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As talked about in a recent post about Knucklemaster and Werewolf being the 7th and 8th character classes mentioned in the .hack//Archives_03 book. What if I told you right now, if you popped in your .hack//IMOQ game disc and look up the texture asset xicon00 and look closely, you will see 8 character class icons. From left to right we see Twinblade Wavemaster Knucklemaster Blademaster Samurai Heavyblade Heavyaxe Longarm These icons confirm a spiked knuckle as the icon for Knucklemaster with the 3rd icon from the left, and a curved katana for Samurai with the 5th icon from the left. Now we can go further back this with several usable weapons in-game with the Twinblade weapons and the Heavyblade weapons. As you may or may not know, the Twinblade and Heavyblade have the most weapons by any of the 6 character classes in-game. But something strange happens when you equip these items, most notably Kite's twinblade weapons. The twinblade weapons can be split in two categories that Kite uses, first is the bladed weapons or two dagger type of weapons. And the second is the dual gloves, dual spikes, or dual claws type of weapons. The first type the dagger type is strictly the twinblade class whereas the glove/spike/claw type weapons are in fact remnants from the Knucklemaster class. (image above shows Kite with a dual dagger type weapon and a dual glove type weapon) Heavyblade are no different, where one style of weapons they use is a oversized bladed weapon usually as large as Black Rose, and the other style is a slender curved light sword. It is implied the slender lighter blades are the remnant for the Samurai class. It's pretty easy to see that Sanjuro was meant to be part of the Samurai class. But unlike Knucklemaster, there was no mention of the Samurai class in the book .hack//Archives_03. Also has been noted that Natsumi may have been planned as a Knucklemaster class based on her weapon on page 193 of .hack//Archives_03. ( D / Natsume: The weapon is depicted as a tonfa instead of a twin sword. ) Below are my interpretations of which weapon would have belong to which class.

While browsing the texture files from .hack//Infection Mutation Outbreak Quarantine, in the file xicon00 there are character class icons and right below them is the icons for the equipment slots. From left to right we have Head Armor Shield Armor Hand Armor Body Armor Leg Armor Except one thing... there is no Shield Armor in-game. Obviously there's no shield class in the franchise, everyone has a weapon of some kind but nothing shield related. Not the say we don't see any shields in the franchise, especially in .hack//Quantum we see a ton of players using shields at the start of episode 3. But if we look back in time, when dothack was during it's third prototype phase called Treasure Hacker, we definitely see Rachel (blademaster) and Marlo (blademaster) brandishing a sword and a shield. (Rachel on left, Marlo on right) But obviously in game, we never see these characters brandishing a shield. Nor the option to equip one on the character equipment screen.