Fireaxe

Fireaxe
Weapon type	Close Combat Weapon
Technical specifications
Rate of fire	0.9s per hit. 18 seconds to kill a Tank.

"Yeah, always wanted to be an axe murderer!"

―Ellis

"Axe me a question, I dare you."

―Rochelle

The Axe is a close combat weapon from Left 4 Dead 2.

It is found in every campaign but The Parish, and the ports of Death Toll, Dead Air and Blood Harvest.

Official Description

Great for clearing out crowds of infected, this handy lumberjack-approved melee weapon will have you stacking up the zombies like cordwood.

Melee weapons replace Pistols in the secondary weapon slot. Unlike Pistols, close combat weapons never need to be reloaded and cannot run out of ammo (excluding the Chainsaw). They have two main drawbacks: a limited reach and (with a few exceptions) relatively long cooldown periods. Close combat weapons cause minimal friendly fire damage to the Survivors, even on Advanced and Expert difficulty levels (the Chainsaw is an exception).

These weapons are extremely effective. All melee weapons, on all difficulties, kill Common Infected and most Special Infected in one hit, aside from the Charger (which takes two—but see point below), the Witch (which takes four), and the Tank (which takes twenty, excluding the Chainsaw). Due to their death effects, it is generally advised to melee neither the Boomer (unless there is no choice) nor the Spitter (unless it is possible to move away immediately from the resulting acid splash).

The melee weapons appear to do more damage if an Infected's head or upper body is targeted. With the correct timing it is possible to kill a Charger with one hit while it is charging, allowing a Survivor to "level" a charge without first dealing damage to the Charger and to gain the achievement "Level a Charge".

The Axe is classified as a Slashing weapon: it will sever limbs and spew blood on the screen.

Pros

• Has an incredibly wide swing, allowing multiple Infected to be killed at once
• Excels at destroying crowds
• A very common find
• Most hit rays out of all melee weapons (about 16)
• Predictable, sideways swing action: right to left on first swing, left to right on second.
• If used correctly, it can be deadly to all Common Infected and most Special Infected, including the Tank.

Cons

• Does not have a long reach when compared with other melee weapons such as a Katana
• It is the slowest melee weapon.
• Not recommended for killing Boomers due to bile showering attacker and any nearby Survivors

Achievements

	CONFEDERACY OF CRUNCHES	(30G)
	Finish a campaign using only melee weapons.

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	HEAD HONCHO	(15G)
	Decapitate 200 Infected with a melee weapon.

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	TANK BURGER	(30G)
	Kill a Tank with melee weapons.

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	BEAT THE RUSH	(15G)
	In a Survival round, get a medal only using melee weapons.

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	CLUB DEAD	(15G)
	Use every melee weapon to kill Common Infected.

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	LEVEL A CHARGE	(15G)
	Kill a Charger with a melee weapon while they are charging.

Notes

Coach holding Axe in Dead Center.

• The Axe's design is based on a firefighter's axe. It's normally found lying on the floor or on a wooden crate but exclusive to Swamp Fever a usable axe may sometimes be found stuck in a tree, suggesting that a previous unknown Survivor had used it as an improvised wood-cutting axe.
• An Axe can be found in Whitaker's shop in The Streets in Dead Center.
• The Axe's swing speed is the slowest of all melee weapons. However, it fires the most hit rays: these determine whether a swing of the weapon is a hit-or-miss: making it the most reliable out of all the melee weapons, and least likely to only stumble Infected in front of the player. It performs particularly well when swung and the player simultaneously turns in the direction of the swing: this kills infected within an arc of increased width.
• It was originally planned that you could decapitate a Witch by sneaking up on her and swinging the Axe at her head but this capability was subsequently scrapped.
• In early gameplay video, the Axe had an animation in which the Survivor brings it over their head and slices downward, probably chopping the Infected in half. This too was later abandoned.
• In the beta version, Axes could be found in The Parish campaign.
• There is a texture of the Team Fortress 2 Fire Axe in the game files, located in the materials/models/weapons/melee/fireaxe folder. A small difference is that it only has a texture and in its VMT file it does not have the toon-shading and lightwarps etc..

Bugs

• When attacking with the axe as one of the Left 4 Dead 2 survivors, Coach's grunt noise is sometimes played.