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These are the results of a large fsim study I did a couple months or so ago to explore the question, "What is a good zero-skill weapon for book starts to pick up off the floor?" For the sake of completeness, rare weapons were included as well--only TSO-blessed ones were excluded.

The wizmode character was XL:1, STR 12 DEX 12 (in retrospect these were a bit high), with zero in all skills. +0 weapon, no brand. The "High AC" target is an orc warrior in chain mail (I made it with &m and selected it manually for each &f, so it always had the same AC and EV). The "normal" target is an ogre, and the "High EV" target is an adder. The values in the table are fsim's "AvEffDam", averaged over three runs, in thousandths of a damage point. Thus the dagger has an AvEffDam of 0.267 against the orc warrior, 1.200 against the ogre, and 0.700 against the adder.

Code:: High AC Normal High EV Dagger 267 1200 700 QuickBl 567 2233 1300 ShortSw 467 1733 967 Rapier 533 1867 1000 Falchion 699 1900 1000 LongSw 800 2333 1067 Scimitar 900 2667 900 DemonBl 1200 3200 1200 DoubleSw 1333 3300 1267 GreatSw 1133 3100 900 TripleSw 1167 3067 667 HandAx 500 1733 900 WarAx 833 2367 1000 BroadAx 900 2567 800 BattleAx 933 2633 500 ExecAx 800 2533 100 Whip 400 1700 800 Club 300 1200 600 Mace 600 1833 1000 Flail 733 2267 967 MStar 1000 2700 900 DemonWh 1133 3300 1500 DireFlail 1067 3067 867 EStar 1333 3267 1233 GreatMc 1100 3000 667 GiantC 1200 3500 167 GSC 867 3167 133 Spear 467 1767 967 Trident 700 2200 1067 Halberd 867 2600 733 Scythe 700 2100 433 DemonTr 1200 3000 1400 Glaive 1000 2767 767 Bardiche 800 2567 100 QStaff 900 2567 1367 Lajatang 1300 3533 1000 Stone 100 500 200 Tomahawk 467 1867 967 Javelin 1167 3267 1567 LrgRock 3300 6900 3367 HSling(s) 500 1867 900 HSling(b) 800 2400 1267 GSling(s) 767 2300 867 GSling(b) 967 2767 1000 Shortbow 767 2267 1133 Longbow 1267 2900 1267 HandCr 1167 2800 1600 Arbalest 1567 3233 1600 TripleCb 1667 3233 1367

Note that while your numbers seem accurate and certainly reasonable enough, I'd question the choice of an ogre as a representative "middle" sample, since they have almost no AC and low EV, they show more damage done than say, a gnoll, hobgoblin, goblin or 'vanilla' orc would, an expected overall average for creatures you'd encounter with 0 skill would be closer to the 'high ev' or 'high ac' numbers than it would be to your chosen "middle" sample (all of the mentioned critters are closer to an adder than they are to an ogre, defense wise)

While you can compare numbers *within* a column easily enough, comparing the columns to each other might be misleading.

Although a "little to no defense" sample is useful too, representing something more like a 'best case scenario' average (Although I a Jelly or slime creature has even slightly lower defense than an ogre, jelly's you can't fsim properly because of corrosion, but slime creatures show a noticeably higher avgeffdmg than ogres even)

Wow, large rocks are OP, god damn.

They're also rare enough that if you throw them at everything you run out.

Aside from large rocks, it's quite interesting how good hand crossbow is.

Siegurt wrote:Note that while your numbers seem accurate and certainly reasonable enough, I'd question the choice of an ogre as a representative "middle" sample, since they have almost no AC and low EV, they show more damage done than say, a gnoll, hobgoblin, goblin or 'vanilla' orc would, an expected overall average for creatures you'd encounter with 0 skill would be closer to the 'high ev' or 'high ac' numbers than it would be to your chosen "middle" sample (all of the mentioned critters are closer to an adder than they are to an ogre, defense wise)

While you can compare numbers *within* a column easily enough, comparing the columns to each other might be misleading.

Although a "little to no defense" sample is useful too, representing something more like a 'best case scenario' average (Although I a Jelly or slime creature has even slightly lower defense than an ogre, jelly's you can't fsim properly because of corrosion, but slime creatures show a noticeably higher avgeffdmg than ogres even)

The purpose of the ogre column was to analyze just the weapon output itself. I almost used "ghost", a defunct monster that is available in fsim with AC 0 and EV 0. So the no AC and low EV was actually what I was aiming for. Whether it's useful information, that's another question.

Jeremiah wrote:Aside from large rocks, it's quite interesting how good hand crossbow is.

This shows how weapon accuracy is more important than usual at zero skill. Other examples: quarterstaff vs adder, giant club vs GSC, long sword vs scimitar with adders.

I often say GSC are useless in early game and these numbers seem to confirm that. AvEffDam or 1.33 versus an adder? [It's too slow and inaccurate to use without a lot of skill investment; you will kill yourself if you try to use it without extensive training FIRST.]

That is a very specific artifact of having accuracy below a certain level. You can see it also happens with bardiche and exec axe. The issue disappears once you get 3 levels of weapon or fighting skill, which is does not take long for an ogre. Notice that even at 0 skill it's fine against low ev stuff.

MainiacJoe wrote:[...]averaged over three runs [...]

You can increase fsim's sample rate in your config with, e.g.

Code:: fsim_rounds = 10000

duvessa wrote:That is a very specific artifact of having accuracy below a certain level. You can see it also happens with bardiche and exec axe. The issue disappears once you get 3 levels of weapon or fighting skill, which is does not take long for an ogre. Notice that even at 0 skill it's fine against low ev stuff.

And it's delay is so high you virtually HAVE to killhole with it...

The issue, I think, is not whether GSC does more AvEffDam than say a flail. That's obvious: it does. The issue is, is it actually possible to wring this full potential out of the weapon in the early dungeon? The effect of the long delay is that it gives enemies opportunities to swing more than once for each of your swings, and unlike in fsim, with a couple early bad rolls you can run out of HP before the law of averages catches up with your damage output.

If I understand duvessa correctly, he thinks it *is* possible to use a GSC to full effect at very low skill. I'm sympathetic to bcraden's argument (daggaz made it too in the CYC "thought experiment" thread) because it makes sense that you might die before you get a chance to swing again. But for all its obviousness, it may well be wrong.

The point I kind of get from this is "if you're going to hit popcorn with a 0-skill weapon, bigger weapons are better but don't sweat it too much because it's popcorn anyhow."

Fair synopsis?

njvack wrote:The point I kind of get from this is "if you're going to hit popcorn with a 0-skill weapon, bigger weapons are better but don't sweat it too much because it's popcorn anyhow."

Fair synopsis?

yes

My synopsis is this:

Use Hand Crossbows and Large Rocks.

I'd previously done a skill curve with Crossbows, Hand Crossbows were better than Arbalests until skill 9, then Arbalests were better than triple crossbows until skill 21. [Assuming all of them were same enchantment level and brand.]

I'm assuming your skill curve was strictly for damage and didn't take defense (shields) into account? (For the purposes of "better" )

njvack wrote:The point I kind of get from this is "if you're going to hit popcorn with a 0-skill weapon, bigger weapons are better but don't sweat it too much because it's popcorn anyhow."

Fair synopsis?

When I looked at the topic previously, my question was "if I attack with a weapon when my Wz finds itself next to a jackal/adder with no MP, which weapon should I use?"

Hurkyl wrote:When I looked at the topic previously, my question was "if I attack with a weapon when my Wz finds itself next to a jackal/adder with no MP, which weapon should I use?"

So, triple sword or eveningstar

Hurkyl wrote:
njvack wrote:The point I kind of get from this is "if you're going to hit popcorn with a 0-skill weapon, bigger weapons are better but don't sweat it too much because it's popcorn anyhow."

Fair synopsis?

When I looked at the topic previously, my question was "if I attack with a weapon when my Wz finds itself next to a jackal/adder with no MP, which weapon should I use?"

The answer is probably "whatever weapon you're actually carrying"

ydeve wrote:
Hurkyl wrote:
njvack wrote:The point I kind of get from this is "if you're going to hit popcorn with a 0-skill weapon, bigger weapons are better but don't sweat it too much because it's popcorn anyhow."

Fair synopsis?

When I looked at the topic previously, my question was "if I attack with a weapon when my Wz finds itself next to a jackal/adder with no MP, which weapon should I use?"

The answer is probably "whatever weapon you're actually carrying"

Although the player has a choice of what to carry. It's interesting to know that, for example, a 0-skill whip is better than a club for fighting adders, but a mace is better than either. The quarterstaff is by far the best among the easily available weapons, and several ranged weapons are surprisingly worthwhile.

Link to data sorted:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

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