The Tavern

As always, weapon choice is hard for me !

My En with 14 SB currently has access to those options :

• +11 vanilla dagger (with 2 ?brand weapon)
• +7 pain qblade with 0 Necromancy
• +9 elec rapier
• +9 speed rapier
• +10 drain short sword

Additional data : I can afford a Necromancy manual and train some of it.

I still have Vaults and Depths to go, so drain and pain will still be good for a long time. 0 slaying on all my gear so far.

Which one will be the best for non-stabs ?

Didn't use fsim but I am 99% sure the elec rapier does the most damage right now. However, it will take very little necromancy skill for the quick blade to beat it; training necromancy until the manual runs out should do it.

Here's the beauty of the game, you don't have to choose just one. Practice swapping weapons tactically to match the conditions you're in. Those are all nice weapons in their own right. If I were forced to choose, I'd probably keep at least the +11 dagger for stabbing, the quick blade of pain (train necro) and the electric rapier to cover most situations. Really, the best overall weapon there is the quick blade of pain if you train necromancy.

Heh, I usually carry something like 5 different melee weapons (no wonder my inventory gets full). I wouldn't start training necromancy just for the pain brand this late in the game, unless you also have some necromancy spells you are going to use. Chances are, of course, that you do.

I don't think the short sword has much use though (monsters that are immune to elec but not to drain are pretty rare I think).

Speed rapier is significantly better than alternatives against rElec + rN enemies than pain or elec weapons. It's also around as good as the quick blade at applying confusing touch.

Draining short sword shouldn't be underestimated either. Against a single enemy w/o rN, this will let you duel it trivially by draining it into the ground. Even stuff like Tiamat can be killed that way.

I'd point out that you could rebrand the quick blade if you don't want to use pain, I mean pain is *really really* good, but a qblade of elec would be pretty good too, and not require necromancy. (elec is about equal to pain brand and 11 necromancy skill)

Here's the list of things that are immune to both pain and elec (FWIW things that are immune to pain are also immune to drain)



Even though the quickblade is slightly faster than the rapier of speed, and thereby gets a slightly better benefit from slaying (assuming you have significant slaying bonus) it's notable that the rapier's non-branded damage exceeds that of the quickblade until you get up into around 70 slaying or so.

Against things that can be damaged with pain, it only takes about 6-7 necromancy to exceed the speed rapier's damage.

Against things that can be damaged with electricity, elec rapier slightly outdamages the speed rapier, but by a pretty tiny margin, not enough that it's worth carrying it around.

In terms of raw damage the draining short sword is inferior to the speed rapier, but draining makes things easier to hex, and reduces the damage they do, so it's not a clear cut comparison.