Weapon Expansion for base game.

[Delicious Orange]

One thing my group noted while playing the base game was that there was a distinct lack of certain craftable weapon types in the game, as well as a lack of weapons for certain tiers of crafting. I was thinking this might be a good area to focus on for a gameplay mod, so I went ahead and counted up the number and types of weapons in the core game.

Weapon tiers

Bone tier weapons = 7
Scrap/Leather tier weapons = 7 (including the 2 harvest items)
Iron/Smelting tier weapons = 8
White Lion weapons = 5
Screaming Antelope weapons = 2 (yikes)
Phoenix weapons = 6

Weapon Types

Swords - 4
Daggers - 4
Grand Weapons - 3
- Grand weapons are all about single, high damage hits. A bit risky in terms of dice rolls, but very safe against triggering traps and chunking off multiple AI cards is very satisfying. A tempting choice if you can frenzy yourself into getting more speed, but the fact that you are limited to only the Zanbato until the late game blacksmith tech makes it difficult to get into.
Spears - 4
Katars - 2
- Could use a little more variety. Katars are geared for usage while paired, which lends them toward a satisfying dice spam and moments of explosive good luck at the risk of triggering traps much more often.
Axes - 4
Clubs - 1
- Easily the most obvious weapon type in need of variety, the Skullcap hammer is incredible specific to fighting high speed enemies. I'm unsure of how to theme the clubs since we only have one club to base off of, but we'll see.
Whips - 4
Bows - 2
- Another weapon type lacking variety, bows only show up in the monster specific crafting tables. Could be a good place to add an Antelope item. Bows tend to be very static, but very powerful support weapons. Adding in the specialized arrows for added utility makes them even more interesting; at the cost of your limited inventory space.
Shields - 4
Katanas* - 1 (since this weapon type seems tied to the Sunstalker expansion and seems balanced around being hard to craft with no weapon expertise bonus, I'll ignore it for now)
Harvesting - 2
- This group seems utilitarian, but having a variety of harvesting tools to choose from might help create more build variety.

What has your experience been with the core game's weapons and what sort of weapons and weapon effects do you feel the game is lacking?

[Buffalo Bell]

I think overall the weapons are distributed well enough. I kinda wish the base game Katana also had the sword typing but other than that it's fine. Some weapons are meant to be more unique utility style weapons whilst others are meant to be more common with varying power levels. It makes sense that some weapons are more common than others. HOWEVER I would be happy to see more weapons in future.

Also to counter some points:
- Bows are limited because they're pretty strong for what they do and it only shows up at tier 2 for the first time
- Clubs are weirdly limited yes
- Katars are fine as is, they're insanely powerful at one specific thing. The whole point is they fill a niche in combat usage
- Grand Weapons are meant to be a later development (Zanbato is one of the best weapons in the game!)
- Harvesting is fine as is I think too many options would lead to more risk of stretching resources and they're not meant to be used in fights anyways.

If anything I think the limited amount of some weapon types is probably to stop weapon type abuse. Like Grand Weapons and Katars are really strong so it's harder to provide balanced options for them. I'd say bows are the same in that they're strong for utility and you can easily kill the Watcher with clever bow use. My biggest gripe is perhaps the weapon specific proficiencies most notably: The Twilight Sword, if a survivor who is really strong gets stuck with the TS you are really fucked. It's dangerous to not raise their proficiency in it but at the same time that means losing their old one. It'd be neat if it was instead Twilight Weapons and you could have a variety of weapons from the Twilight Knights. Also some expansion weapon types are woefully under-nourised in terms of variety. See: Scythes

[Katsuhiko]

Axes and Katars seem like the healthiest weapon types for sure. Lot of variety there. I greatly enjoy the counterweight axe combined with as much accuracy reduction and speed bonuses as possible. I'd love to one day see a thrown weapon type with more dart-type weapons combining mobility with range at the cost of speed/strength.