What weapon to buy

[Guitarpunkmasta]

Hello i have 3 people in my squad and 1 has a katana the other a club. and then the last one has heavy weapons. so for the heavy weapons dude i focused on blunt damage while buying a weapons. for the katana i looked at cut damage. for the club again blunt damage. but is there a better way too see if a weapon is better

[Rusted Cake]

Look at the weapon's stats & weight to know ya silly goober.
If the weapon is more blunt than bladed it will help get xp for strength & if it's more bladed than blunt it will get xp gain for dex.
Good to level up both strength & dex to make your unit properly combat capable.
When using a bladed weapon this usually means just carry a'lot of weight to train up strength.
Also if using a 1 handed blunt weapon, you could pare that with a crossbow for dex xp (and precious ranged stun locking).

Over all just do what you wanna do & use what you wanna use! Unless your trying really hard to balance level all your stats then it will not matter too much so just have fun doing you. :D

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by OH Guitarpunkmasta:

... but is there a better way too see if a weapon is better

Simple answer - No.

(Scroll to bottom for sample loadout)

:)

But, in the early game you need to consider your skills and what you're going to likely be fighting.

So, for instance, nothing will beat the Katana in the Early Game, perhaps augmented with something that's good against animals, like a polearm, if you find them to be a problem.

Why?

You'll likely be fighting groups of starving bandits. They have little "Armor" at all and are going to be very vulnerable to Katanas/cutting. And, bang-for-your-buck, a Katana is lightweight, meaning you don't need much Strength to wield it effectively, and can do really nice damage against unarmored humans, which is what you're mostly fighting. If you're considering fighting Dust Bandits or Animals a lot in the early game, you're either dying a lot or running, instead.

Later, you'll get stronger, faster, more easily able to pick your own fights. At that point, you need to start specializing. Of particular importance, beyond needing the STR to properly wield the weapon, you need to look at the weapon's Special Values, particularly the ever-important Armor Penetration. You'll be fighting tougher human opponents with a goodly bit of armor and Toughness - If you can't penetrate that armor, you won't even be making much of a dent in their hitpoints because their Toughness will easily shrug off your miniscule Katana damage.

Blunt damage is good, since a lot of stuff doesn't compensate well for it, but actual Armor Penetration is better no matter what damage you're applying.

Mid-game, you need to start looking at a good balance of capabilities. Katanas can still be useful, but not as much as more specialized weapons. This is where Hackers shine and Polearms and, for very special uses only, Heavy Weapons.

Hackers, IMO, are probably the most all-around useful weapon and can be one of the most damaging and easily mastered weapons in the game I've experienced, so far. Polearms are awesome too.

One thing to thing about - As you take damage, your capability to put your uber-awesome STR score goes... down. For all those great uber-number end-game extremely heavy weapons that the end-game obliterator is using, they're still going to take damage from those end-game opponents and that means that at some time during that fight, their end-game 100STR Only weapon is going to stop dealing out full damage. It's inevitable.

But, the guy swinging the easily mastered hacker is going to be doing full damage every connecting swing and piercing armor like a pro even if he's about to bleed out...

]So this is useful for you, now, a sample loadout might be:

Iron staffs/rods until you get some money.

Katanas all the way around unless you get lucky with a good area-effect weapon like a polearm.

A big Sabre is a great weapon for a Taunt Tank. Why? +Defense. Those stats MATTER. Those kinds of bonuses matter more than most of the numbers on a weapon. Armor Penetration, +Damage Against, +Attack, +Defense... They are A Very Big Deal ™..

There is no reason to not start equipping everyone with a crossbow in the early game if you're taking on larger parties of bandits. Just do it and dump them, later, if you want. They'll help raise some stats and a face-full-of-crossbow-fire will always pay off against a big group. Of course, if there are friendly NPCs hanging around, you do not want to do that with novice crossbow users...

Make sure you get your STR up to 2x the weight of the weapon you're using and/or want to use. Then, look for a good Long Cleaver, a Naginata and keep a Katana user around, too. (For the 3 man team example.) You want the Armor Penetration and damage potential of the Long Cleaver, the AOE and +Dmg to Animals (As well as good cut damage against low/unarmored humans) of the Naginata (Polearm-blade, basically) and then the Katana, to quickly cut through all the yard-trash.

There are bunches of great threads around. Check the Kenshi subreddit for the best ones.

[SnugSnug]

There several things to consider when choosing a weapon, but often better is a misnomer... it's more what fits the current circumstance the best.

Looks.
Bonus.
Damage.
Type.
Reach.
Weight.

If you pull your stats tab for each character you'll see the attack, def stats are seperate to the weapon type stats. Your weapon type stat corresponds to the in bracket catagory description on the item.

Different weapon catagories benefit from primary stats; dex and strength. In general though Blunt, Heavy and MA benefit from strength for damage while the other use dex for damage.

Dex determines the block and strike speed % modifiers on all weapons however, these don't really kick in until one has enough strength to wield the weapon. General rule of thumb is higher dex is better for everyone, and aim for a weapon weight that's less than half your strength.

Generally each weapon type gets heavier as it's quality improves. So sometimes going straight to the most damage especially for heavy weapons comes with detrimental combat penalties until one is strong enough.

The bonus that different weapons have can be tailored towards the likely enemy threat, the feel of that character (rpg). But generally speaking cutting damage weapons have a harder time against armoured opponents but are more likely to actually kill them through limb/bloodloss trauma. Blunt weapons can quickly incapacitate but then one ends up playing a game of whack a mole as they keep getting back up again, unless one can loot a vital organ for instant kill.

Longer weapons have a greater reach and catch more in aoe, lighter weapons usually strike quicker. But without pulling data from FCS one is left with the generic description.

Some weapons can only be used 2 handed, usually it's the weapons whose icons don't naturally fit in the backpack. Therefore if one takes limb damage, or is carrying another they can loose use of their primary weapon.

The secondary weapon slot is for 1 handed fights, the game will automatically switch to this if it thinks its more beneficial, eg indoors fight, or one can't use their main weapon. It's therefore advisable to use a light defensive orientated weapon for this slot as your character is usually already struggling when they make the switch. Keeping it the same class as the primary allows one to level up consistently and not switch to a lesser stat when already in a time of disadvantage.

Using a weapon to train a stat specifically is different to general outfitting. There's guides around on how that works.

All the best

[Guitarpunkmasta]

yo thank you all for helping me out i love this game and i love learning more about it