Strength / Dexterity Confusion

[Kloodge]

I have read here and on the wiki that dexterity influences the damage of light weapons. This does not seem to be the case for me.

I have all 3 expansions installed and am dual wielding light weapons. My dex is maxxed and strength is still at 15, based on advice I had read.

I leveled to 6 and decided to put a few points in to strength to see what happened. Well, the damage stat on the "main" page started going up. I then experimented with killing some orcs. If I didn't spend the points from my last level anywhere, the orcs took 6-7 hits to kill. If I put the 10 points in to dex, they still took 6-7 hits. If I put all 10 points in to strength, they consistently died in 5 hits. I didn't spend any other points in these tests.

Did this change at some point, or do the expansions affect this?

[Elendil / Redshift]

Nothing has changed and expansions can't change this. :)

The most important contributor to damage is weapon skill (after the weapons own damage potential, of course), where Light Weapon depends on Dexterity and Heavy Weapon depends on Strength. And you can't raise the skills above twice of the associated attribute.

Strength and Dexterity both also directly contribute to damage, Dexterity more if you are fighting with a light weapon and Strength more in case of heavy weapons. This contribution is small, though.

At low levels even one or two points might make a difference (and random variance might be bigger). And of course raising both Strength and Dexterity equally is the best, if all else is the same, but that would leave you with many fewer points to spend on other attributes.

[Kloodge]

When I leveled a couple more times, I put 10 more points in to strength and it didn't affect my damage numbers on the main page at all this time. When I hit undo and did it over again putting all 10 points in to dex, the damage did go up by 1 (less than the 10 points of strength made it go up at level 6.) So obviously both str and dex affect damage with light weapons, as you said.

I was working off info from the wiki and forums that made it sound like strength was nearly worthless other than for heavy weapons. I even read one place that said you could never put a point in to strength and not notice.

Thanks for the clarification.

[PvtScott]

I think the people advocating strength as a dump stat are talking about it in an absolutist, end-of-game ideal sort of sense. Playing through the game while completely ignoring your strength would likely be annoying due to limiting your carrying capacity much more than occasionally throwing a point or two into it. Not having to worry about fiddling with your inventory every time you're going to leave town because you only have a smidge of carry weight left after cutting down to essentials (just scrolls, potions, wands, weapons, armor and food/water and a few other items). Sure, you could mark and recall and take loot out of places in stages if you need to, but that's busywork.

Those books, flowers, repair hammers and other random stuff get heavy pretty quickly if you keep your strength at its starting value and walk around in full heavy armor with three melee weapons, a bow and a shield to deal with multiple combat scenarios. Strength gives you 5 carry capacity per point, compared to the 2 from dex, and while endurance also gives you 5, you can only raise that stat so high. I'd say strength entirely is worth it even if you're not planning on doing any melee fighting because it's convenient.

I haven't gotten very far in the game, so there's surely a point where you'd want to stop working on your muscles if you plan on pure casting/archery or very little melee. Maybe just spend a point on strength every second or third level until you've spent 10-20 points to taste, or just put 2 points a level till you've spent the 10-20 points for maximum early convenience and an early melee boost when it matters more.