Thursday, 22nd March 2018, 00:03 by tasonir
There's no reason why shields are specifically tied to long blades, you can use 1h weapons of any type with shields. I personally love unarmed + shields, as it has a lot of top end power, but weapons are generally more efficent at low skill levels. Still, if you are considering 15 runes, that's the kind of character who can afford to take unarmed to > 20 skill and still also train shields to 15. You can see how that kind of investment can be tough on characters without a lot of experience, of course. You still need to train fighting, armor/dodging, magic skills, invocations, etc.
If I had to pick a weapon to use with a shield, I'd probably say eveningstar/double sword are best, and then demon tridents next. If you can bless a demon trident, even better (at least for extended). The +1 base damage probably isn't worth giving up a good brand for non-holy vulnerable monsters. The first two can be somewhat hard to find, but by the time you've got 3 runes and are looking for extended you have a pretty good shot of getting one.