Medieval combat game Mordhau was instantly a smash, rocketing onto Steam's most played list immediately after launch in April, and the developers report today that Mordhau has sold 1 million copies. For Mordhau fans, there's a great way to celebrate that impressive milestone: with an update that includes a new map and new weapons, including mortars.

The map is called Crossroads, intended for large scale battles with horses, the newly added mortars, and an objective in the center of the map for players to fight over. Also added to the mix in the update are javelins and heavy hand axes. The axes can also be used as repair hammers for fixing structures (by turning them around and using the blunt side, of course). 

The update also includes new armor paints, balance changes, and other tweaks to gameplay, combat, and equipment. You can read the full list of changes here.

If you're just getting started with Mordhau, we've got a guide to its best weapons and to some weird but kick-ass character builds. Steven can also give you tips on how to win at Mordhau by being an utter bastard.

Nestled within the mayhem of Mordhau’s clashing metal is a beautiful ballet of blades, and we'll help you pick out your dancing shoes with this Mordhau tier list. Weapon stats matter, but they're only part of the story. There's no single best tool for the job: Combat in Mordhau is a physics puzzle where your creativity and feel for a weapon will determine how you land a hit. Use this guide to get a feel for what weapons excel in various scenarios, and as you play you’ll find your own preferences will develop alongside your skills.

Before you read:

In addition to showing you which weapons are the best and worst, each entry also comes with a handy stat sheet that helps you compare stats like damage and timing. Explanations for those stats are found in the section below the tier list, if you need them, along with some handy tips about how to build your own mercenary. Use the table of contents to skip to these sections. 

These top-tier weapons each bring a special little something to combat.

These weapons are still a great pick but sometimes are outmatched or have specific flaws.

You may find a favorite here, but these fall short of the mark.

Suitable only as door stops and paperweights.

In Mordhau, weapon damage varies against different armor levels and body parts, and many weapons have alternate modes that change how they’re handled (or just let you chuck them at people and hope for the best). But there’s a lot more to the weapons, and I’m going to cover some of those stats here.

Damage & Armor is split up into head hits, body hits, and leg hits based on where your weapon connects. The level of armor is ranked from unarmored (0) to heavily armored (3) and will be based on what your target is wearing on that body part. You’ll learn quickly why going unarmored is incredibly dangerous in Mordhau. 

Length is quite simply how long the weapon is when swung. Since Mordhau uses weapon physics to determine hits, a long weapon means you don’t have to be as close to your opponent to hit him, which is obviously a good thing in many cases.

Windup is the amount of time it takes to begin the ‘damaging’ part of your swing, essentially the amount of time between when you click and when the magic happens. Release is how long the ‘damaging’ part of your swing lasts, which should match the animation you see for the swing. This is when you need to hit your opponent, and also when you want to do more advanced things like performing a drag or accel.

Recover is the largely static amount of time you need to wait after your Release finishes before you can start another attack. Combo is the amount of time before your next Release if you begin another attack during your previous one. This is a great way to keep the pressure up and avoid the Recover window.Stop on Hit determines whether or not your weapon will stop when it delivers a hit, or if it will continue on and potentially hit another target. Weapons with blades generally pass through things they hit while blunt weapons do not. Block View Tolerances are measured in degrees of view from your cursor, and keeping your opponent’s attack inside this window will determine whether or not a parry will be successful. So far they’re fairly static.Projectile Speed is a measure of how fast a thrown or fired weapon moves, with higher being quicker, whereas Gravity Scale shows how much a thrown or fired weapon will drop, with lower numbers going further with less drop. Draw is the amount of time it takes after you click and hold to be ready to release your shot, and Reload is the cool down period after you’ve done so before you can start a new shot. 

When you have a few games under your belt (and a small bag of gold to spend), your goal should be to create your own character. First, obviously, you have to spend some time getting fashion conscious with the many choices of clothes, emblems, colors, and accessories—just don’t spend all your gold on it right away.

As you begin to build up gold, it's well worth experimenting with different looks for your armor. With all the cosmetic options available, you can easily be deceptive with your armor. There’s value in being a 3 armor body who looks like a 1 armor body—it can mislead opponents into using alt-modes on a weapon that are less effective (or neglecting using one that would be more effective). All warfare relies on deception, even the kind that relies on selecting the right scarf to look like a peasant.

Once you’re done playing dress up with your fresh-faced recruit, there are a lot of excellent choices in the armory. Core to this is going to be your primary weapon, as its points cost is going to determine how much you have left for perks, armor, and backup weapons. I’d recommend picking up something that felt comfortable when you were playing the defaults. Things like the Maul, Executioner’s Sword, Spear, or Pole-Axe are a great if you felt comfortable with big heavy two handers, and something like a Short Spear, Mace, Arming Sword, or Rapier is a good choice if you want to use a shield, or have more points to play with.I like to look at Perks next, while mentally assuming 5-8 points for armor. Things like Friendly (reducing friendly fire damage both ways), and Fireproof (reducing fire damage by 80%) can be amazing ways to spend your final point. You’ll have to plan more for Dodge (giving you a short hop to dodge attacks), or Bloodlust (refreshes you to full health after kills).Usually the last few points (if you somehow have any left) are a great spot to put Throwing Axes, Fire Bombs, or even a Medic Bag or Bandage.  

One of my favourite things about multiplayer melee game Mordhau is its character creator. Rather than push you towards a set playstyle, it gives you a bunch of points to spend how you please, shared between armor, perks, weapons and consumables.

It’s a flexible system: if you wanted, you could create a heavily armored brute who only throws smoke bombs, or a fist fighter who restores health with every fatal right hook. But if you want to craft a playstyle that’s genuinely useful and won’t get boring after five rounds, it’s hard to know where to start. 

Forget the sword and board. I’ve come up with five unconventional builds for both beginners and advanced players—they might not look like the most efficient, but they’re all fun to play and can genuinely have a big impact on any battle. Most of them are designed for Frontline, Mordhau’s main team-based mode, although some will work in duels too.

Check out our Mordhau tips for more general advice on mastering the medieval combat.

The front line Engineer

Bring the hammer down

Equipment:

• Armor: 2 head, 3 torso
• Blacksmith Hammer
• Greatsword
• Perks: Wrecker, Smith

The default engineer class bores me. Carrying the toolbox lets you build spikes and wooden walls but limits your firepower. If you ditch it you can free up points for weapons and armor while keeping the Blacksmith Hammer to construct defences around control points. This puts you directly on the front line, where you’ll see more action. 

Your armor and Greatsword make you a strong brawler, and you can switch between whacking on walls and lopping off heads whenever enemies get close. The Smith perk lets you build defences faster than usual, and you can repair a wall more quickly than a group of attackers can break it down, cancelling them out (see clip above). 

The Wrecker perk comes in handy when you’ve pushed an enemy force back: You’ll deal extra damage to the other team’s structures, so you should lead the charge and smash down their defences. Your team can then flood through the gap.

The mauled Assassin

The backline bastard

Equipment:

• No armor
• Maul
• Smoke bomb x 2
• Perks: Acrobat, Cat, Rat and Rush

Quick, nimble, and able to smash skulls in one swing, this build is perfect for zipping around enemy backlines, picking off archers and other stragglers. With zero armor to slow you down you can bounce from unsuspecting target to unsuspecting target, and the Rat perk dampens your footsteps so they won’t hear you coming.

You’d normally expect an assassin to carry daggers or a short sword, but it’s better to equip the slow-swinging maul, which will kill all enemies in one strike to the head. 

Nearby enemies will spot you if you miss, so make sure you have an escape route planned out. Remember that enemies get a speed boost if they chase you and keep their cursor on your body—try to play around buildings or other objects that will break line of sight. Use your smoke bombs in sticky spots to slip away undetected.

This build isn’t useful in contested mid-fights, but I like switching to it when my team has been pushed back to our spawn. If you can slip round the side of your enemies then they won’t think to check behind them. It’s also especially good on Grad, where you can hide behind buildings and haystacks, you sneaky bastard.

The big ol' Archer

Stab, then swap to your bow

Equipment:

• Armor: 2 head, 2 torso
• Recurve bow
• Messer (or your favourite five-point weapon)
• No perks

Archers don’t have to cower on the back lines. With this build you can both hang out at mid-range hitting headshots and push forward into the front lines to support your teammates. With a balance of armor and speed, you can go where you’re needed most: If you see an ally battling two opponents, wade in with your Messer. If enemies are holding strong in a choke point, pull out your bow and thin them out. You won’t deal lots of damage, but chipping away at enemies will help your allies, and I often lead my team in assists when I use this build.

In more open fights, you can walk around with your sword out to fool the enemy team. When an opponent comes sprinting towards you, quickly swap to your bow to soften them up. They won’t expect it, especially if you make your character look like a melee expert. Pile on the pounds in the character creator and pick a scary helmet. A cheap tactic, maybe, but we all know that chivalry is dead. 

The ultimate Battle Medic

The heartbeat of your team

Equipment:

• Armor: 3 head, 3 torso, 1 legs
• Medic Bag x 3
• Perks: Friendly, Fireproof, Tenacious
• No weapons

Running into battle brandishing a cloth sack sounds silly, but you’ll nearly always pass a sword or spear on your way to the front. When you see one you want, throw down your first medic bag and pick up the weapon. The bag will act as a healing station for retreating allies.

After that, your job is to place your bags in spots that allies can reach, but enemies can’t. Behind structures or buildings is a safe bet, and will protect your team from arrows while they’re healing. Sticking one in the middle of a control point is usually a bad idea unless you’re actively pushing the enemy off the point and want to keep the momentum rolling.

Using this build will nearly always put you near the top of the leaderboard—Medic Bags are fairly rare in Frontline mode, and your team will jump on any they see. The bags vanish after they’ve healed a certain amount so you should keep returning to supply bins to stock up, giving your team a constant stream of HP. Heavy armor and the Tenacious perk should keep you alive, as long as you’re not too aggressive. 

The Short Spear Soldier

Expert tosser

Equipment: 

• Armor: 1 head, 1 torso
• Short Spear x 3
• Perks: Huntsman

The Short Spear is my favourite weapon in Mordhau. Its quick stabs are surprisingly powerful: One thrust to the head can end an unarmored foe. Best of all, you can throw it javelin-style by pressing R and it’ll deal even more damage.

With this build, you should play tucked in behind heavily-armored allies, picking off flankers and retreating foes. Because you’re close to your targets you won’t miss many throws: Don’t get too greedy with headshots, because hitting their chest will often be enough. Just remember to retrieve your spears after you throw them, and always keep hold of one for hand-to-hand combat. If you see a teammate getting double-teamed, dive in.

Mordhau sadly doesn’t have Jarate, but you can grab the Hunstman perk to boost your damage against archers. Focus on any that are being a nuisance.

If you’ve come up with an enjoyable, unconventional build, tell me about it in the comments below.

Around 2,000 players were banned from Mordhau this week for using third party software to cheat, but the developer is now overturning some of them. The ban announcement was quickly followed by players claiming they were innocent, not surprisingly, but in this case there were apparently some false positives.

"We are revoking some bans that have been part of this wave," a forum update reads. "Most of the bans revoked are false positives, some of the bans we are revoking are legitimate, so some cheaters will slip through the net this time as we are on the side of caution. We are monitoring the situation and will be adjusting our detection."

Bans that are "blatantly obvious" will stay in place, while players who have been affected but still can't access the game can email the developer or post on the Mordhau forums to get let back into the melee brawls. 

The ban doesn't include all third-party applications, so don't worry if you use things like the brilliant lute bot or other mods that don't give you an advantage. 

Cheers, PCGamesN. 

Mordhau isn’t really set up to be fair. Its marquee PvP modes, Frontline and Battle Royale, both pit disorganized, flailing hordes of buff battle boys against each other. It is brutal, chaotic, and often hilarious. But that chaos can also be frustrating when you’re just trying to enjoy a fair fight. Steven’s guide to playing Mordhau like a bastard is all about how to adapt to Mordhau’s unfair battlefield, but I’m after a purer, more idealistic Mordhau. I want honorable fights unblemished by rogues looking for easy kills. I thought I was out of luck, but then I found my people—the wholesome folk of Mordhau’s duel servers.

Duel servers are a truly wonderful respite from the rest of Mordhau. The servers rotate through a pool of smaller maps suited to lower player counts, and stepping into the open is a feast for the eyes—a landscape of people beating the snot out of each other in organized private duels. Some are watching others fight, waiting for the chance to challenge the winner. Others are adding to the drama of a brawl with some lute music.

“Duel” isn’t a special mode within the game, though it definitely should be. Mordhau players quickly began renting custom servers to set up their own rulesets for dueling. Within just a few days, a proper subculture had formed around a few constant rules: 1v1 duels, no RDM (random deathmatch). Challenges are handed out nonverbally using the “flourish” emote. If your opponent flourishes back, the duel has been accepted, and the battle begins. After a fight, duelists crouch to let challengers know they need time to heal before the next bout. 

We're now a few weeks after launch, and there are always plenty of duel servers running near capacity.

The duel server social experience is the polar opposite of a match of Frontline. Not only do people largely respect the rules of honor (lest they be banned), but they're just nice. I’ve played against so many polite combatants. Even if I’ve just brained an opponent with the hilt of my sword, they still drop a “gf” (good fight) in the chat and even commend me on my chambering skills.

That politeness extends to how duels are fought, too. In Mordhau, mismanaging your stamina to zero forces you to drop your weapon. Usually, this is the opportune moment for another fighter to take an easy kill shot. Stamina management is part of Mordhau’s meta, so it’s fair enough to expect a swift death in the chaos of battle. One time on a duel server, instead of taking off my head with his executioner's blade, my opponent stood still and waited for me to pick up my sword.

I couldn’t believe it. They didn’t want to win that way. They wanted a 100 percent even fight. That is some next-level honor. In our second bout, I came out on top. The win felt a little hollow after he'd had me dead to rights, but I made sure to thank him for his honor.

Duel servers have really helped me hone my general fighting skills. Private 1v1 fights are where I practice different fighting styles and weapons I haven’t mastered yet, getting used to their animations outside the confusion of bigger battles. But duels can also be brutal. In every server, there are at least one or two players far better than everyone else.

They know how to drill right into my mind. They can bait out a foolish attack, punish it with a brutal headshot, and immediately fake their next hit to finish me off. It’s useful to have a quiet space to fight better players and learn their ways. But hey, if I don’t feel like losing eleven humiliating duels in a row, the beauty is that I never have to fight them. Duels require consent from both parties, so I can pick my fights carefully.

Protected by the server’s rules, I've noticed players feel free to try new things and embrace the roleplay. My favorite interaction was only a few nights ago, when I found someone had cordoned off a small corner of the map into a micro arena using the game’s builder class. Pieces of player-made cover lined the perimeter of the fighting area, and a man in a black and white-striped referee uniform was officiating 1v1 fights. Lined up outside of the ring were eager fighters waiting to take on whoever came out on top. Naturally, I jumped in line.

We peered through gaps in the wall to watch the fights unfold. When it was finally my turn, I was up against an intimidating level 31 halberd user who had won the past four fights with barely a scratch. The body of the last challenger, a sword user like me, was still warm at my feet. The ref called on our flourishes to ready up and banged their staff on the ground to launch the duel. I put up a good fight, even got a solid hit in, but the brute successfully baited a badly-timed block from me and I eventually took a fatal hit to the chest.

With emotes, the small crowd of spectators cheered and laughed for my foe’s victory. As I respawned, though, chat gave me a nice little ego boost. A few people said it was a great fight, and that I “almost had them!”

This is my perfect little corner of Mordhau.