Currently, weapons feel somewhat restrictive in terms of customization. While skill notes allow you to apply abilities you want to other weapons, they aren’t as flexible as the other combat styles—Magic and Fighting—which offer more flexible options, allowing players to shape their attacks by adjusting stats, forms, and styles.
Weapons, on the other hand, rely on collecting specific weapons to get attacks and abilities, but the customization is still minimal. Although players can augment weapon skills with magic to change the stats, it’s still not as customizable as Magic or Fighting. Also, using magic abilities directly from arcanium weapons would definitely complicate keybinds (a topic for another day). And while someone already made a suggestion for a weapon rework; I wanted to deepen the detail in specifically how the customization could work, so it’s not as confusing as to what attacks would be what.
1. Name:
- Adjective: Describes the skill (e.g., “Giant”).
- Synonym: Tied to the type of weapons the skill note is applicable to (e.g., “Cleave” for axes or “Slash” for swords).
- Name: The skill’s standard name, which can be replaced by the magic, spirit or fighting style imbued into the weapon (e.g., “Flaming Cleave”).
2. Types:
The base type of a skill note cannot be changed, ensuring that you don’t just rip attacks off any common weapon only to change them into completely different abilities.
- Throw (Polearms, Light Blades, Axes, Shields): The player throws the weapon.
- Cleave (Blades, Heavy Blades, Katanas, Axes, Cleavers, Colossal Cleavers): A wide-area attack with circular hitboxes.
- Burst (Axes, Great hammers, Blunt Weapons): An AoE crush attack with a large radius.
- Thrust (Blades, Heavy Blades, Thrusting, Polearms, Staffs, Colossal Thrusting): The player thrusts the weapon forward, creating a piercing beam/wall or optionally a piercing projectile.
- Slash (Light Blades, Blades, Heavy Blades, Claws, Axes, Cleavers, Colossal Cleavers): Creates projectile slashes.
- Rush (Any): The player either ensnares nearby enemies or rushes at them, and beats them down.
- Dash (Light Blades, Blades, Heavy Blades, Katanas, Claws): The player travels and damages on contact.
- Projectile (Bows, Pistols, Multi Pistols, Rifles): The player fires projectiles.
Also, Special skills like Rising Tide or Seismic Slash are not modifiable.
3. Customization:
Throw:
- Projectile Size: Larger hitboxes reduce damage, smaller hitboxes increase damage.
- Impact Size: Determines how big the impact zone is when the weapon hits the ground.
- Pattern: Adjusts the throwing animation and projectile’s movement (Dagger throws typically spin and have a wider hitbox vertically, but this can be changed to a direct pierce throw which has a smaller hitbox but deals more damage.)
- Ultimate Art: Converts the skill into an ultimate art; only one ultimate art can be applied per weapon.
Cleave:
- Cleave Size: Alters the hitbox size.
- Duration: Changes how many times the cleave can hit.
- Direction: Allows control over whether the cleave is vertical, horizontal, or diagonal.
- Shape: Modifies the cleave’s hitbox shape, such as semi-circle or quarter-circle.
- Ultimate Art: Converts the skill into an ultimate art.
Burst:
- Impact Size: Changes the area of effect.
- Impact Shape: Determines if the burst is a shockwave, sphere, or pillar.
- Duration: How many times the burst can hit.
- Direction: Adjusts the player’s movement during the attack (e.g., static hover, gravitational fall, or leaping).
- Style: Modifies the attack animation.
- Ultimate Art: Converts the skill into an ultimate art.
Thrust:
- Thrust Size: Adjusts the size of the attack.
- Thrust Shape: Changes from a straight line to a conical or wall-shaped hitbox. (Sort of like changing from Armor Piercer from the exiled in WOM to Sparrow Thrust.)
- Impact Size: Optionally adds an impact AOE at the end of the attack and changes the size of it.
- Amount: For dual weapons, you can adjust the number of thrusts (1-4).
- Projectile: Option to fire a fast-moving projectile instead of a thrust.
- Ultimate Art: Converts the skill into an ultimate art.
Slash:
- Slash Size: Changes the size of the projectile.
- Impact Size: Adjusts the size of the impact when hitting terrain.
- Range: Determines the distance traveled before impact.
- Amount: Number of projectiles fired (1-20).
- Style: Customizes the attack animation.
- Ultimate Art: Converts the skill into an ultimate art.
Rush:
- Duration: Number of hits (1-5).
- Direction: Determines the finishing blow’s direction.
- Movement: Adjusts movement during attacks (e.g., static, upward, or downward).
- Follow-up: Chooses whether to pursue or recoil after the attack, or just stay in mid-air as normal.
- Ultimate Art: Converts the skill into an ultimate art.
Dash:
- Distance: Adjusts the distance traveled, with damage changing accordingly.
- Speed: Controls the attack speed, with slower dashes reducing end lag.
- Gravity: Determines whether the player is affected by gravity.
- Size: Changes the hitbox (planar or circular).
- Amount: Number of dashes performed (1-4).
- Direction: Determines the direction of the dash.
- Ultimate Art: Converts the skill into an ultimate art.
Projectile:
- Speed: Controls projectile speed, with faster attacks having more end lag and dealing less damage. Optionally, rifles can perform beam attacks at 0 speed.
- Amount: Number of shots fired.
- Gravity: Applies gravity to the shot, allowing for arc-based attacks similar to storm of arrows, but can’t be used with speed.
- Ultimate Art: Converts the skill into an ultimate art.
These are essentially all of the current skills crunched down into base types, and then given different property options based on how the old skill types varied. I think this and Zawaito’s suggestion Weapons Rework and Parity would definitely help fix the problem with weapons not having as many customization options as the other styles and just parity in general.
While this would take a lot of effort to implement, it would also take off the load of having to make several new weapon abilities every time a new weapon type is introduced (except for special weapons) and also provide a baseline on how weapons could function.