about 5xStrength to wield = proper skill or thereabouts. Heavier weapons will be less accurate, and you should be aiming for 66% accuracy or so.

Strength to Wield

Strength-to-wield testing is ongoing; many preliminary results are available in the weapons tables, with the following notation.

n	Testing has determined that n is the minimum strength needed to wield this weapon in your main hand.
<n	The weapon can be wielded with n strength and might be wieldable at lower strengths, but we have not yet tested them.
>n	The weapon cannot be wielded with n strength, and we have not yet tested higher strengths.
n<x	The weapon cannot be wielded with n strength, can be wielded with x strength, and we have not yet tested the values in between. (e.g., 4<8)

Axe

Attack Type: Chop, Pierce for picks and stalactites
Fast for: Ranger	Viable for: Paladin, Shapeshifter
Uniques: None

• Pros: Common, usually lightweight, chop is good due to few armors protecting against it.
• Cons: No uniques, limited high end choices
• High End Choices: Choppingweapon and Stalactite are both good hard hitters, but stalactite is pretty heavy (8) so you will have to expect more misses with it. Butterfly wing axe hits pretty good as well.
• Two Weapon Choices: Butterfly wing axe gets bonus hits and hooked axe makes it easier to get offhands hits so they work well together. Wield the hooked axe in your main hand and when you fight things that have weapons or shields you'll see "You hook your opponent's weapon/shield with your axe, pull it aside and land a blow with your off-hand!" Dwarven mining picks just dual well in general, but nothing special.

Everything you want to know about axes can be found here..

Club

Attack Type: Crush
Fast for: Cleric, Artificer, Shapeshifter	Viable for:Paladin, Ranger
Uniques: Krakadoom, Stone Smasher Maul, Onyx, Destructor, Hammer of Gralain, the Big Un

• Pros: Common, big damage
• Cons: Heavy, bad parry
• High End Options: The heavily jewel encrusted mace(hjem) is very popular, but inferior to the other high clubs. Krakadoom(kraky) is still probably the most damaging weapon in the game. A word of warning about the Stone Smasher Maul(ssm) – when you first wield it, it’ll look great - +1 strength and giving you bone crushing messages all the time: unfortunately, those messages aren’t real bonecrushes and only do about 8 damage. The Destructor is only really good for dwarves. Huge warhammer(non-unique of kraky) not too shabby either.
• Two Weapon Options: Well-balanced battlehammers and thats about it. Good use for anyone, but Dwarves get uber bonuses with them.

Everything you want to know about clubs can be found here..

Curved Blade

Attack Type: Slash
Fast for: Rogues, Paladins, Rangers	Viable for: Artificers
Uniques: Blade of Sethic, Eagle Talon, Flamberge, the flame sword

• Pros: Decent mix of damage, parry and lightness
• Cons: Somewhat uncommon, a bit lower on damage scale.
• High End Choices: The katana has pretty nice parry, and the orcish sabre does reasonable damage, but neither are exceptional. Eagle Talon from the eagle clan is possibly the best curved blade in game. Or the Flamberge, if you can get it for your skill. See its page for more info. Blade of Sethic possibly good because 2handed, but can't say. See its page.
• Two Weapon Choices: Orcish Sabre has been often used, assassins blade and hasashiyyini blade from hasashiyyini both give bonuses to two weapon, the sharpened keen steel scimitars from shieldhand dual decently and give +20 riposte.

Everything you want to know about curved blades can be found here..

Exotic

Attack Type: Differs. Elemental orbs good with everything.
Fast for: No One	Viable for: Ranger or Paladin
Uniques: None

• Pros: Not much, though the top exotics are very good
• Cons: Very rare, very slow for most classes
• High End Choices: Elemental orbs were the only choice for a long time, they do fire or frost damage depending on which you have, and so work very well on armored things. Now there are the thraxi mandibles that are two handed and do good damage, but are heavy. Shears are decent and good dualled
• Two Weapon Choices: They all dual pretty well due to low weight... but only ones worth it are the orbs and shears, shears being more difficult, but actually have specials for offhand.

Everything you want to know about exotic weapons can be found here..

Flail

Attack Type: Crush
Fast for: Cleric, Paladin	Viable for: No one in particular
Uniques/Document Weapons: Morning Star, Flail of Ancient Demolition, the Xenophobe

• Pros: Good damage, very nice high end choices now
• Cons: Heavy, somewhat uncommon
• High End Choices: Morning star gets a very nice bonus when hitting humans, and does reasonable damage anyway. The vicious looking flail is just your average high end non unique. The flail of ancient demolition is a 2hander that has chance of knockdown. Dire flail is a semi unique that has a high skill requirement and level requirement, occasionally causes enemy to freeze up. Two handed mithril flail generic semi unique. The Xenophobe is a document weapon, and like most document weapons, is great.
• Two Weapon Choices: Not a whole lot of good options. Cat o' nine do ok but pretty meh damage, rangermade whips and maybe other whips like the scythe one and lizard one.

Everything you want to know about flails can be found here..

Knife

Attack Type: Pierce, Slash in some occasions
Fast for: Rogue, Ranger, Shapeshifter, Artificer	Viable for: Everyone else
Uniques: Shadowspawn, Gemmed Rondel Dagger

• Pros: Extremely common, light, easy to dual with, raises very quickly
• Cons: Very little damage
• High End Choices: The nailfile is fairly heavy and still so-so, stone daggers are incredibly good against the stone golems, but fairly useless apart from that. Silver knife is actually decent vs undead, but still somewhat crap. The Main Gauche doesn’t do very good damage but it has very nice parry. Best option is a document weapon, kings blade. Shadowspawn gives +2 strength to rogues only, and needs to be fed corpses or it'll take your strength away, and not very good damage anyways.
• Two Weapon Choices: Really all dual well except the nailfile and stone daggers, the assassins daggers from hasashiyyini however are designed for dualling.

Everything you want to know about knives can be found here..

Longsword

Attack Type: Slash
Fast for: Paladin, Ranger	Viable for: Rogue, Cleric
Uniques: Starblade, Bloodred, Pendragon, Evil Blacksword, Diablo, Sword of Virgis

• Pros: Extremely versatile, fairly common, very good balance of parry, weight and damage
• Cons: Can be a bit heavy.
• High End Choices: There is a wealth of choices at the high end. Starblade is very good for a tank, especially a non entity – high parry and +20 to all your resistances, and also a free light source. Exquisite rune swords are very common, do solid damage and parry reasonably well, fine broadswords sacrifice some of this damage for better parrying. Pendragon has a bonus for human wielders and the good aligned, and is only good for those. Outstanding sword is one of the most damaging non-uniques in the game, but comes with mediocre parry and is very heavy. Diablo does nice damage and has very nice parry, but seems to be way slower than usual weapons for raising your skills. The Sword of Virgis isn’t easy to get, does average damage, but does come with a nice +15 Longsword skill.. for females. The pristine thraxi arm from thraxi is pretty good.
• Two Weapon Choices: Theres the hasashiyyini lonswords that give bonuses when dual wielded specifically, Elven longswords from andellen are light and dual ok, silver longswords are also light and good vs undead stuffs. Maybe golden sword from fubs because it is light.

Everything you want to know about longswords can be found here..

Marksmanship

Attack Type: Pierce for Crossbow
Fast for: Ranger, Rogue, Shapeshifter	Viable for: Everyone else but paladins
Uniques: Crossbow, Silver Longbow

• Pros: High damage with archery, crossbows are decent as well.
• Cons: Very heavy to carry around, some NPC’s really dislike having things thrown at them
• High End Choices: Varied, read below

Marksmanship is a bit different than most weapon skills, as there are few "pure" marksmanship weapons that work on their own. Marksmanship also effects archery with bows and thrown weapon to an extent, and are also raised by these.

Everything you want to know about marksmanship can be found here..

Polearm

Attack Type: Slash, Chop for Poleaxe
Fast for: Paladin	Viable for: No one in particular
Uniques: Awesome Scythe, Orcish Poleaxe, Malign Pikestaff

• Pros: Solid damage
• Cons: Rare, very heavy
• High End Choices: Orcish poleaxe is very good damage for a 1hander, the awesome scythe is two handed and your average high end. The best option probably the steel poleaxe from shieldhand, two handed. Theres the pristine insectoid arm from thraxi thats also very good but also very heavy, also two handed.
• Two Weapon Choices: Not a whole lot of options. Sickle from tingi.. maybe the other low skill ones could do ok, but fairly low damage.

Everything you want to know about polearms can be found here..

Rapier

Attack Type: Pierce
Fast for: Rogues	Viable for: Paladin
Uniques: Sword of Gilian, Crystal Blade

• Pros: Very good at disarming and parrying, powerful uniques for tanks, pretty common, fairly light
• Cons: Very low damage
• High End Choices: Crystal Blade gives +2 dex, Sword of Gilian gives +2 con, both unique and good damage and parry. Jeweled dwarven rapier also pretty good damage and parry.
• Two Weapon Choices: Jeweled dwarven rapiers dual well, the sword of gilian and crystal blade do as well.

Everything you want to know about rapiers can be found here..

Shortsword

Attack Type: Pierce or Slash, roughly equivalent
Fast for: Ranger, Paladin, Rogue	Viable for: Cleric
Uniques: Blade of Losoth, Ebonblade

• Pros: Very common, easy to dual with
• Cons: Low damage, not a whole lot of choices
• High End Choices: The wolfblade your average high end, can insert a star caverns gem into it for more damage, ebonblade is ok but nothing great. Best bet is gathering of the spiders, a document weapon. Blade of losoth and mithril shortswords are good for mages.
• Two Weapon Choices: Steel butterfly blades from felgands best bet as they are designed for dualling, serrated shortswords from shieldhand do some good damage specials, the blackened gladius and wakizashi not too horrible.

Everything you want to know about shortswords can be found here..

Spear

Attack Type: Pierce
Fast for: Shapeshifter, Ranger, Paladin	Viable for: No one in particular
Uniques: None

• Pros: Decent damage, great dual
• Cons: Small selection of high ends
• High End Choices: Steel spear from shieldhand probably best choice, two handed. Pristine poisonous insectoid arm from thraxi good as well. Golden trident is pretty good, ancient pike generic high end.
• Two Weapon Choices: Halfspears are about the best two weapon choice in the game, otherwise could use arrows.

Everything you want to know about spears can be found here..

Staff

Attack Type: Crush
Fast for: Mage, Cleric, Shapeshifter	Viable for: Everyone else
Uniques : Glimmer, Staff of Azakath, Oaken Staff

• Pros: Common, fairly versatile, lots of special effects
• Cons: Damage somewhat lacking
• High End Choices: For mages still learning spells, Glimmer is the single best item in the game. Azakath and Tetsubo are also good for those mages and necromancers with the skills and strength for them. Iron shod a good generic high end. Staff of Tarran is very good damage and also gives AC. Then there is the chain-staff document, but needs two weapon to use.
• Two Weapon Choices: Chain-staff works on two-weapon some, otherwise black staff from the yeti caves is light and gives +1 to dex.

Everything you want to know about staves can be found here..

Two handed axe

Attack Type: Chop
Fast for: No One	Viable for: Ranger
Uniques: Great Mithril Axe, Rakar

• Pros: Reasonably common high ends, very nice damage
• Cons: Slow to raise, especially at low skills, heavy.
• High End Choices: Crescent does very good damage, as does Mighty Battleaxe. Great mithril axe and rakar both also do fairly good damage, but rakar has a special command.

Everything you want to know about two handed axes can be found here..

Two handed sword

Attack Type: Slash
Fast for: No One	Viable for: Paladin, Ranger, maybe Rogue
Uniques: Elvenheart, Powersword

• Pros: High damage, reasonable parrying
• Cons: Heavy, rare, slow to skill, especially at the start
• High End Choices: Elves and half-elves obviously should wield Elvenheart – making a puny character one of the highest physical damage dealing. Steel greatsword from felgands pretty awesome, otherwise shadow sword or powersword are ok.

Everything you want to know about two handed swords can be found here..