Weapon strength

[Dustoori 8]

Hi all,

First of all, great game! Thanks Bohemia. It's nice to see such active interaction from a dev team.

On to my question, I've been doing some research on the strengths of various weapons. How many hits it takes to kill mobs.

I had a search and couldn't see anything about that anywhere on the forums. Is it information people would be interested in seeing? Do you already know? Should it be left to discovery?

Let me know what you think and if there's interest I'll post my findings.

[RobinKing 0]

I want to know how to craft the frozen sword  

[WijkagentAdrie 384]

Yes please, would be great if you can give us some numbers! Maybe also discuss the cost of the individual weapons to find out which ones are better or more economical  

Maybe you could do it in a youtube video format?

Edited December 15, 2017 by WijkagentAdrie

[handofthesly 214]

That would be excellent information to add to the wiki

[Dustoori 8]

I'm stuck in a deep cavern and my mining helmet just broke, fell on the floor and I smashed it. Just trying to work out how I'm going to out of this with my loot. There are holes all over the cavern floor into an even deeper cavern.

I was thinking about doing some youtube videos, I've never done any before. I'll have to look up how to do it.

I'll figure out how best to present the findings. Basically the bolt action rifle is leading but slow, the pump action shotgun is second. I need to run more tests to see about range drop off on the shotgun. Both of those require a Locksmith table though.

[Dustoori 8]

So, I'm going to put this here, I can make a new post or edit the OP if required.

TL;DR Pump action shotgun rules, if you can make it. Crossbow otherwise.

My sincerest apologies for the formatting, it's driving me nuts. I just want to get it out tonight and then tomorrow I can try and fix it. If anyone can tell me how to embed images in the text, please do.

 

The tests were done in creative mode with some concurrence from survival (more on that later), first image the kill pit.

I started spawning each animal 10 times for each gun but when it became apparent there was no variation I dropped to 5 then 3.

In descending order of number of shots;

                                                                                         Puma                   Black Bear                 Mutated Bear Alpha                       Speed

Flintlock Rifle                                                                     3                                5                                         15                                       V Slow   

Repeating Rifle                                                                  3                                5                                         15                                       Fast

Iron Bow                                                                             3                                4                                          15                                      Slow

Revolver                                                                              3                                4                                         12                                       Medium

Double-Barreled Revolver                                               3                                 4                                          12                                      Medium

Blunderbuss                                                                      2                                 4                                          12                                      Slow

Iron Crossbow                                                                   2                                 4                                         12                                      V Slow

Double-Barreled Shotgun                                               2                                  3                                          9                                        Medium

Bolt-Action Rifle                                                                2                                 3                                           8                                       Slow

Pump-Action Shotgun                                                     2                                 3                                           8                                       V Fast

 

The two double barreled weapons both use 2 rounds every shot the shotgun doing less damage than its single barreled equivalent and the revolver the same. I'm not sure this is intentional on the dev's part, but if it is, seems odd.

There is no range penalty on the damage from the shotguns. Up close the mutant took 8 shots. So far away I could barely see it, it took 8 shots.

This test was done on captive animals, when a similar test is carried out with them free to move the number of shots rises, I think this is because when they lie down to sleep they heal. If a dev fancies chiming in on that, feel free. I attempted to test if the numbers were the same in Survival mode and with the quick weapons they were. With the slower ones I presume the animals had time to heal.

In conclusion, the pump-action shotgun is outright winner, It's 8 round clip means it can deal more damage quicker than any other gun. It's closest rival in terms of speed of kills is the repeating rifle, however that chews through the ammo and so resources.

If you have no rubber and so no locksmith table, then the blunderbuss is quicker firing and does more damage than the flintlock. But you're probably better off using the crossbow and saving your gunpowder.

Tomorrow I'll fix the formatting and look at melee weapons.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Dustoori

[vforventura 17]

Nice format, this agrees pretty well with my own findings that I had posted on the Update Survival Tips for New Ylanders topic. I also put some conclusions there for melee weapons. I used a cage too to avoid the problem of animals running all over the place when shot.

On 12/14/2017 at 1:40 AM, vforventura said:

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere yet, so I think its fair to have it as a reply here: while sabers look cool, they're actually relatively bad at damage. After some extensive testing by spawning mutated bear alphas (I think its the highest HP mob currently in game, please correct me if I'm wrong) in creative and testing each possible weapon, the ones that take less hits to kill 'em are the war hammer and the lance (if you prefer polearms). With seven strikes, they use one less strike to kill a mutated bear compared with the several weapons in the second tier. Second tier notable mentions are the iron mace and iron spear.

Finally, on the third tier you have a large number of weapons, this is where the saber and war axe fall in. Those require 10 hits total to kill a mutated bear alpha. The pitchfork might be the actual single entry in the third tier (9 hits) but since it is the only weapon, to my recollection, that took 9 hits to kill a mutated bear alpha, I've lumped it together with the 10 hit ones as being the third tier

Since the difference in resources to craft a saber vs. a war hammer is minimal (2 extra iron ingots) and easily achievable early game, I see little reason to use anything else. Just gotta keep in mind that it counts for everything that requires a hammer to craft, so make sure to not make your only weapon into a repair kit by accident.

I couldn't figure out a proper way to accurately measure weapon speed for melee weapons but my gut feeling is that in the current version all melee weapons are equal in actual damage speed. Even tho the third person animation of some weapons (like the saber) seems to be faster, the actual 'hit spark' on enemies (that are the actual indication of when the damage happens) seemed to happen at the same interval for all weapons independently of the third person swing animation. I suppose one way to verify this would be to turn off creative mode, get in the cage with the target, and then see how many times the player gets hit before the enemy dies, but I haven't tested it yet.

The damage difference is only noticeable between, say, a third tier (saber) and first tier (war hammer) weapon on enemies with more health. Most low health aggressive animals (like wolves and pumas) take 2 hits to kill with either weapon, but the difference is clear on tankier enemies like mutated bear alphas.

Edited December 16, 2017 by vforventura

[Dustoori 8]

I was going to do melee weapons today but if you've already done them then cool. 

I'd agree that the speed of melee attacks is similar enough to be negligible. We could do with figuring out a way to test the arc of each weapon though. I've preferred the swords to the polearms as I got the impression they hit a wider arc. I've not done the research though.

A war hammer and pump-action shotgun for spelunking then.

I've been thinking about testing the armour. I think I'll put on a full set of each one and let a mutant bear hit me. It's not going to be as exact as the weapons as there are fractions of hearts. But should it should give an indication.

Edit: I just read your posts in the Survival tips discussion and could have saved myself some work. The numbers are the same though and corroboration is always nice.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Dustoori

[vforventura 17]

On 12/16/2017 at 11:43 AM, Dustoori said:

I was going to do melee weapons today but if you've already done them then cool. 

I'd agree that the speed of melee attacks is similar enough to be negligible. We could do with figuring out a way to test the arc of each weapon though. I've preferred the swords to the polearms as I got the impression they hit a wider arc. I've not done the research though.

A war hammer and pump-action shotgun for spelunking then.

I've been thinking about testing the armour. I think I'll put on a full set of each one and let a mutant bear hit me. It's not going to be as exact as the weapons as there are fractions of hearts. But should it should give an indication.

Edit: I just read your posts in the Survival tips discussion and could have saved myself some work. The numbers are the same though and corroboration is always nice.

Yeah, the polearms (lances, spears, pitchfork, etc) feel a bit... wonky in third person view. They may or may not have longer reach (haven't tested), but they feel harder to aim so I tend not to use 'em. In first person view, however, all weapons are pretty decent to hit with, so if you spend most of your combat time in first person the longer ones might be worth it.

Regarding arcs, I'm not sure if there's any difference either. In third person mode they all seem to auto-target sort of randomly (breaking all sorts of random crap instead of hitting the huge freaking bear eating your face, for example) and I haven't noticed much of a difference between, say, the iron-level swords, axes and war hammers. Those are the only weapons I've wielded for any significant time in regular survival mode, before and after my testing, so I can't really say much about the others.

[handofthesly 214]

 

On 12/17/2017 at 2:43 AM, Dustoori said:

I've been thinking about testing the armour. I think I'll put on a full set of each one and let a mutant bear hit me. It's not going to be as exact as the weapons as there are fractions of hearts. But should it should give an indication.

I have found that they can have about 2 or 3 different attacks so you might want to take that into account. One of their attacks is a lot more powerful than the other too.

[Dustoori 8]

The armour is going to be a lot more problematic than the weapons. 

As Handofthesly said, the animals do varying amounts of damage. I was thinking maybe it related to where they hit you but them having different attacks would also work.

It's also more difficult gauging how much damage they are doing in terms of hearts.

I think I might have to start again and change the metric. Counting the number of hits they get on me before I die and averaging it over 10 or more encounters should provide a decent indication of armour strengths.

And to complicate things even more, Steammonkey in another thread suggested that the bear boots make you run faster.

So if different armours have different effects other than just damage reduction choosing will be more involved.

[Dustoori 8]

Ok, so I tested the armours. I'd finished when I found this reddit post by Red-kuutti, 

So could have save myself a lot of work. Their numbers agree with mine though so it's not too bad, with the exception of bark armour. There was also a +/- 1 hit variation for each of the armours this appears to be because the animals have

The other consideration is durability, I assume that is what the hp number is about in the editor and I'll find out for sure later. For brevity I'll list the number of wolf hits and the hp of the armours.

The hp follow the same pattern; helmet, legs and boots all the same, then body a bit higher. E.g. bark helmet, legs and boots all have 80 hp and the armour has 120. Ill list them as 80, 120.

Leather 8 hits, 100, 150

Bark 9 hits, 80, 120

Stone 10 hits, 150, 200

Bear 10 hits, 100, 150

Crab 11 hits 100, 150

Iron 12 hits 200, 250

Guardian 14 hits 300, 350

Bear armour makes you run faster, about a second faster over a 30 block run. I haven't noticed if any of the other armours have any special effects. Crab armour doesn't effect either swim speed or breath time.

Iron armour is not difficult to make as long as you can find clay, but if you can't then any of stone, bear or crab (or a mix) depending on resources will do but need repairing more regularly. The upgrade to guardian as and when you gather the mats.