Twoweapon

#twoweapon is an extended command used to wield two weapons simultaneously in order to perform additional damage at the cost of skill points and time spent in training the ability. Twoweaponing is not available to all roles.

For unexperienced players, it may not be obvious how to activate two-weapon combat. First, you need to wield a weapon as a secondary weapon. To do this, press [w], then the letter of the weapon in your inventory, and then [x]. Now, wield your primary weapon by pressing [w] and the letter of that weapon in your inventory. Type in #twoweapon and those two weapons will be wielded at the same time.

The skill used by twoweapon is the lesser of the twoweapon and primary weapon skills. While twoweaponing, only your twoweapon skill is trained, not the skills of your primary or secondary weapons.

If the first weapon hits, the second weapon is guaranteed to hit. The second weapon has no effect on the to-hit calculation; any skill points in the second weapon's skill or enchantment on the weapon itself contribute only to its damage.

Weapon damage bonuses are calculated seperately for each of the two weapons. The skill that is used is the lesser of the skill in currently hitting weapon and the twoweaponing skill..

Note that twoweaponing skill bonuses for both to-hit and damage differ from single-weaponing skill bonuses (See Skills for details).

If you wield an artifact weapon as a secondary weapon and attempt to #twoweapon, you will not be able to engage in two-weapon combat. A message will appear saying "Your <artifact weapon> resists being held second to another weapon!" SLASH'EM removes this restriction.

Choices for Secondary Weapon

When twoweaponing, an obvious choice for the first weapon is your favorite artifact weapon. For the second weapon, popular choices include:

• Silver saber, very useful for fighting demons in Gehennom
• Silver spear, for the same reason
• Trident, due to its high damage versus large monsters
• Crysknife, for good damage and to-hit bonus
• Katana, high damage, and uses the long sword skill

Two-weapon combat while polymorphed

You can twoweapon while polymorphed only if your polymorphed form has two weapon attacks. Most monsters with this property are not valid polymorphable forms. The complete list of polymorphable monsters that can twoweapon is:

• h dwarf lord
• h dwarf king
• o orc-captain
• A Aleax
• H ettin
• @ elf-lord
• @ Elvenking
• & marilith
• & pit fiend
• & balrog

and in SLASH'EM:

• h duergar
• & bearded devil

Two weapon combat skill

Two weapon combat
Max	Role
Basic	Archeologist, Barbarian
Skilled	Knight, Tourist, Valkyrie
Expert	Rogue, Samurai

SLASH'EM

For SLASH'EM players, the commands to activate the two-handed combat skill are #twoweapon or #2weapon. Only certain roles and certain races can fight two-handed.

Of the game's many races, only humans and dwarves can twoweapon. Annoyingly, other races might still see "two-handed combat" in their #enhance screen even though they cannot use it. Attempting to activate two-handed combat produces the message, "Droven Barbarians aren't able to use two weapons at once."

SLASH'EM roles that can twoweapon, in addition to those in vanilla NetHack, are Flame Mage, Ice Mage, and Yeoman. All can reach Skilled proficiency.

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.