Dagger

The dagger is the smallest short blade. While daggers are one of the weakest weapons, they receive a large stabbing bonus, higher than all other weapons. See the Stabbing page for more details.

Strategy

Daggers are weak if you aren't stabbing. If you have nothing else, a dagger is at least better than a club or Unarmed Combat. However, a short sword will be better at everything but stab damage. On the other hand, "stabber" characters (such as Enchanters and other users of Hexes) greatly benefit from the dagger boost. A skilled stabber with a good dagger can one-shot sleeping dragons and giants with ease.

For other characters, a dagger/short sword with a "flat" damage brand, namely venom or electrocution, is a strong early game weapon. A dagger of venom can take you to Lair with 0 skill investment. This isn't because daggers are good, but because the venom brand is so powerful in the early Dungeon.

Comparison to Short Blades

Despite their special stabbing bonus, daggers may be worse than other short blades for stabbing damage. Assuming you've reached mindelay:

• Quick blades: Quick blades are better at every stab except sleep stabs. This is because quick blades have the same base damage, but make twice as many stabs. The dagger bonus is always less than twice the damage of other short blades, so quick blades are just better. Sleeping enemies are the sole exception: since sleeping enemies can only be stabbed once, the stronger first hit off a dagger is better.

• Rapiers: At extremely high levels of skill and dexterity, rapiers may deal more stab damage than daggers do. For reference: at 25 dexterity, 27 Fighting, 27 Short Blades, and 27 Stealth, a rapier stab is just slightly better than a dagger stab. At more realistic levels of skill, dagger stabs are significantly better. Of course, sticking with a rapier means you don't have to waste time swapping weapons.

	Image
Mundane
Magical	File:Dagger2.png
Artifact	File:Dagger3.png
	Unrandarts
Spriggan's Knife	File:Spriggan's knife.png