(Okay, I’m pissed, because the first time I tried to submit this, it gave me a 404 and I lost it all. Not fun.)

Read: BOWMAN stuff. So if you’re not a bowman, leave because you won’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about. And even if you do, it doesn’t apply to you.

And if you are one, reading this blog, or at least its ending, will answer ALL your questions about whether getting something that adds, say, 8 dex or 3 attack, is better.

UPDATE: forgot to say, it works for crossbowmen too. The numbers are a lil different but the basic idea is the same.

Thought-rant: The DEX-to-attack ratio.

People often say: “3 dex = 1 att”. Though it IS a good estimate, dex and att aren’t in the same place in the damage formula. So 1 att will never equal any fixed amount of dex. No, not 2.767 dex either.

Max damage = (3.4 * DEX + STR) /100 * w.atk

This looks different than the Hidden Street one, but I assure you it is the same formula. Now, your DEX is always approximately 4 times your STR. Go check your stat screen for yourself. So for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say it is. Now I’m going to replace the ‘STR’ in the formula, with ‘DEX / 4’.

Warning: anyone who has not taken algebra should skip this part and go to the ‘Conclusion’ below. And anyone impatient who doesn’t like to read long stuff should go to the ‘Final Conclusion’ farther below.

(3.4 * DEX + DEX / 4) /100 * W.atk
(3.4 * DEX + 0.25 * DEX) / 100 * W.atk
((3.4 + 0.25) * DEX) / 100 * W.atk
(3.65 * DEX) / 100 * W.atk
3.65 / 100 * DEX * W.atk
0.0365 * DEX * W.atk

Conclusion: the people who have not taken algebra can continue where they left off, here.

No, this isn’t a conclusion in the normal sense, because it doesn’t conclude my thought-rant. But we’ve concluded that your max damage can be estimated by multiplying your dex, with your weapon attack, and then multiplying the whole thing with 0.0365.

Now let’s pretend the 0.0365 doesn’t exist. That we’re going to add it in later or something. Not that we are.

For all the calculations below: Dex times attack equals your max damage.

So if you have 1 dex and 1 weapon attack, your max damage is going to be 1, right? That’s simple enough. Now, if we were to raise dex by 5, it would obviously be: 6*1 = 6 max damage. So raising dex by 5 increases your max damage by 5 as well. We can see that the same goes for weapon attack.

So in this case, raising dex and raising the same amount of weapon attack raises the same amount of max damage. So 1 dex = 1 att.

Now, let’s say we have 20 dex, and 10 att. Our max damage is going to be 20*10 = 200. If we raise dex by 5, we’ll have 25 dex and 10 att, and 25*10 = 250 max damage. Which is 50 more.

If we were to raise weapon attack by 5 instead, we’d have 20 dex and 15 att, and 20*15 = 300 max damage. Which is 100 more than we had originally.

We can see here that in this situation, 2 dex = exactly 1 att. Notice something else: our dex is exactly twice our att. Is this always the case?

What if we had 10 dex, and 30 att? Then our max damage would be 10*30 = 300. Raising 5 dex makes it 15 dex, 30 att, and 450 max damage, for an improvement of 150. Raising 5 att makes it 35 att, and 10 dex, making it 350 max damage with an improvement of only 50.

So raising dex is actually 3 times more effective than raising weapon attack. 1 dex = 3 weapon attack in this case. Also notice, our weapon attack was 3 times more than our dex! I think we’ve found a pattern.

If we were to multiply everything by 0.0365, you’d see we’d get all the same answers. I just took it out for simplicity’s sake.

Final Conclusion (and this does conclude my thought-rant):

So, to find out how much dex is equivalent to 1 weapon attack for YOU, simply divide your dex (with all equips) by your attack (with all bonuses). I’ll use myself as an example. I have 202 dex and 73 weapon attack. So if I divided 202 / 73, I get 2.767. That means, for me, 2.767 dex = 1 att for my max damage. Do it with your dex and attack, and find out how much dex 1 weapon attack counts as for you.