Why so many weapons?

[Storm]

Hi,

Confucius here again, why are there sooo many weapons? Wouldn't a sword be the natural upgrade from an axe (axe seems more a starting point which then branches into things like cooking, etc.), so then you get a sword and there are a few of those and you're done.

But there are axes, swords, spears. I've tried looking at the stats and they all seem to be roughly around one another so I'm just unable to tell what you're supposed to do with which and I can't seem to find anything when I search.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Ysthrall]

In my meager experience, use whatever you feel like and sell the rest for plenty of cash :)

I don't think there is any major difference.

[Treveri]

Hmmm, and here I'm unhappy with the fact I have to give up my weapon slot for rake, ladle, and needle, etc.

[Treveri]

BTW, that's me being a smartass and saying I don't think they are meant for your dwarf's consumption ... as least I never saw it that way.

[Da' Vane]

There are currently only three different types of weapons - axes (two different types), spears, and swords (there are two different types). They all provide different modifiers which affect things like damage and speed, and crafting quality. In general, swords are the best weapons in terms of price, speed, and damage, but different material combinations and crafting quality does affect this as well, as does the skill of the blacksmith crafting them, so if you don't want to worry about this level of detail, you don't have to - since a skilled Blacksmith will make better weapons over time anyway.

As for why - well, it's fun, it's thematic, and they are often worth a lot in trade. You can easily grind away at that 50,000+ gold end goal simply by pumping out more weapons, and variety is the spice of life...

[Storm]

OK thanks, makes sense. I was referring to the fact that for each weapon type, there's different heads.

I'm confused though, I'm still very early game and my copper needs to be mined and then it's gone. Is there some way to get infinite ore like you do with stone?

[Da' Vane]

No, there's no way to get infinite ore - you need to look for more ore in the Mountainhome. Drills actually provide extra ore as they dig deeper, so you may want to save some ore patches to place drills on to make the most from them.

You can sometimes dig up ore when excavating depending on the biome, but this isn't as reliable as actually finding a seam of ore. I believe copper can be found in the Dawnlit Caverns dirt and rock, for example.

If you have no ore, you can buy copper, iron, and silver ingots from the overworld, and use them to create the weapons and tools you need. You can even forge iron/silver weapons from iron/silver ingots before getting the techs that lets you smelt those ores yourself.

As for the weapon heads, they vary in difficulty to craft, and change the properties of the weapon slightly. Thus, part of the game for optimising is crafting various combinations of handles/hilts and heads/blades of appropriate materials to get the most out of them. People have made spreadsheets and everything about this!

[Storm]

Ah, ok, so you'd get an "infinite" supply of ingots which is why people are so happy to be selling out all their tools / weapons. I've been VERY stingy with only ever letting something go that needs ore when it's for a mission and never for normal trade.

Thanks!

[Torven]

Once you get up to the drills, you can gather massive amounts of ore, to the point where you can just crank out weapons and tools. All metals have four different stats, Hardness, Resilience, Weight and Preciousness. The stats of a given tool get bonuses and penalties based on those stats. Those are further modified by the composite parts.

For instance, spears do mostly piercing damage, which is affected by hardness, which means you just want the hardest metal you have to make one. The two types of swords mix piercing and slashing damage 70/30 or 30/70, which means one sword type benefits most from hard metals, while the other one favors resilient metals (and parts).

If you start selling weapons to support an overworld faction, knowing how to match weapon type with the metals you don't use anymore will let you build up the faction strength more quickly (which is based on the weapon's damage, rather than the sale price)

[Storm]

Ah, cool, thanks for that info!