B42 nerfed spears into oblivion

[Nightmare]

I can accept the new muscle fatigue mechanic, which, in my opinion, makes combat less enjoyable. However, what's the point of changing crafting recipes for spears when they were already balanced? They had decent damage, were easy to craft, and their low durability was a fair trade-off. Simply put, they were the ideal early-game weapon, especially when zombies gave you no time or space to search for more reliable options.

But now, you need to search for long sticks and saplings. Really? What's wrong with tree branches and planks? Why can’t I just carve a wooden branch and use it as a spear? This change feels illogical and unjustified, forcing players to waste up to 10 minutes searching for “the perfect long stick” just to craft a single spear, which will inevitably break after killing only one zombie.

Yes, the lifespan of a single spear is now, at best, 1-2 zombies, even if you have a high maintenance skill. I sincerely hope that in the final build, this unnecessary complexity in spear crafting is removed. Otherwise, there will be no reason to use this type of weapon anymore.

[Katatonik]

long stick and something sharp is enough

[Neskess]

Tldr: And thats a good thing.

[DrLamp]

Fire hardening helps.

[YourLocalMedic]

Yeah I agree that this change is terrible. Spears were good as they were.

[中国語じゃない]

Tried to craft a spear at lvl 10 carpentry and maintenance, the spear has yellow condition. They really nerfed it hard.

[namorufa]

Originally posted by 狙撃NG:

Tried to craft a spear at lvl 10 carpentry and maintenance, the spear has yellow condition. They really nerfed it hard.

I thought carving is the relevant skill now

EDIT:

Originally posted by Nightmare:

waste up to 10 minutes searching for “the perfect long stick” just to craft a single spear

Good news, now in B42.1 saplings are readily available from chopping young trees, so spears are easier to craft now.

[DragonKing]

Originally posted by YourLocalMedic:

Yeah I agree that this change is terrible. Spears were good as they were.

Referring to B41? Are you aware, that B41 has a bug specifically related to spears and their durability when crafted? Something about how the math works out, you can't ever achieve a 100% durability spear with using a mod to fix it.

That being said, spears felt awful to use in B41 due to the ridiculous low durability, similar to handguns.

Compare it to the Crowbar, which you can use for an eternity before it breaks.

Some of the new mechanics, like the spearhead knife "snapping" off, I feel is a good way to balance the range advantage, without feeling cheaped out by it having a high probability of lowering its durability.

In B41, it is like a 1/2 chance for it to reduce, with a max durability of like 5 or so?

Compared to, again, the crowbar - which has like a 1/70 chance, and durability of 15

like the wiki page suggests, this is a difference of an average of 10 durability for a crafted spear, versus an average of 1050 for the crowbar.

At max maintenance, this was then 80 and 1260 respectively.

Add to this, the repair mechanic also heavily favors items that have a low chance of durability loss, given that repeated repairs have diminishing returns.

So with this logic.... let's just weld a machete onto a crowbar, so we can have a 1000+ durability machete-tipped crowbar /jk

I personally think that the consequence of using spears should rather be in how their use wears down the character, being more unwieldy, maybe heavier etc. (until you could maybe make something with better grip, or better materials?

I was never a fan of the way that durability has been balanced to this point, cause it makes no sense to me. I think they are trying to address that with the new composite weapon system though, where the blade attached to a spear should have the higher impact on it's damage and such, where similar to hammer handles snapping, but you can recover the head to re-attach.

Let's not forget, that the downside to using a bladed/sharp weapon in general, is also that it damages clothing that the zombies wear, which I think is a good way to balance out the increased damage output, or other factors.

The whole low durability for spears, felt more like a cop-out, because you needed a reason to craft a billion spears for woodworking (if that is how you wanted to go about it).