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Great Swords are the 'Best' Weapon Choice (and here's why)

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Revi
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Great Swords are the 'Best' Weapon Choice (and here's why)

Post by Revi »

There are a lot of posts on various forums asking about the 'best' weapon selection in IWD. Usually such a topic gets responses that refer to a specific weapon, say, the Singing Blade of Aihonen. This is not the right way of going about answering this question. In reality, it does not matter which specific weapon in the game is the best, all that matters is where you want to put the proficiency points of your main fighter.

Ideally, you want your main fighter to carry a weapon that:

- Is available early in the game.
- Can hit enemies that can only be hit with magical weapons.
- Deals a large amount of elemental/magical damage, for enemies that ignore physical damage.
- Provides either fire or acid damage to kill trolls.
- Is abundantly available; you don't want to depend on a rare drop.
- Does not deal piercing or missile damage; many enemies have resistances to these damage types.

This is why putting points into great swords is such a strong choice. Great swords are the only weapon type that meets all of the above requirements.

- Early availability: You can buy a +1 Bastard Sword from Conlan the Smithy in Kuldahar. For some reason known only to him, this is the only 'cheap' enchanted weapon he sells, all the others are expensive artifacts.
- Due to the early and reliable availability of a this magical bastard sword, you are guaranteed to be able to kill enemies that can only be hit with magical weapons when they first appear.
- Elemental damage/killing trolls: Another bastard sword, Trollkiller, is available from Conlan for a much higher price (but affordable by the time you need it). This sword does not only deal a lot of elemental damage, it also kills trolls.
- Wide availability: Because the Great Swords group effectively combines two huge groups of weapons (Bastard Swords and Two-handed Swords), it is more widely available than any other weapon type.

That's my opinion. Yours may differ, but it's hard to argue with the wide availability of this weapon type. I think it is a real shame that they chose to make some weapon types extremely abundant and others incredibly underrepresented. One would think that Conlan could at least sell a basic +1 version of every weapon type, considering he has apparently been able to collect a large selection of incredible named artifacts.

Hope this helps some first time players who are still on the fence regarding what weapon to specialize in.
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