Elephant tusk

An elephant tusk is an item obtained from butchering an elephant. Tusks can be sold to exotic goods traders, or used as a melee weapon.

Acquisition

Butchering an adult elephant will yield two elephant tusks, unless the parts have been destroyed by damage. Only a full adult elephant will produce tusks when butchered. All wild elephants spawn as adults.

They can also be purchased from traders.

Summary

Elephant tusks function identically to any other melee weapon, despite their unorthodox method of production. They do not have a quality value - all elephant tusks are statistically identical.

Analysis

An elephant tusk is a good choice for a early melee weapons. It requires no crafting, and it has no Quality value and is thus not reliant on skilled crafters. While it has a modest DPS, its AP is fairly high for the early game. It thus an effective choice until Smithing is researched and other alternatives become available, or longer, if materials and/or skilled crafters are lacking. The primary difficulty comes in killing an elephant in the early game, but the hardy leather and large amount of meat make it a valuable feat if it can be accomplished.

After the early game, the practical value of tusks goes down as more effective weapons become available, but they still come as a nice freebie that you would not get if you were hunting or slaughtering other big game.

Taming vs hunting

Hunting elephants may be faster but can prove difficult or prohibitively dangerous, especially when herds turn manhunter. As elephants have a 0% manhunting chance on a failed taming attempt, taming them for slaughter has no risk beyond lost pawn time and a small amount of food, while also providing several additional advantages. Slaughtering a tamed elephant will still produce both tusks, along with significantly more meat and leather. Taming elephants requires an Animals skill of 5.