Project Zomboid • Build 42.20

Weapon Comparator V1.7.1

Single-target melee comparison. Character inputs change weapon calculations; three weighted preferences only reorder the results.

STR 5

FIT 5

Weapon Skill 5

Maintenance 5

Hit Distance 75%

Axeman

Grip

Grip (2H)

Difficulty

Normal toughness · HP ~1.8–2.1 · crit ±0

Only preset settings that directly change this weapon model are applied.

Always sharpMulti-hit OFFOverkill has no ranking valueDifficulty applies only direct weapon-performance modifiers

Enable weighted rankingWeighted score controls sorting

Preference 1

Preference 2

Preference 3

Weights normalized internally to 100%

Calculating…

#	Weapon	Skill	Heavy	Score	1-shot	≤2 hits	Hits/kill	Attack	APS	Impact (s)*	Endurance/kill	Reach	Hits to break	Kills to break†

Difficulty scope: The named presets contain many other differences. For this comparator, only Zombie Toughness currently changes the neutral weapon calculations: it changes zombie HP distribution and the toughness-based melee crit modifier. Zombie Strength changes how hard zombies hit players/objects, not your weapon damage. Speed/sprinters, population, cognition, hearing, injuries, loot and respawn alter encounter difficulty or weapon availability, but do not directly alter the intrinsic damage/APS/endurance/reach/durability formulas under the healthy-player assumptions used here. Outbreak and Apocalypse therefore intentionally produce the same weapon calculations.

Probability model: One-shot chance is calculated deterministically from the weapon damage distribution, crit chance and selected zombie-health distribution—there is no per-weapon Monte Carlo noise in the 1-shot column. Multi-hit outcomes and expected hits/kill use common deterministic samples across all weapons to prevent arbitrary favorable rolls.

* Impact (s): Estimated time from starting a standard attack until the weapon connects with the zombie. Lower is faster/more responsive; it is different from APS, which measures sustained attack rate.

† Kills to break: Fresh-state estimate using expected hits-to-kill and overall-condition loss. The comparator assumes weapons remain sharp.

Difficulty scope: For weapon performance, V1.7.1 applies only zombie toughness: Rising = Fragile, Outbreak/Apocalypse = Random, Extinction = Tough. Other preset differences such as population, loot, speed, hearing, and respawn do not change these weapon calculations.