To get irregular surface topography efficiently, various processing methods were compared and the chemical etching method, which is simple to operate and cheap to use was chosen to process the irregular surface topography of cold work die steel Cr12. Then the relationship between the surface topography and the corrosive agents as well as the corrosion time was analyzed. Different kinds of corrosive agents resulted in different surface topography under the same corrosion time and the stronger the corrosivity was, the shorter time it took to get corrosion pits, which enhanced the sensibility to corrosion time. To research the impact of irregular surface topography on the friction performance of die surface, wear tests of samples with both smooth surface and irregular surface topography was performed under starved-oil lubrication. After analyzing the friction coefficient of twelve specimens, conclusions can be drawn as follows: irregular surface topography can reduce the friction coefficient of die surface effectively; the value of friction coefficient has a strong relationship with the density of contact peaks and, under certain surface topography, the denser the contact peaks are, the smaller the friction coefficient is; the friction coefficient increases first, and then decreases when the corrosion pits get bigger and deeper.