Strength

Strength affects carrying capacity, the ability to efficiently use weapons at normal speed with blunt damage, and the effectiveness of Blunt Damage and Martial Arts. If you lack the required strength to use a weapon or are encumbered your Combat Speed will be penalized. The formula for carrying capacity is 15 + strength.
In combat, your Strength XP is mostly gained by attacking. Every strike you land, even if blocked by the enemy, grants you Strength XP. Successful blocks also grant you 40% of the experience that landing a hit would give. Getting hit without blocking grants you 10% of the Strength XP.
Strength—like Armour Smithing and Weapon Smithing—affects the bulk of your character. At level 1 Strength, a character will display as fairly thin and frail. At 100 Strength, they will appear much larger and bulkier. This is not to be confused with Dexterity, Martial Arts, Athletics, and Swimming, which increase the definition/visibility of the muscles. Cooking and Science, on the other hand, have a negative effect on muscle definition. Lack of feeding-increasing hunger decreases your strength stat. Every 1 Hunger below 200 will debuff your STR by 0.9%, to a maximum of -90% at 100 Hunger. 
All weapons—including unarmed Martial Arts—have a required Strength level equal to 40x the blunt damage value of the weapon or 1x the weight of the weapon, whichever is greater. The required Strength for Martial Arts is equivalent to 80% of the Martial Arts level. Weapon weight modifiers are ignored when calculating the required Strength level. Failing to meet the required Strength level will result in massive Combat Speed penalties up to a maximum of -47.5%. (When 20 STR or below) 
Strength also determines the amount of blood that Human and Shek characters have. Blood = 75+STR(0.75)
==Improving Strength==
One safe way to train strength is to fill a backpack with Raw Iron, Generator Cores, or other heavy items. Either a Shopkeepers Backpack or wooden backpack can be used. When the backpack is filled, put it in your inventory without wearing it. You will then have all the weight inside the backpack applied to your character. Have your character follow a guard or policeman around a city; they will continue to walk around while carrying this weight, accumulating strength experience rather quickly and autonomously. Another great place to walk if you wish to train AFK is to follow raptors on Raptor Island.
At 70% Encumbrance a maximum of 25% Strength XP is reached. Further Encumbrance only diminishes the Athletics XP gain. You can push this to 50% by carrying any character or creature. Carrying another character also adds 30 weight to your encumbrance.
If you have a party of more than 1 person, you can further train strength by ordering one of your people to carry the other via the 'pick up' command (hold down the right mouse button on the character you wish to carry) and ordering the carrier to walk as usual. This can also be achieved by picking up a corpse or unconscious character. Please note however that any weight carried by the character you are holding will not increase your strength gains.
The fastest way to train Strength is through combat. Using a weapon that has a required Strength (see the introductory section) that is 20 levels over your character's Strength level will gain you a fair amount of (STR XP 110%) XP per swing. Swinging a weapon which gives you 110% STR XP will grant 11x the STR XP for swinging one with 10%. The more targets hit, the better.
Alternatively, you can overload your inventory as explained above and then go fight using Martial Arts. Each hit you make will give a nice boost to Strength XP. The XP gained per hit is based off your Encumbrance amount. Every 1% Encumbrance = 1% STR XP in combat. Therefore, when maxed out on Encumbrance (100%) you will gain XP equal to that of a weapon which gives you 100% STR XP. Remember, though, that encumbrance slows a character down to the point where running away from a fight is near impossible. The encumbrance also significantly diminishes the character's dodge as well as dodge XP gain.
== Trivia ==
* Strength suffers more penalties from malnutrition, while Dexterity suffers more penalties from damaged body parts and armor penalties.
* If you do not like how bulky your character has gotten, you may want to go to a Plastic Surgeon to change your appearance. Alternatively, you can make yourself start out looking very skinny, and look more normal as you train your stats.
Category:Statistics