Blades

A powerful swordsman has reflexes of lightning, but more importantly, knows how to look cool while fighting.

Blades is a weapon skill that relies on Reflexes and Cool. Swords, knives and the likes rely on this skill.

Advantages
The RIP-9 Shiver sword and RIP-10 Cherenkov, 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 Firearms, so with some skill raw you could use those more easily than other builds as well.

Brawn scaling blades such as the Bruce Springsteel, Boss Springsteel, and bone sword 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.

Disadvantages
You're going to need a decent brawn to use most blades, since a lot of them scales with brawn a bit. Also, the skills that Cool affects generally aren't as useful as the ones affected by Senses or Endurance. Most of them are very slow with low reflexes (even the RIP swords) so you'll need all the Reflexes you can get. Except for the RIP-10 Cherenkov and Bone Sword, they mainly do slash damage which is pretty easy to get soaks for. Also most of the midgame blades are one-time quest rewards. End game blades are often difficult to obtain, such as the RIP swords which require power to operate, and chobo knives which are expensive and require a niche mutation to buy. Overall almost every blade except the RIP swords, Hosaka Daikatana and chobo knives have poor skill scaling compared to other weapons like whips, so you might have some trouble until you reach your 10th raw unless you're a brawny build.

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

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. Dual wield 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
 * Sonic scalpel - Great alternative to Wakizashis, since they do unsoakable bleed damage. Now a medic's weapon. Sorry blades.
 * Crystal spike - Does mainly EMP damage, which is great against those pesky ghosts and spectres.

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 acquire. 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.
 * Wasteland kukri - The craftable alternative to fine katanas. Scales a much more with brawn. With Brawn-blade build, dual wielding can become very effective.

High-end weapons

 * Bruce Springsteel - Impressive (staggering with high Brawn) beat damage and better to-hit than its Boss counterpart, but very, very slow. 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, with 2 less tohit. Brawn-blader builds go very well with this as well, but it doesn't scale as well with Brawn as the Bruce. Which one is better is mainly personal preference.
 * Bone Sword - Brawn blade that scales quite well and does unusual acid damage which most armors can't soak very well.
 * RIP-9 Shiver sword - The best blade (for skill-bladers). Does good amount of slash damage, but needs a cheap power adapter bought from Radio Slack(heavy, rechargeable, 20 unit) or a normal crafted power adapter (needs atomicells to recharge, 120 unit per cell to a max of 300 unit) to work.
 * RIP-10 Cherenkov (Cherry sword) - This is an upgraded shiver sword made to do electric damage instead of slash. MUCH harder to soak, but very expensive to craft. This weapon is devastating in PVP. The jewel in any blader's arsenal.
 * Chobo Knives - A strong alternative to the Shiver sword. While it's only a PC1 weapon, the knives can be duel wielded and become rather fast with mods and decent reflex. These can only be purchased by Chuds in the Chud colony. They're also the only blades that can take the waste catalyst mod. (2-6 radiation damage)

Stats
After maxing out Reflexes and Cool, you should 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 buffs. Senses builds are wildly 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.

Brains for the more support-oriented blader. Also makes a stronger, 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. Put it on blades you use to PVP, like cherenkovs, or chobo knives.
 * Sharpening kit - More slash damage is always good.
 * 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 - Your preferred choice of elemental damage.
 * Waste Catalyst - Adds the difficult to soak rad damage which can cause enemies to become sick and light on fire. Exclusive to chobo knives.
 * EMP generator - If you get some crystal spikes for the ghosts, completely forgettable.

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.
 * 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 armor 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 - +Reflexes. You'll need all of it you can get to have a decent speed, and the -End can be easily countered with HI.
 * 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.
 * 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 easily 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.