Swordfighting drop pattern

The drop pattern is different for each of the sword types. It's the pattern of colored blocks that are sent to an opponent in a swordfight in the initial form of sprinkles and swords. The colors chosen for the sword affect the arrangement of the colors in the pattern, but generally not the pattern itself. An exception to this is mirroring; a green, blue or purple guard will reverse the drop pattern, which can be good or bad depending on sword type.

Picking the Best Drop Pattern for you
Don't let appearances fool you; just because a drop pattern looks mixed doesn't necessarily mean it's as deadly as it looks, nor is a seemingly monochromatic pattern horrible. However, as a swordfighter, your style of play will invariably favor one broad type of sword or another, so here's a brief guide to picking the best one for you.

If your top priority is just keeping a clear well and breaking everything as soon as the option presents itself, you want a sword with a fairly mixed bottom two rows&mdash;since you'll be sending mostly single-row sprinkles to your opponent&mdash;like the stiletto, poniard, or skull dagger. While these swords do not have especially strong middle rows, their bottom two are the ones that get sent across the most, and they're the ones that are most devastating.

If you're a more advanced swordfighter who likes to build up big blocks and send strikes instead of sprinkles, you'll be needing a sword with strong columns, and not necessarily a strong bottom row. For this purpose, you'll be looking at the rapier, the long sword, the falchion, and the cleaver. Note that the rapier requires big strikes in order to be effective, because the effectively monochromatic lower rows won't do you much good.

The other swords are either notably weak (In particular the cutlass and dirk are notable for weakness despite price), or are specialized and not broadly used for that reason (The backsword, for example, is only available to box edition buyers, and is similar to the poniard in style and pattern.)