Hasta

A Hasta is a type of one-handed melee long weapon similar to the two-handed spears, though with negative defence stats. Hastae can be obtained either by trading with another player or using the Smithing skill upon completion of Barbarian Training on a specified barbarian anvil.

Hasta can be poisoned with either normal weapon poisons or Karambwan paste, which is more potent and can only be used on hastae and the aforementioned spears. For some reason, they have been confused with mjolnirs, the two-handed, non metal, staves.

Although they can only be used to train controlled and defensive attacks, hastae are still arguably the most flexible weapons in the game, as they are the only weapons to use Stab, Crush, and Slash attack styles save for spears. However, hastae are not used often as they do not excel in any particular style and other one-handed weapons, such as the scimitar and longsword have higher attack bonuses.

Hastae are hardly used because of the difficulty of obtaining them and the negative defence stats they have make their one-handedness nearly useless. Furthermore, up until recently, Hastae could only be sold from player to player. They couldn't be sold on the Grand Exchange. Despite the changes, they remain very unique, somewhat rare items.

Trivia

 * Hasta means lance or spear in Latin.
 * All varieties of hastae are notable for giving more experience per bar than any other item when smithed using the Smithing Skill. However, logs are required to make them.
 * The plural term would be hastae, rather than the common misconception of it being 'hastas'. This is because in Latin, plurals of nouns ending in •a would become •ae, not •as.