COMBAT KNIFE
- BASE ITEM
- WEAPON
- MELEE
- LEVEL 1
COMBAT KNIFECOMBAT KNIFE is a melee weapon, wielded from level 1. STRENGTH is the stat that scales it.
The requirement cuts both ways: nothing below level 1 ever drops one, and a hero below it banks the find rather than wearing it.
Nothing in the campaign is authored to pay it out, so it turns up only where the loot rules reach it on their own.
Sold as tactical, bought for opening paint cans. It has never been sharpened and has never needed it. Fast, short, and honest about both.
What it does
- SWEEPThe swing carves a 70° cone and strikes everything standing in it. INTELLECT widens that cone as you grow, out to a full half circle.
- EDGEDIt has an edge. A blow that takes a body's whole health in one goes clean through it, and the two halves fall apart along the swing.
- PRICED FORAbout 1.2 target a swing. That is what the damage budget assumes it reaches, which is why a wide weapon carries a smaller blow than a narrow one of the same level.
- CRIT WEIGHTA critical hit lands for 1.9× — a flat trait of the melee class, the same on every weapon in it. Your build earns the crit CHANCE; the class fixes what a crit is worth.
- SALVAGEIt melts down: the merchant pays double what an ordinary piece of its worth fetches.
A dropped copy carries 200 swings of wear. At zero it does not shatter — it falls into the bag unusable until a repair kit mends it, and the hero draws the best thing left.
A fresh find in the hands of a hero who has spent no stat points — the piece itself, with nothing of the wielder in it. Your own STRENGTH, DEXTERITY or INTELLECT lifts these from there, as does an item level found deeper than the requirement.
Make quality
Every plain drop of this base rolls a make quality on top of the numbers above — the craftsmanship of that particular copy, stamped at the moment it drops and frozen for life. It scales the damage and the wear budget together, and it leads the name: a BROKEN COMBAT KNIFE and a PERFECT COMBAT KNIFE are the same base item and not the same find.
The bands overlap on purpose, so a good CRUDE can out-swing a poor NORMAL while a PERFECT always clears a NORMAL. Which one you get depends on the level of whatever dropped it: the two odds columns below are a level-1 killer and a level-60 one, and everything between is interpolated. Craftsmanship and magic are exclusive — a magic-or-better find is always normal make.
| MAKE | DAMAGE | SCALE | ODDS AT MLVL 1 | ODDS AT MLVL 60 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BROKEN | 8–11 | 0.58–0.82× | 20% | 0% |
| CRUDE | 9–13 | 0.73–0.97× | 25% | 6% |
| NORMAL | 12–14 | 0.90–1.10× | 52% | 54% |
| SUPERIOR | 13–17 | 1.03–1.27× | 3% | 28% |
| PERFECT | 15–19 | 1.16–1.44× | 0% | 12% |
Named items built on it
One relic wears this shape, with an authored block of bonuses on top.
