Spade (Shovel) in Build 42 — Bat-Tier Crit, 1.9 Ceiling, 10 Condition Fuse

The Trade in One Line

The spade is the highest-ceiling weapon you can find at weight 2 short of a blade tier: 0.8–1.9 damage with a 40% crit and 0.5 knockback — the bat’s best attributes and a much higher top swing. It buys all of that on condition 10, so it is a strong weapon you will replace sooner.

What the Numbers Mean in Play Cross-Verified

• Damage 0.8 – 1.9. A floor equal to the bat’s, a ceiling that clears every common blunt weapon; only the machete and sledgehammer (2–3), the pickaxe’s 2.2 and the katana sit above it.
• Crit 40%. Tied with the baseball bat for the best crit rate in the two-source table apart from the hunting knife’s 50% — and on a far bigger base than the knife.
• Knockback 0.5. Full stagger tier, matching the bat and crowbar; half the sledgehammer’s 1.0, but real space per hit.
• Weight 2. The carry-free common class — same as the bat, crowbar and machete, a third of the sledgehammer’s 6.
• Condition 10. Its one soft column: the durable set (bat, crowbar, chainsaw) holds 15. Drain is Maintenance-gated — skill leveling guide.

When Not to Use It

• On a long, un-supplied run. Condition 10 is the trade; the bat and crowbar at 15 outlast it when you cannot resupply.
• When you already hold the machete. Same weight 2, higher and tighter 2–3 damage, three more condition — the blade tier simply beats the garden tool.
• When the crowd is thick. 0.5 shoves one; the sledgehammer’s 1.0 flattens lines. The shovel is a strong duelist, not a brawler.

How It Compares

The shovel-and-bat rows are the clean read: identical weight, floor, knockback and crit, and the shovel converts that package into a much higher ceiling by giving up five condition. Against the crowbar it wins damage and crit and matches the shove; against the machete it loses the ceiling race but keeps the stronger shove, 0.5 against 0.3, and the higher crit, 40% against 20%. The weapon tier list treats this as the classic power-versus-longevity call — the shovel takes the power side at weight 2.

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.Shovel:

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.