Answered: Which is better- Thulecite Club or Dark Sword?

[Grim the]

Have you ever wondered the classic question- "Which is better? Club or sword?" and nobody had a conclusive answer? Well you've come to the right place, because i have answers!

Which one has higher DPS?
- The player attacks once every 0.433 or 0.466 seconds (13-14 server ticks), meaning 2.33 times a second. I'll use 0.433 for keeping things managable.
(Thanks to Guille for discovering this) 

Dark Sword DPS:
68 damage, 2.33 times a second, meaning 158 DPS.

Thulecite Club DPS: (without tentacles)
59.5 damage, 2.33 times a second, meaning 138.635 DPS .
- Note that the above statement assumes no tentacles

20% of the time, the Thulecite Club will summon a tentacle, and assuming 1 in 5 hits will always spawn one, this means that there will be a new shadow tentacle every 2.15 seconds there will be a shadow tentacle, meaning the tentacles give an extra 15.81 DPS per hit, or 31.62 DPS for both, increasing the Thulecite Club's damage to 154.445 or 170.255 DPS, depending on how many times the tentacles hit.

- Please note that this assumes "perfect" rng, and Lady Luck and/or Rngesus may not be on your side.
- In addition, this assume every tentacle hits at least once for dps with tentacles.

But what about cost?

Thulecite Club total damage:*
{[59.5x200]+([200/5]x68)} aka 14,620 damage

Dark Sword total damage:
{68x100} aka 6,800 damage

considering the fact the club takes 3 living logs, this means that you can instead use 3 living logs to make 3 swords, for 20,400 damage, 5,780 damage more than a thulecite club, meaning the damage to living log ratio is better for swords.
however
considering the fact the sword takes 5 nightmare fuel, and the club 4, this means the fuel to damage ratio for the club is 25% better than a club, and 1/4 of a club is 3655, while 1/5 of a sword is 1360.

This means that if you're low on logs, make a sword. Is you're low on fuel, make a club.

*this assumes you get a tentacle every 5 hits (20%) and it hits 2 times for 68 damage

Conclusion:
- Thulcite Club has higher DPS if the tentacles hit, and Dark Sword is higher if they don't 
- Thulecite Club is better in terms of nightmare fuel cost, but Dark Sword is better in terms of Living Logs
- Thulecite Club gives 10% speed, so you could possibly do 10% more damage, if you kite.
- Niether is really "Best", but thulecite club is good for both tanking and kiting.

And no, the tentacles are not bugged.

This is also my first forum post so that's cool I guess.

[Wardin25]

I usually play Wormwood, so I go for Dark swords, since I can easily recover lost sanity by bringing some pinecones and I can have a base speed boost, appart from that, the tentacles from the club are stationary, and unless youre tanking (which I dont usually do) your enemy wont stand still so it wont be worth it.

Also Wormwood is kind of a walking Dark sword machine, and its kinda annoying having to go trhough the lenghty process of getting large ammounts of Thulecite clubs

[BeeClops]

*this assumes you get a tentacle every 5 hits (20%) and it hits 2 times for 68 damage

I heard there is a bug with the club, and that it will only the first tentacle it casts will deal damage, the ones following don't deal any at all; maybe someone can confirm if this is the case or not.

The obvious advantage the sword has over the club is that you can have 8 swords in 2 inventory slots, while with clubs you can only carry 2. So you get around double the damage if you decide to use your weapon slots for swords, not to mention that if you use magi/bone armor you kind of want to carry nmfuel with you anyway. 

[BoysenSyrup]

I like both, but for how I play, dark swords are more common and in higher abundance.

[Wardin25]

1 minute ago, BeeClops said:

The obvious advantage the sword has over the club is that you can have 8 swords in 2 inventory slots, while with clubs you can only carry 2. 

you mean the resources to craft them?

[Pop Guy]

The fact that the dark sword does not require thulecite and is prototizable makes it much better in my opinion. If the thulecite club had 68 damage then it would be worth the expense; otherwise the sword remains a better alternative.

[Grim the]

8 minutes ago, BeeClops said:

*this assumes you get a tentacle every 5 hits (20%) and it hits 2 times for 68 damage

I heard there is a bug with the club, and that it will only the first tentacle it casts will deal damage, the ones following don't deal any at all; maybe someone can confirm if this is the case or not.

The obvious advantage the sword has over the club is that you can have 8 swords in 2 inventory slots, while with clubs you can only carry 2. So you get around double the damage if you decide to use your weapon slots for swords, not to mention that if you use magi/bone armor you kind of want to carry nmfuel with you anyway. 

As shown by Guille (the same person who got the attacks per second for me), its not bugged in either DS or DST

 

[Well-met]

shadow tentacles have a tiny range and seem very slow to respond. they're hopeless for mobs that move even the slightest around.

if they acted more like real tentacles I might consider the question, but until then its the sword easily.

[BeeClops]

9 minutes ago, Wardin25 said:

you mean the resources to craft them?

Yes, ofc that's what I mean. If the club could be crafted, then it may be the better option.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

i only see barely worth to use the club against toad (if he isnt wet but idk who will want fight a dry toad) and fw

against klaus is the worst weapon to use and for other mobs and bosses the tentacles dont do anything because they move

[Grim the]

Antlion is great for clubs

[BeeClops]

6 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

i only see barely worth to use the club against toad (if he isnt wet but idk who will want fight a dry toad) and fw

against klaus is the worst weapon to use and for other mobs and bosses the tentacles dont do anything because they move

what's wrong with using it when he's wet? Since you said it I realized that's probably the only fight I consistently used it for. 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

4 minutes ago, BeeClops said:

what's wrong with using it when he's wet? Since you said it I realized that's probably the only fight I consistently used it for. 

because you can use morning star to get similar dps and wasting way less resources

ofc, assuming non volt goat jelly fights

[BeeClops]

Just now, ArubaroBeefalo said:

because you can use morning star to get similar dps and wasting way less resources

ofc, assuming non volt goat jelly fights

oh you're right. I can't even think about Toad without thinking goat jelly lol.

[Mx-Pain]

I prefer thulecite sword, only if I use it with the skin that make it bigger  It look more badass 

Honestly I think the crystal  sword from the lunar island is way better than this 2.

cheers !

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Just now, BeeClops said:

oh you're right. I can't even think about Toad without thinking goat jelly lol.

and i dont know how worth is if you are using volt goat jelly since the club has 59,5 damage and the sword has 68, is a difference of only 8.5 but with the jelly it is 8.5*3= 25.5 damage per hit (and if you are using wolf it reaches 50) and taking in count that the club cost 3 logs, 4 thulecite and 4 nightmere fuel for 200 uses meanwhile the sword, to reach 200 hundred uses, will cost 2 living logs and 10 nightmere fuel

without jelly or morning star (which it makes the fight really fast already) the club has clearly an advantage vs the sword and will not drain your sanity but with jelly i think they are similar in damage output

[BeeClops]

1 minute ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

[...]

It's true, but with long fights on console not needing to change your weapon during a fight is a huge deal for me, or changing it 1 time instead of 3-4 times, and also the fact that I need a lot less sanity food if any, made me go with the club.

[Axe_]

Something to note is how this applies to damage scaling effects like wolfgang, wigfrid, volt goat jelly, and pepper spice, considering the effects don't carry over to the thule club's shadow tentacles, you might get more dps with dark swords depending on how large the scaling is.

I haven't done the math, so this is only my theory at this point in time. Should be pretty easy to figure out though, just multiply the dark sword dps by the multiplier and the portion of the thule club's dps that's dependent on the player by the multiplier.

Anyhow, nice post! Never thought of the different log and fuel ratios of the weapon.

[Wardin25]

31 minutes ago, Mx-Pain said:

I prefer thulecite sword, only if I use it with the skin that make it bigger  It look more badass 

Honestly I thunk the crystal  sword from the lunar island is way better than this 2.

cheers !

oh right I forgot about those lol

I remember i would rush the lunar island to have 6 of those

[Muzarello]

I prefer the club just because of the skin, the durability change is welcome but it still is kinda expensive compared to how many dark swords I can make, If I get one early game I love it, late game is just a cool weapon.

[Cheggf]

I've always thought that the Thulecite Club was good against more-or-less stationary enemies and the Dark Sword is better overall because you can craft as many as you want without going underground to a specific location. This doesn't really change what I thought, but it still is an interesting post. Thanks for sharing, especially that bit about player attack speed. I was under the apparently incorrect belief that it was 2.5 times a second.

[bruhmoment23]

The only helpful thing about Thule Club is the speed boost, other than that the tentacles are pretty worthless and i prefer going with sword all the way.

[ShadowDuelist]

1 hour ago, bruhmoment23 said:

The only helpful thing about Thule Club is the speed boost, other than that the tentacles are pretty worthless and i prefer going with sword all the way.

I was about to say this, the only times the club becomes important to have in my opinion, is when you didn’t get any tusk during winter for whatever reason , so 10% speed boost is better than none.

As soon as I get the tusk I’ll just use the club for tanking dfly, kill toad, kill antlion, or just to kill random enemies and get rid of it (and never make one again)

The durability buff made it “not as bad” as it was, but still not worth making. I’d reduce the cost to just 1 living log OR make it deal the same damage as a dark sword so it becomes a weapon you’d want to progress to beyond the dark sword.

[Guille6785]

2 hours ago, Cheggf said:

I was under the apparently incorrect belief that it was 2.5 times a second.

I'd like to rectify that the values I gave to grim about attack speed were obtained from a 30 tickrate server, so I tested again on 15 and it seems that attack speed alternates between 6 and 7 ticks for 15-tickrate servers, so 0.4 seconds for fast hits and 0.46666 for normal ones, kinda making you attack 2.5 times per second at times (though it's just momentarily, the game loves to change your attack speed for no reason)

[1bubbainpa]

The major downside that works against the club is the fact that you can make a dark sword at whim once you craft it, whereas a club requires a trip to the ruins.