This covers the hand-held weapons. Plasmids get their own page.
The wrench and pistol were around before the civil war. Then the camera was invented to scan aggressors to find their weaknesses. The other weapons were thrown together from components on hand during the civil war.
Weapons are used in conjunction with plasmids for that fighting experience. All weapons but the wrench and camera are upgradable with the Power to the People (P2P) vendor, which provides only one upgrade for only one weapon at one time — but it is free.
All weapons except the wrench and camera have three kinds of ammo. For weapons that shoot bullets the three kinds of ammo are standard, anti-personnel (for aggressors) and anti-armor (or security devices and Big Daddies). The shotgun and crossbow have ammo that comes in standard, electrical and incendiary varieties.
Then there is the chemical thrower, which comes with three chemicals that match it with compariable plasmids and gene tonics.
| Electric | Fire | Ice | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chemical Thrower | Electric Gel | Napalm | Liquid Nitrogen |
| Plasmid | Electro Bolt | Incinerate | Winter Blast |
| Gene Tonic | Electric Flesh | Human Inferno | Frozen Field |
Ammo varieties marked craftable
must be built at a U-Invent station from components scrounged from containers and dead enemies.
A 12-inch Laplante pipe wrench you found in the Rapture Metro station after you just disembarked. Knock people on the head with it. Use it in combo with Electro Bolt (that one-two punch
, to quote Atlas). Combat tonics like Wrench Jockey, Wrench Lurker, and SportBoost make your wrench a powerful tool against aggressors.
Capacity: n/a
You get the standard six-shooter from a Ladysmith-model aggressor who treated it as her baby. Good for popping enemies in the head, for destroying hard-to-reach security devices, and for setting off barrels and cannisters of fuel from a distance. Its small clip can be increased at a P2P station, from which you can also boost the force of its bullets. Ammo comes in standard, anti-personnel (craftable) and anti-armor varieties.
Capacity: 6/24 (24/48 with the clipsize augmenter) for regular bullets, 12 for specialized bullets (24 with augmeter).
A throw-together Tommy gun ('Chicago typewriter'), with which you can spray your enemies away. You can boost the force of its bullets at a P2P station; it can also provide a dampener for the gun's kickback, making the spray more accurate. Destroyed turrets provide you with lots of ammo for this gun, especially after you've done level-two research on them. Ammo comes in standard, anti-personnel and anti-armor (craftable) varieties.
Capacity: 40/360 rounds
A hand cannon that blows your enemies off their feet, and provides an effective weapon against Big Daddies. P2P stations provide a gas-cannister lashup that gives your shotgun more boom for the buck, and also a gear mechanism to turn your boomstick into a semi-automatic. Ammo comes in standard (called 00 Buck), electric, and explosive varieties. Explosive Buck (craftable) is de rigueur in fighting Big Daddies if you do not yet have a crossbow. Electric Buck is more potent that Electro-Bolt, so don't use it on bots and turrets if you plan to hack them.
Capacity: 4/36 cartridges
Built out of cans and wood blocks, this really looks like it was thrown together. But it does the job of popping frag bombs at your enemies. Or, you can lay proximity mines in an enemy's likely path; these explode when an enemy walks into its red-delimited field. (You can walk on your own mines without setting them off.) Mines are useful for laying perimeters to trash enemies while you are doing something else. You can also plop a couple on a gas cannister to finish off a Big Daddy. Or, you can use heat-seeking rocket-propelled grenades (craftable) for when screaming death absolutely, positively must be delivered to your enemies, esp. nitros and Big Daddies.
P2P machines can add components that boost the explosive potential of your bombs. Another boost protects you from the splashback of your own bombs, especially when something steps on your mine before you can distance yourself from it.
Capacity: 12 frag bombs, 6 proximity mines, 6 RPGs
Not a weapon in itself, your research camera not only takes an aggressor's picture, it analyzes them for weaknesses you can exploit. For every set of pictures of a particular kind of aggressor you take, you win the ability to inflect damage on that aggressor. You can also win certain tonics; snapping pictures of three Houdini splicers, for example, wins you the very useful Natural Camoflage tonic. More about research in the Research page. Cameras use film as 'ammo'. They cannot be upgraded in themselves; but the tonics Photographer's Eye makes research easier, and Damage Research can amplify the results of your research.
Capacity: 100 pictures
This sprays a chemical that does your enemies a great deal of harm. Burn your enemies with napalm; freeze them with liquid nitrogen; or shock them hard with (craftable) electric gel. The liquid nitrogen is useful in freezing security devices so you can hack or shoot them. The electric gel to sap the life out of Big Daddies while render them immobile. The thrower uses lots of chemical without a consumption reducer from a P2P machine. From a P2P you can also make your thrower project further. If you have both mods, Big Daddies become easier to kill with Electric Gel.
Capacity: 400 units of napalm, 200 units of the other two chemicals.
Sander Cohen's personal gift to you, the crossbow is a sniping weapon whose bolts kill enemies at long range. Steel bolts (in green) kill or seriously injure enemies. Incendiary bolts (in red) ignite enemies on contact. Craftable trap wire bolts (in blue) let you string electrically-charged wires across a space. P2P machines provide means to make bolts fly further faster. P2Ps also have a lashup that give you a better chance of recovering steel and incendiary bolts. (Trap wire bolts are single-use and usually cannot be recovered.)
Capacity: 48 steel bolts, 24 of the other two kinds.
Trap-wire arrows shoot wires out their free end. The wires embed themselves with hooks on any flat surface opposite the arrow. After that anyone or anything walking into the wire will be shocked hard. Trap wires will kill aggressors, destroy bots and seriously weaken Big Daddies.
When you shoot a trap wire bolt, you must jump out of the way at once, or the wire will hit you! It took me a long time to figure that one out.
Unlike steel and fire bolts, trap wire bolts are rarely found in the open. You have to create them at crafting stations; a bundle of six bolts costs a unit of alcohol, three units of distilled water, and two batteries (assuming no tonics or hacking to lower those numbers).
There are only two weapons that gene tonics can enhance, and these only indirectly: The wrench and the camera. The camera's tonics are given in the Research page.
Wrench Jockey, Wrench Lurker, and SportBoost both enhance your ability to swing your wrench, to strike with greater force, and even to approach a foe without alerting him. A combo of Wrench Jockey 1 and 2, Wrench Lurker 1 and 2, and SportBoost 1 and 2 will make your wrench so powerful, even in the hard difficulty setting, that you will need your other weapons only on Big Daddies.
These can also be considered as weapons.
These will attack aggressors directly (turrets, bots) or by summoning bots (cameras). These last until the aggressor is dead or the devices are destroyed. They will only attack Big Daddies splashed with Security Bullseye.
These not only provide cheap (R$10) health care, but poison (usually fatal) to any aggressor who uses them.
Cannisters of gas and barrels of gasoline can be picked up with Telekinesis and thrown at enemies. Splat proximity mines on them to make them more powerful. You can shoot them a couple of times to detonate them.
Like cannisters and barrels, you can grab the bombs of nitro aggressors with Telekinesis and toss them either back to them, at anyone else bothering you, or at anything else in your way.
Setting bottles of booze afire with Incinerate turns them into Molotov cocktails for you to throw telekinetically at anything (or anyone) combustible.
You can recruit Big Daddies as bodyguards with the Call Big Daddy plasmid. They will treat you like a Little Sister, attacking anyone who attacks you.