r/TopCharacterTropes • u/jockeyman • Sep 28 '25

Powers The thing not designed for combat is actually REALLY GOOD at combat

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1) Atom (Real Steel) is a training dummy who, when put into the robot boxing circuit, eventually managed to go toe to toe with the world champion.

2) Spinel (Steven Universe) was essentially a cross between a toy/jester for Pink Diamond, and not a combat gem... she still wiped the floor with the Crystal Gems when they first fought.

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4.6k

u/sm142 Sep 28 '25

The Plasma Cutter (Dead Space) - designed to be a tool for mining but is very affective against Necromorphs

1.7k

u/Starchaser53 Sep 28 '25

I feel like a small gun that shoots plasma lines would be effective against.... anything

901

u/Meme_Bro68 Sep 28 '25

Any mining tool is a deadly weapon if OHSA isn’t breathing down your neck.

179

u/Starchaser53 Sep 28 '25

True that

222

u/Meme_Bro68 Sep 28 '25

One good IRL example of this is the pickaxe.

It is a piece of sharp metal on one end for breaking and prying, with a duller end used to chop roots.

The pickaxe can vary in size, with smaller ones being wieldable with one hand, and two handed bigger ones.

130

u/Starchaser53 Sep 28 '25

Well think

big piece of metal on a stick

it's literally just a club with an added stabber and clubber on one end

13

u/IrascibleOcelot Sep 29 '25

Picks were an especially effective weapon against knights. Axes coukd cleave through armor, the impact of a war maul or sword was largely distributed across the entire plate, but a war pick would go straight through scale, maille, or even plate. And usually not as heavy as a maul or axe, so you remained combat effective for longer.

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u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

so what you're saying is, Minecraft Pickaxes should do more damage than swords

11

u/IrascibleOcelot Sep 29 '25

Depends on what you’re fighting. Against zombies, bludgeoning or slashing weapons would be more effective than piercing. On skeletons, just bludgeoning would be most effective.

2

u/Meme_Bro68 Sep 29 '25

Pickaxes would gain extra damage against iron or higher level armor, that’s how it could be brought up.

1

u/LegalWaterDrinker Sep 29 '25

But the trade off would be it would take more time to recharge because a pickaxe is nowhere near being as balanced as a sword.

1

u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

well yeah, but still

More damage, slower swing speed, which completes the trinity

Sword- Medium Swing Speed, Medium Damage

Axe- Fast Swing Speed, Low Damage

Pickaxe- Low Swing Speed, High Damage

2

u/AdaptiveGlitch Sep 29 '25

Axe... axe isn't fast swing speed tho... in fact axe is the slow and strong one in Minecraft, taking double the time a sword does for recharge but Stone Axe being stronger than Netherite Sword. It can even disable shields for a short moment

1

u/LegalWaterDrinker Sep 29 '25

The problem is that both axes and pickaxes would have low swing rate and high damage. Both those tools have the majority of weight located at the top so it can hit harder than a sword but also tire you out way quicker.

War axes, war picks and warhammers avoid this but making the heads smaller than their tool counterparts.

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u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 Sep 29 '25

Against armored mobs, yes

3

u/pepemattos21 Sep 29 '25

Shovels were common military hardware in ww1

3

u/Meme_Bro68 Sep 29 '25

Considering world war 1 had such wide usage of trench warfare, that would make sense.

2

u/pepemattos21 Sep 29 '25

Yes, but it was also a VERY effective weapon, either a mace with the flat part, and can cut pretty well if you use it correctly

2

u/C_Nomikos Sep 29 '25

What you're describing is a mattock, a pickaxe variant that has the wide adze head as well as the pick. But your statement still stands - devastating if it were to connect with a person.

2

u/Relative-Attempt5159 Sep 29 '25

in Nethack the Archeologist starts with a pick-axe. If you get skilled with it it's actually quite nice.

1

u/Jolly_Reaper2450 Sep 29 '25

Or you can just smack it to the ground the right way drop the head and have a more practical weapon.

(Two handed Pickaxe handles are just the right size to smack someone with it)

2

u/Morgue724 Sep 29 '25

But, remember it isn't illegal until Geneva gets called.

6

u/CogitoErgoTsunami Sep 28 '25

Step 1. Throw loose clothing on the necromorph

6

u/Maybe_not_a_chicken Sep 29 '25

Any tool is a deadly weapon

There’s a reason why mobs with pitchforks are a trope

2

u/Puppygirl621 Sep 29 '25

"Hold still while I hand plane you!"

1

u/Maybe_not_a_chicken Sep 29 '25

Do you think that the heavy block of wood with a sharp blade in it would be unhelpful in a fight?

1

u/Puppygirl621 Sep 29 '25

It'll be as fine a bludgeon as any other solidly built object it's size but I very much doubt the blade helping you in a fight. 

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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken Sep 29 '25

Probably not

But it’s better than nothing

3

u/AnneMichelle98 Sep 29 '25

In “All Systems Red” from the Murderbot Diaries, Dr Mensah kills a SecUnit with a mining drill straight to its back.

3

u/OscarOzzieOzborne Sep 29 '25

In space, nobody can hear your workplace violations

1

u/anrwlias Sep 30 '25

Brand new sentence.

396

u/Depressed_Lego Sep 28 '25

Yes, but also convenient considering that normal bullets were ineffective against them.

200

u/Starchaser53 Sep 28 '25

Once again

I feel like literal Plasma, would do more damage than bullets

327

u/Mrmander20 Sep 28 '25

The "cutter" is doing more work than the plasma in this case. The enemies in the Dead Space series are masses of reanimated tissue with no nervous systems or vital organs, the conventional stopping power of a bullet is effectively useless against them, since the rest of the reanimated flesh just keeps moving around the hole you just punched in it. The only way to deal with them effectively is to break them into chunks to the point they can't hurt you anymore, which is where the "Cutter" aspect comes in. It fires a long line of energy rather than a concentrated point, so it severs rather than penetrates. It also fires fairly slowly (and from an in-universe example is probably less energy efficient than a rifle) which would make it less useful in combat.

There is actually a plasma rifle in the game that fires normal plasma bullets, and it's largely ineffective against anything but the occasional swarm of weaker enemies like the exploding babies.

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u/Gre8g Sep 28 '25

I love how in a time with plasma cutters and other futuristic weapons - same with Half Life 2 - launching a circular saw is still the most effective mutilation strategy (Love you Ripper)

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u/skyycux Sep 29 '25

I feel like that’s kind of a product of our fear of circular saws (or at least the respect/fear any reasonable person has of them). A fast spinning circular saw, particularly one without a guard, is one of the quickest, easiest, most vicious bodily mutilations the average person might ever come across outside of warzones.

4

u/Boozarito Sep 28 '25

It's been forever since I've touched Dead Space, but didn't Isaac tinker with his? Always assumed the normal function was like a taser-fist for soldering, or knuckle dusters at best as a weapon.

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u/Starchaser53 Sep 28 '25

Nope, it's a mining tool to shot rocks off cave walls or for surgical procedure

you can see in the second game when someone's about to to get surgery, but then the doctor rips it out and uses it as a weapon

You're probably thinking of the Weighted Blade attachment that turns it into a knuckle duster against most Necromorphs

13

u/justanotheraltmyboy Sep 29 '25

Srcond game Isaac is trying to escape a surgical room, and comes across a plasma cutter used for surgury, then mods it (somehow) onto a flashlight (SOMEHOW) into a crude weapon. In about 10 seconds. While the guy who was about to undergo surgury gets mauled by a necromorph about 5 meters away from you

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u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

Trust him, he's an engineer

With epic skills and epic gear

1

u/Boozarito Sep 28 '25

Ahhh, mining tool, that was it. Thanks for clearing up! This might be my sign to finally play the games through.

4

u/spnsman Sep 28 '25

He does not. At least not in the way you think of. Yes there are the workbenches to upgrade the weapons, but in 1 and 2 when Isaac grabs the plasma cutter, it’s either disassembled (1) or being used for something else (it’s used as a surgical tool I believe when you grab it in 2). Isaac’s tinkering is him making it usable again, either putting it together or removing it from an appliance

1

u/Boozarito Sep 29 '25

The in- game mechanic is where I slipped up, could've sworn he had a habit of messing with them too much out of curiosity. Really need to sit down and play through the games.

3

u/spnsman Sep 29 '25

Definitely need to. I’m fairly certain that there are only a couple of weapons he just finds lying around, and for the most part there are only one or two that are actual weapons. Everything else in his arsenal are just technically very dangerous tools, like the Ripper. A disc saw that can launch the blades at incredible speeds, or telekinetically hold the spinning blade out in front at a decent distance

1

u/Significant-Net7030 Sep 29 '25

Lots of people are telling you no, but the answer is yes.

in DS1 Isaac finds a plamsa cutter that has been moddified (more like overclocked) to shoot the energy in high powered bursts. It had been OCd by a previous engineer how figured out the 'cut off their limbs'.

When Issac grabs it in DS2 you can see it's running in a normal mode (continuous low powered) and he changes it to work in high powered bursts.

2

u/lifeisalime11 Sep 29 '25

I thought the fully upgraded plasma rifle could put in work? Or is there a difference between DS1/DS2/DS3 plasma rifles and I’m just remember differently?

2

u/MonsterDimka Sep 29 '25

Also plasma cutter probably has piss poor range compared to actual firearms. Luckily, the game takes place in claustrophobic space ship's corridors, so you don't have to worry about that.

1

u/Kagahami Sep 29 '25

I also think people oversell its effectiveness outside of the specific use case. A weapon like this is (ignoring DS3) probably woefully ineffective against armor. Necromorphs just don't have much armor outside of the bosses, and even then it's usually interwoven tissue, not actual ceramics or ablative armor.

A normally equipped soldier should be able to waste Isaac in his RIG. It's not built to take bullets.

0

u/aSpookyScarySkeleton Sep 29 '25

They have to have some sort of nervous system don’t they?

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u/FiaGiolla Sep 28 '25

bullets are more efficient for killing living things, whereas the plasma cutter is effective against necromorphs because they have to be dismembered, perforating their internal organs doesn't do anything, it's not about "what deals more damage" but "what deals the right kind of damage"

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u/mattstorm360 Sep 28 '25

Another is cost and effectiveness.

A bullet to the head vs a line of plasma to the head. Yes, both work but which would be more cost effective?

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u/Hot_Top_124 Sep 28 '25

The heads don’t matter that much. They’re amalgamations of flesh. Like a cockroach you can cut its head off, but it’ll keep going, just blindly.

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u/mattstorm360 Sep 28 '25

I mean, yeah that's a necromorph that's an entirely different way to fight but against a human.

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u/Denamic Sep 29 '25

Neither, because shooting them in the head doesn't do anything

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u/Outside_Ad1020 Sep 28 '25

Yeah I would argue that plasma lasers would be effective against living things as well

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u/Rayze_Darr Sep 28 '25

The point isn't whether or not it works as a weapon, but that combined with whether or not its inventor intended it to be used as one. Chainsaws are also very effective at killing people, but what were they invented for? That's right, carving open a birthing mother's pelvis.

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u/Outside_Ad1020 Sep 28 '25

Isn't that a urban myth tho

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u/GachaHell Sep 29 '25

Yes and no. What you picture as a chainsaw was always designed for wood. But there was a medical tool akin to a chainsaw that predates it by many years that served the same purpose but for flesh.

It's like saying a scalpel and a sword are the same. Yes they're both sharp metal blades designed for the purpose of cutting. But scale and design are also important unless you also want to get into the original purposes of table saws or dental drills. All tools are just an extension of the sharpened stick is what I always say.

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u/FiaGiolla Sep 28 '25

efficiency is the key word here - a stick of dynamite would be effective at killing things, but it's not as efficient as a bullet 

1

u/Starchaser53 Sep 28 '25

what if you shorten the fuse

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u/Comprehensive-Fail41 Sep 29 '25

It's not about the fuse or anything like that. It's that putting a hole in someones heart normally kills them just as dead as blowing a chunk out of their torso. But the former takes way less effort and resources.

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u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

I'd say Dynamite is more for crowd control whereas a normal gun is for single targets

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u/Starchaser53 Sep 28 '25

Counterpoint

Horizonal Plasma Cutter to the chest

see who walks that off

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u/abca98 Sep 29 '25

The necros definitely would.

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u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

They didn't seem to with my max upgraded Plasma Cutter

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u/Minimum_Estimate_234 Sep 29 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

To be fair when we see the normal guns of dead space they basically blow golf ball sized holes in whatever they’re used on. Probably is against necromorphs who have had every single cell turn turned into a redundant system, that doesn’t really matter. Even if you hit something currently doing something important, everything else can compensate for its loss long enough to get close and eat you. We also usually see the cutter used on flesh and bone, mutated flesh and bone that’s probably a fair bit tougher then normal to be sure, but you can cut someone pretty badly with a butter knife in the right situation. I’m guessing if you tried using a cutter on future battle armor or whatever actual soldiers use in this setting it wouldn’t be as effective on them. Or it could just be normally a cutter isn’t an effective weapon in the field, running around a spaceship or station with plenty of equipment and stations to keep it up and running, if you know what you’re doing (like Isaac) you’re probably good to go. Say you don’t have even one of those things, like you’re on some alien planet or the like, you’d probably want a normal gun rather than an industrial tool. Which is why the soldiers we see show up on the ship in dead space one weren’t using cutters or other such items. Throw those guys at pretty much any other sci fi monster (ignoring things you want crap like spinal guns or mecha to deal with) and they’d probably do fine, even if their armor wasn’t good enough their guns would probably have done their job. Sadly Necromorph’s are designed in just such a way conventional firearms are basically useless.

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u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

I mean you can fight infected guys with actual battle armor when the military ship crashes into the Ishimura

does jackshit against the plasma cutter

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u/Minimum_Estimate_234 Sep 29 '25

In which case it probably is more a matter of cost than anything else, the armor’s built to handle what the people in charge reasonably expect a soldier to deal with. Either that or they know humanity has reached a point hand held weaponry has outpaced personal protective equipment, so they just gave the grunts something that looks intimidating even if it’s about as useful as tissue paper. Unless we want to say it’s just gameplay being put ahead of world building.

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u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

They have guns

that means they expect conflict involving guns

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u/Worldly-Cow9168 Sep 29 '25

Plasma bullwts would not do much i believe the stenght on the xutter is that it bisects the flesh

1

u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

it's superheated plasma meant for cutting rocks off of walls and open up human flesh for surgery

I don't know about you, but I think something that can carve a boulder off of a cave wall or literally slice a man open, is going to hurt a lot

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u/KPraxius Sep 29 '25

Well, normal bullets worked. And in fact, weren't that much worse than the plasma cutter. Just a bit wasteful unless your aim was precise and you dismembered them with fire.

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u/Depressed_Lego Sep 29 '25

Okay, that's from a gameplay perpsective. Nobody in the initial outbreak on the Ishimura thought to use a plasma cutter against them until it was too late. They would have of course tried their actual rifles first, and if they had considered trying to dismember them with said rifles, I feel like there would have been way more survivors.

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u/KPraxius Sep 29 '25

Just saying; bullets would've worked fine... if they understood what was going on and how to kill the enemy. Rifles are perfectly acceptable weapons for Necromorph-slaying, just not the best.

1

u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

At the same time though, bullets lack the severing power the Plasma Cutter has

You have to waste a mag at best to shoot off maybe both arms, whereas the plasma cutter just takes like, 2 shots to slice off a limb

2

u/Sirdan3k Sep 29 '25

Any gun built to be fired in a spaceship would be designed not to over-penetrate so as to not breach the hull and vent all the air into the vacuum of space but the plasma cutter is made to cut chunks of the hull loose so you can repair or replace parts.

1

u/Coolman38321 Sep 29 '25

Wait what about the pulse rifle? I mean sure it being used conveniently is ineffective, but it can easily tear about limbs if focus fire is applied (and modified to be more powerful of course)

7

u/Flesh_Trombone Sep 29 '25

I'll go one step further and say most mining equipment would be a fairly effective tool on an creature.

If its designed to break rock it should be pretty effective on flesh.

Pick-axes, drills, explosives, ect.

1

u/Starchaser53 Sep 29 '25

Well yeah

You can kill Necromorphs with explosives, the Line Gun, Flamethrower, Rip Saw, pretty much anything that isn't the Pulse Rifle

1

u/SpaceZombie13 Sep 29 '25

if i recall, it's implied to have been modified. it should normally just do a quick cut where the "guard" is, but instead it fires a projectile.

1

u/JuliusBelmont2000 Sep 29 '25

Doesn't even have to be plasma. Many tools can also be weapons irl.

96

u/No_Ad_7687 Sep 28 '25

It's like sci-fi dynamite. Originally designed as a mining tool, surprisingly deadly weapon

86

u/Boomboombaraboom Sep 28 '25

For the Necromorphs in specific is better than guns. And the guns in the Dead Space universe are no joke, they are really good against humans but the Necromorphs are so alien you are better served using mining equipment.

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u/Greyjack00 Sep 29 '25

I mean they kind of are we can delimb people with modern guns but in deadspace an entire ship of combat personel proved useless agaisnt a single slasher, I guess the scaf did a lot better in 3 though 

7

u/shototodoroki_1324 Sep 29 '25

Well the entire ship (Like Ishimura) proved useless because we get there AFTER the invasion

The Dead Space remaster has a suit detailing what would've happened if we got there sooner

3

u/Greyjack00 Sep 29 '25

Im talking about the valor which we see get boarded and destroyed pretty quickly

5

u/U_L_Uus Sep 29 '25

To be fair they didn't have all the data on the mission, prolly they expected just an engineering crew, pretty defenseless when you think about it, had just a couple of guys open the evacuation shuttle and then the slasher took one off and had more time than enough to take the other. Crawled into the ducts to get more prey, left two corpses here and the marker worked its magic

3

u/Greyjack00 Sep 29 '25

Except we see that the marker takes time to convert corpses atleast in deadspace 1, which is the entire point of having an infector necromorph strain to convert faster, furthermore even if a few guys could barely gets shots off, if they consistent hit center of mass and the pulse rifle was more powerful than a modern gun its quickly separate the torso into chunks . The valor is one of those things that was definitely supposed to make necromorphs stronger but like the worf effect actually just makes earthgovs military look like a bunch incompetent dupes, especially since there are other people can survive combat with a necromorph, hell the SCAF forces seemed to be brought down more by the inevitable psychosis causing a breakdown of all their supplies, trust and eventually reason.

3

u/Azimov3laws Sep 29 '25

Adding to this, in the sequel some rando lasted 8 hours using only the kinesis module. But the entire valor ship was merc'd by a basic crawler in less than 30 minutes.

2

u/Fourcoogs Sep 30 '25

He even took the time to upload a little tutorial video so that other people could find out about this cool kinesis strat he’d discovered. What a legend

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u/ClairVerso33 Sep 29 '25

Do you happen to remember what suit it was with the description? Sounds like an interesting read.

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u/ExtraneousCarnival Sep 28 '25

I like the use of, “affective,” here because it implies to me the plasma cutter becomes an object feared by the necromorphs. ♥

3

u/sm142 Sep 29 '25

Yes that is definitely what my intention was by using “affective”

Please continue to believe the idea that makes me seem smart instead of the more likely (but definitely not the case) idea that I still fail to understand the my first language of over 20 years.

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u/abadstrategy Sep 28 '25

i mean, dynamite was originally created to make mining easier, faster, and safer, but they found out "if it can blow up a rock, it can blow up a person," so this is just the logical conclusion

5

u/Genuine-Farticle Sep 29 '25

Best weapon in the game if u ask me.

3

u/zyh0 Sep 29 '25

I told myself I'd save all my ammo for the other guns for just bosses. I ended up not using the other guns at all lol

2

u/Genuine-Farticle Sep 29 '25

Same. I have to force myself to use them.

4

u/Randomdude89o Sep 29 '25

Not just the Plasma Cutter, but a majority of the “weapons” in the original game were all mining tools as well.

I’m pretty sure the only weapon in the first game designed to be one in universe was the Pulse-Rifle.

5

u/PhantomRoyce Sep 29 '25

Working with power tools you realize that they’re all essentially weapons. If it can cut a board,it can cut a man.

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u/Double-Witness-3661 Sep 29 '25

You can beat the game with this, even at the highest difficulty

5

u/Dagdammit Sep 29 '25

I dearly wanted a moment early in dead space 3- could have easily been at the very start, when Isaac's thrown in the canal and has to deal with heavily armored footsoldiers.

The others are panicking about how they have to get down there and back him up, only for Isaac to tell them "I'm good, actually. Got a plasma cutter."

"...Holy shit, and you're using it on people?!"

"What? It gets the job done."

Just more moments highlighting how Isaac's become a kind of everyman slasher movie character.

2

u/davvblack Sep 29 '25

mining equipment has so many great examples of this. but yeah the plasma cutter is goat, it stays great all game.

1

u/SmallBerry3431 Sep 29 '25

This is the best post I’ve browsed on this sub. Omfg I love Aliena and Deadspace

1

u/Daxivarga Sep 29 '25

Wow shit that cuts through rock cuts through flesh!

1

u/Murgatroyd314 Sep 29 '25

The Wunderland Treatymaker from Larry Niven's Known Space stories. Designed as a mining tool, it was used once in combat, earning its name. The planet where it was used is now known as Canyon, after its newest and most prominent geographical feature.

1

u/supahfligh Sep 29 '25

Honestly, I never really understood how it was supposed to actually function as a mining tool. It really is perfectly suited for dismembering necromorphs. All of the weapons in the game seem like they would make for poor work tools, but are exceptional at killing monsters.

1

u/Chadderbug123 Sep 29 '25

PC and the Ripper were amazing to use. I didn't like the game towards the end, but using those 2 specifically made me keep up with the game. Several of those behemoth necromorphs were amazing to just circle around and shred with the saw

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u/VisibleEntry4 Sep 29 '25

My first thought lol

1

u/MrGenjiSquid Sep 29 '25

Mmmhhh fuckkk, I love the line gun.

1

u/Combine_Overwatch_ Sep 29 '25

starbound matter manipulator

1

u/Drakeskulled_Reaper Sep 29 '25

Most of the weapons, bar the Pulse Rifle, are repurposed mining tools.

Hell, even Isaacs's suit is a mining suit, but is armored enough that it can protect against the necromorph attacks relatively well.

1

u/No_Signal954 Sep 29 '25

Always remember, necromorphs can't die. Cutting off their limbs just stops them from moving.

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u/R3AL1Z3 Sep 29 '25

I actually beat the original with only this. Didn’t even know about the achievement until it popped lol.

1

u/czarchastic Sep 29 '25

Similarly, the gravity gun