Dagger

A dagger is one of the most commonly used weapons in history. It is a short-bladed weapon used primarily for stabbing or thrusting. It evolved from prehistoric tools and initially were made of basic materials, such as stone or bone. In GemStone, they are a very fast weapon. Daggers are one of the fastest weapons, having only a one second roundtime and a three second minimum roundtime. The only weapon faster is the bare fist.

Dagger

Construction

Like most bladed weapons, daggers consist of primarily two parts: the blade and hilt.

Blade

The blade of a dagger is exceedingly short, approximately 6 inches long. The dagger blade is usually narrow and pointed, designed for thrusting and stabbing. The use of a fuller is not uncommon, but is usually only for aesthetic purposes. The only thing common between all daggers is that the blade is designed for stabbing.

Hilt

The hilt of a dagger usually consists of the crossguard, handle, and pommel. As compared to the longsword, the pommels of daggers were significantly smaller, as they do not have to act as a counterweight to the blade. In the case of a handle that is bolted to the tang, pommels were not even used. With the wide variety of daggers, there is no real standard to their construction.

Uses

Daggers have many uses aside from being merely weapons. They're used in fletching for paring arrows, cutting the shafts to length, nocking them, and for cutting the tip. They're also used in the Rogue Guild skill, Rogue Gambits.

Game Mechanics

The dagger is a low damage, high speed weapon. It is ideal against opponents wearing little to no armor and is best employed in stabbing wounds to the eyes. Daggers are known to be more effective when used in ambushing, Melee Warmages are mainly concerned about strength. They need all the AS they can get relative to the other classes before the AS slowdown. AgiDex is less of a concern because, from an RT perspective if you are doing most melee builds, you should be able to swing anything in 6 seconds with any race. That is the RT needed to hit 1 second eventually. If your stats are placed for growth, and you are using a lance, AgiDex might be a concern in a few cases. In that case just make sure you math it out before you get started, or swap to a faster polearm.

The strongest races are: Giantman: +15 STR, but bolting suffers with a -5 DEX and CS takes a hit with a -5 Aura. They do have a nice CON bonus at +10 and the best encumbrance factor of all races.
Half-Krol: +10 STR, with no bonus or penalty on DEX or AURA. They share the same +10 CON bonus as Giantmen, as well as a high encumbrance factor.
Dwarf: +10 STR, no DEX penalties but -5 to AGI and bad Aura at -10. They have the highest CON bonus at +15.
Human: Only +5 STR, no modifiers to DEX, AGI or AURA. Humans are the middle of the road race.

It should be noted that these THW warmages races outlined above tend to be weak in DEX and Aura if you decide to swap builds after the AS slowdown. So you would find it very difficult to swap from a Racially maximized THW Warmage to a Pure or Ranged Warmage. because crit weighting, based on ambush imparts critical weighting; thus, the dagger is able to overcome its low damage as long as the ambusher is able to inflict a rank 1 wound or higher.

Weapon	AG	Cloth	Leather				Scale				Chain				Plate				RT	Min RT	Damage Type	STR/DU
	AsG	1	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
Dagger	DF	.250	.200				.100				.125				.075				1	2	Slash/Puncture	18/195
	AvD	25	23	22	21	20	15	13	11	9	10	6	2	-2	0	-6	-12	-18

Other Names

Being one of the oldest and most widely used weapons in existance, the dagger has been called many names. These include alfange, basilard, bodkin, cinquedea, dirk, knife, kozuka, misericord, parazonium, pavade, poignard, pugio, scramasax, sgian achlais, sgian dubh, spike, stiletto, and tanto. Other types of daggers include the fantail dagger, forked dagger, kidney dagger, crescent dagger, bracelet dagger, and bodice dagger. Other types of knives include the knife and butcher knife.

Legendary Daggers

• ShadowDeath Daggers - Most ShadowDeath weapons are daggers. There are a few weapons of other types, such as the handaxe.

Related Articles

• Edged Weapons - The skill required to use a dagger effectively.
• Forging - Player-forged weapons can have up to a 6% bonus to the weapon's AvD and DF.

References

• Play.net, weapons and armor guide
• Wikipedia article on daggers