Spear

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Name	Spear
Skill	Polearms
Damage	6
Accuracy	+4
Base delay (%)	11
Min delay	5 at skill 12
Hands	1H
Size	Little
Ranged?	No

A hunting weapon consisting of a wooden shaft with a pointed metal head fastened on one end. "The halberd is inferior to the spear on the battlefield. With the spear you can take the initiative; the halberd is defensive. In the hands of one of two men of equal ability, the spear gives a little extra strength. -Miyamoto Musashi, _The Book of Five Rings_, 1645.

This weapon falls into the Polearms category. It is a one handed weapon.

Spears are good starting weapons. They require little skill to reach minimum delay, and as a Polearm, they can reach up to 2 tiles away.

Strategy

Of the "simple" starting weapons, spears are the strongest against single targets. Because spears can reach, they get 1 free attack for every engagement, which usually makes up for the worse stats compared to maces or falchions.

Polearms in general are great if you have some means of creating distance. Characters with fast movement speed can kite enemies. Players with summons can attack behind their allies. Even if you didn't start with melee, you can probably get at least one spear off of a gnoll pack in the early dungeon. At 0 skill, spears are outright better than whips and short swords (if you aren't stabbing).

But unless you find a good branded or randart spear, you'll want to upgrade to a trident quickly.

	Image
Mundane
Magical
Artifact
	Unrandart
Wyrmbane

History

• Prior to 0.14, spears were also considered Throwing weapons.
• Prior to 0.9, spears had 7 base damage but lacked reaching.