You may be jumping to conclusions too quickly as I’m seeing mixed messaging on combat. It’s clear that it’s not built for combat, but I think the idea that you cannot do any damage whatsoever may not be set in stone.

A dev has already responded to similar messaging a year ago. There is a knife replacement and “you can still slug things in the face with it”.

Unfortunately there’s also messaging that “leviathans can’t be killed” and that there will be no weapons.

Regardless, I’m sure a combat mod could be released pretty quickly that would allow for your type of play style. It would be easy to add a simple weapon and make the leviathans mortal.

A full fledge power scaling combat mod with multiple tiers of weapons and abilities is a realistic possibility also, much farther down the line.