Awesome! I always get a little excited when I see a post in the Programming section

Oh, snap. Mistook it for the last one at a glance.

No shoutbox. Down for repairs?

I got the chests - but on examining the thread I saw that I had been linked to the most recent post, when there were two others that had been posted earlier in the day, before I had checked the forum that morning, and which hadn't yellow-chested on me

Same as above, apparently.

Changing handles is possible (change primary to match secondary -> change both to anything), but ill advised. Once both materials match they will ALWAYS match. All non-artifact/magical weapons (that have handles) have wooden handles, which is about as good as you can get. If, for example, you changed your mace to the appropriate wood and then to adamantium, you'd have a really heavy adamantium mace which isn't actually any better than just a normal adamntium mace. The handle's material ONLY affects weight and value.

The highest naturally-trained stat (other than INT) I ever had was armstrength, with my winning character, at somewhere around 35+. Dual-wielding Neerc se'Ulb will do that.

I have nobody to Thanksgiving with.

Keep in mind higher accuracy also means more head and limb blows. Minimal benefit against animals (including Elpuri!), but great against people. Rolling torsos are a lot less threatening than knights and wizards.

Hmm...
SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

The actual damage bonus would be minimal. Damage is a function of weight as well as the hardness of the item's material, with various multipliers to both depending on the specific (if I'm recalling my item.dat correctly). Because Octiron weighs considerably less than Mithril, the main benefit of such a hardening would be faster and more accurate attacks. So the short of it is yes, I think that would be worth it.

Though, you'll need a little more than 30 int IIRC...