Weapons and ammo

A gun is only as good as its condition, the magazine feeding it and the rounds you have for it. Knowing which weapons jam, how far a cleaning kit gets you and which guns share ammo tells you what is worth picking up — and what to leave lying.

Condition

Every weapon, magazine and attachment is in one of five states: Pristine, Worn (below 70 %), Damaged (below 50 %), Badly damaged (below 30 %) and Ruined. Guns, magazines and ammo spawn anywhere from pristine down to damaged, never worse.

Every shot wears the gun a little, and a suppressor on it too. How much depends on the gun and the round: full-power rifle rounds (7.62, .308) and shotgun shells wear a gun two to three times as fast per shot as 5.56, 5.45 or pistol rounds. Hits on the gear you carry damage it as well.

• A ruined weapon is finished: it can't fire, can't be loaded, takes no magazine and can't be cleared of a jam.
• A ruined magazine or a ruined pile of rounds can't be used to load a gun either.
• Above ruined, condition shows up as reliability: the worse the state, the more often the gun jams.

Jamming

Every time you pull the trigger, the game rolls against the gun's jam chance. That chance depends on:

• The weapon's condition.
• The magazine's condition. A magazine has its own jam chance by its own state, added on top of the gun's.
• A missing magazine. A self-loading rifle or pistol fired with a round in the chamber but no magazine attached gets about 6 % jam chance on that shot, even when it is pristine.

Vanilla jam chance per shot:

Up to Damaged, jams are rare. Badly damaged is where it hurts: a badly damaged rifle with a badly damaged magazine jams about one shot in seven.

Not every gun can jam at all. These never do:

• Bolt-action rifles: Mosin 91/30, M70 Tundra, CR-527, CR-550 Savanna, Pioneer, SSG 82, VS-89
• Single-shot and double-barrel guns: BK-18, BK-12, BK-43, Blaze, Derringer, Longhorn and their sawed-off versions
• The Revolver and the sawed-off revolver

Self-loading pistols, semi-automatic and automatic rifles, submachine guns, the SK 59/66 and R12 can jam, and so can the BK-133 pump and the Repeater Carbine.

A jammed gun can't fire or be reloaded until you clear it. Clearing takes several seconds of working the action. The stuck round isn't lost: it goes back onto a matching stack in your inventory, or drops at your feet if there is no room.

Repairing with a cleaning kit

Gun Cleaning KitWeaponCleaningKit

The gun cleaning kit is the only repair tool for firearms — duct tape and epoxy don't work on guns. It also repairs magazines and the factory suppressors, but not the plastic bottle suppressor.

• The item has to be Damaged or Badly damaged. Worn and pristine items can't be cleaned, and nothing brings back a ruined one.
• Each cleaning raises the item by one state: Badly damaged to Damaged, Damaged to Worn.
• Worn is the ceiling. A repaired gun never gets back to pristine.
• Every cleaning uses a quarter of the kit, so a full kit is good for four cleanings — enough to bring two badly damaged guns back to Worn. The kit itself must not be ruined.

The practical rule: clean a gun before it drops from Badly damaged to Ruined. Once it is ruined, only a replacement helps. Kits spawn at military, police and hunting sites; they are in the tools list.

Scopes, sights and weapon lights are repaired with the Electrical Repair Kit instead, with the same one-step rule and a quarter of the kit per repair. The two night vision scopes can't be repaired at all.

Magazines and loading

Detachable magazines

Most modern rifles, submachine guns and pistols take a box magazine: fill it with loose rounds, then attach it. Magazines belong to weapon models, not to calibers. The KA-101 fires the same 5.56 round as the M4-A1 but takes neither the M4's magazines nor any other — only its own. See the magazines list.

Internal magazines

Some guns have the magazine built in and are loaded round by round: the Mosin 91/30, M70 Tundra, SK 59/66, Repeater Carbine, BK-133 and R12, among others. A few of them, and some break-action guns, accept a loading aid that puts several rounds in at once:

5rd Mosin 91/30 ClipMag_CLIP762x54_5Rnd10rd SK 59/66 ClipMag_CLIP762x39_10Rnd.357 SpeedloaderMag_357Speedloader_6Rnd12ga Snap LoaderMag_12gaSnaploader_2RndB95 SnaploaderMag_308WinSnaploader_2Rnd10 Round ClipMag_CLIP9x19_10Rnd

• The Mosin clip fits the Mosin and the sawed-off Mosin.
• The SK 59/66 clip fits the SK 59/66.
• The .357 speedloader fits the Revolver and the sawed-off Revolver.
• The 12ga snap loader fits the BK-12 and BK-43 and their sawed-off versions.
• The B95 snap loader fits the Blaze and the sawed-off Blaze.
• The 10-round clip fits the Red 9.

A single round in the chamber

You can load one loose round straight into the chamber of almost any gun, magazine-fed ones included. That makes a rifle usable when you have its ammo but no magazine — one shot at a time, and with the extra jam chance for firing without a magazine described above.

Calibers: which guns share ammo

Tracer rounds fit everywhere the normal round of the same caliber fits, and the same goes for 9x39 armor-piercing. All 12ga shells — buckshot, slugs and rubber slugs — fit every 12ga shotgun. Rubber slugs knock out rather than kill: they deal shock and no real damage. Sawed-off versions take the same ammo as the full-length gun.

Ammo also spawns boxed, 10 to 50 rounds depending on the caliber. Unpack the box to get loose rounds you can load. All of it is in the ammo list.

Shared magazines

Most guns only take their own magazine. The exceptions worth knowing:

• Standardized magazines (30, 60 and the coupled 30) and Mag-C magazines (10 to 40) fit the M4-A1, M16-A2 and AUR AX. The AUR AX also takes the AUR magazine; the shorter AUR A1 takes only the AUR magazine.
• The KA-74 magazines (30 and 45) fit the KA-74 and KAS-74U.
• The SVAL, Vikhr and VSS magazines (20, 30 and 10 rounds) fit the SVAL, Vikhr and VSS. The Groza-4 takes its own 20-round magazine and the 10-round VSS magazine.
• The Kolt 1911 magazine fits both the Kolt 1911 and the engraved one.
• The LE-MAS magazine fits the LE-MAS and the sawed-off LE-MAS.

Attachments that matter

Which attachment fits which gun is listed on each item's page. The attachments list has them all.

Optics

Scopes and sights come with their own mounts: side-mounted sights such as the PSO-1 Scope and Kobra Sights go on KA-type rifles, the Hunting Scope on hunting rifles, the PU Scope on the Mosin and SK 59/66, and rail sights on rifles with a rail.

Sights with an illuminated dot or reticle take a 9V Battery. Without power the red dot stays dark. The night vision scopes, the NV-PVS4 Scope and the 1PN51 Scope, show nothing without a battery.

Suppressors

A suppressor makes shots quieter and hides the muzzle flash. The factory ones each fit a group of guns:

Standardized SuppressorM4_SuppressorNormalized SuppressorAK_SuppressorPistol SuppressorPistolSuppressor

• The standardized suppressor fits the M4-A1, M16-A2, AUR AX, M249 and Pioneer.
• The normalized suppressor fits the KA rifles, the VSD and the Groza-4.
• The pistol suppressor fits most pistols and the small submachine guns.

The Plastic Bottle Suppressor fits far more guns — most rifles, pistols and submachine guns. You make it from an empty plastic bottle and duct tape (see crafting):

Plastic BottleWaterBottleDuct TapeDuctTape

• The bottle must be empty and not frozen.
• The duct tape needs at least a quarter of a roll left, and the craft uses a quarter.
• It doesn't go on a gun that already has a bayonet or a muzzle device such as a compensator.
• It is very flimsy: a quarter of the hit points of a factory rifle suppressor and more wear per shot, so it lasts roughly a sixth as many shots. It can't be repaired. Carry a spare bottle and tape if you rely on it.

Lights

Universal FlashlightUniversalLightPistol FlashlightTLRLight

The universal flashlight goes on the rail of rifles and submachine guns such as the KA-101, KA-74, KA-M, M4-A1, AUR AX, SCR 17, SVAL, SG5-K, USG-45 and R12. The pistol flashlight fits the Kolt 1911, CR-75, FX-45 and Mlock-91. Both need a 9V battery.

Zeroing

A bullet drops on its way to the target, and the further it flies, the more it drops. Zeroing sets the distance at which the point you aim at and the point the bullet lands line up. Set it close to the distance of what you are aiming at: zeroed too short, you hit low at range; zeroed too far, you hit high up close.

Each gun's iron sights and each scope keep their own zeroing. When you swap a scope, check its zeroing again. The range you can set differs a lot:

Zeroing comes in 100 m steps on most long-range sights; red dots and holos step 25, 50, 100, 200 m.

Where to find them

Hunting rifles and old rifles like the Mosin turn up around farms, villages and towns; military rifles, their magazines and most optics come from military sites — see loot tiers. For your first finds, see the first hour. The whole list is under weapons. What spawns where is a server setting; the item pages show your server's own rarity.