Spears work wonders in place of hammers
Most of the damage will be pierce which will keep the zombie intact and they are neither strength nor stamina intensive, So peices will be severed but those will be fairly easy to deal with
Except spears will take quite a while to bring the undead down. Bleeding and damage to internal organs does nothing to them.
I had a fresh undead goblin battle a swordwarf. The swordwarf tore the undead goblin´s heart, stomach, kidney, hacked his left front tooth, right arm and tore several nerves and main arteries before a second zombie caught up and together with the other zombie (which was still perfectly fine) wrestled her to death.
And these were just regular "oh hey a dead body lets reanimate it" evil biome zombies, not evil sentient cloud/mist/fog thralls.
I cant imagine a spear would do better.
Best way to kill a zombie imo is break all its bones.
Incidentally, is there any way to train stamina?
Even better,a way to train will? I try to have only iron-willed soldiers but when those all die horrifically to undead giant thrips I get the next expendable dwarf with some combat skill.
Im guessing this was the problem, as I acquired these weapons before I realised how important a dwarfs attributes where, and how they could be checked on the thoughts and preferences screen
Ah, if only you could see their atributes in the military screen. Would make life so much simpler.