My findings so far trying to play the hardest combat with spear

In the hardest combat setting enemies have much more health and deal more damage, also starred enemies are more common. This means that, with usually appropriate gear, staggering is much harder as is parrying and the opposite is true for the player and most hits taken will stagger, crush through blocks or directly kill.

I have played a few times with the hardest setting with the usual weapons, mostly sword, mace etc. because they really are very good, but because the bow deals relatively so little damage I thought it could be a good idea to just replace it and go for the spear.

I think that the spear is one of the better weapons to deal with flying enemies, ranged enemies and enemies with a skirmishing AI like greydwarves and fulings. These enemies don't want to rush the player down, they circle around, attack, and repeat. The secondary can be used to hit them which often causes a stagger allowing a quick kill and the primary is quick so it's also easy to land.

Hitbox: Everyone complains how ridiculously short the spear hits because it's similar to the knife. However it has a very high and "tall" hitbox and it's really good for hitting wraiths, deathsquitos, bats and just fighting in a slope while under the enemy. The primary attack cone is narrower than most weapons and that avoids multi-hits which reduce damage.

The throwing: The secondary attacks has less DPS than the primary, in a good day when the spear doesn't do something awkward. Sometimes it goes under some enemy, sometimes it slides away, sometimes it goes in water, sometimes it gets stuck in tar, sometimes it gets lost in a bunch of garbage items, sometimes it can't be retrieved because I got that junk instead and the slot was filled. The point is that the secondary is not good for DPS and stamina, it's good to get staggers on enemies with lower life, to hit at range, and to finish enemies (and to cheese).

The drake thing: Surprisingly they were in the easier parts of not having a bow. The drakes AI makes them get close to the player to get a line of sight for their ranged attack, then stay still while attacking, fly away and repeat. This AI is easily manipulated with the environment so they get closer and preferably above terrain (not a huge cliffside) minimizing the risk of missing or the spear sliding down. I think outside of long-range stealth hits with the bow, the spear is even better at killing drakes because it uses so little stamina. Dealing with groups of 3 drakes is no problem at all.

Overall I'm having a great time with it. Smooth runs into early mistlands. Maces to help early in the swamp, but as the spear line is so cheap, these are the first hardest runs I actually have gear before finishing the biome and that helps a lot in this difficulty. The accessibility is a huge, huge thing. For instance the silver tier, fang spear, costs 8 silver and some misc items to fully upgrade while Frostner costs 120 silver and Ymir flesh which in turn requires killing The Elder and a substantial amount of gold. The powerspike of having the weapon fully upgraded quickly and with higher levels (because of fast attack) kind of makes up for the lower ceiling in so far.

If devs would change anything about them, I'd like to see that:

• Dropped spear had a unique not-generic effect;
• Throwing the spear would "save" it's slot and not get replaced with something else;
• Limited sliding on the grounded spear, perhaps they could stick vertically on the ground instead for better visibility;
• A bit more forward range on the primary because it's visually awkward;
• Perhaps some trajectory improvement in higher tiers like with the bow;
• Perhaps some elemental damage variants like the bow (boomsticks?);
• Perhaps the ability to have the spear stack in a single slot or have it auto-replaced after thrown if having another spear, like arrows;

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Tl;dr. The spear is surprisingly good in this difficulty and flying enemies are very easy to deal with.

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