What IS the Cane of Corpus? Does a Ninja do more damage with bare hands, or with a weapon, ie a so-so staff?

The amount of damage a ninja does with his/her bare hands depends on strength and Martial Arts. The higher either of these, the more damage you will do. I would experiment with a few battles and compare the damage with bare hands to damage with a weapon. Personally my ninja uses bare hands beacause at level 20, I get up to 6 attacks with up to 3 strikes each a round. Overall damage is a little low but the potential for KO or critical hit is higher.

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The Cane of Corpus is a Faerie Ninja specific weapon according to most people is the best weapon in the game. Since my Ninja is not a Faerie, I have not tried to acquire it. In order to get it you have to either kill or PP a specific NPC.

My faerie ninja is using dual weapons and checking her weapon attributes on the stat sheet, she gets 2 hits, 3 swings with her primary (sword) and 2 hits, 2 swings with her secondary (nunchaka). In actual combat though, she gets two sets of 2,3 + 2,2, one set before opponents retaliate and one set after per round. She has snake speed (now at 47) which pumps up the initaitive greatly. (And she just got the Light Sword in Bayjin, yippee!) Since she is playing solo, I never did put any points or usage into Martial Arts because I wanted the K.O.% or Kill % found on her weapons to give her an edge in battle. She is now level 29.