User:Kimo/unarmed notes

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Revision as of 15:53, 14 April 2021 by Kimo (Talk | contribs) (special abilities)

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welcome to unarmed, arguably (see misc) the weirdest and most neglected and maligned but secretly most dynamic spec on the disc! ready to stay behind the damage curve but in a fun and rewarding if slightly punishing way?

read me

  • tldr; you don't do as much damage as weapon-wielders but you're very fast. hitting stuff hurts your hands but there are ways to mitigate that. you don't have many unarmed toy/aid options! and that's kind of a shame but you may find you like one of them anyway or opt for none at all. you might not be able to solo things other players can at similar low or mid levels, but you'll be able to get loot just fine and grouping can supply all the ridiculous xp you might want.
  • read other newbie material first this is not a substitute for the basics. you're still going to need those. i've live linked a lot of stuff- read all of it. see:
  • use at your own risk: this is currently a jumble of advice for squishies (low-level alts and newbies) and midbies, but i can't honestly call it a newbie guide. some of the things covered here may not be feasible at very low levels (tentacle, focused attacks, insane mode etc are not recommended right out of pumpkintown), or may become redundant at very high levels (???). i do have 400+ bonuses on striking, dodge and tactics, so remember that things i mention working on or trying right now may be things i'm only just getting comfortable enough with my skills to try, and not safe or useful at lower levels. i am hoping at some point to play with level caps to determine what's easy at what bonus. i'm not sure i would actually recommend diving straight into unarmed as a real actual new newbie- i played a bunch of alts before i created kimo.
  • ask more questions when in doubt, try the igame talker channel. they know everything over there and if they don't they might still be able to help.

tentacle stuff

up at the top so nobody has to hunt for the juicy stuff: people ask me about the tentacle a lot! it is a pretty good conversation piece if not the best combat item in game. it's pretty gross but i enjoy it. the wiki page for it is pretty complete but for the record:

  • it is a symbiote and thus can't be fumbled or stolen when equipped nor does it add burden (low upkeep). it turns some of my punches into tentacle slaps and bashes (slimy ones!), doesn't require a permit cause it isn't a weapon (low upkeep!), and transmits unarmed damage to me automagically (high upkeep). it comes with a secret grappling bonus boost (low upkeep!) and no secret specials that we know of. it falls off and you have to rehold it (high upkeep but tolerable with triggers). if you cut it off or die holding it it has to be soaked a while (high upkeep). you can't equip it over or under gloves or hand armour and you can't use two :( :( :( rip kimo's dual tentacle wielding dreams. one gets jealous and slaps the other one out of your hand onto the floor... high upkeep. i also do not actually have the skills yet to take full advantage of it, hence:
  • i do not recommend it to actual new-to-the-disc newbies besides the fact that it's a high-skill item, if you're not a seasoned alt-maker, it's really expensive! i was semi-newbish when i got mine but i had been playing kimo for some months and knew that this alt was committed to unarmed. the value of sailing items and ambergris has stabilised, but the tentacle is a low demand item and you may or may not be able to resell it without at least some loss, which may be up to a k or so in any currency.
    • so it's not very accessible, and it's also undeniably extremely weird. and you will get gently or not-so-gently trolled for using one. all that said, if it seems cool or fun for you, with the assumption you've already gotten to a point where you feel kinda committed to unarmed, or you just really want one? definitely save up and get it (or get oldbies to help you fund one but don't tell them i told you that). i can confirm that it is indeed cool and fun. and expensive and weird. all true things.
  • if you do have one, a way to keep track of it is setting up a trigger highlighting the drop phrase "The black flesh withdraws rapidly down your arm and contracts back into a squirming black tentacle", also sending "hold your damn tentacle!" to command.
  • also also also: DO NOT try to use a tentacle with anything other than the normal humanoid number of two (2) arms! use while missing an arm or using magic wizzie arms is buggy :( :( :( rip kimo's 3 or 4 tentacle wielding dreams.


your unofficial primaries:

tldr of this section; can't really neglect any of the above skills except maybe health at any level because you're not using increasingly fancy weapons!

the rule of thumb as was explained to me is advance defensive skills first. this holds mostly true with unarmed except for parry damage. you will take damage through your hands straight through magical and faith shielding from punching trolls, armour, and being parried against with weapons. hitting a troll seems to give me 2 rounds of 1-10 damage each, specials can be more painful, being parried and blocked can be 10-50 depending? one round isn't much but it will whittle you down faster than you thought possible, esp when herding- that plus a few specials will take your head off really fast. with unarmed all your skills are defensive. dodging enemy attacks obviously will save your life but so will accurate strikes. you should still lead with advancing dodge (and health! just at least get your health up over 2k asap and then you can forget about again for a while) but advancing striking (a lot, like 400+ bonus) will reduce the moment to moment damage you take. for this reason you may consider hand armour rather than combat aids altogether.

at lower levels i alternated between focusing on dodge and tactics and haven't regretted it. i recently discovered that i was neglecting fighting.special.unarmed and (see specials below) have found since investing xp that it makes a substantial difference to prep, accuracy, and force of specials. which should go without saying but there are rumours of a low-level fi.sp sweet spot

ap soak/fi.sp.ta

tactics (the skill, not the setting) affects how much ap it takes you to do things. ap, or action points, is the big unknowable mystery number that determines your attack and reaction speed- basically the number of moves you can fit into a turn. if you've been grinding tactics, you can dodge a pretty high number of attacks and still get your 2ish hits per round in. it's rough on the knuckles, but a puncher is a good meat shield- see:


since your damage per hit is fairly low specials count for a lot more. like unarmed aids, you won't get a wide variety of specials. you have two categories: the ap-absorbing specials trip shove and feint, and the attack specials kick and punch. use trip against bashy opponents and shove against dodgy ones. you also get command exp even on a failed special so it's worth getting and rotating them all. targeted specials are more difficult to complete but more powerful. combining an ap-draining special with a combat special can increase the chances of the combat special landing.

one of the many handy benefits of grinding sp ta is better feinting. feinting is incredibly useful and will often turn the fight around if you or your group run into an aggro imp or something and nobody's landing any hits. aside from the obvious ap-absorbing benefits, fully successful shoving or tripping combined with a successful targeted kick will result in a stomp, which is of course deeply satisfying. your grappling bonus will give you the added benefit of being difficult to rob and may save you from certain djelian crocodilian doom should you come face to face with it.

do note that targeted specials are more difficult to complete and zones vary in difficulty. from kick, in order of difficulty and damage, lowest first:

  • unfocused, shins, feet, knees, chest, stomach, face, back of the head [warriors only]

from punch, ditto:

  • unfocused, arms, kidneys, stomach, solar plexus, face


options combat tactics (the setting, not the skill) is a mixed bag- again because of parry damage. defensive and wimp modes may improve your dodge but i find my strikes may be less accurate (not tested, just a feeling), drawing more parry damage. for that reason these days i rarely go off insane mode , but if you are soloing or group leading i definitely recommend some micromanaging by way of aliases. attack large groups on wimp, recover gp using neutral, and feel free to switch up when the rest of the group joins the fight and you're no longer the only person taking all the hits. it took me a while to get up the courage to attempt insane mode but find it pretty effective. note that insane mode costs gp and my current playstyle means i am running at seriously suboptimal gp basically all the time, a situation likely to be intolerable to a lot of players as there's a pretty substantial combat penalty to running without enough gp. i don't have very high guild gp (co.po in my case) or fi.po though- i recently dumped a bit of xp into both and sense a bit of improvement, will do more and update later.

you can also use options combat tactics focus to change the focus area of your strikes- you may want to try focusing on upper body until you've done the equivalent of mostly guildmaxing your unofficial primaries. i've just begun to experiment with focus = head, and am finding it really effective against npcs that aren't imps/guards so far, and so have made aliases to switch between fousing on upper body and head. focusing on the head i miss a slightly higher percentage of strikes overall and my attack speed is slightly reduced but the hits i land seem distinctly more destructive. there's an additional benefit because faces/heads are rarely armoured, making at least armour-punching less of a problem.

note: since switching focus to head, i seem to be more effective while on neutral than i used to be.

special abilities

i have been using the knee attack for a while now and kind of forget it's there although the attack messages are pretty enjoyable. i'm sure somebody somewhere has quantified knee strike damage but i haven't tracked them down or asked them about it to date. i do intend to exchange it for the genua statue (better targeted specials) at some point soon. sto lat statue require 250 lvls of striking and the genua statue requires 150 lvls of perception and a fancy sword.

update: switched- looks like a moderate bonus bump to specials.unarmed and .weapons? not sure since skills raw doesn't reflect it.

rearranging, stats, and stat items

i uh don't think i could comment on rearranging- it's a pretty personal choice. i've done lots of rearranges on lots of alts and can honestly say i've learned nothing. best i can advise is plug everything into the bonus computer (plug straight 100s or 500s into all the fighting categories and look at bonuses) and the regen calculator until something clicks. i will say that someone once told me that str is the only thing you can't compensate for with masses of xp, and i've found that true. striking uses dex 2, str 1, and wis 2, for what that's worth.

i find the slight bonus boost from carrying charged prayer beads beneficial at the cost of a free hand, and don't love the gp cost of gauntlets though i do love the burden reduction.

also note: while there are a wide variety of bonus-adjusting items there aren't many actual stat items. strap gloves and clompy boots are not stat items and you should be able to use them with charged prayer beads without the numbers getting complicated, unlike gauntlets or dex gloves, see:

unarmed aids and stuff on hands in general

according to research, knuckle-dusters do increase unarmed damage. not my research, i don't have any numbers on hand; the one thing i do know as confirmed is they decrease your other combat skills- fairly substantial bonus drop in both melee and ranged, though not bow. unarmed, defence, special, and points were unaffected). dusters are of course easily replaceable and require no babysitting, unlike certain other options. there may also be an overall benefit because the character has a duster on each hand, effectively raising damage on all punches, as opposed to tentacles which are only boosted on tentacle strikes, and paws where not all strikes are boosted.

i have been revisiting the leather-strap gloves and it's difficult to tell a difference aside from the added hand armour- supposedly they may not increase damage but may aid in specials. they do decrease melee bonus along the same lines as the dusters.

i had slightly more fun with iron gauntlets even though they have no direct effect on damage as kimo already has fairly high strength and again, hand armour. as for the clompy boots i really have no idea. i'm not sure anybody has come up with proven effects from those things. they're heavy too i think? i personally prefer armour boots or lighter-weight sheathe boots. again, there is a possibility that rather than damage they affect specials, but nobody's sure how. note that there are a lot of things with secret effects, and there's always a chance that you can take long descriptions at their word. the strap gloves and clompy boots say they do something, so they very well might.

as of this writing kimo is around guild level 240 so i haven't gone for the lion paws yet. paws have an edge on the squirming black tentacle in terms of damage while the latter is better than the paws against armour and trolls, because paws with claws out do intermittent sharp damage whereas tentacle is always blunt (there's a joke there somewhere, i'm sure). tentacle use may require high-ish fi.sp.ta.

the bottom line on unarmed aids and their efficacy continues to shift but here's the tldr; dusters and strap gloves are easy to acquire, the paws are a process due to the guild level and quest restriction, and the tentacle is prohibitively expensive for a noob. not many options! soz. it is what it is. you aren't here for toys, you're here to punch stuff. (full disclosure: i am not not here for toys.)

i also have not covered obbk here because i have no magic but understand it's pretty sweet and possibly the highest and most consistently damage-boosting option. it is on the to do list. using unarmed with shields or unarmed parrying are also viable options but i have not tried them yet so can't comment.

healing stuff

tea is of course a staple (ask me if you need a new blackened canteen!) but in the long run i personally recommend whatever combination of bandage, cure light wounds, and healing roses is appropriate for your spec/faith. the xp investment for decent bandaging and rose plucking is lowish. up to 5 roses can be braided into hair with no additional burden and can be smelled in combat when unbraided, though you may fumble them if you try to rebraid while fighting. bandages can of course be produced on the go though may add some burden, bandaging is easy to TM at low levels and you can TM covert on the go when you combine it with abscond and hide. you can get special bandage containers or you can identify your bag of choice as "medicine bag" and automatically pull bandages from it when using the bandage command.

other stuff mostly relating to low burden


most armour is pretty heavy. i have heard the padded monk's robe is supposed to be good lightweight armour- an obvious but pricey option is the sea serpent scale which is lightweight, durable, and repairable by needle and thread but by no means the most protective option. steel-toed leather boots are a decently-weighted foot armour, though i tend to go for boots with sheathes- if you need to carry around a cutting edge the scalpel weighs the least- stompyboots from the AM cobbler (link later) containing one scalpel weigh 4/9lb- less in total than the sasswot graduate black ankle boots + a blade, and definitely less than the ninja purple ankle boots. will double check on the soft-soled boots with sheathes. white ankle boots weigh the same as cobbled boots.

now what?

this is why you need to read the other newbie guides! what does any noob hunt when they can't even hit a roach straight out of pumpkintown? i honestly don't really remember. i think i blocked it out. do some quests, do some job missions. certain smaller towns and cities in the sto plains have exceptionally easy-to-kill npcs, or npcs that murder each other in cold blood and leave their stuff all over the place- collect it and sell it. ask nicely and find out if any of the groups running consider themselves newbie/new alt-safe- they do exist! get your health and perception up enough to a. join fights and b. not be immediately specialled into smithereens. if you feel like you can't hit anything you need more striking; if it feels like it takes forever to strike you need more tactics. actually whatever it is you probably need more tactics.