My weapons progressions is almost always:
knife spear → steel spear → quiang → broadsword or katana.
For general use: Katana
The rapid strike procs more then enough to make up for slightly lesser damage especially when you get good skill and are critting + rapid striking often.
Nobody calculates that in when they determine dps for weapons.
Also it’s one of the best weapons for the best melee martial art, Niten Ichi-ryū.
For me personally, the broadsword.
I run high strength PCs with heavy ~35+ torso/arm/leg encumbrance. I don’t do a lot of dodging so the extra +1, and the block are much needed. I’m super durable, so I don’t mind if the fight takes a couple extra turns. Now If I find a Niten Ichi-ryū book, it’s all Katana all the time.
The battle axe looks good on paper, but it doesn’t have block, parry, or quick strike.
Like you said, damage isn’t everything. I guess if you ran a lightly armored PC you could make a battle axe work. But you would get shot to pieces the first time somebody decides to shoot you.
EDIT:
I always keep a knife spear, steel spear, or qiang in the backpack for armored enemies or enemies that spray acid when hit.
Depends on your stats. The easiest way to tell which weapon is good is to look at the damage approximation at the bottom of the description, sum the damage and divide it by cost to attack.
I’d pick broadsword for general zombie hacking and katana for unarmored stuff.
Battleaxe is worse than swords, except for some rare armored enemies. Armored enemies don’t resist bashing crits as well as they resist cutting crits.
Battle axe gets less bad when you count in the speed penalty. It doesn’t get comparable to lighter weapons though.
I seem to be unable to use the acetylene torch alone. If I have it with me and try to repair a vehicle part, I am told I cannot do it because I need a welder. But if I have a welder with me, I get asked to use the torch or the welder. Is this a bug?
I can’t disassemble copper scraps or copper tubing in an experimental version. Am I doing something wrong or am I supposed to get copper some other way?
As defraggler said, katana if you have Niten Ichi-ryu (it got nerfed pretty badly, so now it’s only crazy awesome good), but broadsword if you don’t. Ditch the axe.
I actually like the machete pretty well, too, especially early game - VERY high speed, great hit bonus. Sometimes, I keep that (or the survivor one, or the diamond one) even when I have other stuff available… unless I have a style that uses the other stuff (oh, and the machete works with… uh… that South American knife style. Can’t remember the name now, anyway, that makes it EVER BETTER).
How do you raise NPC trust? I was dealing with a quest line, the Jabberwocky starting NPC quest line, and he made me go get a “trapper”. I did so, and how the trapper wants me to get him something? I don’t know what, and he doesn’t trust me enough to let me do anything to him. On top of this I think one of my quests is bugged, as the “kill zombie master” is perpetually stuck now, despite me killing the master. Does anybody have some help on this odd occurrence/dealing with NPC’s in general?
does “spore dusted” do anything to the post-tresh Mycus survivor?
also, even though i am a shroom now, it’s hard living in the middle of fungal territory - my grey friends make so much noise when their spores land, that my character keeps waking up, and i have to spam “I” whenever i try to read, craft, disassemble, learn from NPCs and do many other things…
Do quests. For friendly NPCs, just keep them alive, fed, unhurt and rested. It takes a while.
I think it does at first, but you should become immune to it after a while.
Try to disassemble it from the inventory, it should show what you’re missing.
You need a hammer and a fire (not generic source of heat, has to be fire or lava).
Try to disassemble it from the inventory, it should show what you’re missing.
You need a hammer and a fire (not generic source of heat, has to be fire or lava).[/quote]
It says I need an integrated toolset with 10 charges, but it does work by a fire with a hammer. Thanks! I guess I just wasn’t paying enough attention.
A companion NPC considers me a “major liability”. What did I do to deserve that sort of rating and how do I improve upon that?
Background: I started in lab escape scenario, and the NPC gave me a quest to kill a jabberwock. It took me about 8 days to get around that, but now that NPC follows me, seemingly loyally. But still, I’m supposedly “major liability”. What gives?
Bug in quest system. You can’t improve it except with quests (which may also worsen it).
It may make the NPC refuse to train you, but you can fix that by giving them a lot of valuable crap until they owe you a lot of cash.
NPC relation system was broken for years, it is slowly getting improved but it isn’t there yet.
Is the minimap any good? I had to debug my way for all my items after I lost my duffel bag to a zombie, and the minimap blocked any of the messages telling me that it broke. I really don’t like have to press P every now and then, so I am getting rid of it.
Capital N toggles it on and off, so you can just turn it off until you think it’ll be helpful. It does help you realize where the enemies you can see are without needed to displace your camera away from your character.