Dane-Axe

[AnneFrankFanfiction]

I loved Conquistador even though I wasn't real excited about that game's setting. The promised changes and a move to one of my favourite historical settings made me super excited for this game prior to its release. Nothing is more iconic of the Viking Age than the dane-axe and I couldn't wait to pillage my way through England, hewing Saxon men apart with my dane-axe-wielding Viking chief.

Then I got my ass handed to me by Asleifr the first time I played, in part because the game shipped with a bug that made it default to the hardest difficulty, but mostly because the dane-axe just isn't a very good weapon. Possibly the single biggest bummer of the game for me.

It just doesn't hit hard enough to justify using it over any of the other weapons. If you want to deal damage in melee, you can do it much better with a sword which also gives you the protection of a shield. If you want to deal damage from the rear, Nefja, a main character, already does a very good job of that with her spear, and I don't see ever wanting more than one character in a party filling that role. In any case the dane-axe doesn't compete well enough with the spear to justify giving up the spear's superior skills and armour-piercing capability. Yes, the dane-axe, with sufficient crafting ability, can achieve a maximum damage range that is double that of the spear. The problem with that is that characters who have enough HP to make use of that much damage very often also have a lot of armour, and with the same amount of salvage that it takes to craft a max damage dane-axe with 10 AP damage, you can craft a max damage spear with 20 AP damage. That might still give the dane-axe a slight edge in dealing damage to ever well-armoured enemies (might, I haven't actually tested or run the numbers), but the spear has great abilities at every skill level while the dane-axe just offers no good abilities at all.

With the spear you get extend at level 1: this lets you make a slightly lower-damage attack at three tiles away, thus increasing the number of potential moves you can make with your polearm-user. Since polearms are all about finding opportunities to hit enemies without exposing yourself, this is great. The dane-axe, on the other hand, gets reckless strike, which is basically the opposite; it doesn't extend your range and, in fact, sacrifices all of your moves on the following turn. On one hand I like this because it reflects the dane-axe's role in a fight, being very heavy but devastating to wield. But it only gives you 25% extra damage. This can be situationally useful, like when you're hacking away at an enemy with a truly huge HP pool, or your pole-arm user is in a place where he can attack multiple melee enemies, but it just doesn't offer enough extra damage to make the dane-axe stand out, in my opinion. Couldn't we make it 50%, or even 33%?

Then at level three it gets even worse. The spear gets smack: this allows you to escape engagement without receiving an attack of opportunity while simultaneously dealing some damage AND a debuff to your opponent. This is perfect for polearm-users because getting engaged in melee causes them to forfeit all of the advantage they'd normally get from their weapon. The dane-axe, on the other hand, gets pull, which does no damage, uses their attack action, and brings the enemy into melee range. Why would I EVER want to use this as a dane-axe user?

The only situation I can possibly imagine is one where I'm able to force the enemy to take an attack of opportunity from someone else, and then am also able to switch my weapon set to a sword/axe and shield, but I don't think you can switch weapon sets after using your attack action. Otherwise, I have just sacrificed my attack to put my shieldless polearm-user in melee range of an enemy. I might also be able to use it to pull a rear-line combatant into an empty spot in the melee line, but when is that ever really possible? And when it is, when would it ever be advantageous for me to put them in melee with my axe-user when I could have just actually hit them with the axe instead? I could see it maybe if I could hook them from THREE tiles away instead of two, but I don't think that's how it works. Even then I'd say it's nearly useless, because why would I want to sacrifice my attack action to bring them closer but not engage them, when I could just take one step forward and attack them instead?

And then at level five we continue with the trend of spear getting great skills while dane-axe gets terrible ones. Spear gets distract, which lets you neutralise the attack of opportunity of any enemy in attack range, plus it's a free action. This is very rarely useful but when it is useful it's great, because it lets you extricate your archer or your healer or a heavily wounded melee character from danger, without even sacrificing your attack action.

Dane-axe, meanwhile, gets swipe, an attack action that theoretically lets you hit three enemies if they're all standing in an arc, but you give up any armour-piercing damage and also can't damage any of their shields. I'm not going to say this is completely worthless but it is extremely underwhelming for a level five ability. This is an ability you'll only be able to unlock after obtaining at least 265 skill points, which means you'll be fairly late in the game. At that point you're not often going to walk into clumps of unarmoured enemies. Any unarmoured enemies you run into by then are usually going to be glass cannons (archers, rogues) or healers who aren't going to be clumped together and who you're going to want to take out straight away.

Plus, if there aren't shield-users between you and the enemies you're swiping, and you didn't kill the targets you swiped, you've just exposed your shieldless axe-user to three open attacks on the next turn. If there ARE shield-users between you and them, then most likely the enemies are carrying shields, too, and you've just given up the ability to break those, which is probably the most useful thing the dane-axe could do in this situation.

It's probably far too late after release to expect this to get tweaked, but it would be nice. I mostly just wanted to rant about how what is easily the coolest weapon in the game, and the most iconic of the viking age, is also easily the least useful. That's right. Less useful than the sling.

[KAZAM | King Fat]

Thank you, AnneFrankFanfiction for formulating and posting rather more succinctly my gripe with the Dane-Axe (my version was more or less just "It sucks! But WHY?!") I've greatly enjoyed my time with this game (albeit mostly playing the hated glass canon, the archer), but I really wanted to have a go at the Dane-Axe (being Danish, I felt I sorta had to, and it is such an awesome weapon). But the skills on it just didn't make it feel worthwile. Same reason I don't really use Gunnarr in my crew.
Maybe we are both misreading how to use it. (If anyone has some amazing pointers on how to use that wonderful axe, please do share.) But I admit, I think you're right.

[Vushe]

I've only played Hard Difficulty so my opinions probably won't apply to Insane Difficulty. IMO most weapon skills aren't that great. I can only think of two weapons that I used often and the rest were on rare occasions. Offense/Support skills saw much more usage.

Weapon damage is more important than most weapon skills. My biggest gripe is that two handers are not that much better than a one hander in that department. Dual wielding one handers has greater damage out put than a dane axe (+21 dmg late game). I guess it is to make up for the 2-tile range which I rarely took advantage of. The 25% extra damage swing could make up for the difference had it not been for the unbalance debuff. Spears are very underwhelming in the damage department but try to make up for it by having some unique spears such as the Gae Derg.

For my game dual wielding Gunnar tore everything to shreds while Nefja played support. Didn't like relying on chance based stuff like crit or ranged attacks.

[AnneFrankFanfiction]

Ultimately the only use I can see for the dane-axe is as a back-up weapon for a melee character that doesn't have good perception or finesse, for use in situations where he can't position to use his primary weapon(s). But even in those situations, you're probably better off using a support ability. Even if you absolutely have to deal damage, you're probably better off using inspire to get an extra attack from your front line without having to leave a character in the open with no shield.

For a primary weapon? No. Forget about it. MAYBE if you run with 10 strength and 10 endurance then maybe you could kill enemies fast enough and soak enough damage to make it worthwhile. And maybe you could still manage to have decent sense (I never want to dump sense, it just loses you far too many dialogue options) while doing that if you dumped finesse and perception both.

[[__h.stickeye_]]

dane axe only good in certain situations, stick it on a axe weilding shield bearer and thats it , end of story.

In fact, this is quite true to history. If you have seen any serious re-enactment fights, the great axe, or dane axe does NOT feature very ofte, primarily because the spear was so much better. One big thing the great axe had was FEAR in battle, as in skilled hands, in could rip through most helmets and cut a man in twain.