questions about Auxiliary attacks --

[Gakhan]

been playing with a demonspawn so i am confused about exactly how they work.. i currently have the You have very sharp fingernails. mutation.. will it still activate with me wielding a spear? should i remove my +0 gloves to get the most out of my fingernails? and in general how useful are the Aux attacks? my favorite species is the minotaur and the headbutt was noticeable throughout the game, one hitting enemies itself when surrounded lol

[crate]

fingernails (claws) do absolutely nothing unless you're attacking unarmed*
aux attacks are a noticeable increase in damage
since you got claws you might consider switching to unarmed, especially if you're just using a spear

*this isn't quite exactly true but the only other way to get claws to do anything is to waste xp which you should not do

[Gakhan]

ehh, so the claws are worthless long term unless i switch to unarmed attack? thanks.. that it good to know at least

Edit: i tried unarmed and one simple fight took me under 5hp lol, so that is not a viable solution, guess ill ignore the mutation and hope for better stuff that actually helps

[cerebovssquire]

Unarmed at no skill is a lot worse than weapons at no skill (unless you have claws 3 or something - claws 1 will not be better than a spear with some polearms skill if your unarmed skill is 0). You need to to train the skill before it becomes just as good and eventually better than nearly all one-handed weapons. If you wanted to switch to unarmed combat, you would be better off training UC while using the spear for a short while, then unwielding it (UC base damage is 3 + UC skill + 2*claws mutation level, you would base when you unwield the weapon on that).

edit: if you are in heavy armor or wearing a shield that affects unarmed more than weapons, so if it seems unusually bad, that could be a factor. Not that either of these things are impossible to combine with UC, it particularily makes sense to wear a shield.

[Gakhan]

i see, thanks for the info ill keep all that in mind, think ill save unarmed combat for a monk gargoyle maybe.. i have a couple species/class/equips sets id like to get a win with. i have not been playing dcss for long but it is a pretty sweet game lol

[Aean]

Just a side note - you'll still get an aux attack with those claws as long as you have one hand free. So if you're not using a shield with that spear (and if your gloves aren't that great) then it can be worth your time to take off the gloves, and do a bit more damage.

[crate]

Just a side note - you'll still get an aux attack with those claws as long as you have one hand free.

Only if you also have unarmed combat skill, which is a waste of xp if you're not punching things with your primary hand.

edit: actually in my current offline trunk (0.16-a0-3250) claws 3 apparently does nothing unless you use unarmed as your primary attack, according to fsim
I think what I said above is correct in older versions.