RAILROAD MAUL

BASE ITEM
WEAPON
MELEE
LEVEL 18

REQUIRES LEVEL 18

RAILROAD MAUL is a melee weapon, wielded from level 18. STRENGTH is the stat that scales it.

The requirement cuts both ways: nothing below level 18 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 SPIKE MAUL and IRONHORSE MAUL, at requirements the endgame can actually meet.

A double-faced spike maul off the permanent way. It drove every tie between the station and the pass, swung all day by men who were written out of the park's story when the line was finished.

What it does

SWEEPThe swing carves a 120° cone and strikes everything standing in it. INTELLECT widens that cone as you grow, out to a full half circle.
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.
EDGEDIt has an edge. A blow that takes a body's whole health in one goes clean through it, and the two halves fall apart along the swing.
PRICED FORAbout 1.9 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.
WILDIts blows swing ±35% around the average — far wider than the usual band. The mean is unchanged; the excitement is not.
SALVAGEIt melts down: the merchant pays double what an ordinary piece of its worth fetches.

A dropped copy carries 150 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 RAILROAD MAUL and a PERFECT RAILROAD MAUL 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	45–64	0.58–0.82×	20%	0%
CRUDE	57–76	0.73–0.97×	25%	6%
NORMAL	70–86	0.90–1.10×	52%	54%
SUPERIOR	80–99	1.03–1.27×	3%	28%
PERFECT	90–112	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
RAILROAD MAUL (normal)	18	51–105	71.4	1.9
SPIKE MAUL	46	53–111	75.0	3.8
IRONHORSE MAUL	87	88–184	124.4	4

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.

Named items built on it

These relics wear this shape, with an authored block of bonuses on top — each on the rung of the ladder it names.

SHARURIRONHORSE MAUL
TRACKMAKERSPIKE MAUL

RAILROAD MAUL, a base item weapon in Ada's Trail, shown on the map of BOOT HILL where it drops — RAILROAD MAUL — where it drops, in BOOT HILL.

Where it comes from

BOOT HILL carries it in its drop pool.
THE GARAGE carries it in its drop pool.
THE BUNKER carries it in its drop pool.

Every one of those pools carries SPIKE MAUL and IRONHORSE MAUL 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 87 deep.