Hello All Survivors!

Now that we’ve covered the defense side of things here, it’s time to move on to offence! You know what they say, “The best defense is a good offence” or is it the other way around? I can never remember. Just make sure you carry a weapon at all times so you can either slice, smash, poke, cut or stab your enemy. No-one wants to get blood on their knuckles from punching someone in the face.

(There is a TL;DR at the bottom for you lazy people.)

Most of the melee weapons in the game can be crafted if you have the right materials. However, there are a few that you can only get from other AI Players or from loot boxes/supply drops. These include the: Golf Club, Road Sign, Hockey Stick and Paddle. I am sure that there are a few more that I’ve either forgotten or that I don’t even know of yet. When it comes to firearms though, you cannot craft any of them yet. Once again you have to get these from the previously mentioned sources or you can exchange them with the Dealer when he pops up.

~Note~

When the dealer pops up and starts selling weapons, I’ve noticed (with the Glock at least) that you are able to exchange multiple times with him. For example, if he wants 20 Pine Planks for the Glock, if you take 40 you should be able to get two! I don’t know what the limit is because I have only ever bought two before. So keep your beady, bloodshot and Zombie like eyes peeled. “Wait, are you sure you’re not infected?” asks the Dealer. “I’m sure, I just haven’t slept in a proper bed for 3 weeks.” “Why not?” “I’m not sure, I made one but I just can’t get in it, it’s like there’s some kind of force-field or something.”

The apparent “Best” weapon that you can craft at the moment is the Saw Blade Mace. To be able to craft this weapon you need to be at least level 64 where it unlocks. The next “Best” weapon on the list is the Machete, you get this at level 52. Obviously you have to put your crafting points into it to be able to make it, but just in case you thought I was suggesting that you get it for free. Let’s now have a look at a comparison between the two of them. The materials that you need to craft it are:

Mace: 15 Iron Bars, 10 Pine Planks, 5 Duct Tape, 5 Scrap Metal & 12 Leather.

Machete: 15 Iron Bars, 3 Pine Planks & 12 Leather.

Just like the clothes, you can see that there is a difference between the amount of materials that you need to create the two. Make sure you get your butt out there and take Rihanna’s advice …work, work, work, work work. Next we have to work out the difference in the benefits of each weapon and see which one is best. I will also go back and look at a few of the other weapons, but I’ll cover these two first. When using weapons they have three main attributes. Firstly the “Damage” (D), secondly “Attack Speed” (AS) and thirdly the Durability (Du).

They are all pretty self-explanatory (once again, even for my pea brain) but I’ll go over them just in case. D is how much damage you will cause in one hit with your weapon. AS is how quickly you can make each of the attacks. Du is how long your weapon will last before it breaks. This is something that I had to go and physically test while I was typing up this blog otherwise it would be incomplete! So yes, I wasted all those resources and weapons just for the sake of you guys and girls out there! Aren’t I a nice person, I think I at least deserve a hug for that.

On the top screenshot you can see that the Saw Blade Mace has a “D” of 55 and “AS” of 0.7. To work out what this really means you have to multiply the two numbers together to get your “Damage Per Second” (DpS). So all you have to do is: D x AS = DpS. This in turn means that it is 55 x 0.7 = 38.5. Now if we take a look at the next weapon, The Machete, you can see that this has a D of 30 & an AS of 1.3. If we use our Incredible Einstein brains and use that equation again it will show us that the Machete has a Dps of 39! So from this basic information so far you can actually see that the Machete has a higher score than what the Mace does. But this is where the question of Durability comes into play. This will have a large effect on what weapon becomes better because although the Machete has a higher DpS it’s a faster weapon that does less damage, and this means that you will need to hit the enemy more times to reach its WAS. This is where the question of whether each weapon has its own durability comes in to play.

At this point I am questioning whether I have put too much thought and effort into this game, I’m actually starting to worry about my own sanity! To test this I made the Machete and the Mace from scratch so that they had 100% durability. I then went into any of the Zones and started attacking Zombies like a madman on speed! As I was going through hacking off limbs and stabbing things through the heart like Rambo I counted every, single, attack, one, by, one……

Yup, I actually sat there and counted them all to see what the durability was like for each weapon so that I could work out what would be best. I counted 81 Hits for the Machete and 30 hits for the Mace, so as you can see, quite a lot of difference between the two. So the next calculation we can do is work out what the “Total Damage Caused” (TDC) will be with one weapon on full durability. To work this out you multiply the Damage (D) by the Durability (Du) (amount of hits it takes before it breaks.) This is how it breaks down:

The Mace: 55D x 30Du = 1650 TDC.

The Machete: 30D x 81Du = 2430 TDC!

You can see straight away that the Machete is far better than the Mace in regards to its TDC and it’s DpS. Another thing that it wins against is the resource cost to craft the item, so it’s a clear winner, hands down for the Machete. There is only one more powerful melee weapon which is the Katana, but you cannot create this at the moment. There are two other weapons that I am going to compare to the Mace and these are the Shovel and the Spiked Devastator. Below I’ve included the previous two weapons. To create these you will need:

Mace: 15 Iron Bars, 10 Pine Planks, 5 Duct Tape, 5 Scrap Metal & 12 Leather.

Machete: 15 Iron Bars, 3 Pine Planks & 12 Leather.

Shovel: 8 Pine Planks, 7 Iron Bars & 5 Nails

Spiked Devastator: 10 Iron Bars, 5 Empty Cans, 5 Leather & 8 Nails.

The difference between the Shovel and the Machete is minimal, just a few more Pine Planks and Nails instead of Leather. Nails take longer to make than Leather and if you look at the equation below (in a minute) you’ll see that the shovel has a lower TDC anyway. When you compare the Spiked Devastator against the Machete however, there is a bit more of a difference. You’ll need two more Iron Bars, the Cans and the Nails, but is it worth it? Let’s have a look!

Mace: 55D x 30Du = 1650 TDC.

Machete: 30D x 81Du = 2430 TDC!

Shovel: 27D x 66Du = 1782 TDC

Spiked Devastator: 27D x 90Du = 2430 TDC!

Looking at the above calculation you can see that the Spiked Devastator is the exact same Total Damage Caused as the Machete! So no it’s not worth it because you will need to collect and spend more time on all of the extra resources.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read):

The best weapon in the game (that you can craft) so far is The Machete.

I know that was a lot of information to digest and I’m not surprised if you didn’t actually read all the way through! But I thought that I would cover all bases and show my evidence and working out as proof just in case you doubted me. When there are new weapons introduced to the game that you can craft I will post a new blog page in relation to it so that you’re all up to date. Good luck working out that Mass, multiplied by the Speed of Light squared, equals Kinetic Energy!

——– END OF DAY ELEVEN ——–