best weapon for bosses

[Karma]

any advice?

[Elegant Caveman]

Depends on a variety of factors, but the primary one is probably ammo penetration.

As long as the ammo you're using has good penetration vs. the boss' armor, other considerations mostly come down to preference/playstyle.

High rate of fire and large magazine size can help, but depending on how far along you are, a single shot from a good sniper, if you have the proper skills, can be enough.

[Whiskiz]

-close range wep for Orel, if you can clear their friends and get close to them (pref from around a corner in the north or south alleyway) they're super ineffective with their sniper at close range. just like we are, it goes both ways

-Lazar outrange with a long range sniper if you can get vision of him in the sweetpots between the barricades and/or attract him out. he has medium range weapon so can't fight back max range

if you know what you're doing you can battle with him mid range with like an assault rifle and out DPS with the bullets that are 50+ armour pen, high rate of fire, while using sniper or operator perks, and peekaboo from behind cover to heal (or repair armour) as necessary.

try a grenade if you want a chance at skipping most of that

-Kibba can snipe either mid range max with AR, or max range sniper, he mid range while the halls are great for long range, careful of his speed and aggressiveness and fighting in enclosed shops

-you do not kill Arman. Arman kills you. in the end, when the world is dead and gone, there will only be Arman. Arman is omnipresent and omniscient

you won't find him anyway when you do want to take him on, and will die in seconds when you don't and accidentally come across him (or him you..) so it doesn't matter haha

[Karma]

Originally posted by Karma:

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

-close range wep for Orel, if you can clear her friends and get close to her (pref from around a corner in the north or south alleyway) she is super ineffective with her sniper at close range. just like we are, it goes both ways

-Lazar outrange with a long range sniper if you can get vision of him in the sweetpots between the barricades and/or attract him out. he has medium range weapon so can't fight back max range

if you know what you're doing you can battle with him mid range with like an assault rifle and out DPS with the bullets that are 50+ armour pen, high rate of fire, while using sniper or operator perks, and peekaboo from behind cover to heal (or repair armour) as necessary.

try a 'nade if you want a chance at skipping most of that

-Kibba can snipe either mid range max with AR, or max range sniper, he mid range while the halls are great for long range, careful of his speed and aggressiveness and fighting in enclosed shops

-you do not kill Arman. Arman kills you. in the end, when the world is dead and gone, there will only be Arman. Arman is omnipresent and omniscient

you won't find him anyway when you do want to take him on, and will die in seconds when you don't and accidentally come across him (or him you..) so it doesn't matter haha

Thanks, this will definitely help and ikill arman in 4h playthrough it just stand ther and do nothing must be buged lol

[Karma]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

-close range wep for Orel, if you can clear her friends and get close to her (pref from around a corner in the north or south alleyway) she is super ineffective with her sniper at close range. just like we are, it goes both ways

-Lazar outrange with a long range sniper if you can get vision of him in the sweetpots between the barricades and/or attract him out. he has medium range weapon so can't fight back max range

if you know what you're doing you can battle with him mid range with like an assault rifle and out DPS with the bullets that are 50+ armour pen, high rate of fire, while using sniper or operator perks, and peekaboo from behind cover to heal (or repair armour) as necessary.

try a 'nade if you want a chance at skipping most of that

-Kibba can snipe either mid range max with AR, or max range sniper, he mid range while the halls are great for long range, careful of his speed and aggressiveness and fighting in enclosed shops

-you do not kill Arman. Arman kills you. in the end, when the world is dead and gone, there will only be Arman. Arman is omnipresent and omniscient

you won't find him anyway when you do want to take him on, and will die in seconds when you don't and accidentally come across him (or him you..) so it doesn't matter haha

one more quastion can you explain difrence between type ammos

[Whiskiz]

there's normal ammo, ammo that increases damage (so good against flesh/mutant) then there's ammo with armour piercing - good for higher tier humans with higher tier armour

for shotgun there's close range ammo and 2 blue medium-range decent armour pen ammo (so the gun fulfills 2 roles and is great early)

that's mostly it

some other that helps with recoil instead, but still

ammo with black tips are the best - those are armour pen ammo, is mostly what you wanna use. takes longer to unlock those and factions have access to different black tip ammo (as well as weapons and other gear in general) so choose who you wanna end up joining wisely

i mostly use normal ammo then black tip/armour pierce, mutants are easily handled enough once you get a general handle on the game (your experience may vary), just infestations you need be a little more prepared for

[ThatGuyKhi]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

there's normal ammo, ammo that increases damage (so good against flesh/mutant) then there's ammo with armour piercing - good for higher tier enemies with higher tier armour

for shotgun there's close range ammo and 2 blue medium-range decent armour pen ammo (so the gun fulfills 2 roles and is great early)

that's mostly it

some other that helps with recoil instead, but still

ammo with black tips are the best - those are armour pen ammo, is mostly what you wanna use. takes longer to unlock those and factions have access to different black tip ammo (as well as weapons and other gear in general) so choose who you wanna end up joining wisely

i mostly use normal ammo then black tip/armour pierce, mutants are easily handled enough once you get a general handle on the game (your experience may vary), just infestations you need be a little more prepared for

*Gonna buy ZS in a few*
So I could get by with a Normal Ammo SMG and AP Ammo AR/Sniper for a while?
Then switch to AR Ammo all together in the endgame?

[Karma]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

there's normal ammo, ammo that increases damage (so good against flesh/mutant) then there's ammo with armour piercing - good for higher tier enemies with higher tier armour

for shotgun there's close range ammo and 2 blue medium-range decent armour pen ammo (so the gun fulfills 2 roles and is great early)

that's mostly it

some other that helps with recoil instead, but still

ammo with black tips are the best - those are armour pen ammo, is mostly what you wanna use. takes longer to unlock those and factions have access to different black tip ammo (as well as weapons and other gear in general) so choose who you wanna end up joining wisely

i mostly use normal ammo then black tip/armour pierce, mutants are easily handled enough once you get a general handle on the game (your experience may vary), just infestations you need be a little more prepared for

Thanks man, you helped me a lot

[Whiskiz]

o7

Originally posted by ThatGuyKhi:

So I could get by with a Normal Ammo SMG and AP Ammo AR/Sniper for a while? Then switch to AP Ammo all together in the endgame?

sure can

then preferably 2 close/medium range auto's (with big mags of 50+ if possible) for infestation quests. switch weapons from the first when run out of ammo and try to tag the infestation from as far away as possible, to activate the spawn and give as much distance/time to clear as possible - if it's around a corner then there's enough time to tag and sprint around the corner to get ready

godspeed

[BlueSpark]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

-close range wep for Orel, if you can clear their friends and get close to them (pref from around a corner in the north or south alleyway) they're super ineffective with their sniper at close range. just like we are, it goes both ways

Since the most recent patch, I'd say this is only partially true. I started another playthrough after the update and rushed Orel with an SMG, but my regular ammo did very underwhelming damage to him (I hadn't unlocked AP ammo yet). While I was busy unloading my entire magazine into him, he kept panic-firing and hit me once, so I retreated to cover and healed up. Rushed out again, unloaded my mag, he hit me with 2 panic shots. I had to retreat again and use 2 medkits. After that, I was able to kill him in 10 more hits or so.

The way the patch notes are worded (describing "reduced accuracy" as a penalty for panic fire) makes me think that the short-range damage reduction for rifles still doesn't apply to NPCs. And given that 1 close-range hit from Orel's DMR took almost half my health (if I recall correctly) makes me believe that's indeed the case. Giving NPCs reduced accuracy at close range as a 'penalty' is laughable because at that distance, it's almost impossible to miss, anyway (unless you make their bullet spread completely ridiculous, like a 90-degree angle).

I sincerely hope the ranged damage penalties will be applied to NPCs just as they affect the player in the next update.

[Whiskiz]

i came across the same thing from the patch 2 days ago or so, but Orel only hit me once before i unloaded an SMG clip and took them out still

were you right up next to them? from around a corner

and i probably used armour pen ammo for boss battle, cause Orel only got 3 shots off and only the 1 hit and my armour tanked it, so they still died in a couple seconds for me without much fanfare

it's true enemies can shoot back somewhat now even when not in their proper range, unlike before when they wouldn't fire at all otherwise

but Orel much more accurate and deadly in their given long to probably medium range with their sniper rifle, so it's still probably the best chance for survival - unless you wanna risk a sniper/longer range shootout with a tanky boss at full power/accuracy

maybe all the extra you need indeed is a little peekaboo (and AP ammo for bosses in general)

it's kind of a good thing because before, using the side alleys to get to Orel face range and nullify them 100% was fun the first time, but then made the boss kinda pointless every time after that haha. not nearly as scary as the others

least now there's still something to the fight even when you get close

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by Karma:

one more quastion can you explain difrence between type ammos

Whiskiz gave a good overview, but I'll just drop a link to the wiki as an addition:

https://zero-sievert.fandom.com/wiki/Ammunition

(note that the wiki hasn't quite yet been updated for 0.40, so a few things are missing/wrong, but I think ammo itself hasn't changed, though a new type isn't listed there)

The way armor works is a bit confusing/complicated, but the very short version is that each 10 of penetration gives you a 90% chance to get through an armor level, so round with 20 pen will have a 90% chance of getting through class 2 armor, and a round with 40 pen will have a 90% chance of going through a class 4 armor.

If you don't have enough penetration, the chance of a bullet getting through drops dramatically, which is why SMGs (for example) with regular ammo (~15 penetration) will do practically noting to high-end armor.

If you're 10 pen below the 10x equivalent, you drop from 90% chance of getting through to 40% (so, bullet with 30 pen against a class 4 armor, for example).

That thread is pretty old, so I'm not sure if something's changed, but even if it has, it's probably not by too much, and it still should give you a decent general idea.

Penetration matters quite a bit.

Keep in mind the numbers above are with 100% armor durability.

Even when armor blocks a hit, it still takes damage (though less than when a hit isn't blocked, I think?), so if you dump enough shots onto a target, you'll end up killing them.

With low penetration vs. a high-tier armor, though, they're likely to kill you first.

There was a bug recently where armor didn't lose durability when it blocked a shot, but that's supposed to be fixed.

Originally posted by ThatGuyKhi:

So I could get by with a Normal Ammo SMG and AP Ammo AR/Sniper for a while?
Then switch to AR Ammo all together in the endgame?

To a degree.

SMG regular ammo is particularly bad, though, which makes SMGs without AP ammo quickly mostly useless against armored targets (they're still very effective against animals/mutants, though).

ARs and DMRs have considerably better "regular" (i.e. non-AP) ammo, though, so they're viable as general-purpose weapons for considerably longer.

Some rough numbers as examples:

Bandits have class 1-2 armor, and hunters will usually have class 2-4. Hunters do go up to 5-6 later on, but it'll be a while before you get to that.

Green Army/Crimson Corporation seem to mostly follow the same growth/path as hunters do.

Bosses will tend to have better armors in general (Arman has class 4, Kibba has class 6, I forget the others).

Basic 9x18 ammo (what your starting gun and a lot of early SMGs use) has a penetration of 12.

Basic 5.45x39 ammo (what most ECs/AKs use) has a penetration of 25.

Basic 7.62x54R ammo (what your likely first sniper uses) has a penetration of 32.

Basic 9x39 ammo (used by the ZZ Vel, OP AR from first map's boss) has a penetration of 38.

Early SMGs using AP ammo (9x18mm PBM) only have a penetration of 25, so that's outclassed even by regular AR ammo of the better kind (5.56x45mm M855 with 28 pen and 7.62x39mm PS with 31).

The best SMG AP ammo (.45 ACP AP) only has 35 penetration, which is outclassed by ARs using both the basic 9x39 (38 pen) and 7.62x51 (40 pen).

Honestly, what I really feel SMGs are missing is HP ammo, for that bonus to unarmored targets. Especially considering their generally-low base damage.

Originally posted by BlueSpark:

I sincerely hope the ranged damage penalties will be applied to NPCs just as they affect the player in the next update.

Yeah, that needs to be fixed.