Blades

Blades is a weapon skill that relies on reflexes and cool. Swords, knives and cutting tools fall under this category.

Advantages

The RIP-9 Shiver sword and w00tz Khanda along with many other end-game blades, are PC2. Their damage is very concentrated, which helps passing through big soaks. Since you'll have big cool, stress is something that you don't have to worry about as much, meaning with a little management you could use as many implants as you want. Blades use the same stats as rifles and pistols, so with some skill raw you could use those more easily than other builds as well.

Brawn scaling blades such as the bruce springsteel, and boss springsteel are also PC2 and scale extremely well if one takes brawn as a tertiary stat along side their cool and reflex. The brawn blades are also quite easy to craft for the most part. The Chaindriver is a PC1 alternative that's rather heavy but scales extremely well with brawn.

Blades also shares similar stats to torture, meaning a blader can achieve much higher crit rates than other people if built right.

Disadvantages

You're going to need some brawn or have to take the Mule mutation because most swords are heavy. With armor, you're going to have very limited space to work with unless you have decent brawn or have Mule. Also, the skills that cool affects generally aren't as useful as the ones affected by senses or endurance. Most swords need a lot of Reflexes to speedcap, ranging from 26 to 31. They mainly do slash or stab damage which is pretty easy to get soaks for, considering the soaks of leech-hide armor and some of the rarer armors. End game blades are often difficult to obtain, such as the RIP swords which require power to operate.

Weapons

For an in-depth database for the weapons, see Weaponry.

Starting weapons

• War saw - Pretty slow and has a lower tohit than other blades, but has a decent damage.
• Switchblade - Easily obtained, your bread and butter grinding weapon. Dualwield these for maximum efficiency.
• Cutting knife and butcher knife - Gives a bonus to butchering corpses. Slightly better than switchblades - though the butcher knife is slower.
• Rebar sword - Fast and decent damage, but only with 0-2 raw.
• Shiv - Your improvised prison weapon if you'll end up there for some reason.
• Poison pick - Good crit chance, decent stab damage and infects everything you hit with ebola. Can also break permanently at random.
• Fine wakizashi - Better than wakizashis, if you can kill hepcats for these. Very low skill scaling

Mid-range weapons

• Gas-powered chainsaw - Also does bleed damage, but needs fuel to be decent. Scales very well with brawn. (It's also one-handed - dual wielding chainsaws anyone?)
• Katana - Your next step from the starting weapons. Easily obtained, moderate damage and speed, one handed. Dual-wield them and you can do great.
• Cutlass - Slightly faster than the katana, but if you have the raw for this you can do a lot better.
• Lotus Nodachi - One-time quest reward from Kakuri. Great if you need the PC2.
• Butane torch - Does decent burn damage, but needs butane to work which is pretty bothersome to aquire. The only butane refueling area is in Sharpton Basement.
• Fine katana - The best one-handed blade worth using for the mid range skill-blader. One-time quest reward from Kakuri.
• Hosaka daikatana - One-time quest rewards for killing a certain person who wanders between Necropolis gate and Mountain Pass. Good damage, decent speed, good skill scaling, and great tohit. PC2.
• w00tz Khanda - Craftable equivalent of the Hosaka Daikatana. Same stats as the Hosaka
• Wasteland kukri - The craftable alternative to fine katanas. Scales much more with brawn. With a brawn-blade build, dual wielding can become very effective.
• Krys - Upgrade to the Crystal Spike and a component for the Krysknife. Exorcise some ghosts with these babies.

High-end weapons

• Bruce Springsteel - Impressive (staggering with high brawn) beat damage. Also two handed and PC2. With a dedicated brawn-blader build, this becomes a weapon of mass destruction.
• Boss Springsteel - Similar to the Bruce, but has mainly slash damage instead of beat and is marginally faster. Brawn-blader builds go very well with this as well. Which one is better is mainly personal preference.
• Chaindriver - A freaking chainsaw-sword. Load this up with gas and turn it on for an incredibly high slash weapon scaling off of brawn. PC1, and the Minimum damage increases too, a feature unique to chainsaws.
• RIP-9 Shiver sword - The best blade damage wise. Does insane amounts of slash damage, but needs a cheap power adapter bought from Radio Slack(heavy, rechargable, 20 unit) or a normal crafted power adapter (needs atomicells to recharge, 120 unit per cell to a max of 300 unit) to work. The damage range is also really wide so you can either do a lot or bounce off.
• Ornate Epee - One of the end-game one-handed skill blade. Deals primarily stab damage with a bit of bleed. It's extremely accurate, but requires high reflexes to speedcap. Fancy as heck too.
• Krysknife - The other end-game one-handed skill blade. Has lower min but higher max stab damage, with some slash. Fast and deadly, but a limited mod pool. Can only take grip tape, an element and sharpening kit. Bless the Maker.

Stats

After maxing out reflex and cool, you might want to invest the rest in brawn. Many blades benefit immensely from brawn scaling, and it's also useful to speedcap guns, which are great against enemies who are weak to bullet or prone to parry/dodge a lot.

Senses is a great tertiary stat since it benefits dodge, and focus. Senses builds are widely popular since high dodge can directly debuff your opponent's tohit, making them parry less. The extra focus is also useful for resisting focus mutations like screech.

Endurance is also good for resisting the downsides from drugs and resisting focus mutations even more. Also, higher torture will greatly increase your chance to crit with blades that do slash/stab or element damage.

Brains for the more support oriented blader. Also makes a stronger feint, which is useful in pvp and some pve situations.

Mods

These are just guidelines - the list of what can you put on what weapon can vary (especially with the high-end blades)

• Balanced grip - Blades are a little slow, but this helps them a lot. Put it on blades you use for hunting or general exploring.
• Gyro grip - Accuracy is very important if you want to parry better or hit those dodgy fucks..
• Sharpening kit - More slash damage is always good. Or stab if you're using a primarily stab blade.
• Monowire serrator - If you end up with a decent brawn, you can get some more damage out of this. (NOTE: Will actually reduce damage if your brawn is less than 8)
• Shock/Butane/Acid Pump/Lumission Edge - Your preferred choice of elemental damage.
• EMP generator - If you get some crystal spikes or a Krys for the ghosts, completely forgettable... except for putting on the spikes or the Krys.

Mutations

Recommended

• Hyperimmune - unless you plan to go vampire/zombie, HI is a great mutation with almost no disadvantages. The +end is nice too because you're not going to have a lot of that.
• Superclot - This helps a lot against bleeding if you really don't like bleeder. +2 End too.
• Bleeder - The frenzy on command is extremely useful for extra damage on brawn builds, or extra senses for dodgy builds. You also gain passive -10 stress ticks when covered in blood, which pretty much counterbalances the stress gained from walking around with tons of implants.
• Mule - Weapons and armour can be quite heavy, and with your cool the unburdened stress ticks are laughably small in case you have to run without any equipment. Plus being able to carry more is always nice if you're not a brawny build.
• Nimble fingers - Plus reflexes. You'll need all the reflex you can get to have a decent speed, and the -End can be easily countered with HI or Superclot.
• Twitchy Nerves - Same as Nimble.
• Fuck Machine - +1 cool, plus the ability to control horny (whether you need brawn or cool).

Useful

• Enigma - The +2 cool isn't that necessary, and being unable to get diagnosed can be annoying. But if you can get past that it's definitely something to get. Use @buffs to check what's affecting you.
• Bloodhoud - More senses with no downside.
• Brute Strength/Swollen brain - Dependent if you want to be brainy or not. With implants and horny, you can get 15 brawn easily with only 10 raw (+2 from horny and +3 from implant), so Swollen can help you with brains - but if you don't care about that, then you can get Brute for even more brawn and damage.
• Vampire - Bladers benefit the most from vampire's bonuses. Extra cool for accuracy, extra brawn for damage, extra senses for dodge/focus, and extra endurance for obvious reasons. If you can deal with the whole daylight thing, vampire is definitely something to think about.

Focus

Unlike spears and whips users, you're not going to have as much focus they do due that you don't have much of either of the stats that boost that skill. That doesn't mean you'll be useless with it: with 15 raw and the boost from the various focus mutations, you could easly get around 30 total. That, plus you'll have the ability to get massively reduced stress from using them means that it can be a great help during combat.

Skills
Weapon Skills	Blades • Clubs • Fists • Flails • Medic • Pistols • Rifles • Science • Spears • Whips
Combat Skills	Bombs • Dodge • Focus • Quickdraw • Torture • Wrestle
Mobility Skills	Climb • Pilot • Ride • Swim
Support Skills	Hack • Locksmith • Medic • Repair • Teach • Track
Crafting Skills	Chemistry • Craft • Science
Miscellaneous Skills	Appraise • Fish • Fuck • Linguist • Persuade • Scavenge • Sneak • Throw