How does the split damage on a weapon work?
For example I have a short sword with;
20 Slash
60 Thrust
Does that mean I should be using more triangle attacks with this particular weapon since these appear to be thrust attacks judging from the attack animation.
Also Raw vs Element for shortblade?
When it comes to melee weapons such as Short Blades, the exact attack motion you use is completely unrelated to attack element. So, the Square and Triangle attacks of a typical Short Blade will do the same mix of both Slashing and Piercing damage.
In the example you give, each hit of the Short Blade will be doing 20 points of Slashing damage and 60 points of piercing damage (weighted by the power of the swing you use, of course). The difference between the two is in how resistant the bodypart of the Aragami you are fighting is. For example, if you use that weapon to hit a part of an Aragami that is strong to piercing but weak to slash, most of your weapon power will be wasted. So, you should be aiming for body parts that are vulnerable to piercing hits.
I'm not certain if it is exactly correct, but I'll give some examples based on my understanding of how the math works out.
1) Hitting a target weak to all forms of damage. Both slashing and piercing are 100% effective, so you deal the full 60 points of pierce and 20 points of slash, for a total of 80 points of damage.
2) Immune to slash, weak to thrust. You deal 100% of piercing, 60 points, and 10% of slash, 2 points, for a total of 62 points.
3) Immune to pierce, weak to slash. You deal 10% of piercing, 6 points, and 100% of slashing, 20 points, for a total of 26 points of damage.
4) Immune to both. You deal 10% of both damage types, dealing a total of 8 points of damage.
Note that, as far as I am aware, there are several enemy weakpoints with resistances that are somewhere between highly resistant and fully weak, and that my math is just a loose estimate that is probably highly incorrect in some way. But I think it illustrates the general idea.
As far as Raw damage vs. elemental effectiveness goes, preferably you want both. However, elemental effectiveness gives you roughly a 20% boost in damage (based on my experience, not anything more solid than that), if that helps you evaluate different weapons. As long as you avoid using an element that an enemy is resistant to, you should be okay either way.
BTW, the discussion of how attack types work I gave above only applies to melee weapons. Guns work in a different manner. In short, the damage listings for guns are multipliers that are applied to the damage done by the bullet modules selected in the bullet editor. Each bullet module is either a piercing hit or a crushing hit, with the sole exception of buckshot, which is equally both. If you have a gun with a high Crush multiplier, use bomb-type bullets or radials. If you have a gun with a high pierce modifier, use regular bullets, sniper bullets, or lasers. If you have a gun that has both, feel free to mix and match as you please.
Bought it, and playing through the first now. It's good, like, really really good. Had Freedom Wars had the kind of depth this game has, I think it would have been a top tier hunting game. For one, this game actually has characters.
Also, two questions.
1. When consuming, is the charge only good for getting ammo for weapons? You get all of the materials from even quick bites?
2. I have no idea how to make a good bullet. The debuffer ones I make do basically nothing
To answer this question from earlier...
Both devour types get the same number of materials when used on a dead Aragami. However, Charge Devours have a number of benefits to make up for their longer activation time if used on a living Aragami. I'll just lay it out here:
Quick Devour: You deal a small amount of damage, fill 50% of your Burst Gauge, and acquire one Aragami Bullet.
Charge Devour: You deal a lot of damage, fill 100% of your Burst Gauge, and acquire three Aragami Bullets.
Note that the devours are technically attacks with your melee weapon, and I'm fairly confident they share the same damage properties as that weapon. For example, a Boost Hammer's devour counts as a crushing attack, and a Long Blade's devour counts as a slashing attack, so aim them at the appropriate body parts whenever possible.