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[Urist Mc Dwarf]

A strange mood gave me that. How good is it?

[☼!!Troll Fur Sock!!☼]

It should be pretty good at smashing bones, but don't except it to act as a lightsaber.

[Urist MacNoob]

And then the whip wielder gets into a climactic duel with a goblin warmaster wielding a redstone whip.

[Urist McDwarfFortress]

Worse than a copper whip.

[VerdantSF]

While dense for a stone at 6295, cobaltite isn't as dense as the metals used for weapons (7000-12000).  One of the properties increased for artifacts is the max edge value, but that doesn't do anything for whips which are counted as blunt weapons .

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

still, whips are good right?

[wierd]

Whips are called "lightsabers" for a reason, but as pointed out, cobaltite isn't as dense as most weapons grade metals, and the damage dealt by whips is blunt, not edge.

While it might work good on unarmored enemies, (like troglodites, or scampering kobold vermin), its low density makes it poor when used with armored foes.

I'd use it for fortress honor guards only.

For a quality whip that does lightsaber damage, use platinum, silver, etc. Avoid light materials like candyfloss or aluminum.

Usually, goblinite whips are steel, iron, or copper though.  You want denser metals, because they deal blunt type damage.

[Loctavus]

Are you guys forgetting artifact quality bonuses? sub-standard material aside it might well be perfectly usable. Capture some goblins, disarm them and chuck them into a pit with a champion with their armor still on. See how long they last.

[Telgin]

Being an artifact will make it hit more frequently, so that might counter balance the reduced density.  Honestly though, I bet it will penetrate armor anyway.  Whips defeat armor by more than just a little bit.  I believe I had to reduce some numbers by two orders of magnitude in their RAWs to get armor to have any real effect.

[Larix]

A quick arena test showed that bloodthorn whips are very deadly against unarmoured opponents, but they couldn't get through copper helmets. I didn't check whether it's one of the 'weaponisation' parameters or plain density that makes the difference. If it's primarily density, a cobaltite whip should be in the league of metal whips - at over 6, its density is close to those of metals.

Although parameters might be quite different anyway, since you must play some mod to get non-metal whips.

[VerdantSF]

Btw, what's the whip's name?

[Mr S]

Fleshpeeled the Insensitive Lightsabre of Masochism

Also: Artifact Weapon Trap in Dining Room Mega-Mood Booster

[Urist McDwarfFortress]

If it's primarily density, a cobaltite whip should be in the league of metal whips - at over 6, its density is close to those of metals.

Here's some density values to go off of:
Copper: 8930
Iron: 7850
Cobaltite: 6295
Normal stone: 2670
Normal wood: 500

So, just judging by density, cobaltite is going to be significantly worse than iron, by a factor of more than the difference between iron and copper. However, it rocks when compared to normal stone!

Density is the most important aspect of blunt weapons, but it isn't the only thing that affects it's usefulness:

Iron:
[IMPACT_YIELD:542500]
[IMPACT_FRACTURE:1085000]
[IMPACT_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:319]

Stone (Cobaltite just uses the generic stone template for these values):
[IMPACT_YIELD:120000]
[IMPACT_FRACTURE:120000]
[IMPACT_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:100]

Cobaltite has very significantly worse yield and fracture. However, for strain_at_yield, lower is actually better, so cobaltite wins by quite a bit there, although I doubt that comes anywhere close to making up for the other two.

[BoredVirulence]

I haven't seen many whip related injuries, so my experience could be off.
I tested a *cobaltite* whip in the arena against some typically armored goblins. It always penetrated the armor, and seemed pretty effective to me. I only had 1 goblin survive a lashing to the head, somehow missed the skull (hitting only fat) while he was unconscious.