Depending on the type of steel, of course. Stainless steel is an answer to that, but not every manufacturer is on the same page here. Rust still appears on our knives and scissors if left unattended for a few days. I noticed that kitchen knives from Europe, such as Zwilling Henckels or Wusthoff, get rusted more often than knives from Aisa, like Mac, Shun, Nagomi, and others. Nothing but a personal observation.

Rust thrives if you keep your knives near the kitchen sink or other high moisture level places. It is a chemical reaction where water and oxygen get in close contact with iron in a knife, causing iron to oxidize. It doesn't happen fast but can be quite distractive in the long rung.

Rust is manageable if timely treated with the hard side of a dish sponge. But if you are the one who loves having a ton of knives, but uses one or two from the whole set, rust may appear unnoticed and cause quite a lot of damage. If that has happened to you, think about the necessity of having a big knife set. How often do you really use each knife? Do you think you could shrink the number of knives down? I, personally, prefer to have no more than four to five knives in my set. Each knife in a set this big will be used and washed regularly.