Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DWARFRAWD]

Dwarf can use weapon in each hand simultaneously?

or, just use one weapon?

Is it worth to give two weapons to dwarf?

[Cathar]

Yes, no, no

The best weaponry is hammer (vs armor or undead), axe (versus unarmored) or spear (vs large) and shield. A shield will save many dwarves lives and even more sweet sweet motor nerves. Two weapons might look cool and be marginally usable in adventure mode with multiattacks, but in fortress mode it's a very bad idea.

[Dunamisdeos]

I have found the opposite to be true.

My legendary dual-axedwarf murders everything and parries right about everything with her weapons. She also has high dodge and armor-user stats for defense, so she doesn't seem to miss the shield.

She has actually been more effective than her shield-using peers. I'm sure this does not mean that dual-wielding is inherently better, but it can certainly be viable.

[anewaname]

Can a second axe parry a blast of fire? This is an actual question and not sarcasm.

[Cathar]

That's the point of a shield actually. You can't parry dragonfire or projectile with another axe. As for comparison, I also have one legendary axeman with a greataxe, and she works absolutely wonder. But she's also way overskilled compared to the other legendary fighters...Besides, greataxes have a function (strikes with bigger impacts), where dual wielding do absolutely not ; everything you can do with two axes a dwarf can do with a single axe.

I don't say it's not viable, I'm sure you can make it work and it's definitely cool, but..whats the point?

[Shonai_Dweller]

What ever happened to elite swordsmen swatting bolts out of the air?

[Cathar]

They all took bolts in the face I presume

[mikekchar]

I'm not saying it's worth it (I haven't actually tried), but apart from dragon fire and archery (which is serious enough),I think there *might* be a slight advantage to dual wielding.  Instead of blocking, you get parry which means that the parry scales with your weapon skill, rather than your shield skill.  Also, it stops the dwarfs from bashing with the shield.  Presumably it should also give you more juicy targets (the blue ! in adventure mode) with one of your weapons since you have a weapon in both hands.  I've noticed this is true in adventure mode, though I'm not 100% certain it translates into dwarf mode.  I think so, because I think that's why you sometimes see your dwarfs absolutely pulp the opponent's foot using a punch instead of their weapon (even when they aren't particularly skilled in striking).

[StagnantSoul]

There's really no advantage, try to give them an axe and a hammer and they'll just use the axe mostly cause their dworfy brains prefer cutting damage, give them an axe and a sword and they'll waste turns they should be hacking pommel smashing cause derp, give them two shields and they'll one shot a demon.

[Dunamisdeos]

They can bat projectiles out of the air can't they? I usually invest in dodge for this anyway rather than shield, and my legendries don't seem to have any trouble. They will have no defense against dragonfire without a shield. The solution to this is don't send dwarves without shields to fight dragons.

And yes, I've found that eliminating the shield bash option results in faster killing. Again though, a shield will provide more defensive options. I just haven't yet seen a yuge bonus one way or another (I'm running both dual-wielding dwarves and S&B dwarves in my current fort.)

What DOES seem to have a very clear disadvantage is 2H weapons. Less parry, no shield, no real bonus that I can see.

[Shonai_Dweller]

They can bat projectiles out of the air can't they? I usually invest in dodge for this anyway rather than shield, and my legendries don't seem to have any trouble. They will have no defense against dragonfire without a shield. The solution to this is don't send dwarves without shields to fight dragons.

And yes, I've found that eliminating the shield bash option results in faster killing. Again though, a shield will provide more defensive options. I just haven't yet seen a yuge bonus one way or another (I'm running both dual-wielding dwarves and S&B dwarves in my current fort.)

What DOES seem to have a very clear disadvantage is 2H weapons. Less parry, no shield, no real bonus that I can see.

Is a small guy with no shield better off wielding two daggers or one single sword which he has to hold two-handed?

[mikekchar]

From my experience with daggers in adventure mode, they are surprisingly effective against small opponents.  They are particularly good at doing damage against armour wearing opponents. IIRC, they also only have stab and slash, so they wouldn't waste opportunities on useless attacks in fort mode.  The downside is that they don't do much damage against large creatures.  You can't slice off limbs, or penetrate organs, etc.  Against goblins, though, I would pick daggers over swords anyway. The real problem is when you come up against a troll...

But, yes, I'd be willing to bet that dual daggers will be much better than single hand sword.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yes, you can. I like to give 1 slower dwarf in a squad crossbow and edged weapon, so that they might shoot bolts to weaken targets squad faces and then hit with axe up close (needs to be equipped in right order).

Shield is pretty substantial thing though, being worth about 29% at equal skill and quickly increasing as skill advances in From Iron to Steel: A survey of v0.43.05 combat [Long]
(Don't recall if dodging or blocking takes priority - in the first case, it's worth more, about 34%)

Another benefit not mentioned is that if one of your dwarf's weapon gets lodged into enemy/wrestled away and they can't hold onto it, they'll have a backup weapon.

@Cathar: Worth noting that pick will cut goblin limbs 62,5% harder than axe at same skill level and act more like spears on their bodies while not taking up demonstration slot but being moodable, and that steel spears/axes will outdo hammers versus iron-armored enemies and non-reanimating undead. Morningstars will also outdo hammers when dwarf has enough mace skill to negate lower quality, having same contact area while being 25% heavier and sharp (severing nerves).

[mikekchar]

OK.  I tested this with the arena and I have interesting results.  It was 1 dwarf against 1 dwarf.  Each had competent in their weapon, fighter, dodging, observation and discipline (not sure why I did discipline).  1 dwarf had 2 iron daggers (with competent dagger skill).  The other dwarf had an iron battle axe and an iron shield (both competent).  Neither had armour.

The dual wielding dwarf won 8/10 battles.  The only battles he lost were to very early decapitations.  Interestingly, the dual wielder often lost the use of one arm, but because he had another weapon, he could prevail (something I didn't consider previously).  Also, even though the "Iron to Steel" survey reported that parries were very infrequent, I think that's because the dwarfs were equipped with shields (and block must be higher priority than parry).  From casual observation (I didn't do any stats), the dual wielding dwarf parried at least as often as the shield user blocked.

It would be very interesting to see if armour had an impact.  Also, their is probably an optimal choice of weapons for a dual wielder, but I don't know what it is.  In adventure mode, I experimented with dual wielding a dagger and a pick.  It is actually awesome.  Unfortunately, mining skill is not enabled in the arena :-(

Edit: Just tried 2 axes against 1 axe and a shield.  Axe and shield won just as handily as the dual daggers.  Could be that daggers are actually just better than axes against unarmoured dwarfs.

[Fleeting Frames]

Wow. Unexpected. So unexpected I'm running my own 43.03 trials, with 400 female omni-legendary dwarves with full iron gear and steel pick/maple shield dueling steel pick/steel pick (maybe not the most realistic - goblins aren't likely to have legendary gear, large beasts' punches can't be parried iirc?) in 2x2 rooms. Results:

210 dwarves died over 4 days. Of the 190 surviving dwarves, 59 were using shield and pick, the other 131 being dual-pickers. That's 31%/69% in favour of dual-pickers.

Then I went back to when all the dwarves were alive, changed the weapons to copper morningstars because I could, and ran it again. That took longer and was more equal: of the 197 surviving dwarves, 71 were using star and shield.

Then used steel spears, since spears tend to get stuck. 76 dwarves out of 198 were using spear and shield.

Then since I wrote a script to change all weapons in fort, changed the spears to masterful. 72/199 for ⛭spear⛭ and shield.

Then did that for picks. 71/194 for ⛭pick⛭ and shield. Possible the no-quality pick result was unlucky? Hm. Second test resulted in 60/188 for no-quality picks. Is this iron axes and undead again?

Then, deciding I should be using something blunt because shield bashes are also blunt, did steel ⛭war hammers⛭. 87/199 for ⛭hammer⛭ and shield was surprisingly closest.

Realized I forgot to adjust sharpness with quality above, then hacked picks to ⛭axes⛭ with 10k sharpness and 4 days in 71/192 of shield/axe wielders were alive. Redid ⛭picks⛭, got 66/193, decided to call it close enough to not redo others.

Wanted to check shield and battle axe versus crossbow (steel bolts) and battle axe, at 20x2 tiles with combatants in opposite corners. To my great disappointment, no quivers in arena mode - you need to hold bolts in hand.

Finally, decided to do pick face-offs with Rocs , as their natural skills and body size might approximate a fleshy procedural (dwarves using full steel gear this time). ⛭picks⛭:
Shield and pick: 88 survived after 27 days (out of 100) (one dwarf lost both arms and tried to bite roc to death. And succeeded.)
Pick and Pick: 73 survived.
Rocs: 34 survived out of 200.

With just no-quality non-hacked picks,
Pick and shield: 85/100
Pick and Pick: 67/100.
Rocs: 45 survived out of 200.

Hm, guess there's something of an impact. You can't parry natural attacks, so this result is not surprising.

Maybe I'll do 43.04+ tests someday, but not for now. What this means, however, is a new distinction of military doctrine: Dual weapons versus weapon-users, weapon and shield versus unarmed. No science on two different weapons here, either - that might provide some truly fascinating possibilities.

For mining skill, there is gui/gm-unit (or make-legendary ) if you use dfhack. I recommend tweaking the script with few lines to apply to all units so that you wouldn't get carpet tunnel. For changing weapon, had to write my own script, as changeitem is a compiled plugin (and I don't have setup set to compile right now). Not completely certain if I did it right though can't find differences with gui/gm-editor, can provide code - got crashes when trying to arena several times in same play session after using it *shrug*