Weapon speed

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

See Attack speed, for an in-depth article on attack delay.

This page lists the base and minimum delays of all melee and ranged weapons weapons and the skill level required to reach this minimum.

Useful Info

Every weapon has a base delay. For every 2 levels in the corresponding weapon skill, your attack delay is reduced by 1 aut, until it reaches the minimum delay.

Most weapons have minimum attack delays of 5, 6, or 7 auts. The minimum delay is the smaller of (base delay / 2) and 7, with a few exceptions:

• Rapiers, which reach 5 to match other Short Blades.
• Crossbows (hand crossbows, arbalests, triple crossbows), which have a mindelay of 10.
• Stones, darts, and boomerangs, which are capped at 7.

Unarmed Combat works differently. For every 5.4 skill levels, unarmed attack delay is reduced by 1 aut. Therefore, Unarmed Combat starts at 1.0 delay and reaches 0.5 delay at skill 27.

Modifiers

Some factors may further alter weapons' speed:

• Speed-branded weapons, which reduce the attack delay of a weapon by 1/3 at all skill levels.
• Heavy-branded weapons, which increase attack delay by 3/2 at all skill levels.
• Haste or Berserk multiplies all delays by 2/3.
• Finesse halves all attack delays. Does not stack with haste/berserk.
• If you are wearing a shield you may suffer some penalties. See Shields.
• Ranged weapons are also encumbered by body armour. See Ranged Weapons.

Delays are rounded randomly in a weighted manner (if delay = 3.4, there is a 40% for 4 aut and 60% for 3 aut).

List of weapon delays

Short Blades

Weapon	Base Delay	Min Delay	Skill Required
Dagger	10	5	10
Quick blade	7	3	8
Short sword	11	5	12
Rapier	12	5	14

Long Blades

Name	Base Delay	Min Delay	Skill Required
Falchion	13	6	14
Long sword	14	7	14
Scimitar	14	7	14
Demon blade	13	6	14
Eudemon blade	12	6	12
Double sword	15	7	16
Great sword	17	7	20
Triple sword	19	7	24

Maces and Flails

Name	Base Delay	Min Delay	Skill required
Club	13	6	14
Whip	11	5	12
Mace	14	7	14
Flail	14	7	14
Morningstar	15	7	16
Demon whip	11	5	12
Sacred scourge	11	5	12
Dire flail	13	6	14
Eveningstar	15	7	16
Great mace	17	7	20
Giant club	16	7	18
Giant spiked club	22	7	18

Axes

Name	Base Delay	Min Delay	Skill Required
Hand axe	13	6	14
War axe	15	7	16
Broad axe	16	7	18
Battleaxe	17	7	20
Executioner's axe	20	7	26

Polearms

Name	Base Delay	Min Delay	Skill Required
Spear	11	5	12
Trident	13	6	14
Demon trident	13	6	14
Trishula	13	6	14
Halberd	15	7	16
Scythe	15	7	16
Glaive	17	7	20
Bardiche	20	7	26

Staves

Name	Base Delay	Min Delay	Skill Required
Magical staff	12	6	12
Quarterstaff	13	6	14
Lajatang	14	7	14

Ranged Weapons

Name	Base Delay	Min Delay	Skill Required
Sling	14	7	14
Shortbow	15	7	16
Longbow	16	7	18
Hand crossbow	18	10	18
Arbalest	19	10	18
Triple crossbow	23	10	26

Throwing

Name	Base Delay	Min Delay	Skill Required
Dart	10	7	6
Stone	11	7	8
Boomerang	13	7	12
Javelin	15	7	16
Large rock	20	7	26

In-game display

There are three different ways to obtain some information about your attack speed.

• Viewing the weapon in the inventory will display its current average delay.
• The @ command will print your average attack delay.
• The turn counter in the stat area will display the time your last action took in parentheses next to the total time the game has taken. Using ctrl+direction to swing at nothing a few times should give you a pretty good indication of your attack delay.

The former two commands display the average attack speed, to the nearest aut. If your attack delay is not an integer, it'll semi-randomly round up and down.

See Also

• Melee weapon
• Attack speed

See individual weapon articles for more information about a given weapon.

History

• Prior to 0.17, unarmed combat was penalized by armour.
• Prior to 0.15, ranged weapons used a completely different delay formula: Base delay - Weapon Skill*4*Average Stat/250.
• Prior to 0.14, the speed brand halved your attack delay rounding up, and decreased pre-AC damage by 10%.
• Prior to 0.13, Finesse had no effect on non-blowgun throwing weapons.