Swords are shit. Watch any sword fight in any movie. Listen to the sound of swords clashing. Every time that happens both swords are chopped on their sharp blade. You might have a pro swordsman who turns their sword in time to strike the opponents sword with the flat of their blade. Never see that on tv.
Why would these dudes fighting that way? That’s not fighting that’s daft prolonging the action for the sake of airtime. Real sword fights are nothing like that. Real sword fights are over very fast. Painfully. Swordsmen don’t mess around.
You have two effective moves with a sword. Stab and slash.
Bashing someone’s sword out of the way with your own sword, called blocking, when they stab. Usually this is done with a buckler or a shield, not with your sword. How can you strike them after you block their sword with your own? Use a buckler and you expose them for you to stab or slash them while their sword is blocked. Fast and effective.
But this is why swords are rubbish. Imagine you fight a prolonged sword fight where you chip and blunt each others swords by using them as shields. The fight goes on and on, because nobody can make a strike. All the while the swords are taking a battering.
After that battle the swords will require a whetstone to sharpen their edge. This thins the blade. If the dents are bad hey can’t be fixed with a whetstone.
Take it to a blacksmith he will hear the metal to soften it and hammer it out before grinding it sharp. Repairing swords does reduce the metal in them. Using swords at all wears them out.
Good quality iron is required. Iron alloys with agents to prevent them chipping so easily emerged only later when blacksmiths got into alchemy, metallurgy. A lot of trial and error which takes time and costs money.
Iron rusts, another hazard of sword maintenance. Armour too. It has to be dried and oiled. It’s possible to oil moisture into it, under the oil which rusts it too, so it has to be dried with heat from fire.
If this seems excessive the question about whether you love your sword has to be asked. Polishing your armour to keep it well. You need oil-rag and whetstone (or drystone).
And you’ll need a friendly blacksmith.
Or you will be using secondhand rusty battered goblin swords discovered in dungeons…