Particle Blade

The **Particle Blade** is one of the first weapons added to SpiderHeck, just after the Rocket Fist. It is based on lightsabers  from the Star Wars series. It is one of the 4 variants of Particle Blades.

## Overview

The Particle Blade deals damage to spiders and enemies if they directly touch the blade. It can prime grenades or mines that it touches. It also deals 1 damage to the shields of the rollers and other particle blades. When damaged, its length decreases. After a certain amount of damage taken, the weapon becomes Vaporized. The Particle Blade spawns deactivated, with only the grip visible. When it is picked up, the blade appears. When thrown, the blade deactivates after 3 seconds. Particle blades are coloured based on the colour of the player, except for the Particle Blade Launcher, which launches randomly coloured blades. However, when picked up, the blade will adjust to the new wielder's colour.

### Left-click ability: Charge

Unlike most other weapons of the game, the Particle Blade is not a gun, therefore it does not fire something out of it upon clicking the left mouse button. Instead, it **charges** for as long as the mouse button is held down, decreasing in length, and, in the big version's case, width. Charging continues until the blade's length is a fraction of the length of the grip, at which point the blade stays the same length. When the left mouse button is released, or the wielder drops the weapon, the blade quickly extends to the full length and width, and applies a force linearly related to the charge percentage in the direction that it is pointing. If the wielder is still holding the weapon, they get pulled along.

## Strategy

The Particle Blade can be powerful, however, as a melee weapon, it requires skill to use correctly. The Charge ability allows the wielder to quickly cross the entire map, however it can also throw them straight into lava or the weapon of an enemy. The particle blade is also very light, meaning that throwing it can accelerate it to a substantial speed. The blade also starts spinning when thrown, so it has a great chance of hitting something that it is thrown towards.

### Throwing and recalling

This is a difficult maneuver that can defeat multiple enemies when executed correctly. The blade is thrown behind the enemy group, then called back. The enemies are not prepared for this, so the blade slashes straight through them. This is hard, however, because gravity is also acting on the blade, meaning that the wielder will have to gradually change position in order for the blade to arrive in the right angle. It also has to be executed under the three seconds of the blade's deactivation timer.

## Modifiers

Some modifiers apply only on the **Particle Blades**.

These are :

* Size Matters (increases the Particle Blade's length)
* Thick Blades (increses the Particle Blade's width)
* Blademaster (triggers slow motion for a second when it hits another weapon)

Another modifier combo can become extremely fun with Particle Blades :

* Blademaster (triggers slow motion for a second when it hits another weapon)
* Vacuum (increases the strength of the weapon recall)
* Fast Legs (increases the spider's movement speed)
* Strong Legs (increases the strength of the spider's jumps)

This combo will basically turn your spider into a master Jedi. Combined with an appropriate selection of weapons, the game will become a Jedi war.

Particle Blades are affected by Efficiency - it increases their durability and thus allows them to sustain more hits.

## Trivia

* The Big Particle Blade used to be extremely heavy before version 0.70, which made throwing attacks nearly impossible. It also decreased the power of the Charge ability.
* In version 0.62, all other weapons were temporarily disabled. Instead, each player got a single indestructible Particle Blade.

## Gallery

The regular sized blue bladeThe regular sized green bladeThe regular sized yellow bladeThe regular sized turquoise bladeThe regular sized red bladeThe regular sized pink bladeBoth sizes of blades disabled on the ground

## References

1. ↑ Spiders with laser swords?! - SpiderHeck devlog - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfDvyeccpqo
2. ↑ Lightsabers - Fandom Wiki[1]