Mace Fighting Skill

Mace Fighting is the skill of using heavy, blunt weapons. What makes this skill special is that with mace type weapons you drain your opponent's endurance (stamina) and do heavy damage to their armour. These are usually two-handed weapons. If you spar with a friend using this kind of weapon to train the skill, your friend will not have a single healthy piece of armour left and their Stamina will drop to zero. Training this skill works the same way as the other warrior skills.

Mace Fighting is one of the leading skills among the warrior skills. Since it brings together shattering, crushing weapons, you swing the mace in your hand and smash your opponents' armour to pieces. The weapons of this skill are very slow, but the damage they do is high.

When you fight an opponent with the Mace Fighting skill and your physical resistance is low, they can, so to speak, tear you apart. Also, if you are a warrior about to duel a Mace Fighting character, you should bring 2-3 shields with you.

You do not need a lot of variation or strategy to use the Mace Fighting skill. All you need is a solid suit, jewellery and a shield, backed up by a strong weapon. Still, it pays to be a little more careful with mages and archers, since after all it is not easy to get closer to them than an arm's length, that is, close enough to land a blow with your weapon.

On top of Mace Fighting, characters can also train the Chivalry skill. Chivalry spells are aimed at improving your success in combat. They make life easier for a Paladin, the mounted warrior. It has a system of its own. Karma is very important for a Paladin, so much so that the effect of many spells increases when Karma is positive. Paladin spells will be explained at a later stage...


Choosing a Suit:

Training the Mace Fighting skill and beating the warrior in front of you is easy, but bringing the character up to that level is quite hard work. To bring a Mace Fighting character, which relies on a simple combat strategy, to the powerful position it deserves, you need a very solid suit.

You need to use pieces that give both Stat and Resist; if you can also find LMC (Lower Mana Cost) on them, all the better. In truth these suits are necessary for every warrior. But for Mace Fighting, and for the armour-wearing Swordsmanship characters that will be covered in the coming days, the strength of the suit is very, very important. As I just said, the single most important trait of these characters, which have no overly complicated philosophy, is to be like a tank and crush whatever stands in front of them.

The Stat Bonuses your suit brings should above all raise Hit Point (health). Since Mace Fighting characters have no extra tricks of their own, health has to be kept high so that they are not left weak against the additional abilities of other warrior and mage characters. But it is smarter to achieve that through the suit raising health rather than by raising Strength.


Choosing a Weapon:

We said that the weapons of the Mace Fighting skill are slow but hit hard. For that reason "Damage Increase" is one of the must-have properties for raising the effect of the blow you land. At the same time, it is possible to speed up these already slow weapons with the "Swing Speed Increase" property. The other properties are of course important for Mace Fighting as well. There is no need to explain them separately.

The most preferred weapons are the War Axe, the Hammer Pick and the Club. If you look at their special moves you will easily see why they are so popular. The War Axe in particular is widely used because its special moves are somewhat more effective than those of the other weapons of this skill. It is obvious by now that backing it with the "Hit Mana Leech" property is a must...


Choosing Jewellery:

The "Damage Increase" property absolutely has to be there. For this skill, dealing the highest possible damage is a big advantage. If you round out your solid War Axe with jewellery of this kind, you will have created a character that hits hard with every swing.

And if you want those swings to land on target instead of missing, you also need the "Hit Chance Increase" property. Because three "Armor Ignore" hits in a row with your weapon will help make you a difficult opponent for anyone. Of course, properties that give extra Stats, Strength first and foremost, must also be present on the jewellery. As I said before, creating a Mace Fighting warrior character is easy, but getting it ready for action is not. Not easy at all. You need plenty of money and resources.


Setting Your Stats:

Let me say up front that these settings always depend on your own skill, strategy and preference. For that reason there is no single, definitive right answer on stat allocation. Still, it is worth covering it in broad terms as a guide for less experienced players. Of course you also have to make various adjustments for the extra Stats given by the suit and jewellery you use. This is exactly where the Bonus Stats brought by the suits described above become important.

Again, for the Mace Fighting skill you should push Dexterity to the limit, that is, make it 125. For a skill whose weapon swing speed is already low, not investing in Dexterity means moving very slowly; more than that, it means landing one hit and taking three in return no matter how much "Damage Increase" you have. And if the one facing you is a warrior with the Fencing skill or a mage stacked with FC-FCR, then surviving might take a miracle.

The remaining 100 Stat points should be shared between Strength and Mana. But at this point, unlike with the Fencing skill, health matters more, so Strength should be kept higher. That is, Strength should be around 60 and Mana around 40 accordingly. Mana should not drop below 40, and raising it beyond that must be handled by the suit you wear.