Carving Knife

Carving Knife

Type	Weapon
Type	Dagger
Level	1
Damage	1-3
Crit Chance	4%
Location	The Mines (Floors 1-19)

The Carving Knife is the first dagger most farmers ever hold, and it is a lesson rather than a weapon. It comes out of the boxes and barrels on the top twenty floors of the Mines, or occasionally off a monster there, and it hits for 1 to 3. The broken sword Marlon hands over at the mine entrance does more. What the knife offers instead is speed and a critical chance twice the common rate, which is the first hint the game gives that damage figures are not the whole story. The description is honest about it: a small, light blade, nothing more.

Location

Breaking containers on floors 1 to 19 is the standard way to get one, and the monsters on those floors can drop one as a special find. Those floors are mostly rocks and the occasional slime, so the search is safe even in the first week.

Marlon's shelf starts with the Wooden Blade and the Iron Dirk, both of which cost gold a new farm does not have, so for many players the Carving Knife is simply what turns up first.

Since Mines floors regenerate every day, a farmer who wants one for the collection can smash the crates on floors one to nineteen each morning until it appears.

Stats

Damage of 1 to 3 means two or three stabs for a Green Slime and several for a Rock Crab. The knife's defence is that those stabs arrive very quickly, because every dagger in the game strikes several times a second regardless of how weak it is.

The critical chance is the interesting column. At double the baseline, crits come up often, and with the ordinary triple multiplier a lucky stab lands around nine. On the first ten floors of the Mines that is the difference between two hits and one.

Knockback is at the dagger minimum, so whatever it stabs stays exactly where it is. Against the slow, weak monsters of the upper Mines that is tolerable, and it is also why the knife becomes dangerous to hold by about floor thirty.

Notes

Its real use is as a free trial of the dagger style. Holding the alternate attack pins a monster in place and lands four quick stabs, which on the upper floors kills most things outright. A player who enjoys that rhythm knows to save for the Crystal Dagger and eventually the Galaxy Dagger; one who does not has lost nothing but a few crates.

It sells for 50g, which is about what one morning's foraging brings in, so it is usually kept as a curiosity or binned without ceremony.

Forging it is a joke rather than a plan, although the joke works: three Rubies at the Forge raise its damage by a third and it is still the weakest weapon in the game.

The floors it comes from are worth knowing for other reasons. The chest on floor 10 holds Leather Boots, floor 20 has a water pool to fish in, and the blocked path near the entrance leads to the Dwarf once a steel pickaxe or a bomb can open it. A farmer smashing crates for the knife is standing in the middle of all of that, which is why the early Mines repay a slow, thorough first visit.

All Daggers

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Type	Level	Damage
Abby's Planchette	Dagger	8	24-30
Broken Trident	Dagger	5	15-26
Burglar's Shank	Dagger	4	7-12
Carving Knife	Dagger	1	1-3
Crystal Dagger	Dagger	4	4-10
Dragontooth Shiv	Dagger	12	40-50
Dwarf Dagger	Dagger	11	32-38
Elf Blade	Dagger	2	3-5
Elliott's Pencil	Dagger	8	24-30
Galaxy Dagger	Dagger	8	30-40
Infinity Dagger	Dagger	16	50-70
Iridium Needle	Dagger	12	20-35
Iron Dirk	Dagger	1	2-4
Shadow Dagger	Dagger	4	10-20
Wicked Kris	Dagger	8	24-30
Wind Spire	Dagger	1	1-5