Talk:Weapon Strength

This article needs improve
I didn't want to cause troubles when I changed the page, but I have tested many weapons with many enemies, and I'm 100% sure that there  are wrong numbers.
 * I went back and checked my notes, and I even loaded up the games again to check. The numbers on there now are correct. This page isn't for personal theories on weapon damage, it is for confirmed facts about them. Nothing is placed on this page without making sure there is sufficient data to back up the numbers. The only way there could be an error is if something is copied down wrong, such as with the Hookshot there. But we do not put up numbers on the page just because we think it should be something. Just because something is a magic item doesn't mean it has max damage. 20:26, September 22, 2010 (UTC)

Should the Jump Attack and Spin Attack be included here? Don Lark Kiin
 * I don't see why it'd be practical. They double the attack power of whichever sword Link has. It'd be messy to list them all for each sword. 17:46, September 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * Scratch that, I thought of a way to include that and similar things. 19:32, September 23, 2010 (UTC)

In my experience in Skyward Sword, the Skyward Strike does half the damage of the sword until you get the True Master Sword in normal playthrough. Also, I have noted that the Master Sword deals approximately three times the damage of the Goddess Sword (six times the Practice Sword), though I may be off on this. I'd also like to inquire as to why the Massive Swords (from the Koloktos battle) are not listed. Kyro-Dizzy


 * OK, what evidence do you have that these values are correct? I've included my evidence in the table. If the Master Sword did only three times as much damage as the Goddess Sword it would take nine hits to kill a wooden shield Moblin, not seven. I know the Prima guide says the Master Sword is three times as strong, but these and other hits-to-kill values indicate that it isn't correct. I made very sure of all these values with extensive testing in my copy of Skyward Sword. As for Skyward Strikes, I'm less sure and I'd go back and re-test them, but my Wii has been damaged somehow and no longer reads discs. If you can present data supporting the value you say, I'll change the table. As for Koloktos's swords, I must confess I just didn't get around to testing their strength until after the Wii stopped being able to run the game. I'd be delighted if you could test their strength for me. There is one thing that may complicate this, though: Koloktos cannot die to anything but its own swords. Its health can be brought down to zero with just the Goddess Sword, but it will stay alive until it is hit with its own sword. This may make precise determination of the number of hits it takes with the Goddess Sword versus the number of hits it takes with its own swords difficult. It will also be time-consuming, as it will likely require several repetitions of the original Koloktos fight (not the one in the Lightning Round where you have a better sword). --Osteoderm Jacket 16:20, 31 July 2012 (EDT)


 * For the Skyward Strike, if you use it at the beginning of the game, in the Sealed Grounds, for example, against a normal Deku Baba (to emphasize: not a Quatro Baba), it will take two hits to defeat, whereas the Goddess Sword will finish it in one. My memory can be rather unreliable at times, but I recall that, with the Goddess Longsword or Whitesword, the Skyward Strike does damage equal to the Goddess Sword. And, as I said, I may have been off on the strength of the Master Sword. I can't say with absolute certainty that it IS three times. However, I know that ordinary Red Bokoblins require three hits to defeat with the Goddess Sword, and the chief variety generally takes four. The Master Sword for me has mostly taken two hits for the chief Bokoblins. (The exception for this is the Horde Battle, during which the chiefs take about three, while the normal ones still go out in one.) Kyro-Dizzy


 * I don't remember either of these things being the case, but OK. Again, I can't test this in my own copy of the game at present. Perhaps someone else who is currently in a part of the game that uses the Goddess Sword could help us out with this. --Osteoderm Jacket 19:51, 31 July 2012 (EDT)


 * I have recently tested this, and it came with odd results. As I said before, the Deku Baba takes two hits from the Skyward Strike at its base level to defeat. The interesting part is that this is the only case. I've tested several other enemies in the game, including Keese, and all of them went down in the same number of hits as if I'd used the sword itself. Kyro-Dizzy 21:32, 11 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I would like your confirmation on something. The power values for the Bow's variations in Skyward Sword is based on an uncharged shot. That is the case, correct? Kyro-Dizzy


 * They are. There is a note below the table that the power is 1.5 times greater than that displayed if the shot is charged, but I can make it more explicit that that is the case. --Osteoderm Jacket 00:05, 12 August 2012 (EDT)


 * In my most recent playthrough of Skyward Sword, I tackled Koloktos using the Goddess Sword during the second phase of the battle. It's possible to damage its core using the Goddess Sword alone for this part; the massive swords are only necessary for cutting its legs and breaking the grating over the core, as I suspected. So, here are the results of my test:
 * Using a massive sword, it takes ten hits to defeat the automaton. With the Goddess Sword, it requires thirty. So, it seems that the massive swords deal three times as much damage.
 * As a side note, whether you're using a massive sword or your own, Koloktos will only allow three strikes before it reforms. Kyro-Dizzy (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Just to make sure I understand correctly: You can actually deal the finishing blow with the Goddess Sword? That bit doesn't require one of Koloktos's swords? It occurs to me that what I experienced might have been a result of doing my testing during the Lightning Round, with the True Master Sword. It's possible that whoever was programming Koloktos forgot to program it to be able to die to the True Master Sword specifically, and the Goddess Sword works normally. As I recall, the True Master Sword worked similarly to using arrows against Volvagia in OoT, which can deplete its health but cannot trigger its death sequence, which requires a sword or the Megaton Hammer. Osteoderm Jacket (talk) 09:32, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

What about Twilight Princess? Is there a reason why it's not here? Kyro-Dizzy 18:18, 10 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I haven't tested the values in Twilight Princess. All the tables of weapon strengths have been arrived at by me or another editor testing the weapons' relative strengths in that game.Osteoderm Jacket (talk) 01:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Point of clarification: in the Phantom Hourglass section, is that 4-pt damage score for the Hammer with the charge? If not, and it'd be 8 points, then the tense of "double" in the note would be better in future tense (ie: "will double"). --Xu-kitty (talk) 10:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Representation of weapon strength values in tables
I seem to be running into trouble with these tables when it comes to representing certain extremely low or high damage values. In the table for, on the low end there's the Bee, whose stings deal 1/4 the damage of the basic sword strike, and on the high end there's the Purple Potion, a single use of which deals 16 such strikes' worth of damage. Currently these values (along with that of the Golden Bee, which is 3/4) aren't showing up in the table, at least for me. How do I remedy this? --Osteoderm Jacket (talk) 01:06, 27 November 2013 (UTC)


 * As you can see here, the page only defines the values 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8. We'll need to add 1/4 (haven't quite figured out the code for it yet :P)


 * A dedicated template would be more versatile than variables, but for now this will do for 16.


 * Perhaps it would be better to ditch the green bars and just use numbers, or maybe add the numbers next to them. 03:40, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect information about weapon damage
When I was playing Majora's Mask on the Nintendo 64 emulator, I got ISG with the Kokiri sword and it took 6 hits to defeat a like like with it then I got ISG with a deku stick and it also took 6 hits to dafeat a like like which means that the deku stick does 1 damage on certain enemies. I not only had the deku stick drawn out. I also activated ISG in the first place with a deku stick so don't tell me I made a mistake and it goes by which weapon I activated ISG with and not which weapon I have drawn out. Blackbombchu (talk) 00:37, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Did you then test whether the Deku Stick kills a Like Like in the same number of hits when used normally and not in a glitch? Given the nature of the infinite sword glitch and various other glitches, there's a good chance hits-to-kill may behave differently while they're active. Osteoderm Jacket (talk) 09:35, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Majora's Mask Damage
Just wanna say that Great Fairy Sword does more damage than the Energy Beam, but less than the Fierce Deity Sword, not sure if this should be reflected, but it's tested by fighting Odolwa. It takes 3 hits to kill him with GF and FDS, but takes several hits with EB. Haven't tested other weapons, I just thought I'd make a point of saying the beams are actually weaker than the sword, and that the GFS is actually really good despite what a lot of people might think. Yoboom21 (talk) 18:15, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Twilight Princess
Recently I've been playing Twilight Princess again and I decided to take the opportunity to create a weapon strength table for that game. I've got things mostly figured out, but unfortunately the weapons seem to have less consistent damage output than they do in most other titles, i.e. the relative damage dealt by weapons varies depending on the enemy. It's not completely random; any given weapon appears to have an amount of damage it deals to the majority of enemies, with different values for a few. The main problem is with the especially powerful weapons such as Bombs and the Ball and Chain, where most enemies die in one hit and there's enough inconsistency between the few enemies that don't that there isn't much to base a "typical" strength value on. You can see what I have so far on my sandbox page. Should I add this yet, or does it need more work? Should especially inconsistent weapons (e.g. the Ball and Chain) even be listed? Osteoderm Jacket (talk) 07:04, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, has anyone tested the power of the Mortal Draw against various bosses? (Or unique minibosses, e.g. Death Sword, Darkhammer.) I regret to say that in my present playthrough (now in the endgame just before the Ganondorf fight) I didn't bother replaying fights with bosses, because while I was playing through the game I assumed that, given how heavily scripted and full of special mechanics most of the boss fights in this game are, results from them were unlikely to be usefully generalizable to combat against regular enemies. (In particular, most of them seem to be set up to make it as likely as possible that you will take three, not two or four, successful cycles of "expose vulnerability, attack combo" to win, in at least the "main" phase of the fight if there is more than one phase.) I also assumed that there were enough high-HP regular enemies that I'd be able to easily verify the strengths of all weapons/the multipliers from all sword techniques. However, now that I've done some weapon testing, I've realized that there is only one enemy that can be hurt by the Mortal Draw but isn't one-shotted by it (even with the Ordon Sword): the Darknut. For damage purposes, Darknuts appear to treat Mortal Draws as no more powerful than regular sword strikes. That leaves bosses, and at this point the only boss I've got left to use it on is Ganondorf. I know it can be used against some of the game's (mini)bosses (e.g. Darkhammer), but I wasn't gauging the damage at the time because, in retrospect foolishly, I assumed it wouldn't matter whether I did. Now it looks like the only way to determine a damage value for this technique is to test it against bosses. Has anyone got, say, the number of Mortal Draws vs. regular sword strikes needed to finish off the second phase of Stallord? (Boy does this game make me wish I had the Hero's Charm from The Wind Waker.) Osteoderm Jacket (talk) 09:50, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Anyone have anything to say in response to my questions about Twilight Princess? --Ice Medallion (talk) 06:48, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Link's Awakening
It's not just "appears" -- the guide specifically outlines how much damage each weapon does to each monster, and they definitely vary monster to monster. I'm not sure this can be covered in one section (if covered at all, it would be better for a monster-specific stat infobox on each page), and should probably just say "varies monster to monster".KrytenKoro (talk) 04:33, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * You have the official guide? If so, could you check what the most common relative damage values for weapons are? I ask because realistically we probably can't have weapon damage output for each monster on its own page, and just saying "damage varies" with no further information isn't very useful. --Ice Medallion (talk) 06:31, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The guide only shows how much damage each enemy deals and which weapons can be use, it doesn't show the damage given from them. Chuck (talk) 06:44, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Oops, sorry for misreading that then.KrytenKoro (talk) 14:34, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Any objective way to write this?
Is there any way we could contact a well-known Zelda hacker to delve the games for the default strength values? In addition, would it be possible to write this in a manner that is less of a study log, and more encyclopedic? Otherwise, I feel like it would make sense for this to be a ZeldaWiki: article, some sort of essay.KrytenKoro (talk) 04:36, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The determination of the damage values for most of these has been through extensive testing and thus is plenty objective, but hacking data has been used when it's available. (For ALTTP, for instance.) Many of the newer games haven't been hacked, as far as I know. What would you want in an essay, exactly? The damage ratios between items aren't terribly consistent between games as opposed to within a single game, so I'm not really sure what an essay would consist of. --Ice Medallion (talk) 06:42, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * What I'm saying is that it's already an essay. Instead of presenting sourced facts as facts, it's basically a testing log: "here's how you go about proving this, here's what logic you use for these, here's how you should interpret this to make sense", etc. That doesn't mean it's wrong, I'm not disputing its findings at all. It's just, in the manner it's written, it's less an encyclopedic article and more an essay with a very personal narrating voice. And that kind of thing is fine on a wiki, I was just questioning whether, if it's gonna be written that way, if it was most appropriate in this namespace.KrytenKoro (talk) 14:34, 21 November 2014 (UTC)