All About Knives

[ironcross]

One thing that seems a little weird to me is that bladed weapons have sharpness and condition, but condition goes first, then the blade loses its edge. I would love to see warriors gathered somewhere all pulling out their whetstones and sharpening their blades before a battle.

So first, I'd like to suggest that whetstones be added. These would never be able to sharpen a blade that has never had an edge on it. For example, a blade that has come straight from the anvil should still go through the annealing process and sharpened at the grindstone as usual.

Whetstones generally need some sort of liquid to be drizzled over the surface to bring the grit out. This can be water, which would give players another reason to carry a canteen, or it could be something like olive oil, or even oil coming from a Cogg-specific plant.

I think the sharpness of a blade should go first, rather than the condition. Further, instead of sharpness followed by condition, I believe that as a blade dulls to say, within a quarter of its usability, condition starts to suffer as well as more of the edge dulling away until it simply cannot cut anything. Also, whetstone or not, if a character uses a blade as it approaches dullness, especially in crafting projects, there should be a chance that they injure themselves. This is true to life, since a dull blade makes your motions jerky and your hand could slip, causing you to cut yourself.

If a character wants nothing to do with this, they should have the freedom to always seek out a metalworker. Indeed, my goal in writing this is not to deprive the metalworkers of work, but to shift some of the responsibility of weapon maintenance to the character using it. If they so choose to sharpen their blade this way, they'll get longer life out of it between repairs, but they'll never be able to sharpen it quite the way a metalworker can.

Moving on, if a knife is gore-covered for too long, and has an iron/steel derivative blade, that blade should rust and suffer quality and condition loss. Having blood on your knife is one of the easiest ways to cause rust. Hunters know this IRl if they also skin / gut and / or butcher their own kills. SO, if you skin and / or butcher in Cogg, you should definitely suffer the consequences if you don't clean your knife in short order.

[Taliaferro]

Absolutely agree with all of this.

It'd be nice to have olive oil or bear grease or whale oil or animal tallow in general, too. For whetstones, and for cooking, and for making candles and lamp oil. All that good stuff. Someday!

[Cal]

I like the idea of having to do minor weapon maintenance myself as a warrior, like sharpening, but especially this:

Moving on, if a knife is gore-covered for too long, and has an iron/steel derivative blade, that blade should rust and suffer quality and condition loss. Having blood on your knife is one of the easiest ways to cause rust. Hunters know this IRl if they also skin / gut and / or butcher their own kills. SO, if you skin and / or butcher in Cogg, you should definitely suffer the consequences if you don't clean your knife in short order.

Cleaning and caring for your gear is a big warrior roleplay thing for me, and I would love if the game supported this with a mechanic. Being able to carry around (and use!) a few cleaning rags and some blade/leather oils for regular maintenance would be ideal. (And I wouldn't have to cringe internally every time I re-sheathe a blade without cleaning it. xD)