How to play Unarmed

How to play an unarmed character.

Read this first!

If you are new to this game, DO NOT DO THIS.

Please first play the game properly and learn how it works before attempting this.

I made this because I have a friend that really likes to play punch guys in games and I made a character to test out what you can do. The only things i've seen from the community about this is that you need crits to do anything, with little else going into much detail.

The idea behind this loose build is a monk. You will be using skills often to deal most of your damage rather than rely on unarmed alone. I have not specified what exactly to do, but more so laid out an explanation of what I think works best in both gameplay (fun) and themeing.

Unarmed is in the game???

When you attack without a weapon equipped, your character does a similar, slower, animation as the katar. However, it is different from a katar because it has no unique air attack. You will do the same thing as on the ground as you do in the air, meaning no dive. Another difference is that your fists/claws/wings/whatever scale with Attack Power rather than Dex Power, but they do also start at a base damage of 1-4. Max Attack Power, which includes rage, would give you 16-19.

How to raise the damage + class

The most effective way to raise your unarmed damage output is to min max into strength and crit percentage and to go bandit for Devious Signet - which increases your crit chance when active. Despite not being able to use half of the bandit's skills (without glitches), the previous skill alone is well worth it and it includes Agile Technique as a nice bonus. A max STR character on a full damage crit can do 25 damage.

This chart assumes you have no equipment at all.

It also may be wrong, as I am unsure if unarmed has a power threshold or not.

What that thing on em?

Race

Any race will work fine, but starting with Sturdy (from Chang) could be considered if you are bad at timing parries or Inner Focus (from Byrdle) for skill damage. You can consistently buy Leg Up from Frankie in Tuul Valley (the boar area) at a very low level. You'll also want to visit her anyways for her other scrolls. Reminder that all of the racial abilities can drop as scrolls and can be used by any race.

Attributes

Put most of your points into strength to pump up the base damage. Vit is a dump stat (you can do how much vit you want. I personally have 2 and will probably increase it if I run into any issues). You can always respec these later with a book. Dex I am currently unsure about, but the .gg wiki says "Attack Critical % [increases] by 0.03% for every point in Dexterity" which gives only 2.37 at 79 dex. I need to do more research on how much to balance str and dex with each other.

Equipment

For equipment, you have no weapons. No shield too unless you really want one. Everything else should focus mostly on crit rate, with the addition of also increasing attack power as a secondary need. Do not equip something if it were to lower your crit rate. You need crits.

Skills

Skills described in the order of about best to worst:

• Devious Signet - you NEED crit chance
  
• Mist Veil - can prove very useful for getting out of a situation and for lining up spire
  
• Agile Technique - same as above + its fun
  
• Leg Up - same reason as above and just so you can get from place to place faster. You spend a lot more time in battles because of your poor damage output. The extra evasion can be stacked with Devious Signet to get over 100% very easily.
  
• Spire - when combined with Inner Focus, it can end up melting enemies and it grants you both range and greater ability to damage multiple targets. Also fits the monk themeing.
  
• Fireball - At rank 3, you get an extra ball that orbits around you for a few seconds, which adds on major damage when compared to what you're working with. The range is also just nice.
  
• Inner Focus - see the two above. Do not waste it with a punch youll do 8 damage
  
• Divine - Ground damage and healing. Healing probably isn't as useful due to already having another skill that does it, but it can still help.
  
• Sturdy - It's good but feels situational. If you can time parries, it would only really be useful when there are a lot of enemies at once and you cannot cast spire.
  
• Alacrity - This also feels situational. I do not have much issue with cast time, but if you find yourself having your skills get canceled by damage or need to heal NOW, then its a fine addition.
  
• Rock Toss - It's worth considering due to it being the only novice skill to use strength for its damage, which you should have a lot of, and its very fast recharge. It's downside is needing to have many rocks.
  
• Bomb Trap - This skill is good. It's only this low because it doesn't feel like it fits the theme of the build. You can rank it higher if you wish.
  
• Life Tap - Even with low mana, I find myself more often waiting for skills to recharge than waiting for my mana to refill. Even if you find your supply drained often, it would be better to restore it with items and be more reserved with your skill use than to take a slot up with this.
  
• Recovery - Good until level 10, and then gets replaced by Mist Veil and/or other skills.
  
• Siphon Leech - It's fine? You have a lot better options above and this really acts like a hybrid of range and healing. It could be fine if you want to make room for an extra slot. Do take it if you start as an imp, though, as it will be useful for the first couple levels.
  
• Cryo Needle - I am unsure about this one. I've heard it actually does do a lot of damage but I haven't gotten around to testing it out yet.

Also skills you cannot use (without glitches, see below for a guide on that):

• Execute - unarmed does not count as a physical combat weapon
  
• Spread Shot - no bow
  
• The 4 bandit skills that require weapons
  
• Anything from fighter or mystic

Unfortunately, the game does not have any touch like skills that could be used by an unarmed character. You could maybe pretend things like Fireball and Siphon Leech are touch spells and only use them in melee range, but otherwise there isn't anything outside of larping to work with.

Unarmed mastery does not exist so dont get anything.

Here is the guide for pocket casting (using skills without having their required weapon): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3381238400
(I will add the extra ones to the list above when I try them out.)

Gameplay

Have you ever played an unarmed character in morrowind and spend minutes beating up 1 single animal outside of Seyda Neen? It's that.

For anyone that's scared of that game's combat, you spend a lot more time hitting enemies than usual, especially when your character is fresh out of the womb and clawing against slimes/whisps. Said slimes and whisps will also take about the same amount of time to kill until you're able to get Devious Signet. The most fun way to play unarmed while keeping the spirit, in my opinion, is as a monk. You get spells, but you aren't just playing mystic without clicking. Fighter does not have access to the equipment for bandit nor Devious Signet and would likely suffer from a lower possible crit chance ontop of some of the fighter skills requiring a weapon to use, despite not mentioning it in their desc.

Conclusion - Is it good?

No.

You play this cause you like the larp and/or challange, not because its good. If you grow tired of the poor damage, you can pick up any katar and respec your points into dex fpr your damage will sore while keeping a similar playstyle.

How could it be better?

While playing, I've thought about how a potential unarmed mastery could work:

Rank 1 - You can preform a charged strike. When it crits, its multiplier will be scaled with the power of what ring is equiped in your weapon slot. (Rings can now be used in the weapon slots. The multiplier is not 1:1 and is power x 0.05~)
Lvl 12 Rank 2 - Unarmed crit chance on stunned creeps is doubled. Attack speed is also increased by 10% unless a shield is equipped.
Lvl 14 Rank 3 - Unarmed will be considered a physical weapon by skills

Rank 1 gives you a charged attack, think of a palm strike or upper cut, that deals scaled crit damage. The reason it scales crit damage rather than base damage is to make it more different from the katars and to play like an extension of the build idea in this guide.

Not having a ring in your weapon slot would make it use dex power as a base for the crit mulitpler. Due to not being able to enchant your hands and to keep the spirit of any class being able to use any weapon, you can change what stat its pulling from by putting a ring in the slot. I assume rings would have extra text that tell you which it would set it to. Possibly, you could also enchant rings like you do with weapons to set it.

Note: stats on rings will still work as how they do with weapons and shields, where they don't apply unless they're out and in use.

Rank 2 makes your crit chance a lot better, the highest you could get right now with this would be 70%~, and adds a bonus for those who don't use a shield without punishing those who do too heavily.

Rank 3 allows for the two bandit skills that require a katar, and Execute, to be used while unarmed. There is an idea to allow them to also be used with a bow or the mystic weapons, but I am unsure of how that would impact the game.

This idea is not final and is subject to change, especially if i were to try and implement it as a mod. I have no idea how it fits into the game alongside other weapons and have given it little thought on if it was aviable to mystic or fighter, besides mystic being able to get more mana and magic power from an additional ring and fighter possibly being able to shield bash and instantly kill any enemy.

Tags

unarmed , fists , no weapon , weaponless , punch , puncher , fist , fister , fisting , monk , boxer , brawler , striker , pugilist

Credit

Catman - going into the code to see how unarmed works.

[kaboombit25]

nice guide

[Simping Delphox]

finally, goku build with mystic

[Wenda]

also note: a lot of this is gonna change as i learn more about the game through gameplay and later looking through the code