Quick blade

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Name	Quick blade
Skill	Short Blades
Damage	4
Accuracy	+6
Base delay (%)	7 (70%)
Min delay	3 at skill 8
Hands	1H
Size	One-handed
Ranged?	No

A carefully wrought dagger which is preternaturally well-balanced, making it much easier for even inexperienced handlers to attack with it quickly. "He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword... -Julia Ward Howe, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". 1861

This weapon falls into the 'Short Blades' category. It is a one handed weapon.

The quick blade is the fastest weapon in the game, with a minimum weapon delay of 3 aut. Either Finesse or Haste will bring your attack to a hard minimum of 2 aut.

Sources

Quick blades are rare items.

• For those invested into Short Blades, Okawaru and Trog's weapon gifts are likely to gift one eventually. A scroll of acquirement also has a high chance of gifting 'rare' weapons.
• The Hall of Blades has a decent chance (~30.5%) of having a dancing quick blade, always branded. Also, deep elf blademasters have a 1/26 chance of holding one.
• Some of the more powerful spriggans have a chance of spawning with one.

Strategy

Quick blades are generally the strongest base type of the Short Blades. While a rapier will have slightly better damage from the weapon, quick blades swing faster, so they are stronger with 'flat damage' effects like slaying and auxiliary attacks. If you rely on Short Blades, it's likely for you to rely on flat damage, so the quick blade often comes out ahead.

With a good flat damage brand (electrocution, pain, distortion, possibly chaos), quick blades are quite powerful. A quick blade of distortion can take you through Zot.

	Quick blades
Mundane
Magical
Artifact
	Unrandarts
Gyre and Gimble
Vampire's Tooth

History

• In 0.31, quick blades will have base delay of 1.2 (mindelay 0.5), but will swing twice per turn.
• Prior to 0.30, quick blades could not naturally generate with brands.
• Prior to 0.29, quick blades dealt 5 base damage and scaled with strength instead of dexterity.
• Prior to 0.27, Cheibriados disapproved of quick blades.