Claw Hammer in Build 42 — The Better-Hitting Half of the Wrench/Hammer Tie
Build 42 claw hammer stats: 0.5–1 damage, weight 1.5, condition 10, knockback 0.5, 20% crit. Identical to the pipe wrench except the shove, where it wins.
FAQ
Claw hammer or pipe wrench?
Is a claw hammer a good day-one weapon?
It builds things too — does that help?
The Trade in One Line
The claw hammer is the wrench with a real push: every column matches the pipe wrench except knockback, where the hammer’s 0.5 beats the wrench’s 0.3 — and that single difference decides how a blunt fight goes. Light, durable-enough, and it shoves.
What the Numbers Mean in Play Cross-Verified
- Damage 0.5 – 1. Mid light-blunt tier, same as the wrench and the golf club; the crowbar/bat edges the ceiling, the sledgehammer doubles it.
- Knockback 0.5. The headline over the wrench: full stagger tier, same as the bat and crowbar. Free space on every hit.
- Weight 1.5. A quarter of the sledgehammer’s 6 and a half-unit under the crowbar’s 2 — a travel blunt weapon.
- Condition 10. Middle — the durable common set is 15; drain is Maintenance-gated, skill leveling guide.
- Crit 20%. Floor of the interesting group, alongside the crowbar, machete and sledgehammer; the wrench’s 25% and the bat’s 40% are what you trade for knockback and lightness.
When Not to Use It
- When durability is king. The crowbar and baseball bat at condition 15 outlast it on a long run you will keep fighting through.
- When you need one-hit stops. 0.5–1 never ends a fight the way the machete’s 2–3 does; the hammer is a shover, not a reaper.
- When the wrench’s crit is the point. Rare — but if you are optimizing luck over space and already hold the plumbing use, the pipe wrench trades the columns back.
How It Compares
| Weapon | Damage | Weight | Condition | Knockback | Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claw Hammer | 0.5 – 1 | 1.5 | 10 | 0.5 | 20% |
| Pipe Wrench | 0.5 – 1 | 1.5 | 10 | 0.3 | 25% |
| Crowbar | 0.6 – 1.15 | 2 | 15 | 0.5 | 20% |
| Baseball Bat | 0.8 – 1.1 | 2 | 15 | 0.5 | 40% |
The hammer-versus-wrench row is a clean experiment: change only knockback and crit, and the knockback weapon is the one players keep. Against the crowbar it is a lighter wrench that gives up condition and a little ceiling; against the bat it loses on durability and crit and wins only on weight. It is the sensible middle tool — see the weapon tier list for the full blunt ranking.
Sources & Verification
Every figure on this page is agreed by two independent sources we can read today, matched by the in-game item ID Base.Hammer:
| Source | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PZwiki — Claw Hammer | Semi-official wiki (declared an official site of The Indie Stone, volunteer-maintained) | Infobox fields read via its MediaWiki API |
| pzfans — Weapon item tables | Community data, stamped “Verified for Build 42.20.4” | Independent rendering of the same fields |
What this is not. Neither source is our own measurement, and PZwiki stamps most item pages against an older 42.10-era build while flagging that they may lag the current release. Treat these as 42.20-era agreement rather than 42.21-verified, and expect a patch note to change them eventually. Spawn locations are deliberately absent from this page: we could not source them twice, so we do not print them.
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