Quick blade

Version 0.34: 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 (%)	15 (150%)
Min delay	5 at skill 20
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, when used by a skilled user, are extremely rapid weapons. When swinging with a quick blade, two attacks are made. 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.

• For those invested into Short Blades, Trog's weapon gifts are likely to gift one eventually. Scrolls of acquirement, or Okawaru's weapon gift, also have a high chance of gifting 'rare' weapons.
• The Hall of Blades has a decent chance (~41.5%) of having a dancing quick blade, always branded. Also, deep elf blademasters have a 1/26 chance of holding one.
• Some of the more powerful spriggans have a chance of spawning with one.

Strategy

At minimum delay, quick blades become rapiers that swing twice for more than half the base damage. They benefit greatly from flat damage effects, such as enchantment/slay, auxiliary attacks, stabbing, and flat damage brands. This is because, if every hit deals +1 damage, hitting twice as fast results in twice the bonus. Conversely, enemy AC matters more.

A major downside of quickblades is the massive amount of skill required to reach mindelay, even more than broad axes. However, a +9 quick blade with a good flat damage brand - namely electrocution, pain, distortion, and chaos - will outdamage an equivalent rapier at moderate levels of skill, even against high AC foes like orbs of fire. Therefore, reaching mindelay is not close to required when using a quick blade.

Overall, a quickblade with a flat damage brand is a powerful weapon on its own right, able to take on enemies without needing to stab. A quick blade of distortion or chaos can take you through Zot. If you happen to obtain a quickblade in the early-/mid- game, venom and draining are also reasonable, tying with a dagger of those brands at 6 skill and only getting better with more skill.

Compared to rapiers

If a quick blade is highly enchanted and has a good flat damage brand (that the enemy doesn't resist), it will outdamage an equivalent rapier.

Using wizard mode fightsim tests: against an orb of fire, with 25 Fighting and 30 DEX, a +9 quick blade of distortion will outdamage a +9 rapier of distortion at 0 or more Short Blades skill; this does not consider the 5% banish chance. When fighting lower AC opponents, or with higher Short Blades skill, lower Fighting, and/or lower DEX, quick blades become relatively better.

At low/moderate enchantment levels and with brands worse than distortion, the calculation can change, although the quick blade remains competitive or better at moderate skill.

Compared to daggers

Quick blade are generally better than daggers at stabbing. A quick blade at mindelay will make twice as many swings, resulting in twice as many stabs (except sleep stabs, as the enemy will wake up). Since the dagger stab boost is always less than double that of a quick blade, a quick blade is almost strictly superior to a dagger.

	Quick blades
Mundane
Magical
Artifact
	Unrandarts
Gyre and Gimble
Vampire's Tooth

History

• Prior to 0.34, quick blades had a base delay of 12 with the same mindelay of 0.5 (reached at only 14 skill).
• 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.