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[Melting Sky]

I am curious. When it comes to fortress mode, are the standard dwarven edged weapons actually better when made out of candy or steel? I realize that candy is superior when it comes to edged attacks but it is absolutely terrible for blunt damage and with axes, swords and spears a large portion of their attacks are blunt.

The only weapon that is a pure edged weapon is the pick.

[Zammer990]

For weapons it's often not worth using candy because AFAIK no vanilla enemies come with anything better than iron other than dwarves, but they're still technically better at cutting and much lighter, but the weight won't affect your dwarves unless they're already burdened by lots of armour (candy rarely slows dwarves at all)

[MeMyselfAndI]

See here, but adamantine is better for everything except blunt weapons (for obvious reasons) and ammunition.

That being said, steel is almost as good unless you're attacking something with steel/adamantine armor, and nothing ordinarily has anything better than iron.

[Tawa]

Actually, to compensate for the blunt attack problem, you can add in several nearly identical edged attacks to increase the chance that the dwarves will use sharp attacks.

To make sure this doesn't happen to everything else, just give dwarves these special "multi-edged" weapons and leave everybody else with standard ones.

[Broken]

In practice, there is little diference. Both will aniquilate most enemies.

The only case where adamantine makes a diference is against metal/rock FB. Adamantine can cut them easily.

[Arcvasti]

Adamantine is about 88% cooler then masterwork Steel. Even though there's the whole "Doing pommel bashes/other-weird-blunt-attacks-with-edged-weapons is useless with Adamantine" thing, those are pretty pathetic most of the time anyways. And Adamantine cuts everything. And then some. Its also a matter of pride. Yes, Steel is really good, but Adamantine is THE BEST.

[Melting Sky]

That's a very good point about how steel won't cut some of the very high end inorganic enemies. I actually hadn't considered that. That is a rather important property and of course candy wins when it come to the rule of cool.

I actually did a little testing in the arena. The first run I gave the two teams of 10 dwarfs expert level skill in axes and nothing else other than a candy or steel battle axe depending on which team they were on. The candy axes won all 4 times with between 3 and 6 survivors. It was very one sided.

I did the same exact test with short swords using dwarves with adequate skill in swordsmanship. The steel short swords came out on top 3 to 1. Their victory margin was either by 3 or 4 survivors. The candy won once with 3 survivors. This wasn't as one sided as the first test but I think it definitely favored the steel short swords.

These tests don't really prove which is better in every situation since not every situation is naked dwarves killing each other but it does show how candy weapons that have a lot of blunt attacks mixed in with their slashes have issues with the blunt portion of their combat log being very lack luster. Conversely the slash portion of their logs consists mostly of body parts arcing through the air. It's a mixed bag.

I think the one weapon that indisputably is much better when made out of candy in every possible way is the pick since it has no blunt attacks. It's one of the things that make's picks such devastating weapons to begin with.

[doublestrafe]

Are adamantine axes noticeably more likely to bisect husks? I know they're about the only thing that will take apart a steel FB.

[Melting Sky]

Are adamantine axes noticeably more likely to bisect husks? I know they're about the only thing that will take apart a steel FB.

I haven't done any testing with husks but my guess is yes since the candy cuts better than steel. Only the blunt attacks are poor with candy and I don't think the blunt attacks can contribute to the task of bisecting a husk in any meaningful way.

[Zammer990]

Are adamantine axes noticeably more likely to bisect husks? I know they're about the only thing that will take apart a steel FB.

I haven't done any testing with husks but my guess is yes since the candy cuts better than steel. Only the blunt attacks are poor with candy and I don't think the blunt attacks can contribute to the task of bisecting a husk in any meaningful way.

Is the mass of the weapon taken into account with slashing attacks? AFAIK it's not but if it is, steel would probably be better

[Arcvasti]

Are adamantine axes noticeably more likely to bisect husks? I know they're about the only thing that will take apart a steel FB.

I haven't done any testing with husks but my guess is yes since the candy cuts better than steel. Only the blunt attacks are poor with candy and I don't think the blunt attacks can contribute to the task of bisecting a husk in any meaningful way.

Is the mass of the weapon taken into account with slashing attacks? AFAIK it's not but if it is, steel would probably be better

I think it might be, but it wouldn't matter, since adamantine weapons don't usually encounter any resistance whatsoever. They're like lightsabers.

[miauw62]

On the topic of lightsabers, what about candy whips vs steel whips?

[jaxy15]

On the topic of lightsabers, what about candy whips vs steel whips?

Whips deal blunt damage.

[Larix]

But since whips are ridiculously overpowered, adamantine whips are still pretty decent weapons. Not quite as good as other metal types, but whips have an absurdly tiny contact area and blunt damage pentrates everything (and brains are misconstructed), so i got several kills by adamantine-whip wielding dwarfs against iron-armoured opponents in the arena.

[Panando]

I do remember playing Fortress Defense against a particular kind of large enemy (titans or something?) with iron helms, a candy spear could NOT pierce the large iron helm, though the spearlord tried for pages (eventually his mate the hammerlord came and gave the titan a bonk on the head which did the trick). So apparently candy is not some kind of silver bullet at least for spears, perhaps the benefit applies exclusively to slicing attacks, or perhaps spears are simply awful against armour.