I am curious about the punching skill.  Is it worth it to develop as an effective skill?  If I lvl up in it, will I become a martial-artist killing machine, or just a fighter with a bloody fist?

The Mighty OGRE

Hi, Oh Great and Mighty Ogre,

Most people who train punching do it as a 'fun' skill when they are quite a high level.  Others deliberately hardly train it at all because it can be useful to have a low-level skill with which you can kill a mob without the bounty disappearing.

Punching does the least damage of all the skills (apart from throw after a certain number of levels - but that is a bug which will be fixed in b4).  It is therefore the hardest to develop (if you ignore the enormously long times spent waiting for grace and/or mana to regen).

IIRC you get one extra point in damage for each 5 levels of the skill.  You need some good equipment which enhances your damage if you want to seriously level up in punch.

In short, until you are quite a high level, I would advise that there are more 'interesting' skills you should concentrate on.

Very best reagrds,
Tryagain

It also has the longest delay (excluding horns and rods) between attacks -- 4.25s IIRC.

Thanks! That was very helpful.  I am a little bummed, as I was hoping to make a martial-artist type character....guess I will have to stick to crushing skulls with my mace.


The Mighty OGRE

Smacky - take note of this one - the Mighty Ogre is one of those polite people who say thanks - I think we should help him lots in the future.

Actually delay while still longest apart from horns/rods isn't 4.25s, it's actually 3.5s

I think it's a bug but if you've got no weapon equiped it'll automatically go to 4.25 and then when you try to punch something it goes down to 3.5s and your dam/wc goes up a bit

Training punch is possible but it's a lot weaker than using your impact weapon but it may be upgraded in later updates but until then I'd recommend leaving punch alone

P.S. In the code I believe there is a karate skill but atm it's dorment/not implemented but I'd assume in a future release it might be used

@ Try, LOL.. But we must help even the impolite and ungrateful, Try. It is nice to be thanked though.

@ Mightyogre, I've a feeling this martial arts stuff has come up before. I shall search.

• Quote from: "Smacky"
  Which puts me in mind of something else. How about a martial arts skill? This would be far more effective than punching (in fact it would be an alternative to weapons). It'd be hindered by armour or heavy footwear/gauntlets. It would perhaps be a skill for which you could purchase training from an NPC as well as levelling through experience. (The difficulty I've just thought of would be graphics).
  
  
  Note that last bit about gfx -- this prohibits stuff like martial arts in the 2d client but, AIUI, won't be a limiting factor in the 3d client.
  
  
• Punch Damage

I think since you don't have to wield a heavy weapon it should be MUCH faster than normal and gets faster say every 10 lvs? What do you think? That would make it worth training even with low damage ...It should be even faster than bows etc.