Melee stats

[Gallows]

What stats do you suggest for killing a fox headon with a melee weapon char? Using a crappy axe.

Str -
Cons -
Melee -
Unarmed -

And also a boar. :3

Would also be nice if anyone would tell me how to get easy LP without spending days waiting.

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

You don't have a sword? I would suggest about 50 MC against a fox and 100 MC against a boar since a stone axe chop is very cumbersome and ineffective as an attack. You may want to take a look at Dataslycer's combat guide for the best method of combatting animals. I would recommend you getting a sword soon though as it is much better than a stone axe.

[Procne]

And before getting a sword I would suggest to go for unarmed fighting. Punch is doing only slightly less damage than stone axe, if not more thanks to different scaling with attack bar. Also I believe it has lower cooldown than chop AND it doesn't require initiative. With unarmed you also get the chance to use maneuvers like oak stance, bloodlust and death or glory.

40-50 unarmed should be fine I believe.

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

Punch's cooldown is less than 50% of chop meaning you can attack more often though this doesn't account for the flex you require for 2 punches or 1 chop or the IP required for chop. In other words you can punch much faster than you can chop. It means you are much better at depleting the defense bar of the fox which is me important than the damage increase for a stone axe.

However if you already invested in skills for melee combat, try investing points into unarmed combat and work with that until you get your sword and decide what path you wish to partake.

[TeckXKnight]

I apologize for butting in but don't forget Agility. It factors into the speed of your attacks and your opponents attacks.
Definitely read Dataslycer's guide and for a Fox I'd advise having both Melee and Unarmed. It's expensive to raise both but you can keep them both to ~25 and be successful which is substantially cheaper than raising any one to 50. You can use your unarmed to keep your defense up and use Melee to kill them.

[Procne]

I apologize for butting in but don't forget Agility. It factors into the speed of your attacks and your opponents attacks.
Definitely read Dataslycer's guide and for a Fox I'd advise having both Melee and Unarmed. It's expensive to raise both but you can keep them both to ~25 and be successful which is substantially cheaper than raising any one to 50. You can use your unarmed to keep your defense up and use Melee to kill them.

I agree that agility is important, at least more important than constitution. Although I must admit that I see almost no difference after increasing agility to 100 from 20-30.

However I can't agree with increasing both melee and unarmed, or at least using melee offensively and unarmed defensively. With unarmed and melee being on equal level it is better to defend with shield maneuver, than with dodge for example (25% from shield to def. weight). With stone axe dealing comparable damage to punch combined with axe needing many initiative points as well as full attack bar - it would just be better to use punch. Having said that raising melee skill just for a shield would be a waste of LP.

[TeckXKnight]

You shouldn't be using solely dodge defensively. The point is to utilize maneuvers as they feed you initiative points, increase your defense bar, increase your attack bar, and make you recover from an attack faster. Knowing how to juggle Oak Stance and Bloodlust alone will win you more combats than you can imagine. When you start utilizing Combat Meditation and Death or Glory too UA becomes a brilliant weapon against animals and players alike.
Punch and Chop would require the same amount of attack bar, as that's merely percent of your combat weight applied, and the stone axe achieves a damage threshold that punching does not. Foxes will run away if you try to punch them to death and you won't catch them. Foxes will die in two chops if you chop them to death and never get the chance to run away.

As for amount of agility, it's based against your opponents agility as well, so as long as you have double their agility (I forget if it's actually based on a square root and is 4x to be honest) you attack at 1.25x speed and they attack at .75x speed and you're at the greatest advantage. Depending on the animal and their level will determine when agility stops being useful.

[Procne]

I didn't even mention dodge.
I was talking about other maneuvers and shield. If you were going to keep melee and unarmed at the same level then it would be better to use shield, which is based on melee, for taking hits instead of other maneuvers, which are based on unarmed.

As for the punch damage - maybe it's just me, but it seemed that at 40% attack bar it was dealing almost the same damage as on 100% attack, with enemy having 10-20% defense (same enemy, same level of skill) and damage was very similar to what stone axe did with full attack bar.

Anyway, the initiative cost of melee attacks is already making fight longer - you need to make those 3-4 hits, which is 12-16 IP.
In my opinion, it's better to raise unarmed to 40, than to have UA and melee at 25. Your maneuvers become stronger, you can use free (in terms of IP) attacks which are faster at the same time.

[Sitting_Bill]

I would buy a nice sword (I can sell you one ). Stone axes are not very good in combat, chop needs 4IP and the damage of the stone axe is pretty low. Sting only needs 2IP, and a bronze sword has 325 damage @ q10 and 10str.

But seriously, everyone has their own combat style. I think its useful to have a bit of melee to finish off animals when their defense is low, but I prefer having my UA much higher than MC, for punching down their defense. If you want to be a more MC oriented fighter, I think thats more complicated, since you can't use manouvers well.

For a fox I needed ~40ua, for a boar, it varies depending on how clever you are. They have a move that gives them advantage, which may be tricky to counter if you are inexperienced. I would say 100ua would be safe - I think thats when I got the hang of fighting them.

[dagrimreefah]

...and 100 MC against a boar...

I killed a boar today with 30 ua. lol

But YOU are talking about MC sooooo....