Blade Mastery

Passive: improves swords and daggers fighting skill.

Blade Mastery is a Barbarian Mastery (level 1, no prerequisites, passive, no mana). The Basin's page records it as the original game's Sword Mastery, renamed in Resurrected and widened to daggers under a new "blade" item type. With a blade-class weapon equipped it adds attack rating, damage and a chance of a critical hit that doubles the physical damage of the blow. The decisive number is that critical chance: 5% at level 1, 29% at level 20, and never more than 35%.

The numbers

The attack-rating bonus is skills.txt Param1 (40) plus Param2 (8) a level: +40% at level 1, +192% at level 20, +272% at level 30. The Basin's page gives the original game's 28% at level 1 with the same 8 a level and marks the 40 as Resurrected's; the table confirms it. The damage bonus is Param3 (28) plus Param4 (5) a level: +28% at level 1, +123% at level 20, +173% at level 30.

The critical-hit chance runs on a diminishing-returns curve from Param5 (0) toward Param6 (35): 5% at level 1, 17% at level 5, 23% at level 10, 29% at level 20, 31% at level 30. The Basin's table has it reach the 35% ceiling at level 60. All three lines read lvl (passivecalc1–3 are ln12, ln34 and dm56), so +skills from items count. There is no mana and no duration: the passive is always on with the right weapon.

How it works

The three bonuses are added to your character whenever a blade-class weapon is equipped, through the row's passive stats (passive_mastery_melee_th, passive_mastery_melee_dmg, passive_mastery_melee_crit), and apply to every melee attack with it: the attack rating goes into Chance to Hit, the damage joins your other Enhanced Damage, and the critical hit is rolled on each hit that lands. The Basin's page says what the critical does: it doubles the physical damage of the attack. Because the conversion of physical damage to another type happens after that doubling, the Basin says it also doubles the converted magic damage of Berserk and of Berserk's share in Concentrate and Frenzy.

A mastery critical is one of three ways to double a hit and they are mutually exclusive: the Basin's page says if one of mastery critical, Critical Strike or Deadly Strike succeeds the others are not rolled, so the chances do not add. Two sources combine as 100 − (100 − DS) × (100 − MCS) ÷ 100.

The Basin adds that the overlay a critical shows can be hidden by other overlays, which started the myth that poison damage stops it, and that the mastery critical does not apply when using Sacrifice charges.

Synergies and +skills

No synergies: a mastery has no dsc3 line and no synergy calc, nothing feeds it and it feeds nothing. Its three lines read lvl, so a +skill from an item is worth exactly a hard point: +8% attack rating, +5% damage and a step along the critical curve. Throwing Mastery, not Blade Mastery, applies to a throwing knife when it is thrown; Blade Mastery applies when it is swung.

Against players

A mastery never touches a player; its attack rating, damage and critical ride on the weapon hit, and a player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player.

Build notes

• Level 20 is +192% attack rating, +123% damage and a 29% double; +skills raise all three, so 20 hard points plus gear is where the 32–35% range lives.
• The critical is worth less when you already have Deadly Strike: at 40% Deadly Strike the mastery's 29% adds 17.4 points of chance, not 29.
• The critical doubles Berserk's magic damage too, which is why a blade is as good as any weapon on a Berserker.