Ossuary: Becoming a Bad-Ass Dual-Wielding Barbarian

Saturday, 13th March 2021

One of the most fun combinations of stats in Ossuary is an average attack strength and a high defence skill. This will always be offset by a lack of intelligence, but it has a real benefit in the mid-game: dual wielding becomes viable.

When you wield dual blades, the bonuses are added together. So if you have a high enough defence skill to forego a shield, you can keep hold of that +2 dagger when you find the +4 sword, and combine them together to give you a +6 attack. The same goes for the +6 axe: discard the dagger but keep the +4 sword and you have a +10 attack bonus which will slice through just about everything until you meet your first spectre.

Once the spectre appears, you're approaching the end game. It's now time to grow up and be responsible. While there are still physical creatures around it might be practical to keep the axe in one hand, swapping between the scroll and sword in the other as needed. But eventually you'll leave the skeletons behind. Even before then, those daemons hit hard. So this is the time you might consider using the shield again, and leaving your dual-wielding younger days behind.

One thing to note about dual wielding: it's useless to dual wield the wand along with any blade, even though you can see both bonuses applied to your stats. The wand causes intelligence to become your attack stat, rendering any bonus on your physical attack strength completely unused.