Artificer weaponry

From Ancient Anguish Mud Wiki - AAwiki

Artificers have the ability to make many forged weapons from a variety of materials, and then further spellforge those weapons for magical effects. On this page you will find information pertaining to the various weapons they can make, the materials they can be made from, and explanation of the various spellforges. Weapon difficulty evaluations below were conducted in 2013 with very fine steel weapons.


Weapons

One Handed Weapons

Skill Used Weapon Forged Minimum Skill Maximum Skill Material Required
Knife Knife/Scalpel 10-15/10-15 35-45/? 2/1
Club Hammer 15-20 45-55 3
Rapier Rapier 10-15 45-55 3
Shortsword Shortsword 15-20 45-55 3
Spear Spear 10-15 45-55 3
Staff Wand(Staff) 10-15 45-55 2
Axe Axe 20-30 55-65 3
Curved Blade Sabre 15-20 55-65 3
Flail Flail 15-20 55-65 3
Longsword Longsword 30-35 65-85 4
Polearm Poleaxe 35-45 65-85 4

Two Handed Weapons

Skill Used Weapon Forged Minimum Skill Maximum Skill Material Required
Club Warhammer 35-45 85-100 6
Flail Chain-mace 35-45 85-100 6
Polearm Polearm 45-55 85-100 7
Spear Pike 30-35 ? 6
Staff Staff 30-35 ? 6
Two-Handed Sword Greatsword 45-55 85-100? 5
Two-Handed Axe Battleaxe 55-65 85-100? 7

The weapons above were very fine steel; some were also checked in 'cheaper' metals to see if the skill range changed. Greatsword minimum skill eval was the same for very fine steel, tin, and lead. Battleaxe minimum skill eval was the same for very fine steel and tin.

Note that the weight of the weapon varies based on the amount of material required and the quality of the forge. Fine and Very fine weigh one less than the amount of material used, while Crude and Very poor(?) weighs one more. All others are equivalent in weight to the amount of material used.

Materials

Metal Quality
lead 1
zinc 2
tin 3
gold 3
copper 3
iron 3
platinum 3
bronze 4
brass 4
silver 4
electrum 4
steel 5
orichalcum 6
mithril 7
adamantite 7
trillian 8

Some wisdom from one of the most skill oriented artificers around, #3 in overall skill as artificer and rising.

Whitehand says: a forge does its best to fit a skill range for a person

Whitehand says: but if you forge a mithril rapier for calvin (someone with extremely high 
skill) for example. its not a great choice

Whitehand says: where trillian for calvins rapier is ps (perfectly suited)

Eco asks: so it effects the max range a weapon can be you think?

Whitehand says: not so much the max range as the skilling rate

Whitehand says: trillian for 10 skill is still ok for the purpose of hitting

Whitehand says: since trill is top skill range it would be like having 10 club an swinging 
with hjem(high skill club)

Whitehand says: trill is 85+ adamant is 65 mithril is about 55

After some testing, it is looking like 30 Skill (on Two Handed Sword, specifically) is too high for iron(and theoretically other bottom-tier stuff), perhaps electrum being a better for around that area. More testing needed --Mani (talk) 13:25, 7 February 2018 (MST)



02/14/2018 Sacrifice on Ficer Forges

After reading the above Whitehand/Mani posts, I feel like there is some confusion as to how Ficer Forged weapons work. In order to test Artificer forges you really must have a fighter on hand evaluating everything you make while you save the results in tables.

Basic Premise:
1. A forge has a minimum and a maximum difficulty range determined by the weapon type and metal combination.
2. When forging a weapon for a target player the forge tries to pick a difficulty closest to the target's skill.
3. If the target's skill is higher than the maximum difficulty set in premise #1 it caps out and does not pass this.
4. If the target's skill is lower than the minimum difficulty set in premise #1 it caps out and does not pass this.

Example #1:
An Artificer forges a steel longsword for an orc fighter with 100 longsword skill. If the Artificer makes a very fine steel longsword the highest difficulty it can be is extremely difficult which is difficulty 10 out of 11 possible and this will be the outcome. An extremely skilled (11 of 11 difficulties) was not produced because that would have violated premise #3 up above.

Example #2:
An Artificer forges a steel longsword for an orc fighter with 0 longsword skill. If the Artificer makes a very fine steel longsword the lowest difficulty it can be is moderate skill which is difficulty 6 out of 11 possible and this will be the outcome. A grandmother eval (1 of 11 difficulties) was not produced because that would have violated premise #4 up above.

Example #3:
An Artificer forges a steel longsword for an orc fighter with 76 longsword skill. If the Artificer makes a very fine steel longsword the outcome will likely be a very difficult which is difficulty 9 out of 11 possible. The target's skill wasn't too high for premise #3, and it wasn't too low for premise #4.

Ficer Difficulty Tables:
Minimum = http://anguish.org/tools/showcurrentnote.php?id=38&datetime=1493699476
Maximum = http://anguish.org/tools/showcurrentnote.php?id=38&datetime=1495251462
Note: These posts focus on Lead through Steel. Once you go above mithril the difficulties do change.

Subjectivity:
Whitehand saying trillian is okay for 10 skill is misleading. It depends on what weapon type we're discussing. If it's a trillian scalpel for 10 knife skill, then yes it's a good choice. But if it's a trillian battleaxe for 10 skill then you're just hurting yourself and you'll have a hard time hitting anything and you'll skill very slowly since a trillian battleaxe's minimum difficulty is very high.

Eco asked if trillian improved a weapon's maximum difficulty to which Whitehand said, "no it improves skilling." In this statement Eco is actually correct, trillian changes the possible weapon difficulties as stated in premise #1 it's the weapon type and metal that determine difficulty potentials. The statement Whitehand made is about a fighter's evaluation summary which is based on how close a weapons difficulty is to your skill, how heavy the weapon is, and how damaging. Whitehand's statement is misleading because it implies that a trillian warhammer could be perfectly suited for someone at 20 club skill, or that it will help them skill faster, both of which aren't true.

Mani might be onto something interesting, but instead of anecdotal evidence it needs to be tested with a fighter's evaluations. What you'd need to do is forge 12 different greatswords. Forge a very fine greatsword of lead, zinc, tin, gold, copper, iron, platinum, bronze, brass, silver, electrum, and steel all for you at the same time so they're all forged for the same skill. Then have a fighter "eval zinc greatsword for mani out loud" and do that for all 12 swords. At the bottom of the eval it'll give a summary like "Mani couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with this greatsword" and there will probably be some sort of progression between the 12 metals. My hypothesis based on the reasearch I've personally seen is that lead will be the worst and it'll get better as you go up toward steel which might say "this greatsword is excellent for Mani". Or if Mani is onto something here then perhaps the steel forge will be really poor but the platinum or brass for his 30 ish skill might be "excellent".

However, the weapon type and metals are what determine the minimum and maximum difficulties ficer weapons have, they are hard-coded into the game. So I'm not sure exactly what is working better or worse for Mani between these metals (damage, chance to hit, skilling, etc) but all metals from at least lead through steel will eval at moderately difficult for a greatsword forged for 30 ish skill. It's not until he reaches about 65 two handed sword that the difficulty will change.

Spellforges