Combat Knife

Main article: Counter-Strike Weapons

Combat Knife
Weapon Type	Close Combat Weapon
Weapon Tier	Melee Weapon
Rate of Fire	0.675s per hit. 13.5s to kill a Tank. (Prior to The Last Stand Community Update)

"Grabbin' a bread slicer."

―Ellis

The Combat Knife is a slashing weapon, similar to a Katana or Machete, but with a higher speed. this weapon can spawn in any campaign, although it is rare to find more than two in a given campaign. Despite the Combat Knife's smaller size, its reach or range matches that of any other melee weapon.

Melee Mechanics

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 he is charging, allowing a Survivor to "level" a charge without first dealing damage to the Charger and to gain the achievement LEVEL A CHARGE.

Notes

• The Combat Knife is based on that found in Counter-Strike counterpart, the Knife, which is itself based on the real life Bad Land Bowie by Mick Strider.
• The Knife does spawn in the demo of the Xbox 360 version of the game, and functions as normal.
• As of The Last Stand Community Update, the Combat Knife's swing speed was heavily reduced, now being on par with most other melee weapons. Previously it was one of the fastest melee weapons in German versions of Left 4 Dead 2, along with the Nightstick.
• In the Console Commands it was previously called hunting_knife and it was renamed knife in the The Last Stand Update.

The white outline of the Combat Knife.

Rochelle using the Combat Knife in a custom campaign.

Nick using the Combat Knife in a custom campaign.

Coach using the Combat Knife in a custom campaign. (Third Person View)

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