Originally posted by Marty Chonks:

The only disadvantage to a knife is, it ain't that good against certain bosses (especially bonemass since you shouldn't have a sliver one at that time). Otherwise, the alternative attack is great (+ interesting/unique mechanic) and normal attacks have same or better dps than most other weapons out of the same material/biome. Black metal knife for example is absolutely on par with blackmetal sword, and you can kill singular or spread out trash mobs often a lot faster cuz it swings super fast. And if you can land a sneak alternative attack on an unsuspecting foe it does a really big amount of damage (like 80% of lox hp gone with black knife and decent skill in knifes).

the thing with Bonemass though, or any mob in the swamp for that matter, is they are weak to Blunt damage, so Slash damage will do very minimal damage to him. mace or stagbreaker should really be your go to for the swamps. i tried a few times with edged weapons, it makes running the swamps twice as hard, or rather makes you spend a lot more time there than you normally would have.