I've just realized that the amount of dmg that a spear can make is mounstrous, like I get it when you make the animation of one-shoting a zed but not when you do the normal attack. And if the spears are not as good in real live as they are in the game, why did the developers make them so OP?
Are spears as good in real live as they are in the game?
QuestionOne example I like to give.. is I have a practice spear for live steel re-enactment. The tip of the spear is a metal ball so no point. I casually with little force can jam that spear 1 inch into a tree. If the spear was sharp and i applied force... it would go through like butter. Spear offers a lot of advantages that just simple get over looked.
So your spear is pretty pointless?
Why was this so funny
Because it is pretty
One could even say it is.
User deleted comment
2mo
Wow, so funny, great contribution
I have a macebell that absolutely kicks my ass when I use it, and it's not that heavy. Leverage and torque are powerful forces.
Do you have any recommendations for resources/YouTube channels to get into it?
Not super on-topic, but where did you get your spear? I've been looking for a good practice one for a while.
Reddit is so weird. Just casually stumbling upon a small community of real life spearmen.
If history is anything to go by, we're all spearmen.
I think Cult-of-Athena . com
Not just that but spears require little training to be effective compared to swords and maces dor example
which is a major boon on its own
Even against trained fighters with swords, untrained spearmen have an advantage. There’s a YouTube video on it done by some historical reenactors, I need to find it.
Found it. Great watch. https://youtu.be/afqhBODc_8U?si=DMzmYA2a1ZGmq9h9
So they’re not just OP, they’re OG too.
but they probably would be able to pierce skulls so easily no?
A steak knife taped to a broom handle? Probably not.
An actual dead ass spear made for piecing chainmail? Fo sho
If yoau actuaky maade aa spear from a handle and knife.
You would remove the grip scales and affix the steel directly. Be less slapdash than the games depiction.
hmm i didnt think of that but yea that makes sense
Yes.
Kinetic energy is directly proportional to the mass of the object and to the square of its velocity.
The weight of the spear and your body behind it, plus the speed with which you thrust it, can generate a lof kinetic energy, which is then concentrated in one single spot in the skull. I did some napkin math based on that a 20 joule hit to the head with an air gun can pierce the skull bone.
So a 2.5kg spear alone, travelling at 5m/s will deliver over 30j energy. Provided it has a solid metal tip, all that energy gets concentrated in a singular spot it technically should go through a zombie skull. And if you can jab faster, like 6m/s, it will deliver around 45j, pretty powerful.
Now I am sure my google search history looks pretty sus because of this research xD
Does anyone want to challenge my napkin math?
Add whatever velocity the zomb has coming back at you, as it's not slowing down.
Against people, yes. I doubt a wooden stick would pierce a zombie skull easily though, and suspect that blunt would be my weapon of choice if I were to have to engage the horde in melee combat.
Edit: I get it, I misread the question. I agree, spears are probably the greatest melee weapons for fighting another human.
Edit: Fuck, I agree with you. I literally posted a YouTube video called "Spears are OP" a month ago.
Post was about real life
I thought we were talking about hypothetical real life zombie combat.
But yes, spears are OP in real life melee combat.
Piercing skulls is something spears are great at.
A proper spear, yes. But a wooden tipped one?
They would still be extremely effective.
Wooden sticks we have in game that the game calls "spears" probably not, but real spears would be very effective.
Yeah
Keep it simple stupid.
Less to break, less likely to get lodged in a skull, or tree.
Less skill to use.
Although against a hoard I'd drop everything and run giving me just a few more minutes until I collapse after over estimating my running ability, and I'd be devoured winded with cramps a few minutes later
LAUGHS IN CROWBAR completely massacring a horde XD(talking about real-life logic here not PZ of course lol)
Yes, but only because they are cheap.
Not "only" were they cheap, they were incredibly easy to learn how to use, which was needed when the bulk of your force was made up illiterate peasants that only had like 3 weeks to get ready for war.
Spears are the single most important and impactful melee weapon in history for a great reason.
Easy to use, strong reach, strong area denial, effective striking and top tier thrusting. Cheap. Even in a more modern context, you affix a bayonet to your M1 Garand? Buddy that's a gun spear.
Also, very importantly, easy to use in formations.
You need space to swing around a sword or an axe and have to be careful not to hit anyone on your side, with a spear you can stand practically shoulder-to-shoulder and be very effective.
For every sword idiot on the other side you can have 2 or 3 people with spears in the same space.
Also the material cost to produce is a lot less than a sword. A sword takes more labour and uses more metal than a spear would. So apart from spearmen not needing as much room to be effective, they can also field more people with a similar amount of resources
Swords also take a lot more maintenance. I own one and it's a pain to keep rust free an sharp.
An axe head or spear head is massively easier to keep clean and sharp. More so than its size would imply.
Spear doesn't even really need metal. It's a stone age weapon. You can make a pointy rock head or even just sharpen the wood and then burn it to harden.
That's why phalanxes were so important in spear combat. A single spearman would have a reach advantage but a definite speed disadvantage against a swordsman, but a phalanx of spearmen would be terrifying for anyone wanting to stay to the rock-paper-scissors model and not skip ahead to the grapeshot.
Not true for short swords, see the gladius
Well that's the exception, not the rule,
Ah yeah the minor exception used by one of the largest empires of antiquity?
Spearmen would frequently carry short swords or other side arms when they could afford it in case they lost their spear etc.
A spear is better for use in formations, but swords absolutely can and we're used.
Spears can and absolutely were wicked dangerous being used by a single skilled individual and swung about as you say swords have to be.
Then you have halberds, which were used to great effect in formations, which are effectively massive axe spears.
🤓
You can effectively swing a gladius shoulder to shoulder with armor on?
You feel you'd be more effective with a gladius than a spear in this situation?
Two walls of men shoulder to shoulder, coming together. All armed with spears.
You'd wanna swap for a gladius for this battle?
A gladius isn't for swinging, it's for stabbing. You're merely trading off reach for faster unit maneuverability. Turning a line of spears takes significantly more time than swords. Ideally you'd have both.
So uh, gladius vs spear, best of luck to ya.
I'm not saying I'd rather be using the gladius, or that it's more effective. I'm saying that swords are capable of being used, and effective in formations.
It's a dumb take to say they can't and weren't used in that role. They were. To great effect.
A few million dead Celts would testify that a Gladius is deadly effective in formation, while having the benefit of still being useful when that formation is broken. Also, good luck getting spearmen into a fortified position, or maneuvering them in a forest.
What is the terrain?
Gun javelin in desperation
I love this term "gun spear"
And any peasant can wield it decently effectively, unlike a sword. That’s the real reason spears are so good historically speaking. ( I’m just clarifying the “easy to use” part.)
Simply put, spears are actually that good in real life, when using one you're able to get a lot of power from the thrust of the spear, and when you have a properly sharpened spear they can dig through things and even slice really well (which would be the animation your referring to), and you've also got to take into consideration that what your attacking is rotting flesh, it's not going to be as tough as healthy skin and muscle tissue. Unless I'm just incompetent and what I'm saying is bullshit which could also be true but I think it's right for the most part.
Also personally I don't think spears are that great in game as you often have the animation attack which can really screw you over when dealing with groups.
Ive used spears in game so much that I actually can predict when the animation will occur. Theres a radius check on the zed (IMO i think the radius check should be on the player, not on the zed): if theres another zed in a 3 step radius from speared zed, no oneshot animation will occur. So what i do is avoid spearing a lone zed when another zed from another angle is nearby.
Basically don't fight while zombies are behind you, which is solid advice for any weapon.
Not necessarily behind, but in most weapons except mybe the knife, fighting zeds coming to u from 10oclock and 3 oclock is fine. With spear/knife, the oneshot anim will get you bitten if any of those two zeds from different angles is near enough.
Scenario: conga line on 10oclock, a zed on 3oclock. With the spear, its safe to hit the conga line, since anim check fails, no oneshot anim. Hitting 3oclock passes the anim check. If you oneshot anim the lone zed on 3, the conga line will catch u on 10oclock. Any weapon except the sledge/knife/spear is safe to hit on any of those directions
There's some sort of bug/exploit with the spear insta-kill animation, tho: if you activate the insta kill snd another zombie manages to get into biting range, you push it and for some reason the pushing also insta-kills the zombie (it's easier to pull it off with a charge kill)
Not sure why you are saying knife and sledge are unsafe. Knife has a sanity check for jawstabs and they won't happen when more than one zombie is targeting you.
Sledge just doesn't have any special animation, it's bad as a weapon, but it won't kill you through animation lock.
Spears were the dominant weapon for melee combat throughout all of history.
Swords get more clout because they look cooler, however a novice spearman has such an advantage, that they are likely to still win even against a veteran swordsman, due to superior reach - the spear can attack & defend at a distance a sword can't - furthermore, the sheer weight behind most polearms is liable to shatter a swordsman's wrist, if they would try to block it without use of a shield.
The spear is like the ancient equivalent to a rifle, whereas a sword is just a sidearm.
In real life, even just a wooden staff, without a head, is capable of completely shattering ribs, just from a one-handed swing, so in general, polearms are just lethal, even when they're literally just a stick.
The power of stick is mighty indeed. So yes, polearms are just powerful in real life too.
Another thing is a spear isn't just a long pokey stick held in the middle. You can straight up clobber the motherfucker out of a fool with one, one hand at the base one hand a couple feet above.
Think ninja turtle bow-staff with a blade on the end.
Yup. Historically, most fights were won by spears than swords. Swords are the most popular only because they're awesome and your last ditch effort in a fight. Spears are also easier and cheaper to make than swords (small, sharp metal tip of metal on a stick vs a metal rod sharp all over, with a handle and a handguard. Maybe a wooden/leather scabbard made to perfectly fit the whole thing, too). Wich may or may not made yhem the cheap, low-rank soldier weapon against the iconic, hard to procure, captain weapon used to lead the charge.
they also did a test with trained fencers vs people that never held a spear in their life. and TL;DR newbie spears won
They dominated in war for all of recorded history across all cultures cleanly up until guns. Yeah, they're absolutely boss.
At which point we promptly put bayonets on our rifles returning to spear.
This only stopped being a thing when we started giving soldiers 30+ rounds on tap right now and expecting them to climb in and out of small spaces all day
Even modern guns to this day have bayonets as an option. Probably not used as much though.
reject gun, return to speare
And even then you have bayonets to convert your gun into a spear if needed.
Actual spears, yeah. Sharpened sticks? Nah.
I guess that's why the garden fork is the epitome of spears in the game
triple shank
I'm hoping they add proper spear crafting
wasn't there a picture of a metal spearhead in a thursdoid a few months back?
Dude in skilled hands a straight up staff is a serious ass weapon. Like 80% of the shit you can do with a spear you can with a staff.
Getting smacked in the head with a baseball bat sucks. How bad does it suck when your bat is 6 feet long .
Yes, but zombies get their skull pierced through.
sharpened sticks, one of the earliest hunting implements of humanity that did the job quite well, the main issue i have rn is that we can't fire harden ours
Even actual spears don't attack fast though. Nor do they deal better damage. They just have an excellent range.
They absolutely can attack fast.
Watch some spear sparing on youtube.
I'm referring to stab-only spears. Thrusting into a target will result in it getting caught inside the target somewhat (even if it doesn't get completely stuck), providing resistance that significantly slows attack speed. You wouldn't ever see this occur in sparring (unless someone is grabbing the spear), especially if it's with bladed/swinging polearms rather than thrust-only spears.
Unless it catches on bone no more than any other stabbing weapon.
Short blades don't go in as deep, and are held right up to the part of the weapon that will be inside a target. Those two things make it much easier to manipulate attacks.
Oh if you are worried about over penetration you add a bar just behind the blade. Standard on boar spears. Fighting zeds that probably is a good idea.
If feeling fancy you can even add full on wings to the head.
They are better irl
Yeah they don't have the durability issues irl they do in game.
Well let’s be real it’s because spear irl are made with proper wood instead of being carved from a fucking tree branch like in zomboid
Spears are extremely good. Theyre easy to use, easy to make...You can give 5 people that never toiched a weapon a spear and chances are they will be an effective troop. Spears as a whole deal were only outclassed by arrows...tiny longer range spears.
And then the longbow was created; why settle for small long range spear when you can just have long range spear
Then guns came around and created the idea of tiny long range spears but faster and easier to use
Now we fight with remote controlled spear deployment systems and armoured spear launchers that drive by having a little metal box spin some spears real fast
It's spears all the way down
We just change how we apply them. First we had spear shafts, then we made them tinier, added wings and built the first launch system. Later we removed the shafts and make the laumching system better!
Humanity’s oldest tool is a pointy stick, it predates fire
Predates modern humans even - oldest homo sapiens is around 200k years old, oldest spears 400k years old
Neat
spears are THAT good in real life, even a sharp stick is deadly dangerous.
Excelent range, power, and if the user is good they actually are durable
Spears are simple, effective, require very little skill to properly use, and are dangerous in numbers.
They are very strong weapons, they only really fall short indoors where you have limited room to maneuver, thats where 1handed weapons like swords come in handy.
A wall of spears is a deadly formation
Indoors or any time it's incomvienant to have a 6" pole arm with you at all times
Long pointy stick has single handedly allowed humanity to conquer the planet. I am not joking.
Want to know something funny? Spears irl are better than Spears in-game.
A better question would be if Spears are a good anti-zombie weapon. They have reach, but can they do the damage needed to put down a zombie?
So I think this is the question. In lore do zomboids only redie from cranial damage? If so, I think a lot of the weapons that are decent in PZ should absolutely suck.
If true, then the spear is still a very good weapon.
There a lot of battlefield evidence of people driving sharp branches directly through skulls like they’re play dough?
I’m not being facetious, it’s my understanding spears are much better at poking holes in fleshy bits. And that generally the human skull was pretty hard to pierce.
I don't know about "sharp branches", but I know that actual spears with a blade are more than capable of piercing through the neck or through the mouth and out the back of the skull. I'd say mid-lower face is what you want to aim at, and from there it's easy to at least incapacitate the zombie assuming they survive that.
Yeah that sounds pretty legit. I’ve seen some pretty gnarly spears that I can imagine doing quite a bit of damage to the CNS if used in such a fashion. But the spears, at least the default “wooden spear” as they are in the game don’t feel that way. Other weapons feel like I wouldn’t want to actually use on a zombie. Like a kitchen knife. Which would involve grappling with them similar to the critical animation.
But at some point you have to accept it’s a game.
I think the biggest problem would be the spear getting stuck in the zombie, and it would probably happen alot. So a backup weapon is a must.
This was always the spear's biggest drawback as a weapon.
In real life melee weapons are far less effective than in games, but the spear is a very effective and cheap melee weapon in the game and real life. The main problem is that in real life weapons are 10x more exhausting, still fairly loud, make you sore, and get easily stuck/lodged in opponents, so you couldn’t just mow down a dozen zombies with a spear in real life, but they are really good because they have a long reach, low skill, cheap, throwable and light weight, so compared to most melee weapons they are the best option.
No.
They're much, much better.
The only thing better than a spear is a wall of spears ;)
For zombie apocalipse it would be probably the best meele, in real wars it was most frequently used weapon. If you are unexperienced you want to keep more experienced enemies away and most of participants were unexperienced
Spears are the best melee weapons in real life. You can hit everything from far without getting hit, its actually not that hard to control and you can throw them
Against an unarmoured opponent in melee combat? I'm taking whatever kind of "Long stick with a stabby end" I can get.
The training is "This end is stabby. Stab them.".
You don't need big sweeping motions that tire you out. Longer ones you can even rest the butt end on the ground when not thrusting since you're not going to always have your opponent right in your face..
You've got your distance from the grabby bitey bits of death, and can really dial this up by adding a shield if you want to.
Still want the big sweeping swinging motions? Alright. Put a slashy blade on the tip as well and call it a halberd.
Limited materials? It's a stick with "a sharp thing" on the end. Realistically about as easy of materials as you can get.
Spears have been the go to weapon for defensive positioning for thousands of years. If you need to hold a line you get dudes with spears and shields to create a vanguard.
Spears would be pretty terrible against zombies. They were effective against people cuz people can die from blood loss, I have to imagine piercing the skull reliably wasn’t something that was done often
Just in case anyone is reading this and thinking that spears are the ultimate weapon from all these posts, let me point out a couple sober disadvantages:
Spears are very prone to being grabbed. Both people and zombies would be wrenching it from you.
Depending on the tip, they are prone to being stuck in whatever you stabbed. Not an ideal characteristic for an anti zombie weapon.
They are pretty impractical to carry, especially long distances. Forget about shoving them in a backpack, you'd need a holster, some sort of carriage or dedicate one hand and/or shoulder to spear duty.
Spears remained a staple of battlefields because they were cheap and fast to arm a bunch of paesants with.
i have never actually used or held a spear irl. but i have used them tons in VR games, zombie games pvp games you name it and they are very difficult to use effectively. definitely not a weapon anyone can just pick up and immediately be a master with.
Spears in real life, OP.
Spears in project zomboid is pretty unrealistic, the knockback on a sharpened stick is huge. You're not cutting juggulars with a sharpened stick. And mostly, who on earth would stab a rotting corpse with a stick. Whats to stop a zombie from ignoring it and keep walking towards you. It's also completely unrealistic to have the one shot accuracy. Try stabbing a mouth sized target thats walking towards you bobbing. You're gonna miss most of the time...
Sharp stick with attachment would be too unvieldy. For that reason i only use the pitchfork as a spear in zomboid.
Zombies don't defend themselves, very easy to hit the dome of a slow walker, even with limited experience.
Once you've done it a few dozen times? Easy.
Try playing pool / billiards, you'll see how accurately you can forcefully push a stick.
This is funny because i won the national team pool championship like 4 years back.
Try grabbing a long stick next time you're on a walk and try it for yourself. The force you need to exert is far greater than a pool cue, and the accuracy is not great.
The force needed for a sharp stick to pierce a dome is so much force, and the neck moves the head when struck disappating the energy off the poont of the spear. Meaning ur not doing that.
The one shot kill is going thru the mouth up to the brain in game (& in the book its based on)
The angle for that is so awkward.
IDK, I feel like a zombie would not be blocking at all, thus a nice thwack to the neck, bye bye spinal cord, bye bye signals to arms and legs, easy kill / ignore.
A quarter staff might be a legit weapon, a lot of force to snap a spinal cord. But probably doable, good for bashing skulls as well, a less durable crowbar with better reach.
Are needles painful? 90% of the directions you touch one from are not, start pressing on that tip and ouch!
I think we always can oneshot a zombie with spear in real life, I think it easy 😅
Probably, but what do you do when there's two zombies and it gets stuck midway through the first zombie's head?
I think they're pretty easy to make irl too, you could use a rebar.
No other melee weapon had as much use as a spear in history
Do zomboids not require head shots? Everyone here is talking about how good spears are historically, but that is because living things bleed.
Idk I prefer to use crowbars in real life. They’re the ultimate weapon.
Spears beat swords and most other melee weapons. Many YouTube vids about these ancient fighting techniques
Zombies aren't fast and agile armored beings wielding swords/axes/etc. though
Good point. Personally I think a blunt object would be most effective when facing down mindless hordes. That spear-tip is bound to get lodged in a sternum or something like that
No or "no". Or at least not the wooden spears we have vs zombies. Proper spears with metal tips were great for human to human combat because of their range, and because they worked excellent in formations/groups.
Spears are good in Zomboid because of unrealistic reasons. They attack extremely fast, they instant kill when nearly all other weapons don't, they have a high instant-kill chance (which is very unrealistic when the kills only target the head), and they deal good damage despite just being a sharpened wooden branch.
In a "realistic" zombie scenario metal-tipped spears wouldn't be useless, but they'd be worse than stuff like swords, axes, crowbar/long-blunt due to their slower attack speed and ease of getting stuck in their target (and poor durability), and wooden spears would also deal worse damage due to just being light "dull" wood.
I'm so hyped for the smiting that's coming in the next update. I mean, spears are still gonna break bad probably, but sitting my own spears and being a cave man is gonna be so cool.
Or would medieval peasant be more accurate?
Spears are really effective and require little training honestly. All u need to do to use it is drive it forward and anything with decent weight that’s pointy goes really far into soft things easily. The issue would be moving targets and other things that swing stuff back at you but hell a long stick or spear are basically S tier if you were to fight real life zombies. I’d prefer a stick since you can just push things away rather than it getting stuck like a blade axe or sword would. Imagine how ass axes katanas machetes etc would be if there was a 20-30% chance they got stuck every time you swung them in zomboid LOL that might be worse than a blinking mechanic
Watched this video long ago, I think the explanation are really nice (although we are still talking about a zombie apocalypse)
Spears in real life are probably the ultimate hand held human weapon. Useable by pretty much anyone, super simple to make, can be thrown. Keeps lions away. Can fish and hunt with them.
In a zombie apocalypse, sharpen your broom stick and you’re good to go.
Generally yes. obviously every weapon has its pros and cons and circumstances where its best but yeah spears and polearms in general are great melee weapons and were heavily used throughout history.
- It has great reach thanks to its length, which makes it easier to both keep enemies at a distance and reach to hit the enemy without exposing yourself to swords and other short melee.
- Its easy to make. literally tie a sharp thing to a wooden stick.
- Its light, since its mostly wood rather than metal.
- You can throw it, like an oversized arrow. I wish throwing spears were a thing in PZ.
That said, it was some drawbacks
- you need space to maneuver a spear (or any polearm) which can be hard in narrow spaces to tight formations.
- Easier to break. given the fact its mostly wooden handle with a metal tip. which PZ recreates well.
The spear did fell out of favor with advancements that allowed the creation of other polearms like bills, glaives and halberd but we dont have those in PZ unfortunately. maybe in the future with blacksmithing.
Best military unit in terms of cost/effectiveness was peasant with a spear for many thousands of years.
Spears are much, much better then in vast majority of games. I can name only Mordhau from the top of my head as a game where reach matters at all. Most games are just damage number or an arbitrary strike combo pattern at best.
I mean, pushing a 1" or thicker pole through someone's body is gonna do some damage.
You can get a LOT of force behind them, and they are generally designed for puncturing.
They're even BETTER! Try one on someone you don't like! The results will astound you 😁
Spears are great!
Put a spear through someone and they are not gonna bother you anymore, trust me ;)
There is a reason untrained civilians and peasants across all ages used spears. Physics and ease of use make it deadly even in untrained hands. Not to mention It's safer for an average joe to use, keeping him out of the way with range advantage as he wouldn't know how to properly block, parry and riposte with a bladed weapon.
In a zombie/survival scenario, it's also cheap to make. There is a walking dead character that makes a lot of spears with just a knife to sharpen sticks and they not only use them as weapons, but as defensive stakes to catch zomboids.
Granted u have a side weapon and maybe a spare spear on your back, a spear could do wonders in a RL zombie apocalypse.
spears are overpowered in real life, you dont even need to get em with the pointy bit
The spear is historically an overpowered weapon. It's a weapon that's cheap to make and easy to use, has long range without needing the user to train with a ranged weapon, uses very little metal, and is a direct counter to cavalry.
The weakness is that once an enemy gets behind the metal spike at the tip, the spearman is in trouble...but that's why spearmen deployed in rank formations, so behind the front row of spikes is another row, and behind that is another row, and maybe one more row behind that one for good measure.
Besides simple spears, you also have throwing spears which further extends the effective range of the weapon, halberds for an even more effective and versatile weapon, pikes for an even longer weapon that is especially good against cavalry, and lances because the cavalry got jealous and wanted their own pokey stick, too.
Spears are incredibly effective weapons, so much so that militaries never really stopped using them.
A bayonet is basically just a way of making your gun into a spear.
I imagine that the distance you gain from a spear would be a huge advantage against zombies irl. The last thing you want is to be closer than a couple feet to one of those bastards
Speaking of spears do they last longer if you put something at the end when you are lower level or is it better to just use them unmodified until you get your level up?
Even better. You see, swords weren't the primary weapon on ancient battlefields. Spears were. Spear have a significant reach advantage and require next to no training to outperform even the most skilled swordsman.
What kind of spear are we talking about?
A sharpened tree branch will definitely break in real life pretty quickly, as it does with a player having little maintenance and carpentry skills.
Someone really skilled though that knows how to make and use a sha(Han Dynasty) would be quite deadly, hence the disparity in quality of spear construction in-game and irl.
Don't think I need to add anything about how good spears are IRL cause that's been covered. That being said how dope would it be if we could add holes in defensive formations to stab zombies through? Only with smaller weapons and spears tho. That would honestly make base defense so much cooler. I also wish they'd add a sandbox option to have horde nights. Yes Ik there's a mod for this but I want it as a vanilla feature and expanded on.
Leverage be crazy
Polearms and poleaxes are a heavy spear and we're considered weapons of war like assault rifles and the defacto castle guard because they also served as visual indicators of authority.
Most of my deaths come from spears and I despise all of them, if there us 4 zombies or less YES amazing when the one shot happens is beautiful it's easy to make and with enough levels lasts a while, but OMFG when there is a lot of zombies AND THAT FUCKING MORON STAND STILL ON THAT ONE SHOT ANIMATION AND GET SURROUNDED BECAUSE OF IT MAKES ME GO CRAZY, recently I had 3 deaths thanks to goddamn spears and those shity slow one shot animations, the charaters just stand still for 2 seconds and get killed like a moron, with any decent damage weapon I can kill a horde 20 30 no problem as long as the charater is good enough to not get exhausted and the weapon is not a slow ass like the guitar, hope you never learn the hard way why being a spear main is suicide you either mix it with a quick strong melee like bat with nails crowbar or axe or have aim skills and use a gun, cause it's not worth using a spear against a horde big chances that animation happens and it's over you can't move fast enough and you can't cancel the animation if you move diagonally the animation never happens but spear normal hits are weak in comparison to other weapons if the one shot never happens it takes forever to kill anything
I feel like spears just have to be like hard coded into human dna. Like I have never made or been taught how to make one, but im 99% sure I could make a decent one
I’d imagine they are better irl than in game tbh.
cf. Alexander the Great, the Phalanx, Roman Legionnaires and tactics.
tl;dr the spear has determined the rise and fall of civilizations
Yep. Whole reason the Roman Legion conquered everything. Phalanx structure, completely dominated short and long sword tactics.
Spears in real life are ok.
Like you use it to stab holes in people, and the hole is pretty big.
If you stab someone in the right part a lot of blood comes out.
But if you stab them in some other parts, less blood comes out.
Just about yeah - I do HEMA, and I love swords and knives and all, but spears are just better. They're so goddamn busted.
You can keep them at a distance in your sleep, you can kill people by walking forward a little, any attempts to knock your point off line can be avoided by slightly moving your hands. Stabbing a target takes about as much energy as rocking a baby, and you can still push so even if your target doesn't feel pain, it still pushes them away.
Delightfully broken
We put years into developing the finest blades katanas, claymores, sabres, falchions.
But at the end of the day, our best weapons were pokey sticks.
I don't think spears would be very good in a zombie apocalypse. Most of the time, spears worked really well in history by keeping the enemy at range and poking holes in vulnerable fleshy bits that a soldier would then proceed to either bleed out from or get an infection in. Zombies require a clean shot through the brain, which requires a lot more accuracy than spears are typically designed for, as well as a really sharp blade and some superb upper body strength to drive the speartip through.
A halberd might be a better choice for the undead. A spear, but with the option to use gravity and weight as well as a pointy bit.
You can crush someone's skull with blunted stick. Unless you want to argue the case that baseball bats are also ineffective you may as well toss this comment.
Baseball bats would work great, because they're designed to whack tough things, like skulls. Creating enough force to push a blade through someone's skull (generally in a very precise location) is fairly tricky and not really what the spear was designed for. You're more likely to miss, have the blade deflect off the skull or just shove them back with a new facial wound rather than achieve a kill. A halberd (or baseball bat) would be a little easier to aim and carry a lot more force behind it, hence my recommendation over a spear
Nope, someone with 0 experience won't turn into a ninja day 1 of the apocalypse able to nail 5 zombies in span of a few seconds. The attack speed is wayy overtuned and one-shot special attack is too easy to trigger with too few restrictions. I enjoy it, but it should be rebalanced to fit in with all other weapons. I'd make it so the game only enables the one-shot animation after reaching X levels in Spear, having it day 1 is just broken. That alongside some reasonable restriction such as can't one-shot if highly exerted or with heavy load and be forced to stand still prior to the stab for 0.5s or smth like that to make going for the special attack more deliberate.
You severely underestimate how much damage one untrained fucker with a pointy stick can do. There's a reason they were the go to weapon on the battlefield.
Every Redditor under the sun is an expert on medieval warfare, I get it.
Never said I was an expert, but it is something I'm interested in.
Interested so much you have the same parroted opinion as so many on this sub. Spears have downsides and their strengths aren't even represented in-game. They act more like halberds than classic spears. Idk how it even works you swipe a spear sideways and zombies magically die to it. These spears and especially the garden fork are meant to puncture not cut, yet 90% of their strength lies in super fast swiping and only some light utility in stabbing. It doesn't matter whether they were strong IRL, the way they are strong in-game is completely different. You would fail miserably trying to replicate it IRL, I have my doubts it'd be even able to pierce through the human skull in hands of an average shaped human, but feel free to pitch it to Shadiversity for testing. They did test specially made spears with metal, which are coming in B42 so THEN I'd give this pass, but currently it's just fantasy how spear works in PZ...
I'm talking about historic real life spears. In zomboid I typically go for an axe
Shadiversity should be ignored on any histotical content. He's had no education, no experience, and his content contains frequent inaccuracies.
Not to forget, he's a raging bigot who got upset that Peach in the Mario movie wore pants.
And here I thought my takes were hot. On the tier list of trustworthy sources I will rather take a word of someone who makes videos about melee weapons for years than some random Redditor expert... and you don't need to claim to be one - just having concrete opinions like the one you started with are enough to classify you as one of the many.
Btw there is a rule to not discuss politics on the sub so I won't even react to the second half.
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Ok, kid.
The spear is probably the most used melee weapon in history, so yeah, they're good.