Copper is a soft, malleable metal with a distinctive pink-orange colour. Freshly polished copper shines brightly, while long exposure to air and damp produces a blue-green patina that protects the metal beneath. It conducts heat well and is readily hammered, drawn or cast without complicated tools.
Most copper is smelted from copper ore and traded as ingots. It is used for cookware, pipes, roof coverings, fittings, ornaments and coinage. Pure copper is too soft for dependable weapons, but alloying it produces harder and more useful metals, most notably bronze and brass.