Nightstick

"♪ Gonna beat me a zombie to death with a nightstick~ ♪"

- Ellis

"I'm gonna smack some shit with this."

- Coach

The Nightstick (also known as the Tonfa) is a close combat weapon in Left 4 Dead 2 that can be either found lying around in maps or dropped by Riot Infected and/or Police Officers upon death.

It can be found in the following campaigns:


 * The Parish
 * No Mercy (Left 4 Dead 2 only)
 * Crash Course (Left 4 Dead 2 only)
 * Death Toll (Left 4 Dead 2 only)
 * Dead Air (Left 4 Dead 2 PC version only)
 * Blood Harvest (Left 4 Dead 2 PC version only)
 * The Sacrifice (Left 4 Dead 2 PC version only)
 * Cold Stream

Melee Mechanics
The Nightstick is classified as a bludgeoning weapon: it will spew blood, but will never dismember the Infected. It also sends the Infected's body flying a small distance.

Pros

 * Has the fastest attack rate of all melee weapons (except for the Chainsaw), and it can be used infinitely unlike the Chainsaw.
 * Can be randomly dropped by defeated Riot Infected (and Infected police officers in the ported versions of Left 4 Dead campaigns).

Cons

 * Has an incredibly small arc of swing.
 * Has poor hit registration, meaning that you may have a hard time hitting enemies with it.
 * Has an odd animation for a swing from this weapon, meaning that it can be hard to tell if you have scored a hit.
 * Not recommended for killing Boomers due to bile showering attacker and any nearby Survivors.

Console Command
There are two console commands for the Nightstick:


 * and (where XX is a floating point variable)

The variables above will determine the probability for the Nightstick to be dropped by Riot Infected and Police Officers when killed respectively. The value is a floating point number, meaning it can be a number with a decimal. This specific command restricts it to any number between 0 and 1 inclusive. The default for the Riot Infected is 0.1, therefore all Riot Infected would have a 15% chance of dropping a Nightstick on death, meanwhile the default for the Police Officers is 0.03, meaning that they have a 3% chance of dropping Nightsticks on death.