Which weapons feel more complete than others?

[Andra]

I've just done a sword run and swords obviously have a lot of options with externals, etc. Looking to start a new one and fists look good for the sheer number of options on legendary externals, etc, but the fact that they only hit one person (at least that's what the choosing fist on the create character menu suggests), I feel like fights vs hordes would be super annoying.

Staffs look a lot more fun for their AOE, but a quick search online shows they only have 2 legendary externals, and one requires you to stick with the old man, which I don't plan to do for my second run. That means picking staff looks very sad to me.

Same goes for daggers which have, like, 6 externals full stop and only 1 legendary.

Basically, my question is: Which of the martial art types feel the most complete and fun so far in terms of variety of externals, weapons, and overall "fun" around them. For instance, sword was fun as I got to experience 3 sects - Sword Pavilion, Taoist and Crime Bereau. Whereas Daggers only seem to have one sect that's really relevant to them.

Also, can staff ever be worth it given that I'd be limited to a single legendary external? Whereas if I went fist in Taoist and Shifa, I'd have, like, 5-6.

[derpenstein]

Music is pretty good, especially with perfect adaptation. Although if you're taking perfect adaptation you can pick anything you want.

[Andra]

Is that the skill that lets you use any weapon with an external? Does that let you bypass range limitations? I.e. if fists only hit straight ahead, but a staff skill lets you hit all around and behind you, will the same skill operated using your fist hit all around you?

[mindless]

Sword is strongest. It has best legendary weapon(damage wise), which is crafted so easy to achieve best stat roll, 5 legendary martial arts (4 from 5 are good).
For example, Blade has 7(!) Legendary martial arts, but almost all of them are bad-mediocre.
Each of Brush and Fan has 1 very good legendary martial art, but that's all.
Music is okay for some fun run, but forget about serious play on highest difficulties.
Dagger is trash.
Spear is mediocre.
Staff is good. Good AOE, 2 from 4 legendary arts are good, other 2 is non-available.
Fist is good too, but I don't like legendary arts availability and the fact that 5 from 9 is unobtainable.

[FunkyWeirdo]

Originally posted by Andra:

Is that the skill that lets you use any weapon with an external? Does that let you bypass range limitations? I.e. if fists only hit straight ahead, but a staff skill lets you hit all around and behind you, will the same skill operated using your fist hit all around you?

Perfect adaptation removes the restriction of weapons. Meaning you can equip any weapon (such as a sword) to cast any skill (such as fist, so the AoE is all around you, instead of a t-shape). It treats you as having equipped the weapon of the external skill.

In the lore page, 9 fists are being listed, with a mixture of fist, palm, and finger. I believe all of them have their own attack range and area. There are 5 swords, all obtainable. 7 blades, 4 spears, 4 staff, 2 fans, 2 daggers, 2 brushes, 2 zithers, 1 flute, and 2 lutes. Since you are limited to only 9 slots, it does not really matter if you don't "have-it-all".

Originally posted by mindless:

Fist is good too, but I don't like legendary arts availability and the fact that 5 from 9 is unobtainable.

From leaked video I saw online (Chinese based), they're probably releasing in the upcoming Chinese New Year patch. The quest seems to involve getting the rumour from Bao Dating and then meeting the Developer in Hua Siniang's inn to obtain some unreleased legendary manuals as a gift from the Developer NPC, while he apologizing for saying he's not able to give us some classic legendary skills from Louis Cha's work (which formed the foundation of this game).

Since this is a work-in-progress and from an unofficial post, so don't quote me on this.

[mindless]

Originally posted by FunkyWeirdo:

Since this is a work-in-progress and from an unofficial post, so don't quote me on this.

It's okay, you can obtain by cheats (not tried yet) + I thought It will be added with some new content in the future.

[小龙马]

Originally posted by FunkyWeirdo:

he's not able to give us some classic legendary skills from Louis Cha's work (which formed the foundation of this game).

Awww, that's too bad...it would be awesome to have wild ball fist or yang guo's heavy black iron sword manual

edit: typo and format

[Nether]

I can more or less confirm what was said by the others:
Sword, Fist and Blade are the best all-rounders:

Swords have easy access to Legendary Weapons and plenty Legendary Externals. They require a bit of effort to get (most are locked behind sects). Plenty of companions I like are specced for swords, so I usually skip them for the sake of variety.

Fists actually have great area coverage: depending on the type of technique they can attack with different shapes of AoE - but they work off different attributes, so you might not want to hyperspecialize those. Legendary Techniques are plentiful enough and Legendary Weapons are annoying to get. (off the top of my mind, your only options are the one-time auction and murdering sects)

Blades are good stat sticks and tend to be full of bleeding. Their attack areas also tend to be pretty good for big sweeps. Legendary Techniques are abundant and you can get a couple pretty early. Extra good for an evil run aligned with the Yan army.

Spears have the advantage of a relatively early Epic combo of technique and weapon in Pear Blossom. Other than that, if you're planning to stay pure spear you will definitely NEED to join the Ye Army and follow their questline, and you might want to help the Jiuli tribe too.

Staves don't have many Legendary Techniques but I really like anything that ignores armor, so Dharma Staff gets high points from me. It's also trivial to get a Legendary Staff super early in the game (Hint: check Wan Yan Liang's pockets when you meet him at sects).

TOGETHER with perfect adaptation they form Voltron... no, I mean they become plenty usable - even if you might STILL be stuck without a full set of Legendaries depending on playthrough choices

Daggers have garbage support. They have a single Legendary Technique that's annoying to get, and I think a pretty late game Legendary Weapon.

Brush and Fan are pretty similar, and both want you to love Confucius. They don't have a great amount of Legendary techniques but what they have are pretty good (I'm pretty sure Orchid Pavillion Preface can carry games)

TOGETHER with perfect adaptation Brush, Fan and Dagger are an absolutely valid choice.

Music is my favourite, but it really really wants you to have perfect adaptation (there's a point where you're rewarded with a legendary flute if you learned a specific Lute and a specific Zither technique, so I'll take that as the game trying to tell me something).

With perfect adaptation you'll have more techniques and weapons than you know what to do, all pretty decent (music tends to add nasty rider effects to attacks).
Without perfect adaptation Lute has the best support (Weapon and 2 techniques) and Zither the earliest Legendary at the sweet price of some tomb raiding.

[kvo189]

Doing my first playthrough on hard difficulty, I decided to go with daggers at the beginning and I had 0 idea how limited my options are :( It is still viable but It is a chore to find all the manuals to boost my short weapon stat. I also would have to learn some throwing and kite tough enemies to win fights. I hope devs are adding more dagger weapons and manuals soon...

[kvo189]

Originally posted by Nether:

I can more or less confirm what was said by the others:
Sword, Fist and Blade are the best all-rounders:

Swords have easy access to Legendary Weapons and plenty Legendary Externals. They require a bit of effort to get (most are locked behind sects). Plenty of companions I like are specced for swords, so I usually skip them for the sake of variety.

Fists actually have great area coverage: depending on the type of technique they can attack with different shapes of AoE - but they work off different attributes, so you might not want to hyperspecialize those. Legendary Techniques are plentiful enough and Legendary Weapons are annoying to get. (off the top of my mind, your only options are the one-time auction and murdering sects)

Blades are good stat sticks and tend to be full of bleeding. Their attack areas also tend to be pretty good for big sweeps. Legendary Techniques are abundant and you can get a couple pretty early. Extra good for an evil run aligned with the Yan army.

Spears have the advantage of a relatively early Epic combo of technique and weapon in Pear Blossom. Other than that, if you're planning to stay pure spear you will definitely NEED to join the Ye Army and follow their questline, and you might want to help the Jiuli tribe too.

Staves don't have many Legendary Techniques but I really like anything that ignores armor, so Dharma Staff gets high points from me. It's also trivial to get a Legendary Staff super early in the game (Hint: check Wan Yan Liang's pockets when you meet him at sects).

TOGETHER with perfect adaptation they form Voltron... no, I mean they become plenty usable - even if you might STILL be stuck without a full set of Legendaries depending on playthrough choices

Daggers have garbage support. They have a single Legendary Technique that's annoying to get, and I think a pretty late game Legendary Weapon.

Brush and Fan are pretty similar, and both want you to love Confucius. They don't have a great amount of Legendary techniques but what they have are pretty good (I'm pretty sure Orchid Pavillion Preface can carry games)

TOGETHER with perfect adaptation Brush, Fan and Dagger are an absolutely valid choice.

Music is my favourite, but it really really wants you to have perfect adaptation (there's a point where you're rewarded with a legendary flute if you learned a specific Lute and a specific Zither technique, so I'll take that as the game trying to tell me something).

With perfect adaptation you'll have more techniques and weapons than you know what to do, all pretty decent (music tends to add nasty rider effects to attacks).
Without perfect adaptation Lute has the best support (Weapon and 2 techniques) and Zither the earliest Legendary at the sweet price of some tomb raiding.

There are 2 Legendary dagger manuals btw as far as I know.
One is Killer's secret which is on the wiki: https://heros-adventure-road-to-passion.fandom.com/wiki/Martial_Arts#Dagger_(Short)
The other is "Metetor from Outer Space" which is a secret dagger legendary I got from "Tsukuyo Sakuraha" girl after these events:
- Steal the Seal of the state from Jiuli tribe
- She will appear out of nowhere and fight you
- Defeat her and keep the seal
- Do the casino girl's questline where you have to beat the evil casino boss (200k+ coin win which is very worth it)
- Defeat the boss and Sakuraha again and she will give you the manual

[FunkyWeirdo]

Originally posted by 小龙马:

Awww, that's too bad...it would be awesome to have wild ball fist or yang guo's heavy black iron sword manual

I remember Wild Ball Fistis already in the game. It's named as Rock Paper Scissor, you'll get it from the Lao Motou in Ice Prison, but it's a purple tier fist.

[Zetsuen]

Originally posted by Nether:

I can more or less confirm what was said by the others:
Sword, Fist and Blade are the best all-rounders:

Swords have easy access to Legendary Weapons and plenty Legendary Externals. They require a bit of effort to get (most are locked behind sects). Plenty of companions I like are specced for swords, so I usually skip them for the sake of variety.

Fists actually have great area coverage: depending on the type of technique they can attack with different shapes of AoE - but they work off different attributes, so you might not want to hyperspecialize those. Legendary Techniques are plentiful enough and Legendary Weapons are annoying to get. (off the top of my mind, your only options are the one-time auction and murdering sects)

Blades are good stat sticks and tend to be full of bleeding. Their attack areas also tend to be pretty good for big sweeps. Legendary Techniques are abundant and you can get a couple pretty early. Extra good for an evil run aligned with the Yan army.

Spears have the advantage of a relatively early Epic combo of technique and weapon in Pear Blossom. Other than that, if you're planning to stay pure spear you will definitely NEED to join the Ye Army and follow their questline, and you might want to help the Jiuli tribe too.

Staves don't have many Legendary Techniques but I really like anything that ignores armor, so Dharma Staff gets high points from me. It's also trivial to get a Legendary Staff super early in the game (Hint: check Wan Yan Liang's pockets when you meet him at sects).

TOGETHER with perfect adaptation they form Voltron... no, I mean they become plenty usable - even if you might STILL be stuck without a full set of Legendaries depending on playthrough choices

Daggers have garbage support. They have a single Legendary Technique that's annoying to get, and I think a pretty late game Legendary Weapon.

Brush and Fan are pretty similar, and both want you to love Confucius. They don't have a great amount of Legendary techniques but what they have are pretty good (I'm pretty sure Orchid Pavillion Preface can carry games)

TOGETHER with perfect adaptation Brush, Fan and Dagger are an absolutely valid choice.

Music is my favourite, but it really really wants you to have perfect adaptation (there's a point where you're rewarded with a legendary flute if you learned a specific Lute and a specific Zither technique, so I'll take that as the game trying to tell me something).

With perfect adaptation you'll have more techniques and weapons than you know what to do, all pretty decent (music tends to add nasty rider effects to attacks).
Without perfect adaptation Lute has the best support (Weapon and 2 techniques) and Zither the earliest Legendary at the sweet price of some tomb raiding.

is there no zither legendary weapon?

[DeNarr]

Definitely NOT daggers. I went through a whole run, joining appropriate sects, and never even got a legendary manual for my weapon.

[kvo189]

Originally posted by Zetsuen:

is there no zither legendary weapon?

You can get it at the legendary auction after finishing the 3 city quests for 150k+. Might have to save scum before the fight against the 9 sects disciples.

[Nether]

Originally posted by Zetsuen:

is there no zither legendary weapon?

I have one, but I'm 90% sure it's from the auction.

[FunkyWeirdo]

Originally posted by Nether:

Originally posted by Zetsuen:

is there no zither legendary weapon?

I have one, but I'm 90% sure it's from the auction.

You can strip one from Melody House leader.

Edit: Statement removed due to inaccuracy.