Favorite insane mode melee + range weapon?

[Ryohei]

Recently did a knife / pistol play through, knives go hard. The slow is very nice, this is my new favorite combo.

What do you guys go for on the HP sponge mode?

[Shurenai]

Fist weapons and machine guns.

Fists are a little weak in the first few days, but, as you raise your fist weapon skill and accrue mods for your weapon and the bar brawling skill books, you get to a point where you're dealing like 10 different kinds of debuffs ranging from slows, to stuns, to knockdowns, to ragdolls, to setting em on fire. Swings fast, low stamina cost like knives too so you can always reposition with sprinting and jumps without endangering your fighting ability; Machine gun spray and pray makes quick work of any situation where you accidentally find yourself cornered.

Then you add beer to the mix and start one or two shotting enemies while drunk. It's all kindsa fun.

[Pain Weasel]

Sniper Rifles & Stun Batons.

With maxed rifle perks a Sniper Rifle can take out almost any enemy, even on Insane, with a single head shot, particularly once you get the damage bonus up to +50%. With Penetrator that means one shot, 4 kills.

Even zombies like Demos still only take one or two shots. Throw in a base with a killing corridor and some electric fences and blood moons are a joke. Fences stun everything, meaning you'll probably never miss a head shot. Running POIs is just as easy since it doesn't really matter how many zombies charge you since your shots will penetrate them.


The stun baton, with the right perks, is a crazy fun weapon. The shock stun works on everything and with maxed out skills you can stun lock any enemy in the game. With a repulsor you can send entire groups flying and with maxed perks the shock blast will have recharged before they get back on their feet. Additionally with Physician 5 you get a 10% chance to instantly kill anything you hit. Combined with the stun lock and you'll just wipe out everything you encounter, regardless of how tough it is.

The only downside to a stun baton is that there are a few instances where you have to be careful when using it. I've accidentally launched more than a few zombies off the roof of some T5 POI only to have to go back down and find them to clear the quest.

[Nerevar]

spears and whatever gun. for indoors nothing beats shotguns. a machine gun is ALWAYS good weapon even without perks in it.

spears are goated in a21. easy to poke trough a broken door aswell. easy headshots. can poke 3 blocks downwards and forwards. can solo hordes on insane with max settings up to day 35 with a simple walkway funnel because it hits up to 4 zombies at once. this also means the 30% dmg bonus is always active.
downside : really needs the special books to fully shine. stun baton only needs the 2 special books for it.
the baton is a close 2nd tough. only downside is getting one early game is pure luck based and it likes to malfunction still sometimes (known bug)

sniper goes hard on tunnel hord bases due to the penetration perk.

also insane isnt spongey. zombie hp is never changed in case you didnt know. only player dmg is changed. and the different between survivalist and insane is only like 17% less dmg from the player.

which is fully negated when you get to the good weapons anyway as it takes the same amount of hits and shots to kill a regular zombie. player dmg gets so high that you do so much dmg at lower difficulty you would kill a zombie 2-3 times per hit. which means all that bonus dmg does absolutly nothing for you.

[Ryohei]

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

Sniper Rifles & Stun Batons.

With maxed rifle perks a Sniper Rifle can take out almost any enemy, even on Insane, with a single head shot, particularly once you get the damage bonus up to +50%. With Penetrator that means one shot, 4 kills.

Even zombies like Demos still only take one or two shots. Throw in a base with a killing corridor and some electric fences and blood moons are a joke. Fences stun everything, meaning you'll probably never miss a head shot. Running POIs is just as easy since it doesn't really matter how many zombies charge you since your shots will penetrate them.


The stun baton, with the right perks, is a crazy fun weapon. The shock stun works on everything and with maxed out skills you can stun lock any enemy in the game. With a repulsor you can send entire groups flying and with maxed perks the shock blast will have recharged before they get back on their feet. Additionally with Physician 5 you get a 10% chance to instantly kill anything you hit. Combined with the stun lock and you'll just wipe out everything you encounter, regardless of how tough it is.

The only downside to a stun baton is that there are a few instances where you have to be careful when using it. I've accidentally launched more than a few zombies off the roof of some T5 POI only to have to go back down and find them to clear the quest.

I dunno abt ANY enemy, but .44 weapons get super close to 1 shot all, and a fast 2x scope on pistol feels great

Edit: meant to say its kinda nice using cheap 9mm ammo and then having a monster .44 swap all getting the pistol bonus if u need.

[RequiemsRose]

Admittedly I am not currently playing on insanity, but I am surprised how much I am loving the punching weapons since I came back to the game. Normally im the overly cautious, usually stealthy, but also incredibly squirrely sniper kind of player. Previously, I genuinely preferred to painstakingly sneak through places doing silent kills or make multiple trips back into a POI to lure things out to where i can headshot conga them from a little (momentary) parkour safety. Then I get back into the game after a few updates, the best weapon i end up finding early is some hand wraps so i give them a try, and now I appear to be addicted lol.

Im finding that a highly mobile, perpetually drunken brawler is both a ton of fun and surprisingly good at making most things dead. The few things I don't really want to get that close to, i tend to fall back on the sneaky headshots for when i can so for now my ranged has been bows. I used to switch to rifles later game when i got a good one but Im not actually sure I plan to ditch the bow anytime soon this time around (even though i do have a rifle that is actually much better than my current bow, bow has just worked so much better to cover what I am not great at with the brawler style)

[Undefined]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

also insane isnt spongey. zombie hp is never changed in case you didnt know. only player dmg is changed.

According to everything I've read, zombies get a damage reduction. So, yeah, they don't get more HP but, assuming the information is correct, they're still tankier.

Wiki for reference

https://7daystodie.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty

[Demios]

play on 3rd diff and wasteland only instead, that way zombies are not a chore to fight (silly amount of Hp). also stun batons are quite busted for CC (just spam light attacks), then shotgun or machinegun for highest dps! HO... also a whole bunch of grenades for horde night farm, if you made your base properly they will all clog up in one spot and get nuked in one go!

[AlterRred]

What armor would be better for Fist+Machine Gun and Pistol+Knife? Cloth?

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by AlterRred:

What armor would be better for Fist+Machine Gun and Pistol+Knife? Cloth?

Ultimately you don't even need armor though if you can dodge 100% of the time, So it depends on how well you can dodge.

Cloth is ideal for mobility; But if you take any hits it will hurt and you'll be prone to injuries. If you can't be confident you wont get hit more than once, maybe twice in a prolonged fight, It's not worth it.

Light armor (leather->military) is still good for mobility and with the armor mods can be almost as good as the cloth armor, but provide better injury resistance and damage reduction.

Heavy armor (iron, steel) is awful for mobility, even with the armor mods. But it's perfect if you just suck at dodging, Or if you're good at dodging but want to just face tank things from time to time.


For me, I do heavy armor. I'm great at dodging; But I think it's just too fun face tanking things when stacked in plated heavy armor with medicine and beer and just go to town punching things; I only retreat when I get injuries just long enough to heal.

I would up cloth/light armor for knife specifically though, as you rely on high mobility to get in and power attack and get back out and primarily use the bleed effect of the knife skill to deal most of the damage to enemies.