(i hope this is in the right forum section,if not,could somebody redirect me?)
I'm fairly new to spiral knights,and have just recently found out that a cold iron vanquisher is not that good of a sword,so i have decided to change my weaponry up a bit,and im now deciding to go down the electric brandish and fire autogun paths,will these paths end me up with fairly good weapons? or are there better one's i am not aware of?
Thanks.
The shock brandish is good, but requires 300 krogmo coins (or you can buy a shockburst brandish from the AH for a nice fee to save 50 krogmo coins). It took me weeks to accumulate 300 krogmo coins, and my voltedge will probably be my secondary brandish behind my Combuster (except in fire theme levels).
As for the pepperbox, yea, normal isn't that great (same reason the Cold Iron Vanquisher isn't that great). The pepperbox is an interesting weapon, and can be useful, but if you want optimal gear to start with, you should either go with an alchemer (if you want fire status) or if you like the autogun line, then go with the blitz needle.
+1 on all counts accept the ease of getting a Voltedge. I pretty much only pay Basil prices for recipes, so I feel like I got my Voltedge faster by grinding out PvP then I would have if I had to hunt through the clockworks for the recipes from Basil (plus the recipes where basically free, totally free if you win more than you lose).
I would state again the the Blitz is the best gun for taking down Vana by far, but I am personally not a fan of it elsewhere (it glues you in place for a long time & is useless against turrets, my main gun targets).
Fradow, Nordlead, and Bluescreenofdeath give good advice. Your planned elemental sword is good, and it's a good idea to get an elemental gun. But there is one problem. In most situations, you don't want all of your weapons to be elemental, because then you're weak against beasts and gremlins (and not great against slimes and fiends). Instead, you want two non-normal damage types, such as piercing and elemental. If you can't swing this, then you can get by with one normal weapon, although that's not ideal. So here are some options:
* elemental sword, Blitz Needle (good, and only a slight variation on your plan, but not great against turrets)
* elemental sword, Valiance (good, but an elemental gun would be better)
* piercing sword, elemental gun (quite good, but requires you to set aside your Brandish plan for a bit)
* shadow sword, elemental gun (good, but a little weak against fiends, and requires you to set aside your Brandish plan for a bit)
* elemental sword, elemental gun, and either a piercing weapon or a shadow weapon (requires you to get third weapon slot)
Maintaining a third weapon slot may not be as costly as you think. People use their unwanted ME to buy weapon slot upgrades for resale in the 150-200 CE range, or the equivalent in crowns. If you're playing multiple times per week, then you can achieve enough cash flow that keeping a third weapon slot is quite doable.
Even if you're not going to maintain a third weapon slot you shouldn't limit yourself to two weapons. I mean Arsenal Stations are there for a reason. Try many weapons, experiment, build your arsenal slowly, amass power. Do not try building best set out of only two weapons. The real point (and fun) in SK is to have wast and diverse arsenal and change your loadout according to challenge ahead. I know it's easier to focus on heating and upgrading two weapons at first, but never think of them as ultimate set that will be "the best" and will cover all possible situation, either in PvE and PvP alike.
As I hope you already suspect, which gear is best for you depends on your tastes and aptitudes, like whether you like to quickly steamroll through or slowly savour levels, which gates you like, how important visuals and sound effects are, etc.
The CIV is "not that good," in that the Leviathan Blade outperforms it, but it is still viable. Unfortunately, "pretty good, but slightly outperformed by another option" can quickly get intertuberated into "useless crap" even for a non-competitive game where a slight edge will only very rarely save you any revives. A handicap can cripple you in a competitive environment like PvP, but in the Clockworks it's no big deal. If you need a Normal-damage medium-sized sword, not for PvP, and like the looks of the CIV, then you should be able to enjoy one.
For the most part the first considerations in weapon choice are going to be class (as in, gun vs. sword vs. bomb) and damage type, (Normal, Elemental, Piercing, and Shadow) though Autoguns are an exception because they have higher potential to not be useful for a random player since they put restrictions on play style. Which class or classes to go for depends a lot on how you like to play and what you are most competent with, but my generic "safest bet" suggestion for when little info is provided is to go for an Elemental Gun and Piercing Sword, then decide on a Shadow weapon or maybe a Normal weapon after some experience. An Elemental sword and Normal gun is not a bad combination, though.
If you have already tried the vanilla Autogun enough to be sure you are comfortable with its offensive nature, and are thinking of the Pepperbox because you're in love with the pulling effect and/or Normal damage, the Pepperbox should be more of the same and you should know that the Piercing paths lose the pulling effect. OTOH, if the pulling effect is not what draws you to the Autoguns, the Piercing ones have better projectile range AND a tighter spread, and it seems the projectiles travel faster as well. As if that weren't enough, the increased range is enough to give a similarly wide spray at max range if that is what you need. If you're just in it for the ranged Fire infliction, the Alchemer is probably a safer bet and you might even want to consider a Brandish instead since they now reach pretty far with the charge attack. The Brandish only has a chance to inflict Fire on the charge attack, while the Alchemer can do it with any hit, but the Brandish inflicts "Strong Fire" while the Alchemer inflicts "Moderate Fire." I don't know how much difference in damage or duration there is between "Moderate" and "Strong," but the Brandish can safely attack Oilers, which can come in handy unless you have a Shadow sword equipped at the same time.
As noted, the Shockburst recipe is bought with Krogmo Coins. The Fireburst and Iceburst are bought from Basil, with Crowns. If you love PvP and do not covet any other Krogmo Coin recipes, the Shockburst recipe is a sensible purchase. Otherwise, it will be more expensive than the other Elemental Brandishes because some one has to unbind either the recipe or the weapon. Costs aside, preference between the 3 status effects for the Brandish is a matter of taste, so take with a large grain of salt any advice saying that one is far superior or inferior to the other two. Freeze is more defensive and shines in solo play or well-coordinated, experienced parties but mostly gets wasted in pick-up groups due to newbs and noobs preventing thaw damage by unfreezing targets early. Fire adds the most bonus damage against single targets but lacks defensive utility other than killing monsters more quickly. Shock is a compromise between the two but with an extra splashy bonus against clumped-up monsters and probably the best for pick-up groups, (Shock interruption might save your party some damage.) but might feel kinda wasteful against Mecha Knights since a lot of the time you'd only be upgrading their self-inflicted Shock.
As for my generic suggestion, if you are interested in more detail...
For Elemental guns, the main options are Alchemers and the Elemental path of the Pulsar. The Pulsar is really great for solo play, but has a reputation as an annoying weapon for party play since it is easy to misuse. If you take it into PUGs be prepared for whining about things like it being overpowered or its spamtastic explosions messing up team mates with knock and visual disruption, even from people who have never seen you misuse it, even after you have demonstrated ability to use it properly. If you take it into a party of any kind, it requires higher awareness of what team mates are doing than Alchemers but in a like-minded party it can be fun and satisfying to ruthlessly dominate monsters with Pulsars. For Alchemers, the Prismatech is probably the safest bet since the higher base damage (compared to the status-inflicting Alchemers) will definitely not cause you frustrations like the available status effects might for some Slimes. At the other end, Cryotech may be at a slight disadvantage since it often immediately cancels out its own freeze effect by safely thawing with the Alchemers' multi-hit mechanic. On the other hand, Alchemer shots bounce in a way that is not predictable, which can be annoying in places like Ironclaw Munitions Factory where there are lots of switches that can be inconvenient to hit at wrong times. Another big factor that might help you decide is that the Pulsars start to really shine right off the bat, even before the Elemental path becomes available, while the Alchemers are kinda weak up to 3-star and suddenly become vicious at 4-star when the multi-hit fun starts adding up fast and the charge attack can instantly pop turrets- even neutral type matchups like Prisma vs. Polyps, though it requires a bit more luck.
For the Piercing sword, the non-status-inflicting options are generally preferred as well but here I think you can afford to sacrifice some effectiveness if you think a status effect is more fun, since the Piercing swords are very powerful anyway. In case you haven't already read, the only known performance difference between the (non-status) Flourish and the Snarble Barb is the charge attack, so you can look at the descriptions in the wiki and decide between the two based on that, unless of course you particularly like or dislike Snarbolax runs. A Piercing sword is probably the most likely gear investment in the game to become and remain a valued part of any player's arsenal, unless said player decides to only use guns or bombs. If you find yourself wishing you could gun down Beasts and Fiends instead of getting close, the main options that go all the way to 5-star are Magnus and the Piercing Autoguns. Magnus is easier to use, but the Needlers produce more dramatic effects and, as noted by others, are popular for Vanaduke. If you end up deciding to be a bomber, the Spine Cone is the obvious choice. I do not know for sure, but it feels to me like it has a short charge-up time and fuse, so I like it as bombs go. There is talk about changing the Radiant Sun Shards, and though it seems unlikely to happen given player feedback so far, I'd rather not recommend something that might plausibly get changed soon.
The Nightblade is the first Shadow-type sword available, at 3 stars, and is a pretty safe investment much like the Piercing swords. Its intermediate balance between attack speed, reach and damage per hit is pretty neutral and the shield-cancel window is generously early like with the Pierce swords, so it's got the least potential to be hard to mesh with your playstyle. OTOH, the only other Shadow sword option, the Faust line, starts at 4-star, is more likely to be hard for a given random player to use, and its charge attack is definitely not for every one. (but it's really nice to be able to kill myself to share heat!) If you want to try a heavy sword on the cheap to see if it feels right for you, I suggest getting a Heavy Hatchet for Tier 1 since 1-star weapons are just so easy to afford for such experimentation. If you find yourself preferring guns against Gremlins and Slimes, the Shadowtech Alchemer (2-star) or Toxic Catalyser (3-star) are the earliest Shadow gun options that upgrade to 5-stars. All of the Alchemers behave similarly, but the twin Roarmulus guns are very different so the Toxic Catalyser cannot be trusted to give a good idea of how the Pulsar line behaves since they are used differently. If you find yourself liking to run RJP, the Toxic Catalyser can kill the boss by itself but I don't know about the Shadowtech.
First, you should read Bopp guide here which explain a lot about swords.
That said, Shock brandish is a very good elemental weapon, keep it. You should also look into a shadow and piercing swords.
The fire autogun line, Pepperbox, is not that good because it's normal damage. You'll either prefer a Blitz Needle (piercing autogun line) for FSC, the end game boss, or for more all-around side-arm, an elemental gun.