Weapon

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Weapons are items which you can wield to improve your ability to attack enemies. In most cases, they deal non-elemental damage, making them suitable for dealing with any threat. Weapons are divided into two main categories:

• Melee weapons
  • Magical staves
• Ranged weapons
  • Throwing

Useful Info

All weapons are subject to skill; increasing skill increases weapon damage, accuracy, and decreases the attack delay. The heaviest weapon is not always the best, as an unskilled user will swing inaccurately and slowly, potentially giving monsters two turns for your one. Certain weapons also take two hands to use, which restricts the use of a shield. Both skill and strength are multipliers to a weapon's base damage.

Weapons are not required for melee combat; Unarmed Combat is available at any time and uses similar damage formulas to weapons.

Weapon Properties

• Base damage: The damage done, before modifiers and adjustments. This is multiplied by strength and skill bonuses.
• To-hit: Accuracy. Larger weapons have less accuracy, though skill and enchantment increase it.
• Delay: How fast the weapon swings naturally, in decaAut.
  • Minimum delay: How fast the weapon can possibly swing, once you reach a certain skill level. Most weapons have a mindelay of (Delay/2) or 0.7, whichever is lower. Every 2 skill levels decrease base delay by 0.1 until you reach mindelay.
• Handedness: Weapons that require two hands restrict the use of a shield and the offhand punch (Octopodes can still offhand slap). Smaller species may find certain weapons requiring two hands and normally large weapons completely unusable.
• Type: Each weapon has its own designated weapon type (Short Blades, Polearms...), and each weapon type has its own skill and potential quirks.

Weapon Modifiers

• Enchant: A higher enchanted weapon will be more accurate and deal more damage.
• Brand: Brands generally help with combat, increasing damage and/or causing elemental effects.

Magical staves do not have either. Artefacts may also come with special properties not found on regular weapons, though are not necessarily better.

See Also

• Weapon choice - Strategy for which weapon to pick
• Weapon damage - Damage formulas

History

• Prior to 0.14, there were elven, dwarven, and orcish variants of weapons which had small additional benefits, and demonspawn characters received a damage bonus when using demonic weapons - see Racial weapon variants. Also, several weapons were renamed: sabre to cutlass, double sword to bastard sword, and triple sword to claymore.