Beginner weapon and armor questions

[Hones]

Hello there!

I have a few general questions about weapons and armor, especially for the early game where I still am.
What should I keep my eyes on concerning weapons? Are the different weapon types equally viable (Katanas, Sabres, Hacking, Blunt, ...), or are some weapons to be considered a "trap"? Is the money value of a weapon a good indicator to gauge the usefulness of a weapon overall or are there other pointers I should look at?
I am still struggling a bit wether for example the "refitted blade" plank my shek has is better or worse than, say, a naginata of lower quality, for example.

Concerning armor: Coverage or actual protection value? Is a heart protector more useful than traders leathers? Should I focus on "layering" (getting a vest with some armor value as well) or focus on obtaining better blueprints for armors?

Again, just some general pointers would help me a lot, I am still learning the game and I want to explore and find stuff out mostly for myself. So please no "If you go to spot XYZ you can find an OP katana that can carry you through the game!" or something along those lines. Thank you! ^^

[Cattrina]

Big heavy weapons won't be much effective until your pawn has leveled up their strength. Pawns will only skill on the weapon type they are using, so the first weapon type they equip should(?) be their weapon type always, if ya wanna keep the progress.
Unfortunately this is as much info I have to give, as I am a pacifist an never pay much attention on the fighting.

[Spulls]

Katanas are a trap since most enemies outside of the borderzone have some level of armor. I usually setup a group mixed with sabers and crossbows, then when i get some decent dexterity on my first couple of characters, I train them in strength and give them a big heavy weapon. I also usually just stay in safer areas till I get a decent amount of combat stats then shift over to kitting out the crew in samurai armor/legs, iron hat and wooden sandals to counter the movement penalty provided by the heavy armor. When you need acid rain protection, either go in with a sneaky approach with dusters/samurai longpants or drifter leather pants/iron hat, or if you need defense as well, crab armor and helmet.

Edit: I'll let you figure out where all that stuff is of course, but a good indication of the quality of the weapon is how close to silver it looks over the more rusted looking junk you will see at the start.

[bunny de fluff]

For armor, get one with high "coverage" and "cut resistance".

For weapons, most op is crossbow.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by Hones:

are some weapons to be considered a "trap"?

Blunt weapons are a bit of a trap, since they don't deal cut damage. Cut damage is what'll actually kill your enemies for you.

You might like the idea of defeating people without killing them, but unfortunately most characters in this game act like homicidal lemmings in battle, and even against overwhelming force will refuse to stop unless you're dealing the sort of wounds that don't take no for an answer.

For those cases where you really want to take someone alive, there's the so-called "assassination" skill. Contrary to what the name implies, it simply deals knock-outs, allowing you to skip over the "combat" stage of events entirely.

In the early game, personally I like sabers quite a bit. Armour's all well and good, you certainly don't want to skimp on it - but that boost in actual defensive skill is handy-dandy.

[di eshor ribly]

Weapon damage comes in two types: blunt and slashing. You can consider crossbows and turrets to be "piercing" damage due to some armors having specific crossbow defense, but otherwise is treated like slashing damage.

Slashing is good against unarmored or lightly armored enemies, but tends to bounce off heavier armors. Blunt is good against armor, but isn't as lethal as slashing is. Hand to Hand combat is considered blunt (at high levels is also the most lethal combat option in the game).

Therefore, if you want maximum output with minimal effort (in carrying around multiple weapons, etc), you'll want to pick a general weapon type that offers both damages. Personally I'm a huge fan of Combat Hackers and Light Hackers/Crossbow combos. The Ranger or Oldworld Bow Mk II are excellent general use crossbows.

As for armor, there's a bit of a trade off. Light armors let you run faster, sneak better, carry more, and dodge better. Heavy armors let you absorb far more damage, but you're going to lose the light armor advantages.

The best armor depends on what you're doing... a thief/ninja will want light armor. Smugglers will want light armor to outrun hungry animals. Your war party will probably want heavy armor. Unarmed monks want either metal armors or hand reinforcements, or as light armor as possible depending on species/skill thresholds.

Environmental issues are dealt with by different armors, like dustcoats for acid, or goggles for dust storms. Part of the journey is figuring out what you should wear in certain areas.

[Hones]

Thanks for all the helpful replies! I think I will go with a combination of weapons for my small group of weirdos. Some sabres, hackers and the occasional crossbow or polearm.

[di eshor ribly]

Oh, as an aside on what Cattrina mentioned about being strong enough to use certain weapons? It's not mentioned anywhere in game, but you can figure out a weapon's strength requirement by multiplying its blunt damage by 40.

If your, for argument sake, combat hacker does 1.5 slashing and 1.25 blunt damage, you would need 50 strength to swing it without attack penalties. The heaviest weapon in the game requires something like 140-150 strength, which needs cyborg arms to pull off.

[Hones]

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

Oh, as an aside on what Cattrina mentioned about being strong enough to use certain weapons? It's not mentioned anywhere in game, but you can figure out a weapon's strength requirement by multiplying its blunt damage by 40.

If your, for argument sake, combat hacker does 1.5 slashing and 1.25 blunt damage, you would need 50 strength to swing it without attack penalties. The heaviest weapon in the game requires something like 140-150 strength, which needs cyborg arms to pull off.

Oh okay thanks for that info! Looks like my people will have to spend some more time carrying a bunch of iron in their backpacks while running circles around the hub. ^^

[Bandy]

The best weapon and armor is what you have access to and/or can afford. And as mentioned, learn the mechanics, the dex and strength limits etc, tho if everyone waited to reach those 'no penalty' levels early game would be beating others up with sticks for a long while...

Don't be afraid to make mistakes, this isn't Dark Souls...

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Originally posted by Hones:

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

Oh, as an aside on what Cattrina mentioned about being strong enough to use certain weapons? It's not mentioned anywhere in game, but you can figure out a weapon's strength requirement by multiplying its blunt damage by 40.

If your, for argument sake, combat hacker does 1.5 slashing and 1.25 blunt damage, you would need 50 strength to swing it without attack penalties. The heaviest weapon in the game requires something like 140-150 strength, which needs cyborg arms to pull off.

Oh okay thanks for that info! Looks like my people will have to spend some more time carrying a bunch of iron in their backpacks while running circles around the hub. ^^

it's actually a bit faster to stick an MkIII frag axe on them, though you'll want to do that you've finished the rest of your training so you have enough Dex to offset the combat speed penalties.

if the weapon's strength requirement is 20+ more than what you have you can quite large bonus to strength gains, so it's just a measure of finding a good mixture of attack speed and gains, though attack speed can't drop below 50%, so you can also just run with something really heavy and fight animals with a tank to keep their attention (give them a rusted blade jitte and taunt-mode and they'll deal completely negligable damage while still keeping the enemy's attention) while your strength training guys flank it if you don't wanna have to min-max your weapon weight.

if you do want to min-max it, maxed dex can usually offset most of a 40 point difference if you have no other combat speed penalties and wooden sandals, which gives you 20 points of strength before you need to upgrade to a new weapon.

Beak Things can work well for that as their attacks are super slow and they're big enough that multiple people can attack at once. Though it can be difficult to isolate one to play with as there's never just one beak thing, and even if it seems like there is at first, there won't be for long.

And strength isn't an SOL skill, so it trains at the same rate no matter when you do it or what you're attacking, so I usually save it for last, as Dex is a lot more important to raise early on.

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otherwise try to get one of the three remaining shop-keeper's goods bags as they weight 100k and have no encumbrance reduction (they count as a large backpack as well so you can combine that with combat training to get a head start on strength training while waiting for enemies to recover or moving between training locations), so you can dump a bunch of mass produced high quality frag axes in it), and then carry a body around (which doubles the effectiveness/xp cap of passive strength training), though this will eat tons of food, so you do have to weigh your options.

Personally i think it's alright if you're mass training a lot of guys, but for a small team, the combat method can end up working better since you can better micro each guy to maximize their gains.

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having an OP weapon doesn't matter since 90% of your damage comes from your stats, a better weapon just gives you a better base amount for your stats to modify.


I.e. it's why the Holy Sword start is a massive trap, as it gives you an extremely high quality nodachi that still deals the same damage as a rusted junk nodachi because you don't have the stats to deal any more than the minimum damage. (weapons have a minimum damage that they'll deal regardless of stats, and until you surpass that amount, it's all you deal).

Though a few weapon types (Ninja-to, Wakazashi, Longsword) have a higher than normal minimum damage since they're considered "newbie" weapons.