Best melee weapons in Fallout 4, ranked

From rocket-powered sledgehammers to a flamethrower-katana hybrid, there’s no shortage of over-the-top melee weapons in Fallout 4 to help you get up close and personal in a fight.

The problem is, not every absurd contraption is able to live up to its cool appearance when it comes down to raw output. While the actual damage of any weapon largely depends on your character build, there are a few clear winners that rise above the rest in any category even once your stats are applied. Here’s a look at the top seven best melee weapons in Fallout 4, ranked by overall damage and versatility.

7) Sword of Wonders

• Base damage (without player perk and STR multipliers): 28
• Weight: Three
• Speed: Medium
• AP cost: 35
• Legendary effect: Ignores 30 percent of the target’s damage and energy resistance.

Obtained from either peacefully resolving the quest A Magical Kingdom or looting it off Oswald’s corpse in the Nuka-World DLC, Sword of Wonders is a unique variant of the Chinese Officer’s Sword. It comes with the Electrified Serrated Blade—its most powerful weapon mod—already attached, putting it at a base damage of 28 plus bonus electrical and bleed damage. Its unique ability pairs exceptionally well with the extra electrical damage—as electricity falls under “energy” damage—to bypass enemy resistances. Overall, it’s a very solid medium-reach, all-purpose melee weapon.

You technically don’t even need the DLC to get it: Functionally, it’s identical to a fully upgraded Chinese Officer’s Sword with Penetrating Legendary.

6) Grognak’s Axe

• Base damage: 25
• Weight: 10
• Speed: Medium
• AP cost: 20
• Legendary effect: Hits cause more stagger, and targets take bleed damage.

Obtained from a locked display case on Hubris Comics’ first floor, Grognak’s Axe is one of the few truly unique weapons without a base variant. The immediate drawback is it has no weapon mods available and doesn’t even show up in the workbench menu (which also means it can’t be renamed). 

This lack of upgrade is offset by its unusually low AP cost for its weight class, allowing you to swing it like a Fast weapon with the damage of a Medium weapon through V.A.T.S. The ability to make several hits quickly also pairs well with its unique ability, as bleed damage stacks with each hit and can be devastating when built up.

Requiring only the first rank of Locksmith to acquire, its early-game availability makes it one of the best weapons for a V.A.T.S. melee build until you have access to more advanced weapon mods. 

5) Rockville Slugger

• Base damage:  21
• Weight: 3.5
• Speed: Slow
• AP cost: 21
• Legendary effect: 40 percent less Action Point cost.

Sold by Moe Cronin in Diamond City, the Rockville Slugger operates on the same logic as Grognak’s Axe: It’s a moderately high-powered weapon with a low AP cost that boosts its damage output in V.A.T.S. While it’s available in the base game, what puts it within the top five of all melee weapons is the extended list of baseball bat mods added by the Nuka-World DLC. With eight more upgrades unlocked by higher ranks of Blacksmith and Science!, the Rockville Slugger is a heavy hitter that can keep up with you through higher levels.

Best of all, it still only costs 21 AP no matter what mods you put on it, making it the top pick in blunt weapons for V.A.T.S.-centric melee builds.

While you need the Nuka-World DLC to unlock its full potential, the Rockville Slugger can be substituted with a regular swatter with the VATS Enhanced Legendary effect. 

4) Kremvh’s Tooth

• Base damage: 28
• Weight: Two
• Speed: Medium
• AP cost: 30
• Legendary effect: Targets bleed and are poisoned. Exceptional damage.

Kremvh’s Tooth is a unique machete found at the very end of Dunwich Borers. While it might seem like a moderately powerful sword about on par with the Sword of Wonders, what really distinguishes Kremvh’s Tooth is that its effects are attached to its unique weapon mod, the Sacrificial Blade. This means you can take the plus 14 damage and extra poison damage buff and place it on a machete with a Legendary effect, functionally attaching two unique weapon effects to one sword.

This versatility gives it a huge edge over other medium melee weapons. If attached to a machete with the Wounding or Furious Legendary effects, the Sacrificial Blade lets you hack through most regular enemies without breaking a sweat. The best part is you can adapt this to other Legendary effects to better suit your playstyle, making a Legendary machete with Sacrificial Blade the best all-rounder one-handed sword to have on hand.

3) The Harvester

• Base damage: Four
• Weight: Six
• Speed: Very Fast
• AP cost: 40
• Legendary effect: Chance to stagger on hit. 

Don’t let that low base damage number fool you—the Harvester is a unique Ripper, one of the only “automatic” melee weapons. As miniature chainsaws, Rippers are doing chip damage continuously and very rapidly as you hold down the attack button for exceptional DPS and attack rate.

What puts the Harvester in a class of its own is its unique ability: Its “chance to stagger” is actually a 50 percent chance to stagger on hit. Considering how many hits it lands by default, the Harvester can effectively incapacitate most enemies via perpetual stagger and finish them before they can fight back. If you take the third rank of Blacksmith, you can attach the Extended Blade mod onto the Harvester and add rapidly stacking bleed damage that rips through enemy HP in a flash.

The Harvester can only be found at Echo Lake Lumber—a Far Harbour DLC area—but you can replicate its effects with the Staggering Legendary effect on a regular Ripper. 

2) Throatslicer

• Base damage: 35
• Weight: Two
• Speed: Fast
• AP cost: 20
• Legendary effect: Targets bleed for 25 points of additional damage.

Throatslicer is a unique variant of the Disciples Blade you can purchase from Katelyn Alden at the Nuka-town Market in the Nuka-world DLC. To start, the Disciples Blade is already the best knife available in the game with an absurdly high base damage for its weight class (20 before any modifications or multipliers). Throatslicer comes with the Serrated Hacking Blade mod and a unique bleed effect for a total of 35 weapon damage and 25 bleed damage on each hit—combined with a fast swing speed and low AP cost, Throatslicer can do an obscene amount of damage in a very short window. 

If you add any sneak attack multipliers and bonuses from the best melee perks, the weapon truly lives up to its name. While it might be held back by its limited reach in all-out brawls, Throatslicer is undeniably the best knife for a V.A.T.S.-based sneak build that can Blitz through a small group of enemies before they even know you’re there. 

Throatslicer can be substituted with a Wounding Disciples Blade if you have more RNG luck than caps. Unfortunately, it’s exclusive to the Nuka-world DLC and can’t be replicated—the closest base-game runner-up for stealth builds is Pickman’s Blade.

1) Atom’s Judgement

• Base damage: 40
• Weight: 20
• Speed: Slow
• AP cost: 45
• Legendary effect: Plus 100 Radiation damage.

Truthfully speaking, every other entry on this list can be shifted around in placement depending on your personal playstyle or build—but there is no contest when it comes to Atom’s Judgement. This unique Super Sledge variant is the singular most powerful melee weapon in Fallout 4 by a tremendous margin.

On paper, it might seem like a situationally powerful weapon that performs like an ordinary Super Sledge against radiation-immune targets like Ghouls or Super Mutants. Given the huge amount of radiation damage it does, this might even seem like a fair trade-off. However, the bonus damage on Atom’s Judgement is completely unaffected by enemy resistances.

Whether it’s an oversight or an intended feature, Atom’s Judgement (and the Shem Drowne Sword) are programmed to deal a different kind of radiation damage than all other radiation weapons and weapon effects. This distinct damage type completely bypasses any rad resistances while still scaling correctly with radiation damage bonuses from the Nuclear Physicist perk.

What makes Atom’s Judgement truly ludicrous is the radiation damage also scales with the Big Leagues melee multipliers as if it were part of the weapon’s base damage. With both perks maxed, Atom’s Judgement comes with plus 400 raw rad damage in addition to what its base damage comes to after applying your Strength and perk multipliers.

You can only acquire Atom’s Judgement by completing the Far Harbour DLC sidequest, The Heretic. Its unique effect can’t be replicated, so it’s effectively a DLC-exclusive weapon—in the base game, Super Sledges with Legendary effects are the next best two-handed weapons for Power Armor melee builds.