Combat Weapons and Skills

As a young seeker i want to learn to fight and also to learn to become a good fighter ... It is important for me to know that i develope my character in the RIGHT direction .

The longest journey begins with a single step - in our case i belive first step is : What weapons should i have ? What skills should i develope ?

I have asked ( in letters ) the first 5 sekers who have the highest combat level ( thank you - apoclypze ,helfdane ,anto_capone ,swamp king ) 

All of them agreed that some skills regardes of your weapon should be upgraded - Must Have Skills :

1. Arms Master 
For each point on the Arms Master Skill your chance to hit increases with 1%.

2.The Critical Strike 
The Critical Strike Skill increases the chance of inflicting double damage with 0.2% and works for all weapon classes.

3.The Dodge Skill 
The Dodge Skill increases the chance to cancel a successful hit with 0.2% and works for all weapon classes.

4.The First Strike skill 
The First Strike skill increases your initiative with 1 for each point. Allowing you to fight faster than your opponent.
( with town events I don't think first strike will help you, as the creatures you fight don't have initiative - thanks to Helfdane )
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Depending on what weapons we chose - skills will be difrent .

At this moment in game ( future changing will hapen at some point - ask aro when ) all of the ones who i wrote and wrote back agreed that 3 tipes of build are best :

1. First Build 

A Mace and A Shield ( i belive it is best build for new characters who did not have time or resources to have their stats developed )

The weapons we have in game and stats :

Axes (damage:3-6)(speed:0)
Requires 2 hands. Made from Wood Axe.

Bandalfs staff (damage:1-2)(speed:0)
Requires 2 hands. Receive from bandalf. can also make.

Common spear (damage:2-10)(speed:0)
Requires 2 hands. Get from killing town guard.

Spiked Club (damage:3-9)(speed:1)(bonus to hit:3) Requires 1 hand (only right)

Dagger (damage:2-4)(speed:2)(bonus to hit:1) Requires 1 hand. (Can make left of right handed).Make from Knife.

Wooden Shield (damage:1-3)(speed:-3)(protection: 4) Requires 1 hand.(only left) 

So the mace has the best stats for a weapon ( in my opinion ) in the Right Hand

For the left hand - a shield 
When you do not have much physical resistance, as the protection bonus from the shield would benefit a new character and he/she will not lose that many HP points .

Skills for the Build :

The first 4 general skills 
1.Arms Master
2.The Critical Strike
3.The Dodge Skill
4.The First Strike skill 
5. Mace Fighting 
( i will try to point only to 5 skills beccause every time we add a new level in combat we receve 5 points )

Or 

A variable of this is Dagger and Shield 
( personaly i like more mace beccause it has a better stats in my opinion )

Skills :
1.Arms Master
2.The Critical Strike
3.The Dodge Skill
4.The First Strike skill 

5.Dagger Fighting
6.Back Stabbing

2. Second Build 
Mace and Daggers ( this is what i want to do in the future and i belive it is for now my favorite one ) 
I think it is a more agresive build but it needs to have some developed stats to work better )

Skills :
1.Arms Master
2.The Critical Strike
3.The Dodge Skill
4.The First Strike skill 

5. Depends either Dagger Fighting or Mace Fighting ( depends upon bonus from special weapons or special armoor ) .

If you can find room also add point into :
6.Dual Wielding
7.Back Stabbing

Personal Skills 
( no matter what weapon you decide to employ i belive this are the best to use ) :

1. Physical Resistance - 
2.Constitution
Your Constitution directly affects your body! It becomes tougher so you can take more damage without going down. You will have more health then any other normal man or woman alive!
Your Constitution Skill increases your maximum Life-Points. Meals with eggs will increase this skill.

3.Regeneration!
The Regeneration Skill makes you recover from wounds faster during the reset and in the hospital. The Regeneration Skill increases while healing yourself in the Town Hospital also if you raise it and with a blanket you can basicaly regenearate at some point a expert health poltion per knight very good skill in my opinion to develope .

4.Strength 
Strength represents your character muscle power. The stronger you are, the more physical damage you can do. As well the more power hide behinds all your actions. Meat will raise it .

5.Agility
The power of moving quickly and easily, important if you want to dodge arrows and other weaponry. You can gained it in many ways ( even if you eat to much and trow out ) but thea easiest way in my opinion a meal with poultry .

6.Luck
The force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities. You need to eat cheese for it to increase 

NOTE 
As a new character i would first go with Constitution ( beccause it is cheap to raise it via eggs ) and physical Resistance ( so i will lose fewer points of HP ) and Regenerations beccause i am kind of poor to buy poltions

I hope you like my post and that you will comment about it - ANY kind of comments are good ( even if you don"t agree with nothing here ) beccause this way we ALL learn more .
Also if you have difrent ideas or you experimented and wish to share with us please do .

I also want to point that writing this was my work but the ideas i have them from a bunch of character that where great in answering my questions :
 (Helfdane,Swamp King Pelarn ,anto_capone ) , Special tahnks to Apoclypze for having the patience to answer my letters - i ams ure i did raise his patience skill with at least 1 point !

this is a good guide, well thought out and simple to understand, but I'm wondering if you (or anybody else) has any opinions on the viability of a ranged build as your first choice?

No ranged weapons-yet anyways.  Maces are also a great weapon, but semi-rare since they have to be looted from a bandit(I think) which don't always drop one.  However, you can raise the amount of drinks per day with the decadence still(1 extra per 20 points, max of 10 daily at 100).  But raising that is expensive, to say the least.

Wow, looking at your guide I now realize that axes are hands down the WORST weapon.  2h and they don't even do as much damage as either dagger or mace!   Sad for woodcutters who need that skill for synergy with woodcutting.  Now to decide if I have to change weapons despite the obvious role play choice that my professional lumberjack would use an axe as a weapon.   Sad to just learn this as I near combat level 10
  Edit: maybe the cleaving skill will make axes worth it someday, but sadly now no secondary skill for the axe.   Are there secondary skills for other weapons implemented?

I would say the melee skill is much more important than crit strike, and for sure better than dodge. 

Missing your hits only drains your health.

Coot, the axe would benefit from Two Handed Fighting skill, which increases your damage by +2% per point. If there was a two-handed mace weapon, I would be using it.

Now I'm using a spiked club, because I realised that it is more effective than a common spear with my skills. The club is one-handed, so I'm planning to use a dagger in my other hand. Can somebody confirm if it's possible? It looks a little weird, but if it works, I would use these weapons together 

https://thegraillords.forumotion.net/t589-book-of-weapons
https://thegraillords.forumotion.net/t498-guide-to-combat

two existing threads on this

i've been thinking on re-organizing everything here and on the wiki, but aro still needs to put up templates for the wiki

sorry i think dodge is very bad its only .2 per point so it does not add up to much.. even at higher levels. id go for more damage like if you use a mace crushing damage or if you use daggers  slash?? someone also told me backstab does not happen often so it might not be worth it.

i have my skills in dagger fighting/ arms master /melee and /first strike and i use 2 daggers.

Ghondar, yes you can use mace/dagger.

Crushing only works on NPC's, only works on the few NPC's that have that weakness, and if/when PvP opens up, it's not going to work there at all. Very situational skill.

On dodge, crit, and killing blow; The percentage chance on those are so low I don't recommend ever putting points into it. I had 20 killing blow for weeks, killing many dozens of mobs before I saw it work. I thought it was broken for awhile.

Thank you!
I've already ordered the butcher knife :)

why not use 2 clubs?

It is a good idea, if I use clubs only, improving the club related skills will be enough :)
Tragically, I have only one club
There are left- and right-handed dagger, I can use them in both of my hand, but I do not know that I can grab a club in my other hand

The spiked club is right-hand only.