questions

Is there a better weapon than maul in the game in terms of damage compared to stats required? 25-50 for 86 str is ridiculous. I feel like even high level weapons aren't that efficient.

Even if it had damage of 20-40, it would still be decent as the only other strength weapon you'd reasonably get by then would be tulwar with 13-39.

At lvl 41 you could have already gone to the 55-110 damage range weapons. So yes there are better weapons at your lvl than maul

I mean... Club, I guess.

Sabre or Two-handed sword...

But, yeah... minus the very earliest weapons, Maul has always been a pretty absurdly "efficient weapon."

Lots of weapons have fairly close stat efficiency to maul, but it's definitely up there. Many of the pure str or pure/heavy dex ones like mega and earth maul, smasher, steel nunchaku, pain needle, blade catcher, and storm rager actually have slightly better efficiency in that regard. Not much that's close to the level area of maul though for sure. Closest things that aren't simply other pure str weapons would be platinum dagger, rapier or filleter maybe

Interesting question. I got nerd sniped and ran a query. I guess technically the scimitar is the most efficient weapon (9 damage from 6 stat points, so 1.5 damage per stat point), but if you're excluding early game weapons, then the thief knife wins (303 damage from 245 stat points, so 1.2367 damage per stat point).

mysql> SELECT
  ROW_NUMBER() OVER () AS `rank`,
  name,
  total_damage / points AS efficiency,
  CONCAT(total_damage, ' (', mindmg, '-', maxdmg, ')') AS damage,
  points,
  CEIL(points / 4) AS level,
  reqstr,
  reqdex
FROM (
  SELECT
    name,
    GREATEST(0, CAST(reqstr AS signed) - 10) +
        GREATEST(0, CAST(reqdex AS signed) - 10) AS points,
    mindmg + maxdmg AS total_damage,
    reqstr,
    reqdex,
    mindmg,
    maxdmg
  FROM items) foo
ORDER BY 3 DESC
LIMIT 30;
+------+------------------+------------+---------------+--------+-------+--------+--------+
| rank | name             | efficiency | damage        | points | level | reqstr | reqdex |
+------+------------------+------------+---------------+--------+-------+--------+--------+
|    1 | scimitar         |     1.5000 | 9 (3-6)       |      6 |     2 |      0 |     16 |
|    2 | thief knife      |     1.2367 | 303 (80-223)  |    245 |    62 |      0 |    255 |
|    3 | sabre            |     1.2000 | 12 (4-8)      |     10 |     3 |      0 |     20 |
|    4 | two-handed sword |     1.2000 | 12 (2-10)     |     10 |     3 |     18 |     12 |
|    5 | dirk             |     1.2000 | 12 (3-9)      |     10 |     3 |      0 |     20 |
|    6 | solar blade      |     1.1765 | 220 (50-170)  |    187 |    47 |      0 |    197 |
|    7 | skull drill      |     1.1552 | 335 (75-260)  |    290 |    73 |      0 |    300 |
|    8 | short sword      |     1.1250 | 9 (3-6)       |      8 |     2 |     18 |      0 |
|    9 | hand axe         |     1.1250 | 9 (3-6)       |      8 |     2 |     18 |      0 |
|   10 | steel nunchaku   |     1.1040 | 138 (40-98)   |    125 |    32 |      0 |    135 |
|   11 | pain needle      |     1.1014 | 304 (71-233)  |    276 |    69 |     66 |    230 |
|   12 | mega maul        |     1.0494 | 340 (80-260)  |    324 |    81 |    334 |      0 |
|   13 | smasher          |     1.0410 | 305 (70-235)  |    293 |    74 |    303 |      0 |
|   14 | earth maul       |     1.0356 | 320 (40-280)  |    309 |    78 |    319 |      0 |
|   15 | blade catcher    |     1.0329 | 251 (57-194)  |    243 |    61 |     56 |    207 |
|   16 | storm rager      |     1.0290 | 355 (85-270)  |    345 |    87 |     45 |    320 |
|   17 | diamond katana   |     1.0065 | 312 (104-208) |    310 |    78 |    130 |    200 |
|   18 | kris             |     1.0000 | 12 (2-10)     |     12 |     3 |      0 |     22 |
|   19 | splitter         |     1.0000 | 20 (5-15)     |     20 |     5 |      0 |     30 |
|   20 | gold katana      |     0.9933 | 298 (78-220)  |    300 |    75 |    160 |    160 |
|   21 | lightning axe    |     0.9912 | 224 (32-192)  |    226 |    57 |    236 |      0 |
|   22 | maul             |     0.9868 | 75 (25-50)    |     76 |    19 |     86 |      0 |
|   23 | dragonblade      |     0.9724 | 282 (98-184)  |    290 |    73 |    155 |    155 |
|   24 | eviscerator      |     0.9661 | 370 (83-287)  |    383 |    96 |     70 |    333 |
|   25 | moonblade        |     0.9638 | 266 (101-165) |    276 |    69 |    143 |    153 |
|   26 | answerer         |     0.9592 | 306 (102-204) |    319 |    80 |    237 |    102 |
|   27 | equalizer        |     0.9582 | 275 (55-220)  |    287 |    72 |    242 |     65 |
|   28 | winding serpent  |     0.9547 | 316 (106-210) |    331 |    83 |    131 |    220 |
|   29 | gothic claw      |     0.9545 | 294 (130-164) |    308 |    77 |    139 |    189 |
|   30 | death knife      |     0.9531 | 305 (100-205) |    320 |    80 |    170 |    170 |
+------+------------------+------------+---------------+--------+-------+--------+--------+

So the maul is pretty efficient, but not an outlier by any means...

...at least not globally. There's no weapon requiring a similar number of stat points that's more efficient though. So another analysis that could be interesting is to see the most efficient weapons across different ranges of stat points / levels (level 10 and under / 36 stat points, level 20 and under / 76 stat points, etc.). Another layer to all this of course is armor, uniques, and stats from those, as well as CON.

Maul is basically 1:1 for needed added stats to base to "total damage"

Something like Mega or Earth Mauls are definitely a bit better than that even... but Pure Dex has things like Solar Blades, Skull Drills, and Thief Knives...

Still, do you ignore stats and their effects on combat in this ask (which is fair, even if kinda pointless?

Honestly, biggest thing about Maul is for some reason there are like a dozen weapons that pop up right after and ask for that 86-94 strength (or whatever) and suck by comparison - as such, it looks REALLY absurd when you compare it to stupid Gothic Swords or whatever.

And in the time I post that, King Nerd comes along with all the receipts. :P

(actually pretty cool though - it is interesting and thanks, Ender)

Cheers for all the responses and thanks for running the query, Ender! Cool to see the weapons that are up there, some I never really thought would be. Like gothic claw, never gave that weapon two thoughts.

There are of course other factors like pure str weapons with 0 Dex are bit untrue because you'd still want SOME Dex, which would knock them down some pegs. But then str brings so many other benefits that it still cancels it out.

For the record... it's still Club that wins because you should subtract the base -10s demanded for any Str or Dex.

...and... there's a lot of bots out there made to be fought that have, like, NO DEX themselves. Don't need added Dex that don't come from armors to have a sizable Dex advantage, if those are your opportunities - just sayin'

You actually already have the entire weapon table including this statistic, "Economy", listed on your website Ed :)

All this talk about weapons, when do you plan to add some updates for "endgame" as you said in one of your earlier posts Ender?

@Gpof - Lmao! I totally forgot about that. Something something time is a flat circle. I even posted about it when I added that column 17 years ago. See you all in 2042 when I forget again.

@Smeagol - I do have some ideas for high-level content that I want to eventually get to, but my current focus is more on the monthly clan race and smaller QoL tweaks. So soon^TM.

Good to know, some hype achieved here :)