As Lethal as It Needs to Be - Introduction (Patreon)

While we still work our way through the Assessing Armor series and the look at Mixed sets, I wanted to also start on a deep dive look into the various weapons in the game. As this is just an short introductory piece that I don't want tied with any specific weapons, there will be a second post today about the first weapon type.

So the aim of this series is much like the Assessing Armor one, it's looking to analyse the various different categories of weapons (we currently have 16, but I'm not doing one on Fist & Tooth, because that only has 2 weapons for it at the moment), highlight the best examples of these weapons and explain why they are either good or can be situationally be made good (especially with the use of Cycloid Scale, Lantern, Vagabond or Dragon Armor). 

This will give you the tools to look at all weapons, including the less optimal ones, and work out the situations where they are going to be desirable for your settlements. There are very few weapons that are completely useless in this game because the rogue-lite randomness on the resources you get mean that you can't always have the optimal choices.

The layout of each article will look at the weapon type as a whole, considering its role in the game, the strengths, synergies and weaknesses through the lens of the weapon's framework, specialisation and mastery before looking at the common meta choices - the weapons from that category that you see over and over, along with the less common but very powerful weapons. I'll also highlight any situational weapons that I'm fond of.

I'll be using the terms 'Early', 'Mid' and 'Late' to describe the stages of the campaign that these weapons are viable for. There is no set Lantern Year for these parts of the campaign, where you are in the early/mid/late table is very dependent on a combination of your survival action availability and gear loadout because it's those two things that mostly determine if you're fighting L1 Lions and Antelopes or L3 Dung Beetle Knights and Sunstalkers. It's not so much a 'time based measurement' as it is a 'power based one'. For example, the Bone Sword is an Early Game weapon, the Perfect Slayer is an Extreme Late Game weapon, but you can have the Perfect Slayer pre-Lantern Year 10 if you are fortunate and rush the blacksmith.  There is a similar dynamic with the Black Sword, so the Perfect Slayer is not the only example of this.

Each weapon will have it's assessment broken down as follows:

Name: Name

Power Level: Early/Mid/Late

Speed: See below

Accuracy: See below

Strength: Each of these will be a brief look at the stats of the weapon. I want to split them apart even though it'll be a small amount of writing for each because sometimes it's one of these three stats that makes the weapon good, while at other times it's a combination of 2 or 3 of them. Some weapons can be good despite having low strength or unwieldy speed.

Affinities: Consideration of the weapon's affinities (if it has any).

Ability: Sometimes it is the ability of a weapon that makes it truly notable, so this is an important area to discuss.

Summary: A catch all area where I can write about the weapon, this is where the bulk of each entry will be located.

And then I'll wrap each article up with a nice bow in the conclusion. With the goal of explaining the areas in which you will use a given weapon, why it's popular (or not) and roughly what priority you have for it.

We'll be back in a short while with Axes and then move alphabetically through the cast until we reach the end of them!