Spear?

[Boston123]

Huh. You learn something new everyday. That's interesting cheers.

Though I imagine H1Z1's bundle bow is overpowered compared to a real life one. Bagging deer and headshotting zeds. The next stage up bow though is still silly, twine, cloth and a stick.

Plus the arrows being made from branches, with no cutting tool required, no fletching or metal heads.

It is rather underpowered, actually. Watch the second video I posted: while I still wouldn't hunt a deer with it, you can still get 4 inches of penetration into a haybale from 15 feet away. And that was just a bare shaft: no head, no fletchings, etc.

[Lamoi]

Bottom line: THIS GAME NEEDS A SPEAR !

[AmericanSteel]

I have been championing a spear for quite some time. Limit the wolves area of advance (like using a fire, structure, tree, cliff or cave) and work between feints, jabs and thrusts (just like in boxing). I could see a jab doing about 10% damage while thrust would do 50%+. Add in a damage multiplies for hitting a critical spot (like the head, heart or lungs). If you can take an animal down to 20% health or less, it should just give up the ghost. So it might take a few jabs and a thrust from a weak/damaged spear. If you start off knocking the animals health down to 50% in a hit (like a wolf) it is probably going to run immediately.

We would need a haft, so a good sapling or a solid branch would do it. I would prefer a solid branch and there are are fallen trees about in the game. The player could then make a point with a blade or an axe. OR the player could sacrifice a knife to use as the spear point (knife + cordage). If the player wanted to harden the spear (sharpened end) then fire or friction would do the trick.

I see the fire hardened weapon wearing down quicker, not repairable and not do as much damage. The knife tip spear could be disassembled, fixed and reassembled (maybe loose the cordage) and do more damage. I think we should just be able to sharpen the knife blade on a spear but that would be another mechanic to add.

If we can make sharpened spear, then sharpened stakes for defenses would be next on my list. Put a couple pointing outward would stop a charging animal dead in their tracks. Allowing the player a fence to maneuver behind.

[SteveP]

With little more than a sharpened stick, you can quite easily (all things considered) kill any and every animal on the North American continent

Wolves are not magical creatures that require a lot of damage to kill. Take a sharp stick and stab it in the ribcage. Boom, dead wolf.

Spears are not a throwing weapon; darts are. With knowledge, the atlatl is not difficult to make in comparison to a high powered bow. Spears are more for fending off attacks by intimidating the predator.

Wolves and bears will not get close enough to you to permit you to just stab them with a pokey stick much less get it into their eyes, throat or other vital area. They will cause a normal wild animal to halt its charge. You can try lunging toward the animal but you won't be able to get within reach; they are not stupid. It takes quite a lot of force to drive even a super sharp stick through the hide of an animal. If the spear has a sharp metal cutting tip, that's different.

The only viable opportunity to kill a real animal in real life is to apply a mechanical advantage such as a leg catch snare or an implement to send a sharp projectile. Sling shots are viable on small game but very difficult to master in real life. It's a game; we should not get overly concerned with 99% reality when this is just a game which we want to provide us with challenge, intellectually and emotionally as well as a little bit of learning and a dose of "survival reality" (wood gathering & other mundane tasks)

[tdgillies]

Tie a handless hunting knife to a cured maple sapling with gut and you have a spear that if equipped you can throw at game. Can be repaired with another maple sapling and scrap metal.

Pro: Pretty sturdy, Big damage from large wound channel, Throw while crouched, wolves hesitate more to approach (its sticking out at them threateningly).

Con: Only one (unless you make multiples), not as quick as an arrow, shorter range, takes a maple sapling you could make a bow out of.

[Boston123]

Tie a handless hunting knife to a cured maple sapling with gut and you have a spear that if equipped you can throw at game. Can be repaired with another maple sapling and scrap metal.

Pro: Pretty sturdy, Big damage from large wound channel, Throw while crouched, wolves hesitate more to approach (its sticking out at them threateningly).

Con: Only one (unless you make multiples), not as quick as an arrow, shorter range, takes a maple sapling you could make a bow out of.

Did you read the earlier bits of the thread?

Throwing a spear at animals is 1) A waste of the spear and 2) Not going to do much

Take the same spear, hold onto it, and stab it into a wolf's ribcage? They are dead, hands down

[Farmerbob]

No, a solid spear-thrust will kill any and every animal on the North American continent. No stupidity like the .303 rifle requiring TWO SHOTS to kill a wolf.

The spear is balanced in and of itself by requiring you to get relatively close to the animal: either to stab it, or allowing it to charge you. If you miss in either of those cases, you are probably screwed. The animal is going to be too close for you to pull out another weapon, so you are gonna have to fight it off with your bare hands.

Not every animal in North America can be killed with a single spear thrust. Grizzly, polar, and very large black bears are more than capable of taking a single spear thrust with human strength and surviving. Large boars can as well, though boars don't live in the northern wilds of Canada.

Sure, if you get exceptionally lucky and land a throat shot with the spear, you can kill anything, but most animals protect their throats in a fight. Bears and wolves certainly do.

A spear might deter a bear. Maybe. You had better be walking backwards towards a house while the bear is thinking about it. The spear should strongly deter wolves, but not always make them back off.

Against a single wolf, there's no reason why you couldn't pull a knife if it gets past the spear. Sheath knives can be pulled very quickly, and you can fend off a wolf for a couple seconds at least with one arm while pulling a knife with the other hand.

[ethomas21]

+1 to adding a spear to the game. In general, I'm in favor of more crafting items.

If the spear were particularly heavy, it would add a decision making point for safety vs mobility when traveling.

Also, for balance there could be a difficulty with using the spear effectively, like with aiming the survival bow, or a chance of breaking during an attack.

[Boston123]

No, a solid spear-thrust will kill any and every animal on the North American continent. No stupidity like the .303 rifle requiring TWO SHOTS to kill a wolf.

The spear is balanced in and of itself by requiring you to get relatively close to the animal: either to stab it, or allowing it to charge you. If you miss in either of those cases, you are probably screwed. The animal is going to be too close for you to pull out another weapon, so you are gonna have to fight it off with your bare hands.

Not every animal in North America can be killed with a single spear thrust. Grizzly, polar, and very large black bears are more than capable of taking a single spear thrust with human strength and surviving. Large boars can as well, though boars don't live in the northern wilds of Canada.

Sure, if you get exceptionally lucky and land a throat shot with the spear, you can kill anything, but most animals protect their throats in a fight. Bears and wolves certainly do.

A spear might deter a bear. Maybe. You had better be walking backwards towards a house while the bear is thinking about it. The spear should strongly deter wolves, but not always make them back off.

Against a single wolf, there's no reason why you couldn't pull a knife if it gets past the spear. Sheath knives can be pulled very quickly, and you can fend off a wolf for a couple seconds at least with one arm while pulling a knife with the other hand.

Take a spear with a solid 2+ inches of cutting surface, AKA a knife-blade. Jam it between the ribs of a bear or wolf. You just cut a 2-inch-wide hole through their lungs, heart, and associated major blood vessels. In one stab, that animal is dead. Not right away, but it is dead from blood loss. With a solid cross-piece under the cutting edge, you can even keep the animal away from you after you stab it.

Remember, a wolf or a bear is going to run away when you wound it so seriously, or even if you make yourself enough of a threat. They don't want to get hurt, and will weigh the value of it eating you vs it getting injured. If you tip the balance enough, chances are it will just faff off and look for easier prey.

As for the whole "knife thing", I probably would go for something a little more immediately lethal, like a club or a hammer. You can lash a strap to the handle so it is already "ready to go", and dropping a hammer onto a the skull of a charging wolf will stop it, hands down.

[Loppysaurusrex]

+1 a spear should be in this game no debate

[Farmerbob]

Not every animal in North America can be killed with a single spear thrust. Grizzly, polar, and very large black bears are more than capable of taking a single spear thrust with human strength and surviving. Large boars can as well, though boars don't live in the northern wilds of Canada.

Sure, if you get exceptionally lucky and land a throat shot with the spear, you can kill anything, but most animals protect their throats in a fight. Bears and wolves certainly do.

A spear might deter a bear. Maybe. You had better be walking backwards towards a house while the bear is thinking about it. The spear should strongly deter wolves, but not always make them back off.

Against a single wolf, there's no reason why you couldn't pull a knife if it gets past the spear. Sheath knives can be pulled very quickly, and you can fend off a wolf for a couple seconds at least with one arm while pulling a knife with the other hand.

Take a spear with a solid 2+ inches of cutting surface, AKA a knife-blade. Jam it between the ribs of a bear or wolf. You just cut a 2-inch-wide hole through their lungs, heart, and associated major blood vessels. In one stab, that animal is dead. Not right away, but it is dead from blood loss. With a solid cross-piece under the cutting edge, you can even keep the animal away from you after you stab it.

Remember, a wolf or a bear is going to run away when you wound it so seriously, or even if you make yourself enough of a threat. They don't want to get hurt, and will weigh the value of it eating you vs it getting injured. If you tip the balance enough, chances are it will just faff off and look for easier prey.

As for the whole "knife thing", I probably would go for something a little more immediately lethal, like a club or a hammer. You can lash a strap to the handle so it is already "ready to go", and dropping a hammer onto a the skull of a charging wolf will stop it, hands down.

Wolf ribs are vertical along their side. The wolf is coming at you from the front. You are highly unlikely to manage a heart or lung shot from the front with any sort of spear. If you can knock the wolf over, maybe a different story.

If a bear rears before attacking you, you might manage a strike at horizontal ribs - and the bear might try to block your attack with a swipe of a paw. Otherwise, same situation as a wolf, the ribs are horizontal to the sides, and the bear will coma at you from the front, normally.

People survive being stabbed with knives all the time, even without decent medical attention. A wolf can mass as much as a big, healthy man. Bears, depending on breed, can reach nearly a ton, though brown bears rarely get much over half a ton, and black bears are rarely over a quarter ton. That's still a lot of meat to absorb a wound. Think about it this way. A brown bear has five claws on each paw, all of them can easily be two to four inches long. They aren't particularly sharp, but they are being driven by muscles that are powerful enough to break a deer's neck, or even a moose's neck in a single blow. If you poke around on the internet you can see some pretty horrific wounds bears give each other, and they normally survive them.

I won't say it's impossible to kill a wolf or bear with a single spear strike, but it's not going to be easy to get that good hit in on the wolf, and a bear might simply tank even a strong blow, because you can't get deep enough into the body with a crude spear driven by human strength.

I agree that a big roofing hammer or a small one-handed maul would be very good against wolves. Against bears, not so much. They will rip your arms to pieces if you try to hit them in the head with a short weapon, and hitting them anywhere else with a blunt object is meaningless.

[SteveP]

Tie a handless hunting knife to a cured maple sapling with gut and you have a spear that if equipped you can throw at game. Can be repaired with another maple sapling and scrap metal.

Pro: Pretty sturdy, Big damage from large wound channel, Throw while crouched, wolves hesitate more to approach (its sticking out at them threateningly).

Con: Only one (unless you make multiples), not as quick as an arrow, shorter range, takes a maple sapling you could make a bow out of.

Did you read the earlier bits of the thread?

Throwing a spear at animals is 1) A waste of the spear and 2) Not going to do much

Take the same spear, hold onto it, and stab it into a wolf's ribcage? They are dead, hands down

How many animals have you killed with a spear? :-) not too many so I don't think you have much to back up your claim.

A large stick or pole is more useful than a spear against a bear. You whack his nose or his eyes and he doesn't like that and leaves. Not grizzlies. Grizzly will just kill you unless you get a solid high power rifle shot in the head. These animals have thick hides with lots of fur and heavy muscles and fat underneath. A lucky slice or two isn't going to cause enough bleeding to take out a large animal. Wolves are very agile and also thick skinned with plenty of fur. You would be asking for trouble to harass a wolf, even with a sharp spear with a long blade on it. You have to immobilize it and then you can move close enough for a kill.

Now I'm not saying you can't hunt bears with spears; it really helps to have a tree stand. How do you think the Native people hunted bear? In teams using pits to trap the bears. Never solo, mano a mano with a bear.

Watch this video; the guy puts his spear into the bear's gut from a height so there is a lot of power and the bear is not aware of him because he's in the tree. Spear Hunting Black Bear from a Tree Stand The bear dies later, presumably from hemorrhage and damage to internal organs. This is not a quick death and would do nothing to halt an unexpected bear or wolf attack.

Here's another video; you can see the guy shaking with adrenaline. Black bear with spear from 3 yards