v0.11.5 — Two hands, three ways
The hand slots stop being “one weapon, maybe a shield”. Every configuration you’d expect from an ARPG is in, and each was measured against the others before shipping.
Highlights
Two-handed weapons
Three new weapon families occupy both hand slots: the Greatsword (blades, 2.5 s), the Greataxe (axes, 2.5 s) and the Maul (blunt, 3.5 s). Equipping one moves whatever was in your other hand to the bag; equipping any one-handed item puts the two-hander away. If the bag is full, the swap is refused the same way a blocked unequip is.
Per tier they deal 1.75× the one-handed damage baseline, spread over their longer swing, so all three land on the same damage per second and differ in how hard each hit lands. They unlock at levels 12, 30, 50, 70 and 90, roll the normal weapon affix pool, and carry a “Two-Handed” line on the card. The paperdoll shows the blocked hand as a greyed, dashed link that acts on the two-hander, and full-set achievements count a two-hander for both hands.
Dual wield
Two one-handed weapons of any classes can now be worn together. Each hand swings your selected main skill on its own timer, started half a swing apart so they alternate. Every hit does 65 % damage, and every per-hit effect — rage, crushing blow, stun, bleed, armour shred, leech, Flurry stacks, elemental procs and flat elemental damage — lands at half strength. Two hands therefore add up to 130 % of the damage and 100 % of the effect rate of a single weapon; the trade is that the attack-speed multiplier, the Berserk penalty and skill ranks apply once, not twice.
One hand is the main hand (right by default). Set the other one via right-click on the equipped weapon, or the button on the mobile item sheet. Only the main hand earns training reputation and fires its training tier perks — Riposte, Concussion, Breach and Exploit Opening — and accuracy affixes rolled on a weapon count only for that weapon’s swings. Each hand uses its own dice, elemental flats and archetype passive.
The hero box groups the numbers by hand: Strike (Main Hand) and Strike (Off-Hand), each with its damage and hit chance, with Attack and Defense listed once below. There is a thinner second swing bar for the off-hand, the combat log names which hand swung, and the character sheet shows both attacks per second. The main-hand choice is saved with your character.
Shields, rebalanced
With two-handers and dual wield on the board, sword-and-board needed a reason to exist beyond habit. Shield intrinsic damage goes up ×1.1 at tier 4 and ×1.5 at tier 5 on all five families, so a tier-5 targe swings at 96 % of the sword row’s damage per second instead of 64 %. Block chance is up four points on every tier, defense rating is ×1.5, and a blocked hit now takes 75 % less damage instead of 60 %.
The harness verdict, on real gear: a shield build with Strike dies less often per hour than every two-handed and dual-wield setup in eight of nine no-potion tests, at 80 to 84 % of their kills per hour. Dual wield sits within +3 to +9 % of the greatsword. All Resistances now rolls on shields, the same row as amulets.
Also in this update
- Fixed: after paying to reroll the trader’s stock, gear you had already bought came back showing as available. Bought offers stay sold out, and the trader also refuses to sell the same slot twice in one stock, so no double charge.