My observations and issues about weapon distribution

[shinryu495]

I've only done fresh saves and I beat normal and hard. I'm currently on my nightmare run and I got all the achievements. For this discussion, I'll leave out the 8-bit weapons because with enough money almost every weapon class becomes viable at any point in the game. I'll also ignore daggers, spears, and rapiers as I had little interest and experience using them.

Shoes: Kung-fu shoes are great until you get the shortsword and claymore pretty much. Lethal boots are practically obsolete by the time you get them. Toy shoes can upgrade to bunny shoes but at that point its still not competitive. After that its only craftable shoes that you can upgrade starting with an attack of 28. Its way too weak compared to your other options at the time. Basically you have to go out of your to keep crafting shoes for it to be competitive.

Swords: Not much to say here. They steadily give you upgrades throughout the game making them viable for pretty much the whole game. You could also farm the Rhava super early and get the flying edge rather early. Enough said.

Greatsword: The most love is given to greatsword by far. You can get spiral sword before rhava and it'll last you a long time. Then you find the carnot's rebuke which lasts you a long time. Then you find get a free gram and steel lightning. The gram can easily be made into a schedar. You suddenly have 2/3 GS to make the strongest non-elemental GS.

Katana: Its kind of like the sword in that they give you upgrades here and there. The only real gap is between the second lab and the oriental lab where you can farm the dojigiri. That doesn't really matter though as you get a plot weapon soon after anyway.

Whips: What I'm primarily using this nightmare run. The thorn whip you get in one of the first few quests lasts you a long time until you can farm for flame whips(easy farm). After this you have to craft whips to stay competitive or you can just wait till you can farm for beast killers at the second lab area. From there you just upgrade that whip until its final form.

What I would change: Add more non 8-bit shoes to fill in the gap. Not sure how I would balance the rest.

I'm also curious what its like for you dagger and rapier users. Also, if I'm wrong about something, let me know.

[Shiroi Ren]

I just use Valkirie Sword and Sword Whip on NG+. Valkirie Sword is good against enemies that stay on the ground a lot, letting you hack them several times (with proper gear you can feed Zangetsu around 3-5 slashes before he counter) and Sword Whip against mooks and bosses that prefer to keep distance (or you need to keep distance from bosses).

As for the first playthrough, I used Swords since you can get 9/9 passive pretty fast for them. They have pretty good damage, distance and attack speed. Some bosses required Guns or Great Sword.

[LadstonFelisGaming]

I primarily use Swords, Rapiers, and Clubs, swapping between the three based on the weaknesses of the target (Gremory is a special exception to this, as she’s the only enemy specifically weak to a katana).

Swords are pretty standard, as you said. Though I highly recommend getting the three elemental swords so you can combine them into the Blue Rose, the best non-Rava sword in terms of base attack power.

Rapiers are fast, even without expertise shards, the black belt, or other attack speed buffs. A majority of rapiers have access to the Thousand Blossoms technique which is really just mash the attack button continuously. Special mentions for rapiers go to the Stinger and Kazikli, as they can inflict poison and curse, respectively. I was surprised to see how many bosses you can proc those status effects on, so they’re worth keeping around for strategic value.

Clubs are early-mid game go-to weapons, specifically the Morgenstern and the mesoamerican nail bat (Like hell I’m spelling that correctly XD) as they do both slash and strike damage, meaning most enemies until near the end of the Towers of Twin Dragons (Morgenstern) and the Forbidden Underground Waterway (Mesoamerican nail bat) will be having their weaknesses exploited without needing to switch. Best part is that you can get them for free.

[shinryu495]

Originally posted by LaddytheOutcast:

I primarily use Swords, Rapiers, and Clubs, swapping between the three based on the weaknesses of the target (Gremory is a special exception to this, as she’s the only enemy specifically weak to a katana).

Rapiers are fast, even without expertise shards, the black belt, or other attack speed buffs. A majority of rapiers have access to the Thousand Blossoms technique which is really just mash the attack button continuously. Special mentions for rapiers go to the Stinger and Kazikli, as they can inflict poison and curse, respectively. I was surprised to see how many bosses you can proc those status effects on, so they’re worth keeping around for strategic value.

Does curse actually halve the bosses life? I've been tempted to go poison but in the end its not my style.

[LadstonFelisGaming]

Originally posted by shinryu495:

Originally posted by LaddytheOutcast:

I primarily use Swords, Rapiers, and Clubs, swapping between the three based on the weaknesses of the target (Gremory is a special exception to this, as she’s the only enemy specifically weak to a katana).

Rapiers are fast, even without expertise shards, the black belt, or other attack speed buffs. A majority of rapiers have access to the Thousand Blossoms technique which is really just mash the attack button continuously. Special mentions for rapiers go to the Stinger and Kazikli, as they can inflict poison and curse, respectively. I was surprised to see how many bosses you can proc those status effects on, so they’re worth keeping around for strategic value.

Does curse actually halve the bosses life? I've been tempted to go poison but in the end its not my style.

I would assume so, since enemies don’t have listed MP values to halve. The only thing Curse would feasibly do is a percentile HP cut. If it doesn’t even do that, then idk. I’ll test it with the Kizikli and Gauge Glasses.

[DishSoap]

Shoes get techs rather early so that's probably the reason for them tapering off so quickly. While whips also get their tech quickly as well it has other downsides like like recovery frames if you're not canceling.
As for swords and katanas they're rather consistently good, while greatswords are not as consistent, have sluggish techs, and attack very slow compared to swords and katanas.

[LadstonFelisGaming]

I just tested the Kazikli against the Doppelgänger (4000 HP) while wearing the Gauge Glasses to see if there was any tangible effect of curse on bosses.

It seems that when used on bosses, the curse status reduces their max HP by 25% instead of the 50% players get slapped with. On the hit that proc’d curse, the Doppelgänger lost exactly 1000 HP when my average damage per hit with the Kazikli was around 210.

[Kyutaru]

Shoes: Are meant for sliding and getting No Damage on bosses. Your kicks are powering up your slide attacks if you love those. They also are good for bouncing on bosses repeatedly to deal damage without being in front of them, safely out of harms way. In fact, all the Nightmare No Damage boss completions I've seen have used Shoes instead of any other weapon. Somehow I don't think they're weak given their utility value. They might not be as good for farming the castle unless you spam slides but that just makes them situational to bosses.

[shinryu495]

Originally posted by Kyutaru:

Shoes: Are meant for sliding and getting No Damage on bosses. Your kicks are powering up your slide attacks if you love those. They also are good for bouncing on bosses repeatedly to deal damage without being in front of them, safely out of harms way. In fact, all the Nightmare No Damage boss completions I've seen have used Shoes instead of any other weapon. Somehow I don't think they're weak given their utility value. They might not be as good for farming the castle unless you spam slides but that just makes them situational to bosses.

Possibly only for ng+ runs then. On a fresh nightmare save you can't get access to strength food until after you get invert. In the meanwhile, your int is much higher and you use bunny for easily the same purpose. I don't think it would hurt to have like a weapon drop of boots with attack of say 30 to drop though. It would round out the various damage you get off of non 8-bit shoes.