Throwing knives

"A favorite weapon of assassins in the Far East for centuries, throwing knives can be deadly when wielded by a master but are more generally used when it becomes desirable to send a message. The message is usually 'Your death is coming on swift feet.'"

- description of Throwing Knives

A throwing knife is a low-tech skill weapon in Deus Ex.

Background
A knife designed and weighted to be optimized for throwing. Each is composed of a single piece of steel, forged into a double-edged blade for increased striking surface area.

Game item
This weapon is a small knife that can be thrown. If the knife hits a wall or floor, the player can pick it up and reuse it. The weapon does not make any noise when a knife is thrown.

The maximum number of throwing knives a player can hold is 25. If additional throwing knives are picked up, they will vanish and will not be added to another inventory slot.

While throwing knives are generally retrievable from surfaces, they cannot be retrieved if a knife is thrown onto interactive surfaces such as personal computers, bulletin readers or ATMs.

Tactics

 * Headshots will make throwing knives quite powerful. Two headshots at untrained Low-Tech skill level are enough to down a common trooper.


 * The throwing knife is effective against most organic foes; the Karkian being the exception. It's firing rate is fast enough and it does enough damage that it can quickly defeat most foes, especially if the player manages to land headshots.


 * Throwing knives are very rare in the game, so those that want to use them should be very cautious before choosing to use them on an enemy.


 * Stealth players might find this weapon useful for quickly dispatching a single enemy in order to conserve ammo for their other weapons. Note that the death scream that enemies make will alert any enemies near the victim.


 * Another, less obvious use of throwing knives is as a distraction when stealthing. Throwing one into a wall will make a sound which will cause non-alerted enemies to rotate towards it, making them easy pickings. Afterwards the knife can be retrieved from the wall.

Locations

 * UNATCO HQ (first visit): a pack of three on a NSF corpse on the operation table in the medical center in level 3.
 * Luminous Path Complex: two stacks of five are in the sparring room that lead to Tong's lab.
 * Hong-Kong: Killing and looting Gordon Quick yields four.
 * Paris Catacomb: a pack of five on a chest in the area just after the entry of the Silhouette bunker.
 * Paris Streets: two pack of five on the entry table and one pack of five on the coffee table in the flat of an arms dealer.
 * Paris Cathedral: a pack of five on a locked cabinet in the right room above the computer room's. A WiB patrol inside.
 * Ton Hotel (first visit): a pack of four in the north room hidden around the side of the bed in the bedroom.

behind the scenes
The weapons internal name is shuriken, which is a different throwable weapon. A shuriken does match the throwing knife's description, suggesting that this was a rather late change.