THE ATTRITION FLAMETHROWER

BASE ITEM
WEAPON
MELEE
LEVEL 6

REQUIRES LEVEL 6

THE ATTRITION FLAMETHROWER is a melee weapon, wielded from level 6. STRENGTH is the stat that scales it.

The requirement cuts both ways: nothing below level 6 ever drops one, and a hero below it banks the find rather than wearing it.

It is a pool base, so it climbs: the same shape returns later in the campaign as THE REDUNDANCY TORCH and THE SCORCHED EARTH POLICY, at requirements the endgame can actually meet.

Facilities signs it out as a records-disposal wand, and on the days it disposes of records that is entirely true. GOODCO keeps eleven years of paperwork it is obliged to keep and owns one shredder that was never going to manage it, so somebody rewrote the retention policy around a tool that leaves nothing to retain. The tank is rated for ninety seconds at the trickle nobody uses and about nine at the setting everybody does. Whoever chose the word attrition chose it because it sounds like weather.

What it does

SWEEPThe swing carves a 90° cone and strikes everything standing in it — and unlike every other melee weapon, that cone never widens. See FIXED REACH below.
NOT SWUNGYou do not swing it. You lean it into whatever is in front of you and hold it there, juddering, until that thing is in pieces — so there is no arc to watch and no slash to read. What tells you it is working is the shiver in your hands and what comes off the body.
FIXED REACHIts reach and its arc are the tool's, not yours. MIGHT drives every other melee weapon deeper and INTELLECT reads every other one wider; neither does a thing here. It covers exactly what it covers, at level one and at the cap alike — so the only way to use it is to walk into the crowd with it.
BOTH HANDSIt takes the off hand as well, so you carry no shield and no bag while it is drawn. That is what the extra damage is paying for — a two-hander is forged above the budget line every one-hander sits on, because the alternative to carrying one is carrying a fifth piece of armour.
BURNSWhat it kills it burns. There is no body afterwards — the thing goes up where it stood and what is left smoulders on the floor a moment and then is not there either, the same end the bombs give a crowd. It is the only thing about this weapon that is purely a sight: not a point of damage moves either way, and what it pays you in experience and in loot is what any other weapon of its level pays.
BLUNTIt has no edge. A blow that overwhelms a body bursts it instead of opening it — there is nothing left to fall over.
PRICED FORAbout 1.8 targets a swing. That is what the damage budget assumes it reaches, which is why a wide weapon carries a smaller blow than a narrow one of the same level.
CRIT WEIGHTA critical hit lands for 1.9× — a flat trait of the melee class, the same on every weapon in it. Your build earns the crit CHANCE; the class fixes what a crit is worth.
SALVAGEIt melts down: the merchant pays double what an ordinary piece of its worth fetches.

A dropped copy carries 60 swings of wear. At zero it does not shatter — it falls into the bag unusable until a repair kit mends it, and the hero draws the best thing left.

A fresh find in the hands of a hero who has spent no stat points — the piece itself, with nothing of the wielder in it. Your own STRENGTH, DEXTERITY or INTELLECT lifts these from there, as does an item level found deeper than the requirement.

Make quality

Every plain drop of this base rolls a make quality on top of the numbers above — the craftsmanship of that particular copy, stamped at the moment it drops and frozen for life. It scales the damage and the wear budget together, and it leads the name: a BROKEN THE ATTRITION FLAMETHROWER and a PERFECT THE ATTRITION FLAMETHROWER are the same base item and not the same find.

The bands overlap on purpose, so a good CRUDE can out-swing a poor NORMAL while a PERFECT always clears a NORMAL. Which one you get depends on the level of whatever dropped it: the two odds columns below are a level-1 killer and a level-60 one, and everything between is interpolated. Craftsmanship and magic are exclusive — a magic-or-better find is always normal make.

MAKE	DAMAGE	SCALE	ODDS AT MLVL 1	ODDS AT MLVL 60
BROKEN	3–5	0.58–0.82×	20%	0%
CRUDE	4–6	0.73–0.97×	25%	6%
NORMAL	5–7	0.90–1.10×	52%	54%
SUPERIOR	6–8	1.03–1.27×	3%	28%
PERFECT	7–9	1.16–1.44×	0%	12%

What it becomes

The same shape comes back twice more, further down the campaign: an EXCEPTIONAL version and an ELITE one, generated from this base rather than authored beside it. They keep its look, its cadence, its reach and its arc; what changes is the level they ask for and the numbers priced onto the curve at it. A venue that pays this base pays its whole ladder, so a first-map find keeps dropping — as something else — into the endgame.

GRADE	REQUIRES	DAMAGE	DPS	REACHES
THE ATTRITION FLAMETHROWER (normal)	6	5–7	42.1	1.8
THE REDUNDANCY TORCH	30	13–19	112.2	1.8
THE SCORCHED EARTH POLICY	56	22–32	189.4	1.8

The per-hit blow barely moves up the ladder, and that is the point: a longer-reaching weapon in a bigger build sweeps a wider slice of the crowd, so the same damage budget buys more total output at a similar figure per target. Read the REACHES column beside the DPS one.

THE ATTRITION FLAMETHROWER, a base item weapon in Ada's Trail, shown on the map of GOODCO HQ where it drops — THE ATTRITION FLAMETHROWER — where it drops, in GOODCO HQ.

Where it comes from

GOODCO HQ carries it in its drop pool.

Every one of those pools carries THE REDUNDANCY TORCH and THE SCORCHED EARTH POLICY along with it — the game expands a pool entry into its whole grade family at roll time — so the same venues keep paying this shape out at requirements 56 deep.