[2022] best dps meele in current alpha

Speaking strictly to Melee weapons:

Best damage per single hit is hands down Sledgehammer. However a lot of the time you'll be overkilling enemies hard and 'wasting' damage.

Highest DPS is hands down Knives. With a high agility skill, maxed out blade skill and using the hunting knife (not a machete), you can apply a maxed out bleed effect via power attacks to numerous zombies constantly dealing a significant amount of DoT to all of them while simultaneously stabbing them with normal attacks. Potentially, if you could perfectly execute, you could have the bleed on as many as I think 16 different targets before the first one falls off? But this high dps is contingent upon having multiple targets to bleed.

Next highest would probably be fists with beer and other buffs.

Originally posted by Kean: Thanks for all the replies the reason i asked do any of these recommendation change because certain weapons i feel are really gimicky such the stun baton or fists require consumables to be truly viable. while I tried spears mutliple times i find they are by far the weakest weapon in terms of status effects the apply to zombies or any sort of crowd control or anything in fact i found spears to have no redeming qualities other than improved range. i would consider gimmicky weapons not viable for insane due to constant demmand of external resources this is obviously excluding ammo need for ranged but im mainly talking about meele

Fist's aren't particularly gimicky. They don't Require use of external buffs, and the myriad of debuffs they inflict on the enemy can be amazing for managing a crowd. Particularly that it can stun or knock them down, and does so quite frequently.

It does however do fairly little damage compared to some other weapons, and isn't the greatest weapon to start out with as the primitive leather knuckle wraps aren't a particularly great early game weapon. But by the time you can craft a mid level iron knuckles (which isn't terribly hard), it becomes a solid choice.

Basically, once you can get to rank 2 or 3 of the fist weapon skill, it becomes rather amazing(imo). Beer is a nicety that brings up your damage potential for a horde night so you don't get overwhelmed by the sheer number of zombies. And reaching rank 2-3 before the first horde night and making iron knuckles isnt terribly hard; Nor is getting a couple beers from looting and trading to cover your first horde night.

But you do you. I'm just a lover of fist weapons. :D