Hammer

Hammer is a type of melee weapon available to the Fateless One in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Using powerful focused attacks, the hammer is a close-range weapon, good at destroying small enemies with a single swing as well as staggering large enemies with their high damage output per hit. Being part of the Might-based weapon set, they are intended for use by fighter-style characters, and are bolstered by the Brutal Weaponry and Hammer Mastery passives in the Might ability tree.

Damage Characteristics[]

Hammers will always have a base damage consisting solely of Physical Damage.

They have a Very Slow attack speed, making them the slowest melee weapon type in Amalur.

They have a Moderately Few amount of combat moves available for those who invest in the Brutal Weaponry series of abilities, equal to the number available to the Longbow, Staff, and Chakrams.

They deal the Greatest damage output per hit of all melee weapons, compensating for their very slow attack speed and moveset restrictions.

Weapon analysis: Hammer is the highest DPS weapon in the game by a landslide, featuring severing good things, such as no piercing damage (meaning no need to aim for multiple scaling), fairly fast 3-hits combo, extremely high base damage. On the other hand, its coverage is limited, which can be problematic against multiple enemies and can't benefit from bladed weapons buffs.

Hammer Abilities[]

The Fateless One can learn new attack techniques with the hammer by investing in the Brutal Weaponry series of abilities, and can increase damage delivered by the use of hammer by investing in the Hammer Mastery ability.

Minotaur Rush: Hold and release to rush down enemies with a charge and horizontal slam.
Spine Bender: Attack while blocking to perform a devastating kick, hook, and smash.
Crushing Blow - After a timed parry, attack to lift and smash your enemy.

However, unlike the other weapons in the Might set, Blade Honing and Envenomed Edge do not work with hammers, so the Fateless One should invest their ability points elsewhere if they plan to use hammers regularly.

Crafting Hammers[]

Main article: Blacksmithing

The Fateless One can craft hammers at any Blacksmithing Forge by using a plumb and a shaft; grips and bindings are optional components. With sufficient skill, mastercrafted hammers that offer a bonus percentage to total damage can be created.

The Fateless One can also disassemble existing hammers for salvage, recovering some of the above-mentioned components.

List of Common Hammers[]

List of Unique Hammers[]

Notes and Advice[]

The hammer's main attacks, while extremely powerful, are also extremely slow. They tend to have a lengthy "downtime" following each attack, which can leave the Fateless One open to counter-attacks from surrounding enemies.
The charge move Minotaur Rush is a great opening attack, as it covers distance quickly as well as eliminating the targeted enemy from the fight if one can land the whole attack chain.
Due to the slow speed of the hammer, one should try to focus down smaller, weaker enemies first, as this will allow one to focus down the larger, more dangerous enemies without fear of constant interruption.
Using one's shield to bait enemies into attacking can help to separate them from a group. Also, the block-move Spine Bender has a snap-kick starting move, which is much quicker than the standard attack, and thus is very good at exploiting the small counterattack time-window following a successful block.
Relentless Assault is extremely useful for hammer-users, as it removes most enemies' ability to interrupt the hammer's powerful attack chains. One should seriously consider investing in this ability if they plan to use hammers regularly.