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[Illogical_Blox]

Hi, I'm Illogical_McClure. You may remember me from two mods that stopped development and a stopped community fort, but don't worry, I intend to do something about them.

Now, I suddenly have a pig bone artifact sword, somehow. Is it worth going instead for a steel sword, which is of better material, but not artifact?

[Pwned dwarf]

steel defiantly, quality doesn't affect damage, only accuracy, so while you may hit every time it won't do much damage, although you should keep it anyways, its good for shops.

[Eldin00]

Hi, I'm Illogical_McClure. You may remember me from two mods that stopped development and a stopped community fort, but don't worry, I intend to do something about them.

Now, I suddenly have a pig bone artifact sword, somehow. Is it worth going instead for a steel sword, which is of better material, but not artifact?

No. Material properties trump item quality on weapons every time, except maybe in cases where the material properties are extremely similar.

[k9wazere]

You have an artifact bone sword and you contemplate *not* using it? For shame!

Whoever wields that weapon is going to to be the coolest dorf in all dorftopolis.

There's a film called Brotherhood of the Wolf, and it has the coolest bone sword ever. Vids on youtube. Imagine your dorf is wielding that!

[Illogical_Blox]

Discovered that, yes, Greatrivers the pig bone sword isn't useful. However, my expedition leader seems to like it as a symbol of his office.

[Dunamisdeos]

Hi, I'm Illogical_McClure. You may remember me from two mods that stopped development and a stopped community fort, but don't worry, I intend to do something about them.

Now, I suddenly have a pig bone artifact sword, somehow. Is it worth going instead for a steel sword, which is of better material, but not artifact?

No. Material properties trump item quality on weapons every time, except maybe in cases where the material properties are extremely similar.

The only exception I've found is an artifact iron weapon (say, an axe) compared to a regular steel one. I've found the iron one to be superior in fort mode.

[vjmdhzgr]

steel defiantly, quality doesn't affect damage, only accuracy, so while you may hit every time it won't do much damage, although you should keep it anyways, its good for shops.

Quality does actually affect the damage of at least sharp weapons. A quote from Toady that can be found on the DF wiki's page on item quality: "It looks like the artifact edges are the maximum edge for the material, which is also what a masterwork gets, so beyond a masterwork you'd just be getting the hit roll modifier." Which at least implies that non-masterwork items are not at maximum sharpness, meaning that past accuracy weapons also get sharper. There isn't however a sharpness difference between masterwork and artifact though, but there's at least a significant hit chance increase.

[Naryar]

Oh, it's cool.

It's just completely useless as an actual weapon. Maybe as a hammerer weapon ?

[Saiko Kila]

The best use for such a weapon is a weapon trap in king's (mayor's, noble's) room. Preferably somewhere between the door and the bed. When the guy comes drunk and tired from the brothel, he trips and gets intimate with the most artful contraption. In this case he may even survive it, and get a positive thought!

[TheFlame52]

Do like I do and give it to the captain of the guard. My captain is currently wearing 6 different artifacts plus a reacher bone battle axe.

[i2amroy]

It'll shred anything unarmored with the artifact hit-chance and edge bonuses. However if anything is in actual armor it'll be pretty useless, since it'll just glance off. (And being bone it might not be that good at actually chopping off limbs due to hitting the bone inside the creature, though it'll wreck up their organs IIRC).

[Eldin00]

Bone has [MAX_EDGE] of 1000. All of the metals you can normally make weapons out of have [MAX_EDGE] 10000 (10x as sharp at the same quality level). So I'd assume that even a no-quality copper sword is as sharp or sharper than the artifact bone sword, and superior in every other way except hit chance. So the bone sword MIGHT be better in the hands of an unskilled swordsman, but once the skill gets high enough to frequently hit with a lower quality weapon, any metal sword will beat the artifact bone sword in effectiveness.