First playthrough: Hammer/Repeater 
Second playthrough: Pike/Musket 
Planning to try: Mortar/Cannon (not sure if this combo will work out)

Hammer and scrap musket are like peanut butter and jelly.

The mortar and musket have been my weapons of choice for the majority of my 10-idol run through the story. Getting towards the end now, but the Ura enemies might require a change-up. 

I used the hammer and musket for a long time, then switched to rifle/hammer which I find to be a great pairing - big hits near and far.

Rifle with the speed mods and explosive ammo is fantastic, hammer with the charged-up strike and armour-breaker rounds out the close-in game.

Did not care for the repeater, but have enjoyed pike/breaker's bow.

First run I changed my load out all the time and pretty much everything worked.

Now on a 10 idol run some weapons plain don't cut it. The hammer basically suicides you. Had to ditch the flamethrower too.

Currently rolling through it with pistols and machete. Pistols both work as long range and clear swarms of little dudes. Machete wastes anything that is stationary in melee. Might try musket but need to farm up shards for upgrade first.

@Tennmuerti: The flamethrower is insanely strong when you use the dot mode paired with the spirit that regenerates health on each hit (counts for dots as well). I think I could beat the whole game (10 idols) with the flamethrower alone + shield of course.. too bad there's no motivation to do it. :) The hammer for me is probably the coolest weapon in the game and with crits enabled + that special attack that charges up the hammer when you use your shield are really really strong. The thing is that you can't roll and kite a lot, because the enemies will just heal themselves up, so you have to either block and hit all the time or roll and hit paired with blocking to deal enough damage to actually kill something.

On my first playthrough I used the hammer and the musket all the way through the game, I'm not sure about the musket with 10 idols though.. maybe just for slowing down and knocking back enemies and killing them with another ranged weapon.

Right now I'm using the flamethrower + that big cannon you get at the end and I'm constantly trying different pairings. It's so much fun mixing it up.. knowing how much time I'm spending to just use 2 different weapons to finish the Kid's Dream one more time I think the price for the game is too low. :)

Pike/Sniper.
Pretty sweet.

Pike/Rifle were my mains in my first playthrough, I'm experimenting with everything in new game plus.

The Spear and Carbine were my weapons of choice.  I liked all of them though, except for the repeater.  The Mortar seems to be made kind of obsolete by the Cannon as well.

@Tennmuerti: You can't fire all the time and hope that it will heal you up while monsters keep bashing you, that won't work. But dotting them and blocking does. :)

@JimmyRedd: Yeah, the Mortar seems to be overpowered. I played the beginning of the new game plus (10 idols) with Mortar + Carbine and I somehow didn't enjoy it as much as I did with all the other weapons.. it became too easy. It was still fun though.;)

I've been having fun with the Carbine and Bellows. The Bellows is especially nice with that damage over time and the healing idol.

Been using the War Machete, Scrap Musket combo.    warmachete is good for close range while at the same time you can charge it to launch a ranged attack.   Scrap musket is good for crowd control that the machete can't handle fast enough.

Originally hated the Pike, but fully upgraded (crits + knockback) it's unstoppable. Add in the Dragoon jump attack and you'll one-shot just about anything.

Second weapon is practically irrelevant. Usually armor-piercing pistols or seeker/DoT Fang Repeater for soaking health regen.

@Tennmuerti: I wondered that myself too and I think it does. When I got the Calamity Cannon, I did notice that whenever I killed something that took more than one shot from it I got a decent sized chunk of health back, whereas with the Bellows, it's much more incremental.

@Tennmuerti: I wondered that myself too and I think it does. When I got the Calamity Cannon, I did notice that whenever I killed something that took more than one shot from it I got a decent sized chunk of health back, whereas with the Bellows, it's much more incremental.

Hammer and pistols.

I like Bow and Pike for the pure damage. A simple roll and pike destroys nearly everything.

Been rolling musket and repeater, just picked up the pistols but I don't think they compare to the repeater.

Been rolling musket and repeater, just picked up the pistols but I don't think they compare to the repeater.

I changed pretty often, but I rolled with machete for most of the game, fast carbine and minimal-spread musket towards the end, and finished with carbine and hammer, both ignoring armor. There are a lot of good weapons though. It was difficult to choose sometimes. And the upgrades are flexible enough that I can't think of any new weapons that wouldn't be redundant.

I ended up with the repeater and the calamity cannon, simply because you only get the cannon for the past couple of levels and I'd been trying out all the weapons. I wanted to use the dueling pistols, but I found it was too much effort to spam my thumbs on the controller whenever I shot anything when I could just use the fully upgraded repeater and not even have to be facing the right way when I fire.

I didn't like either rapid fire weapon, repeater or revolver. No matter how I set up the repeater it felt like I was tickling the enemies, and the revolvers were boring and tap-intensive.

My first playthough (only Pyth and dead-drop nade idols active) I tried all the weapons, but favoured the big hits of musket/hammer.

Playing through in NG+ with difficulty increasing idols I continued mixing it up, but favoured a carbine/musket combo: speed/exploding carbine and max-spread, fast-load,high-dmg double-tap musket. This pair covered the long and close game for me very ably. Flexible, mobile, and no clip-reloading or weapon charging. Great for everything but the armored frogs.

The explosive rifle rounds were great for annoying stinkeye swarms (at range they face you regardless), and the point-blank death spitting of the musket covered close encounters and roll-shot-roll spamming.

Rolling up on somebody and letting off and instant-fire rifle round (no self dmg) with a shotgun double-blast chaser was a great way to do a tonne of damage quickly and then keep moving.

Shrapnel Salvo was good DPS, but being locked in position with a bunch of idols on was a bad idea. I used the mines as my special, mostly.

Mortar/crit-melee pike was also effective. Bow/pike was also good.

I think first playthrough I used hammer and pistols. Second one was machete and musket, I haven't had any trouble with that combo. Just hack up all enemies with the machete while having that getting health potion buff thing and the musket for when things get a little too close for comfort.

Carbine and musket/machete, with exploding carbine bullets for mine ulti.

Now that I've upgraded everything though, I feel the the Calamity Cannon is what I would use if I wanted to take on Who Knows Where with all idols.

Rifle and Pike was my load out, but I mainly used the rifle speced towards fast aiming. Once you get the hit and run tactics down, using the pike to penetrate armour and to push enemies away, very little comes close, which is key when you have more idols turned on, especially with the slow on hit idol.

Hammer and Mortar. I want to break all the things. I switch up with the hunting rifle, which, when fully upgraded, is surprisingly deadly.

Fire Bellows and Mortar.  Lot of rolling around and dodging with the combo, but for some reason I really enjoyed both of those weapons together and what they offered.  Second play through with all idols on and both of those weapons was really easy for me.  I'm tempted to go for another play through and try some different weapons just to see if it was so easy because I had gotten good enough at the game, or if the weapon combo played a major role in the matter. 

I've been sticking with the repeater and hammer for most of the game. I'm loving the homing projectiles the repeater gets at high level. The hammers "ignore armor" upgrade is also very usefully.

Hammer and pistols! When I do my new game+ I'll probably be using the machete and a slower secondary.

Probably used the hammer and repeater the most during the game. Second most used combo was hammer with mortar...love that hammer. Used the machete a couple times too though.

The fire bellows and army carbine is great.

Musket and machete. 
 
Musket takes care of crowds with a big spread and knockback, while the machete tears up everything.

Rolled with the bow/pike through most of the game with as many idols on as I could get (haven't done ng+ yet). I found the pike was invaluable in keeping dudes at arms reach and knocking guys off the edges, and the bow was just an absolute single-shot damage machine. Tried the pistols, but those things might as well be shooting marshmellows at the enemies with the damage reduction/regeneration idols on. Also tried the carbine, I liked it but felt the downtime in between shots was a little longer than the bow, even with the speed upgrades.

Machete and Fang Repeater is what I rolled with throughout the whole thing. You get yourself those poison upgrades for the Machete and stack them on top of each other, and then get the homing upgrade for the Repeater, shit will be WRECKED.

Hammer and Mortar, or sometimes even Musket and Mortar.

The mortar is kinda broken, in it's upgraded state it's way too powerful, I practically steamrolled through the entire game when I got my hands on it. Even the bosses die in 1 or 2 hits. I just liked the fact that I could accurately drop huge bombs on enemies across the map, without them even seeing me.

Next playthrough I aim to use the Carbine and the Pike.

I played most of the game with the Cael Hammer and the Dual Pistols, but as I upgraded my weapons I eventually switched the hammer with the Brusher's Pike. I never try to throw the thing, of course. Love me some critical hits.