Knife

The knife is a primitive, sharp melee weapon. It deals a low amount of damage, but has a short cooldown, making it friendlier to unskilled users.
== Acquisition ==
It can also be purchased from any outlander and orbital combat suppliers, or obtained from outlander and pirate raiders drops.
A plasteel knife is given at the beginning with Crashlanded scenario, while a unique jade knife is given at the beginning with Lost Tribe scenario.
== Analysis ==
Smithing unlocks a variety of weapons. Despite the gladius and ikwa being more expensive, both are worse than the knife (of the same material/quality). Why is this?
* The melee verb selection system, introduced in 1.1. Each weapon has multiple attacks, or verbs, with some better than others. The game's infobox incorrectly calculates the likelihood of each attack (it uses RimWorld 1.0 values). For example, the knife is assumed to use "Bad" attacks more often than it does in practice. 
* The impact of Cut damage type. Of the 3 weapons, knives are the most likely to deal Cut damage. Whenever a Cut attack is rolled, it has a chance to cleave. When a weapon cleaves, it deals 140% damage, spread throughout body parts. 
: While cleaving reduces the chance to destroy body parts, it deals more pain, which gets enemies into pain shock faster. Pain shock is the most common way to disable enemies in combat, much more likely than body part destruction. Even mechanoids, who don't feel pain, can only lose so much HP before dying in combat. 
: Stab has the advantage of superior damage to internal body parts. However, gladii won't instakill the heart at most reasonable qualities, and the chance of hitting the same organ 2 times in a row is miniscule.
Once longswords are available, knives are statistically worse than a sword of the same material/quality but knives are surprisingly competitive once the low cost and easy of getting high quality knifes are taken into account. A knife will have a higher average than a sword of the same material one quality level lower, and you get chances to roll a high-quality knife for the same material cost as the sword. Similarly, two melee fighters with knives will do better than a single fighter with a sword. As such high quality plasteel and bioferrite knives can remain a valid choice even until the end-game, though they are typically phased out by resource-rich colonies.
Maces and warhammers deal less pure , but as they do Blunt damage, they have a different niche compared to the knife. They have superior body part overkill mechanics, and made from uranium and at high qualities, they can remove entire limbs. Maces are end-game options and the specifics of whether they outperform their sharp competitors depends on a variety of factors including the presence of any melee damage factors and whether ultratech weapons are available.
=== Crashlanded ===
In the Crashlanded scenario, you receive a normal quality plasteel knife. This is roughly as strong as a normal steel longsword, and stronger than most other steel weapons of normal quality. Compared to the longsword, the knife attacks faster for less damage per hit, and is marginally worse against armor. 
=== Naked Brutality ===
As you can make knives in a crafting spot, they can be useful in Naked Brutality and other low-resource scenarios. But, if you have at least 2 Crafting and access to wood (not a given on an ice sheet or desert), short bows should be go-to weapon. As a ranged weapon, the short bow is generally better for combat, and it lets you hunt 0% manhunter animals without getting hurt (even docile animals will retaliate if struck in melee). Otherwise, you might have to make a knife, as they can be made out of steel.
In terms of melee weapons, Clubs are your direct crafting spot alternatives. Clubs have 2 advantages over knives: they can be made out of wood, and they have no quality. While a steel club is worse than a "normal" quality steel knife, they are better than a poor or awful knife. 
Considering metals other than steel: a plasteel knife of normal quality or better is better than any club, and a uranium club is better than a uranium knife.
== Styles ==
Ideoligions allow the selection of styles which then change the texture of the certain items and buildings when constructed by the colony. These style variants can be crafted if the colony has the selected style, or can be looted from raiders from factions with the requisite style.
Knife.png|Base variant
HoraxianKnife.png|Horaxian
== Version history ==
* 0.7.581 - Added
* 1.5.4062 - Received a new texture.
* Anomaly DLC Release - Received a new style, Horaxian.
Knife Old.png|Texture prior to 1.5
Category:Equipment Category:Weapons Category:Neolithic Weapons
Category:Melee Weapons Category:Sharp Weapons Category:Knives