Shattered Kingdoms

I have some questions about dual wielding.

Is your off hand slower, less accurate or less damaging then your main?

Are there any effects on your main hand while dual wielding? What are they?

Does a swashbuckler benefit more from using fast but weak weapons, or
slower more damaging ones. For instance, a sai v. broadsword?

Your off hand is slower than your main hand. Generally speaking, you will get one less attack with your off hand than with your main hand. Since you only get Second Attack, you'll probably want a weapon with at least 2 attacks in your main hand and one with 3 attacks in your off hand (normally; it will get 2 attacks if you're using it in your off hand) for a total of 4 attacks.

I don't know of any effects on your main hand, but I don't really play swashies so far.

Generally speaking (again), you'll want a rather slow but damaging weapon in your main hand and a fast but weak weapon in your off hand. You want to go for the most accuracy possible with both, since your accuracy affects how well you parry. As a swashbuckler, your parrying ability is pretty much the only thing keeping you alive.

I'll leave the cool weapon combinations to people like Necock.

Good answer! He's right, you want something lethal and accurate in your main hand.. speed doesn't really seem to matter a whole lot since you only get 2nd attack.

Off hand you NEED speed. Whether or not the off hand itself is ACTUALLY slower.. I don't know. It certainly seems to work in that fashion, at least.

Accuracy, like LPP said is vitally important. You can't dodge everything and you can't block anything with a shield. And your accuracy directly influences your success at parrying.

Think of it like this:

Your main hand's first hit is pretty much given to you, and your second attack on your main hand is dependent on successfully using your Second Attack.

Every attack you make with your offhand is dependent on successful Dual Wielding, which benefits from weapon speed, and Second Attack comes into play for the second offhand attack as well, of course.

So you have twice as much need for speed on your offhand, colloquially speaking.


As for defense, you rely on your dodge and your parries. Your parries are better than most, in fact, and empower your other abilities. Parry benefits from weapon accuracy.


So, in conclusion, you want as many of all weapon attributes as you can get. This is why most swashbucklers only use one or two types of weapons.

So, if I understand this correctly, more than half of my damage is done with my main hand and most of my parries will be done by my off hand?

If this is correct, I need to use something like a longsword for my main hand and a sai for my off hand to get the best of both worlds? Am I wrong?

Nope. You've got the right idea.

Kinda of slow/damaging for main hand and quick/accurate for off hand.

If you really want to parry a lot you can do like sai/sai.

You can also do something like a slow/damaging in your main hand and quick/damaging(but inaccurate) like a kama in your off hand if you're just looking for more damage.

Swashies are a fun class.

For lower levels I've seen several katana/wakizashi combos.

I tend to have a heavy main hand weapon, fast enough to get two attacks and accurate enough to do some nice damage. Longswords, katana, no-dachi, things like that. Off-hand, I'd suggest sai, epee, wakizashi or rapier. I'm no expert, but I am fairly certain these are good weapon choices.

Here's a list of all the good off-hand weapons. They're all fast enough to get your two attacks, and they're all in the top ranks of accuracy. I'll list rough estimate of (Accuracy, Damage) where 1 is the best and 19 is the worst. These are all based on an old-as-dirt comparison list done by another player. It's good enough to help you decide which weapon is going to work best for you, but none of us can see the real numbers, and he himself said it was a little sketchy in parts.

Kama - the least accurate, most damaging, most rare off-hand. (5, 12)
Wakizashi - only slightly less damaging and slightly more accurate. The only problem is that there are almost no energy/adamantine wakis, and only like one mithril. (4, 13)
Epee - probably the most common and sensible off-hand weapon. Great accuracy, enough damage to justify holding the darn thing in your hand. (2, 14)
Rapier - epee, but less accurate. Some people will tell you it's stupid to use one of these when you could use an epee, but it's very easy to find something like an energy rapier. Honestly, I'd prefer an 8/8 energy rapier to a 4/4 tanso epee. If you have access to the best epees, use those instead. (3, 14)
Sai - the most accurate weapon in the game, with little to no damage at all. It's very popular among swashies who have to tank a lot, since it drastically lowers your chances of getting hit...ever. Those swashies have someone else doing damage instead of them, though, so if you're trying to kill something you might want to go to an epee or something. (1, 17)

There have been a few combinations using other off-hands, but none of them have the same combination of speed and accuracy. People have dual-wielded a certain special kind of straight dagger, for instance, and I think I've seen a swashie with two sickles, but in general you should go with the above choices.

Good main hands, same roughly estimated list.

No-dachi - this is almost exclusively a two-handed weapon, but there are a few one-handers wandering around out there, and if you get the chance you should snap one up. They HURT. (6, 5)
Khopesh - even after it got wimped it's still good. Probably the best main hand after no-dachi. (7,
Katana - nice and accurate. Not so damaging. (4, 10)
Straight Dagger - a slightly worse katana but there are some really cool ones out there that make it worth it sometimes. (5, 10)
Cutlass - Sucks for everyone else, but for a swashie it makes a passable main-hand. By "passable" I mean "get something else quickly." (5, 11)

Main hands I don't recommend but you could use in a pinch.

Longsword - not accurate enough. I don't think you'd last long. (9, 6)
Khukri - same deal. (9, 9)
Falchion - same deal. (10,

Finally, you could always dual-wield two off-hand weapons for lots and lots of accuracy. For example, dual-wielding kamas is awesome.

[Viltrax edit: off-topic posts removed]