Primitive Sword
Weapon · WeaponMelee0★A battered blade for melee work — still serviceable, and built for fighting at arm's length.
Primitive Sword is 49th of 79 melee weapons by attack, at 180 against the 2,400 of Laser Sword.
It feeds no other recipe, which makes it a terminal item: craft what you will actually carry and stop there.
Details
At 10 weight each it eats carry capacity fast, so bring a mount or park a chest nearby.
Primitive Sword Crafting Recipe
Wooden Board
Stone×15
Ingot×15
Ore×32
Wood×25Crafting it takes 32 materials across 3 types.
Where to Find Primitive Sword
Primitive Sword is not something you find lying around — you craft it, and the recipe is below.
Using Primitive Sword Well
It is a large jump over the melee gear that comes before it. Metal Spear unlocks at level 13 with 80 attack and 250 durability; the Primitive Sword lands four levels later at more than double the damage and double the durability, for the same 2 technology points.
Plan on carrying it for a long stretch. The only melee tech between it and level 29 is Stun Baton at level 22, which is a capture tool at 10 attack, so the next genuine damage upgrade is Sword — 360 attack on the same 500 durability. Everything sharper than that (Refined Metal Spear at 34, Metal Bat at 40, Katana at 44) is far off.
Cheap enough to keep spares. The crafting work it takes is about a third of what Sword needs at the same bench and roughly a seventh of Katana, and the materials are all base-camp renewables, so queue two or three at once instead of being left empty-handed when one wears through its 500 durability mid-fight.
Alternatives and Upgrades
Step up from here and you get Drone Launcher at 200 attack; step down and it is Terraprisma at 150. The size of that step is what decides whether the crafting bill is justified yet.
Other melee weapons at a similar tier, for when you want to weigh this against the rest of its class:
