Hello,

I´ve started the game some days ago, and even after reading the manual and threads from this forum alot, there are still many open questions left for me. Would be great if someone of you could help me out with one or two ...

- Sword- and axefighters: Two-Handed weapon, one-handed+shield or two-weapon fighting, what´s best in general?
- I´ve specialised my Lizardman Fighter on axes. Now the blacksmith of Arnika sells a Bipennis for 4K gold, it´s a two-handed axe with initiative -6 and 7-21 damage. Is it advisable to buy this thing, or should I better look out for a lighter axe, in favor of double attacks? So far I´ve been using cleaver+shield.
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...
have to be on my way, more questions later for sure ;)

Axes are all pretty slow in this game. I don't think anyone has listed Axe in any of the Fave Weapons threads i've seen. Any weapon that has a minus to Initiative will get you fewer swings.

I almost always use two weapons, usually sword and mace (hammer early, really nice one later) or sword and dagger. But that's in small parties, where you need more swings, so if i had front and back row, i'd have mostly sword/shield, maybe a martial arts or mace/sheild in front, and polearms or staves in the back (or Ranged weapons).
Though Fighters, Lords, and Samurais have skill bonuses which help make using two weapons worthwhile.
I've had marvellous results with Ninjas dual-wielding Nunchake, Antone has those, too...

As Scatter says, axes are slow and if you are just interested in weapon efficiency, the swords top everything else by a long shot, plus there are so many of them and they are easy to get.

I have used axes several times, however, and they do huge damage eventually. the bipennis is worth getting (especially if you are using a cleaver!). You won't find a better one for quite a while. Did you ask Antone about his custom axe?

Waaaiitt a moment, are you sure about that low initiative -> fewer swings thing? I'd be surprised, in my experience it's not like that, you just get to act later in the round with low initiative, though I didn't really watch out...

Marmot, I think axes are fine. There are some nice ones in the game, and I don't really mind the low initiative, because axes are just stylish for the right chars. Ok, there are more and better swords than axes, but on the other hand, who could stand a dwarf without an axe? I think all the good axes are 2-handed, so you don't worry about putting the shield away...

Cheers
Philipp

[ 01-11-2004, 06:15 AM: Message edited by: Pyrates ]

Only go axes for roleplaying reasons, there are a few decent axes, but no exceptional ones (IMO). If you go dual weapons with your fighter, you can't go axe/sword, as I do not believe there are any off-hand swords or axes in the game a fighter can use. I may be wrong, but I have never seen any.

So if you choose axes, it means no swords, and vice-versa. That's one thing I never understood, since the fighter begins with skills in each.

I recommend using two weapons however. Fighters don't tend to do much other than fight and have less skills to focus on. Dualing weapons with your fighter may give him/her something to put points in. If he/she's your only tank, maybe then, a shield. If you can live through missing a bit more often with two weapons at the beginning, you'll reap the benefits later. ;)

If you go axe/shield, you'll probably use one-handed axes throughout the game, which is fine until you come across some fairly decent 2-handed axes and decide to throw the shield away.

My advice is as follows:

If you're staying with axes, go a 2-handed one, and get nifty with a bow. Get strong, get fast, and get nimble to maximize your attacks. With a single weapon you'll miss less when bezerking, and you'll double the large damage output of a 2-handed weapon, compared with the 'usually' lesser damage output of a single weapon.

If you go with swords, either get a shield or a hammer as Scatter suggested, depending if you play your fighter more offensively or defensively. You could go a 2-handed sword and treat it as you would a 2-handed axe above.

Most importantly though, try to specialize in as few different weapon types as possible to keep your attack rating up, after all what use is a fighter if he/she can't hit anything. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Thank you for your answers. Damn, looks like I´ve done everything wrong. My fighter really had been intended to be two-weapon/swords in the beginning, but someone had given me the apparently bad advice, that 2-weapon-fighting were a weak skill in Wizadry 8 :( .

Now I´ve already got Shield and Axe learned up to 50+. Is there any kind of tool with which a character from a savegame can be modified? Otherwise I´ll delete him and start to build a new lvl 1 fighter ...

Quote from Pyrates:
"Waaaiitt a moment, are you sure about that low initiative -> fewer swings thing? I'd be surprised, in my experience it's not like that, you just get to act later in the round with low initiative, though I didn't really watch out... "

You can test this with any character who's got multiple swings by swapping between a slow weapon and a fast one while watching the numbers change in your combat stats window. I discovered this while deciding between a Stun Rod (-6 Init) and a Mystic Spear (+2 Init). I got 2X1 with the Rod and 2X2 with the Spear. As my Close and Polearm skills got higher (and level) the difference was sometimes even more. At the end i was getting 3X3 with Dread Spear (also +2) and only 3X2 with Stun Rod.

[ 01-11-2004, 04:12 PM: Message edited by: Scatter ]

Thank you Scatter ... I´ve found that the manual confirmes what you say, too. Quite important to have good initiative then.

Well, I´ve started a new fighter *sigh*. After a few combats he´s level 5 and with his 75 HP able to survive combats without guardian angel.

Woa, I didn't know that...Thanks for clearing that matter !!!

Cheers
Philipp

bearded war axe, while lame, can be used in the secondary slot