After paying a lot of money for some rare and very high end steels...like Cowry X, R2, OU31,various stainless damascus steels...the truth is that any steel from a good custom maker who knows his craft...particularly the heat treatment...will work fine...but you cannot generalise on certain things like "sharpening in the field"...that depends on the Rc hardness of the blade...O1 tool steel with a high Rc is likely to be hard to sharpen.

The thing is that some steels at similar Rc heat treatments do exhibit ease of sharpening over other steels but other steels give of their best at higher Rc hardness than others...so it is down to what you specifically want...and whether you are prepared to pay an awful lot more money for the best steels which perhaps in "real use" the improved level of performance is hard to appreciate. Particularly if you "strop" the blade back to a razor edge after a days hard use...because there are many steels able to give that level of performance...the best steels have edge retention you can measure in "days" of hard use if sharpened properly so the edge is not too thin.

Edge angles are a key issue...many blades are taken thin enough to "roll" but prior to this feel better as they are "razor" sharp...so paying more for expensive steel only works if you know how to get the best out of the edge.

Personally for me I would go on "design" suitability and a good maker for a knife before the issue of "steel"...although I thought differently before trying them...but the design, comfort balance and size works far better for sorting out which is the best knife...than the steel.

As an example my favourite 5 inch knives are a 5 inch drop point in Cowry X by Hattori...and the Ratmandu in SR101...one is a $1000 knife...the other is around $250...they both are great knives although far apart in price...and the more expensive one is not able to justify the price difference in performance...unless you really were pushing the limits and not able to strop the edge back and needed a knife to work for "days" maybe even "weeks" without sharpening...then the steel difference would come into play...but those circumstances are very unlikely to occur.