TomeNET

(5.1a) Melee weapon types                                                       
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As mentioned previously, there are four weapon classes:
Swords, axes, blunt weapons (whips, hammers, morning stars etc.), polearms.

You may wonder which one to choose and why. In general, if your character is
especially skilled at one of the four masteries you might want to pick that one
to save skill points (for example Half-Trolls get a bonus on Blunt-mastery).

Also, priests cannot use edged weapons that aren't 'blessed' (a special magical
property, ie ego-power), so if you want to create a melee-oriented priest,
you will usually pick blunt weapons (or 'Martial Arts' instead, for weaponless
combat, making more for a monk-style character).

However, aside from just skill point calculations there are some advantages and
drawbacks to each weapon class, so you may want to consider the following table
to help you make a decision:


Type       1h/1.5+2h abundance  2h top damage/weight  Base item level 1+1.5h/2h
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Swords**   very high / medium   medium / medium       low / mid
Axes*      medium / medium      high / heavy          low / high
Blunt      medium / high        high / very heavy     low / mid
Polearms*  low / high           high / medium         low / mid
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 * Note that these weapon types can (partially) obtain VORPAL mod from 'Sharp'
 or 'Spinning' ego power (see (5.8)):

 ** For randarts, only swords can spawn the VORPAL (see (5.8)) mod:
 Damage-wise 2h-swords with VORPAL flag can make up somewhat for the damage gap
 towards the top tier weapons of the other weapon classes.
 VORPAL mod makes an especially big difference in scenarios that are low on
 critical hits (ie no CRIT item flag or Critical-strike skill being applied).


For example if you stick with dual-wielding two weapons, you might want to go
with swords and definitely not with polearms, since there are a lot of 1h
swords, and very few 1h polearms.

The base item level determines at which depth you will start finding that item.
Also, normal town stores usually only sell low level weapons and armour while
black markets tend to prefer mid (normal black market) or high (special black
markets) level items.

In-game you can press 'I' (or 'x' if inside a store) to inspect an item.
Even if you haven't *identified* it, it will still tell you the weapon class
the item belongs to, if it is a weapon.

(Weapons can be damaged when your character gets hit by an elemental attack or
if you stick them into elementally imbued monsters. Sword type weapons are only
affected by acid, while all other types are affected by both fire and acid.)