Quick blade

From CrawlWiki
(Redirected from Quickblade)
Jump to: navigation, search
Version 0.31: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
Name Quick blade
Skill Short Blades
Damage 4
Accuracy +6
Base delay (%) 12 (120%)
Min delay 5 at skill 14
Hands 1H
Size One-handed
Ranged? No
A dagger with an uncanny enchantment upon it, allowing it to strike twice for every blow the wielder makes.

"He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword...

-Julia Ward Howe, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". 1861

This weapon falls into the 'Short Blades' category. It is a one handed weapon.

Quick blades are extremely rapid weapons. Whenever you swing with a quick blade, you get two attacks. This is treated as if you attacked twice with any other weapon, so factors like brand, auxiliary attacks, and AC can activate twice.

Sources

Quick blades are rare items.

Strategy

Essentially, quick blades are rapiers that swing twice with more than half the base damage. They benefit greatly from flat damage effects, such as enchantment, slaying, auxiliary attacks, and stabbing. This is because, if every hit gets +1 damage, then hitting twice as fast means you get twice the benefit. Conversely, enemy AC has a greater effect. Therefore, you should use a quick blade if you have many flat damage bonuses. With a good flat damage brand (namely electrocution, pain, distortion, and chaos), quick blades are quite powerful; a quick blade of distortion can take you through Zot.

For stabbing purposes, quick blades are better than daggers for everything except sleep stabs, assuming you've reached mindelay with both weapons. While daggers may get bonus damage, quick blades make twice as many stabs. Since the dagger bonus is always less than twice the damage, quick blades are just better. Sleeping enemies are the sole exception: since sleeping enemies wake up after the first stab, the stronger first hit off a dagger is better.

Quick blades
Mundane Quickblade.png
Magical Quickblade2.png
Artifact Quickblade3.png
Unrandarts
Gyre and Gimble Gyre and Gimble.png
Vampire's Tooth Vampire's tooth.png

History

  • Prior to 0.31, quick blades only made 1 attack per swing, but had a base delay of 0.7 decaAut and mindelay of 0.3 decaAut.
  • Prior to 0.30, quick blades could not naturally generate with brands.
  • Prior to 0.29, quick blades dealt 5 base damage and scaled with strength instead of dexterity.
  • Prior to 0.27, Cheibriados disapproved of quick blades.
Weapons
Axes BattleaxeBroad axeExecutioner's axeHand axeWar axe
Maces & Flails ClubDemon whipDire flailEveningstarFlailGiant clubGiant spiked clubGreat maceMace (Hammer) • MorningstarSacred scourgeWhip
Long Blades Demon bladeDouble swordEudemon bladeFalchionGreat swordLong swordScimitarTriple sword
Polearms BardicheDemon tridentGlaiveHalberd (Scythe) • SpearTridentTrishula
Ranged Weapons ArbalestHand cannonLongbowOrcbowShortbowSlingTriple crossbow
Short Blades DaggerQuick bladeRapierShort sword
Staves LajatangMagical staffQuarterstaff
Throwing BoomerangDartJavelinLarge rockStoneThrowing net