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[SyrusLD]

So, good day everyone, I'm new to the forum, been playing adventure mode Dwarf Fortress for a while though...

I always kept wondering what would be the best weapon for an adventurer, taking the less used foreign weapons into consideration as well.

My (last) adventurer - a dwarf - started with an iron scourge (that I found). During my adventures through the caverns I mastered being a lasher, but it still wasn't really as good as I had hoped ... sooo, I decided to run around using two cave blob corpses to punch my enemies to death. That worked ... well, definatly a weapon any sane dwarf should chose after staying in the dark for a long time!
Anyway, after that had been mastered I went back to the more dwarven ways of combat and picked an iron pick for fighting. I always heard how amazing the pick was supposed to be in combat, but I found that mining fat animals twisted into human form didn't work as well as expected. Sooo...I ended up pickin up a good spear, which did best for me so far.

Long story short, what is possibly the best choice of weapon for an adventurer, considering unarmored fleshy beings (which often seem to not feel pain) of small and big size end up being the main enemies?
Which did you prefer most? I mean, my favorite are still cave blob corpses, but that's just ... well, maybe because I spend too much time underground.



And now to the SPOILER:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was trying to get to the funny place and visited 13 different dark fortresses to get there. 3 of them were grey on the map from world gen, they all seemed to not be build of the dense stone and weren't inhabited by the twisted beings from the circus, so I didn't visit any more of that kind. But all other 10 were the "right sort" and 8 or 9 of them had the humanoid being in the top floor and a large basement below. There are only 10 of the purple dark fortresses in the world, so it seems I visited all of them...

The problem is ... not a single one had the stair case which I was looking for. One of the big dense-stone structures had rooms deep enough for me to be able to see the funny place actually, it wasn't connected though.


I even made a new world in which only Goblins existed - and spawned in the dark fortress - to see if I was looking in the right place, and yes, I immediatly found the stair case and could go down it and all.

Is there a bug which prevents the big dense-stone thing to be connected properly? Or is it just luck?
Are all grey dark fortresses on the world gen map made of normal stone and just normal towers without a basement?
The world was generated in .19 ...

EDIT:
Oh, and is it normal that trolls don't care about my adventurer, like ... ever?

[a smiling bearded cretin]

Pirate Bob ran some excellent !!SCIENCE!! here regarding best weapon Dwarven Research: Melee Combat Testing. The result was clearly spear which seems a lot more geared to Fortress Mode.

The above doesn't take into consideration a significant Adventure Mode issue: dealing with grab attacks, which is to say how to break them. For most weapon users, particularly early on in one's adventure, this means slashing (hopefully severing) the grabbing limb. So for the most well-rounded weapon in Adventure Mode, I'd go with the sword as it has enough stabbing penetration depth versus large creatures to reach the heart, and has enough contact area to slash off limbs. While you can play shield wall versus the hydra and other strikers, you only have dodge versus grab and when dodge fails, you need something to break the grab. Sword use in this case is fairly independent of strength and has a lower stat requirements than blunt or piercing.

[SyrusLD]

Oh, thank you! Very interesting, seems like the sword would really be the most "versatile" choice.
I was just wondering how the foreign weapons compare to the dwarven made ones.

The Wiki of course always only stated how the War Hammer is (or was) the best weapon against armored enemies, but rarely I'd encounter enemies wearing any armor at all. So, overall I assumed that edge damage is of more use in adventure mode. As you stated, grabbing is much more of a problem in adventure mode in the beginning, but for later I was wondering what would also be good against bigger enemies...didn't think a (short) sword would penetrate enough to seriously hurt such things.

[xaritscin]

the battle axe seem to give goo results TBH. with good skills and one or two blows you get to behead most foes. or sever their most important parts...

[a smiling bearded cretin]

For semimegabeasts and megabeasts, you can penetrate the head and upper body for strikes to the brain and heart with the short sword. Spear's penetration numbers are better of course.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

short sword
contact area 20000 : penetration size 4000
spear
contact area 20 : penetration size 10000

I like spear best, but I've found sword to be more useful.

[vjmdhzgr]

Hips are probably the strongest blunt weapon, though also the only weapon with a speed penalty so if you don't need the armor piercing (which you won't unless you're singing a dwarf fortress) then it's probably not good. I think the best weapon is probably the long sword if you're a human, or large dwarf. I've heard stories that two handed swords are incredibly powerful though, but you will need to go without a shield for it, so maybe wait until you have a high enough skill to consistently block with just a weapon.

[StagnantSoul]

Hips are probably the strongest blunt weapon, though also the only weapon with a speed penalty so if you don't need the armor piercing (which you won't unless you're singing a dwarf fortress) then it's probably not good. I think the best weapon is probably the long sword if you're a human, or large dwarf. I've heard stories that two handed swords are incredibly powerful though, but you will need to go without a shield for it, so maybe wait until you have a high enough skill to consistently block with just a weapon.

I know from first hand experience, hips can be deadly. My last girlfriend taught me that lesson.

[mastahcheese]

Honestly, in my experience, I've found the best weapon in adventure mode to be the lowly mace.

With the new combat system, a single smash to the neck (which doesn't get protected by armor, making enemy armor a moot point) will almost always turn it to jelly, causing the enemy to instantly collapse from pain, and putting them at your mercy. The neck is also a very easy target to strike compared to the head.

Note that this only really works on humanoids like goblins and elves. Fighting things that are much larger and tougher (god forbid anything that doesn't feel pain) and you may need something else.

[StagnantSoul]

I'm normally using a mace and pike.

[Naryar]

Picks. Mining picks.

Any head hit kills, any torso hit tends to seriously cripple, and they make members sail off in an arc.

Rare in adventure mode unless you have some abandoned fortresses though.

Also a good quality iron pick is sufficient. I don't think adamantine picks are that good...

[Robsoie]

Note that while stilll strong the scourges aren't as overly broken in DF as whips.

whips are still having a contact area of 1, very likely the source of the weapon being overpowered , acting like laser cutting through everything, while scourge have a contact area of 10 (same as a warhammer)

[Max™]

Adamantine is best for picks, they aren't blunt at all, slashing ftw.

Also: hips don't lie.

[SMASH!]

My dorf spawned with 96000 height. He uses 120g necro slab as primary weapon. Not bad at all, this slab crushes bones, smashes heads and it is just badass. 

[SyrusLD]

Picks. Mining picks.

Any head hit kills, any torso hit tends to seriously cripple, and they make members sail off in an arc.

Rare in adventure mode unless you have some abandoned fortresses though.

Also a good quality iron pick is sufficient. I don't think adamantine picks are that good...

Actually, I found quite some decent quality iron picks at human hamlets. But still, I felt like the iron spear that I ran around with later disposed of enemies of all sizes even more quickly. And both I felt like did better than a scourge - than again, my overall combat skills still increased a bit over time.
Sadly I doubt I would have a fortress survive long enough to get at adamantine weapons...so those are inaccessable for me, I guess.

My dorf spawned with 96000 height. He uses 120g necro slab as primary weapon. Not bad at all, this slab crushes bones, smashes heads and it is just badass. 

How do you know the height?
I was looking how I could check the size of a creature (and broadness) because I was wondering if there was a possibility to spawn as a human (or even a dwarf) who would be able to wield a two-hand sword one-handed without penalty - if such exists in adventure mode. Couldn't find out how to get that info though...all adventurers I lately spawned as always used the two-hand sword "multigrasp"ing, I assumed if they were big enough to use it in only one hand, they'd do so even if the second hand is free.
Besides that, the last slab I picked up weighted 257Kg...never tried it for hitting stuff, but I know it didn't fly very far. Found out that a 16'000Kg corpse isn't a good weapon though, seemed to lack "force".



...and of course, who doesn't like great hips!

[SMASH!]

How do you know the height?

Somehow, if you spawn your adventurer in your fort and then use dwarf therapist, you'll be able to connect it while playing adventure mode.