Whips

To shadow Indiana Jones, you will need reflexes and decent senses.

The whips skill governs the accuracy and damage of your attacks with whips, lashes, chains and similar weapons. It is in turn governed by Reflexes and Senses.

Advantages

 * Speed - High-end whips are very fast.
 * Electric damage - The flash whip does a lot of shock, which is difficult to soak in PvP.
 * Dodge-friendly stats - Dodge is a very powerful method of avoiding damage, and it's governed by the same stats as Whips, so any strong whips user will also have very high Dodge.
 * Only two stats - Most classes depend on three stats: Brawn, Reflexes, and something else. Whips only needs Reflexes and Senses, and gets very little value from Brawn. This means whippers can max a different useful stat instead...
 * Brainy whips is strong for both crafting and lockpicking, which are both skills with high demand. This also has potential for strong attacks.
 * Endurance whips opens the door to big Focus totals and generally high combat strength.
 * Parry Class coverage - Whips is one of only two classes in the game with a viable weapon in three parry classes (the other being Fists). Using this, whippers can force fights to be on their terms and take advantage of their high Dodge.
 * Ease of acquisition - Of the three common whips, one can be easily found for free, and the other two are relatively simple to craft.
 * Strong(ish) against guns - Endurance whippers can use their big Focus to very heavily debuff the to-hit of gunners. Combined with high Dodge, they can make it very hard for guns to hit them. This isn't perfect, and doesn't work at all against min-maxed gunners, but it's better than most classes can do.

Disadvantages

 * Low damage - Most whips struggle to reach over 30 max damage, and since they don't scale with Brawn, their damage is hard-capped.
 * Low accuracy - Compared to other weapons classes, whips are generally less accurate.
 * Few damage options - Whips can only do slash and electric damage in strong quantities.
 * Poor weapon variety - Whips has few weapons as a whole, and fewer viable endgame ones. Razorchains, urumis and flash whips are the most used by far, with alternatives like the flame chain and link whip being only situationally useful.
 * Innate parry penalty - All whips suffer a hidden penalty when attempting to parry. This problem is unavoidable when facing a PC0 opponent.
 * Low Brawn - Whips gain little benefit from Brawn, which means a lower inventory capacity, immense difficulty with dragging corpses, and more trouble using firearms for whatever your whip can't deal with.
 * Weak against Fists - Whips can't out-parry-class jawbreakers at PC0, so they're forced into parry vs. parry. Since Fists gets great to-hit, the odds are in the fister's favor - and if they land a grab, the whipper is stuck because of their low brawn.

Notable Weapons
See the whips weaponry page for an exhaustive listing.


 * Antenna whip - Buyable from Ammu-Nation, a good purchase for new whippers at 1 raw in their skill, used until they can get and use something better. The leather whip is better, improvised with human skins.


 * Nail Sjambok - A rare spawn on the second level of the Sharpton Projects. If you have one, great, use it to 6 raw.


 * Venomous lash - Crafted, with the recipe hidden somewhere. Useful until 6 raw. Even after that, nice to keep in a backpack, because acid damage is good for breaking down doors.


 * Link whip - Crafted or looted from freaks in the Necropolis. PC2, does beat damage. Useful until you can get something better, and sometimes used to hunt junkers.


 * Flame chain - Either bought in Weezer Village or rarely looted from Karnivores in Nukem Academy. Relatively slow flame damage that scales with Brawn slightly. Great for hunting ice yetis.


 * Flash whip - Crafted from blacklashes, which drop from freaks in the Necropolis. Does concentrated shock damage, fast, PC1, one-handed and accurate as whips go. Great for PvP - hardly anyone wears deathsuits, so these can punch right through soaks.


 * Razorchain - Found on freaks in the Necropolis (or crafted, but nobody bothers). Slash and bleed damage, a little higher than the urumi. PC2, two-handed and extremely disposable. Great for PvE.


 * Urumi - Crafted in the forge. PC0, so you can dodge most weapons with this. One-handed, fast slashing damage. Good against Nullianacs, or anything else PC1 or up that you really want to dodge.

Modding
For exhaustive details on mods, see the Weapon Mods page.


 * Elemental - Direct damage upgrades on elemental whips. Butane kits on flame chains, shock generators on flash whips. Urumis can't take an elemental.


 * Grip - The formula is the same for all whips - if you have enough reflexes to speedcap the whip on your own, install a gyro grip. Otherwise, use a balanced grip for the speed. Urumis can't take gyro, so use balanced grips on those.


 * Unique whip mods - Whips has two unique mods, ninetails and tentacles. Ninetails adds 3-6 slash damage, while tentacle adds 1-3 unsoakable bleed. They're incompatible with eachother. Ninetails is best on razorchains and urumis for PvE damage, while the tentacle is best on the flash whip for unsoakable PvP damage. The tentacle is also good on the razorchain for the specific purpose of fighting basilisks (which do not soak bleed).

Strategy

 * PvE - Razorchain for 90% of enemies, flash whips for the few that soak slash, urumis for Nullianacs. For lategame, prioritize dodge over soaks unless you're fighting gunners.


 * PvP - Use the flash whip, it punches through almost everything. If you have Endurance, use your big Focus to debuff people with Carrie and Screech. Urumi is also useful for dodging PC1 opponents.

Racial Synergy

 * Abomination/Zombie - Neither of these classes play to whips' strengths. All of zombie's extra Brawn will be wasted, alongside a -2 to Dodge, and Abomination subtracts great strength from either the Brains or Focus strengths of either of the two common Whips builds.
 * Chud - Generally unpopular, also a freak-lite option but without the stat changes.
 * Hideous freak - The classic whips choice. +2 whips and dodge, and reversed Stress means you can spam focus abilities as much as you like at almost no cost, assisted also by the +3 bonus to focus.
 * Vampire - The minmax option. +2 whips and dodge, and unlike freak, vampires have no implant caps, so you can push your stats to the absolute top-end. However, between no stress reversal, the +4 Brawn being wasted and the heavy downsides of Vampire, it's not worthwhile for whips outside of specialized builds.