Short blunt weapons in Project Zomboid

Short blunt covers one-handed clubbing weapons. Every hit trains the Short Blunt skill, and the skill level in turn decides how well you use them. The group is large in Build 42: the weapon database on pindrop.gg lists more than 90 entries and pzfans.com lists 98. Those counts include broken versions and many new crafted clubs.

The group falls into four rough families:

• Purpose-built weapons: nightstick, mace, and the new Stone Mace.
• Tools that double as weapons: claw hammer, ball-peen and club hammers, wrench, pipe wrench, tire iron and fireplace poker.
• Kitchen items: frying pan, rolling pin and similar cookware. These are emergency weapons.
• Crafted clubs: short bats with nails or rake spikes, bone clubs, scrap morningstars and branches with nails. Most of these are new in Build 42.

Two-handed blunt weapons such as the baseball bat, crowbar, golf club and sledgehammer belong to Long Blunt or other groups, not this one. The full list of categories is on the weapons overview, and the melee weapon list has every item.

The figures below come from the Build 42 item scripts as published by pindrop.gg (build 42.22) and pzfans.com (build 42.19). Damage is the script's minimum and maximum. In the speed column, 1 is normal and a higher number swings faster. Hits is a rough lifespan: maximum condition multiplied by the chance of losing one point per hit, before any Maintenance bonus.

For the tool weapons, pzfans.com gives a damage of 0.5-1.0 for the wrench, pipe wrench and tire iron (one source). The high "door damage" those tools show is for breaking doors, not zombies. We could not confirm current Build 42 figures for the claw hammer, ball-peen hammer, club hammer, frying pan or rolling pin. They are listed for checking at the bottom of this page.

Short Blunt is one of the melee combat skills on the skills page. A higher level makes you hit harder and more reliably with this group. It uses the standard combat XP curve: 75 XP for level 1, 1,500 for level 5, and 32,775 in total for level 10. Level 10 alone needs 9,000 of that. Starting levels raise your XP gain, Fast Learner multiplies it by 1.3 and Slow Learner by 0.7. See skill leveling for how the multipliers stack.

The occupation bonuses and recipe unlocks come from pindrop.gg (one source). That source lists no Short Blunt skill books, unlike Long Blade, which has five. Check the skill books page before you count on finding one. More starting choices are on traits and occupations.

Short blunt weapons do low damage per hit compared with axes or long blunt. They make up for it with low weight, one-handed use and light endurance cost. The numbers above show the trade-offs inside the group:

• Faster but weaker: the broken table leg (speed 1.2) and bone club (1.1) swing quickly but have short reach and short lives.
• Slower but sturdier: the lead pipe (0.93) and poker (0.95) are a little slow. The pipe lasts about 300 hits, three times longer than most crafted clubs.
• Balanced: the mace and Stone Mace sit at normal speed with the highest damage in the group and a 40% crit chance.

Crit multipliers matter more than they look. A spiked club with a x5 multiplier can drop a zombie in one lucky hit, while the lead pipe's x2 rarely does. Against a crowd, reach and speed decide whether you get the first hit, so a short weapon pushes you toward shoving and fighting one zombie at a time. The combat guide covers shove and stomp timing.

Not every short blunt weapon can be fixed, so check before you rely on one. The Maintenance skill lowers the chance of losing condition on each hit and improves repairs. See the maintenance page for the repair formula.

These repair rules come from pzfans.com's Build 42.19 repair guide (one source). Duct tape is the best no-skill repair item. Epoxy with fiberglass tape is the top tier but needs Maintenance 3. Every repair, even a failed one, makes the next repair more likely to fail.

Opinion For a daily weapon, take the mace if you find one. It has the best damage and crit in the group and about 300 hits of life. The lead pipe is the sturdy fallback: it cannot be repaired, but it lasts long and weighs little. The nightstick is a good early find because it can be taped back to health.

Opinion Treat the hammer and wrenches as tools first. Keep the claw hammer for building and carry a real weapon. Crafted spiked clubs are fine for the first week, but at 25 to 100 hits they need replacing often. The Stone Mace matches the mace's numbers and suits a wilderness start with no towns nearby.

When you outgrow short blunt, the best weapons page compares every category, and loot locations shows where tool weapons spawn.