Chainsaw



The chainsaw mutilates enemies close enough to contact. At 525 hits per minute, it is roughly a quadruple-speed fist.

It is considered to be most effective against Demons and Spectres. Some players, when confronted by a pack of Demons and Spectres, back into a corner and chainsaw them down one by one (if the corner is less than 107 degrees wide, only one Demon can attack at a time). It can also be used fairly effectively against Cacodemons, Pain Elementals, and Imps.

The chainsaw first appears in a secret area of the level E1M2: Nuclear Plant, and appears again in secret areas of E1M3: Toxin Refinery and E1M5: Phobos Lab. It is finally found in a non-secret area on E1M7: Computer Station.

In vanilla Doom, if a player has a chainsaw, they cannot switch back to the fists unless they have a berserk pack.

The chainsaw can be obtained via the cheat code idchoppers (and, in some source ports, idfa or idkfa).

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of chainsaws: