Weapons Skins...when is a skin not a skin??

When people refer to weapon "skins" I assume they are talking about the look of a weapon when it is equipped rather than a reference to the name (e.g. Fellblade). I know the name often implies the look but, having done a bit of a search on this, when people start talking skins they often just head off into weapon names territory.

So my question is, can you get rare skins, (i.e. a weapons graphical look) that is very unusual, which isn't necessarily one of the named weapons like Shadow, Fell, Murssat and the like?

I ask because I found a purple hammer which had an ordinary name..."Heavy Hammer of Hitting" or something like that...but had the weirdest skin I've seen so far, other than the look of the Murssat Hammer.

This hammer I found had a head which was made up of a spiral of spikes...it looked like a big swizzle stick! Not got the pic to hand atm but I'll add it to the post tonight if I remember.

Is this actually an unusual skin for a hammer? This is more out of interest to clarify the use of the word "skin" rather than a value thing as the weapon doesn't have max damage.

fellblade is a skin, spatha is a skin, tribal axe is a skin, Melon Hammer is a skin,Wolf hammer is a skin (and a cool one at that) 'Skin' just refers to the way the weapon looks, it has nothing to do with the damage or mods on the weapon, I have had non-max damage Fellblades drop for me, but it's still a fellblade.

I have noticed a few times that shields can have the same name "Tall shield" and look different, but thats the only time ive noticed acual skin deviaiton from the named skin.

Skins are always skins. If a weapon didn't have a skin, you wouldn't be able to see it.

In response to the OP:

The Warhammer you found is indeed a rare skin yes. People usually call it "The Spikey Warhammer" to differentiate it from the normal warhammer skin. But yes, it is rare. Personally, I think the Spikey Warhammer is the best looking hammer in the game.

Haggard...in coding terms you are, of course, right. The point I was trying to make though was that most discussions about skins seem to imply that only those weapons with certain names have rare or unusual skins.

Thanks ShadowStorm That's answered the question for me. I thought it looked really cool. I'll probably hang on to it for a while. Although it didn't have max damage the other mods on it weren't too bad at all.

actually I refer to the different swords as 'models'. The model is the actualy weapon itself I find, the skin just the texture file. Hence the Avicara and Tengu have the same model, but different skins.