Starter weapons upgrades worth it?

[UsykP4P]

Starter shotgun and rifle and combat knife, is it worth upgrading fully to what you can max out or wait for better guns ie Riot gun and stingray? Also is it worth upgrading the combat knife?

[Knucklehead McSpazatron]

I don't upgrade any of the starter weapons. I'd wait for the Riot gun and Stingray. You'll find other knives too so I wouldn't upgrade the combat knife.

[mello]

I've stopped upgrading the knife until last, because the game gives you knives anyway. Knife durability get big hits when used to stop a ganado from mutating most of the time, but I prefer using rifles to dispose of them because of its 3x weakpoint multiplier.

Imo the bolt-action is the best rifle in the game, it does more damage per shot compared to the broken butterfly too iirc, and since it's using rifle ammo, it's way more ammo efficient. 2nd best rifle, is the CQBR, has slightly more damage than the Stingray per shot, and is fully automatic, and user skill shine the most here, either you dish out absurd damage or you waste ammo if you don't control your trigger and aiming.

The starter shotgun is very generalist, can't go wrong with it, has high stagger and stun rate, big damage and the spread works fine for crowd control. But I prefer the riot gun, the tighter spread allows for more effective range, and is easier to hit weakpoints and plagas.

[Chauve-souris]

Starter shotgun ends up being the strongeest in term of firepower (20 something vs roit gun 19 something) but have a larger spread radius than the riotgun. so riotgun better for single target, shotgun better for crowd control. riotgun have better firerate too.

All in all i would say those are even.

Bolt action rifle also ends up being the one with higest firepower, but slow firerate. Can't comment much here i did not tried other rifles.

Knife = upgrade durability so you do not have to repir it as often.

That said, once you sell a weapon you get back most of the money you spent on it, so nothing wrong to upgrade a partly gun and sell it when a prefered version becomes avaible.

[Xengre]

The first rifle, BAR commonly shortened nickname, is recognized as pretty much unquestionably the #1 weapon in the game by the community. It is extremely efficient with its powerful penetration stat hitting multiple enemies which base game makes very easy to utilize by simply backing up a few feet as enemies group and using various narrow pathways if available (but not necessary). Less useful in Separate Ways due to lack of multiple enemies and their layout typically but still powerful for the other reasons. It also has such extreme dmg it is considered a pocket revolver, however, unlike the revolver which has extremely rare ammo the rifle ammo is extremely plentiful (esp if you understand ammo drop rate manipulation) peaking at around (iirc) 32 or so dmg off a critical hit at max upgrade which is pretty insane. A single bullet, even on professional, can usually 1-shot transformed plaga and entire groups of enemy/plaga with a single bullet... Tip: Remove scope. Only use scope when you actually need it, otherwise treat it as a med/close range weapon and just learn to position and group enemies. It also penetrates wooden shields so if you get used to aiming where their head will be... easy solution.

The basic pistol is considered one of the best along with S9 (DLC version, basically a slightly upgraded version of default HG) and Red 9 if we're arguing statistical shots to kill, though it isn't that straight forward as crit scales better than dmg at higher difficulties and there is argument about issues of Red 9's ability to stagger enemies as well as its accuracy vs the value of laser sight on HG/S9. Red 9 has caused a ton of people to have issues, such as in areas like cabin at game's launch as most complaints of that section actually turned out to be people using Red 9 which struggled to cope with fire rate and unreliable stagger in that section due to high and aggressive enemy count. Truth be told, thouhg, both are good if you get used to them you just have to learn how to properly apply each one. Even more relevant, however, is the SMG (TMP) straight up outclasses all pistols so the best advice is to sell all pistols and just buy a TMP. You might have to swap cases to anything but the base starting case which causes boosted handgun ammo drop rates otherwise even though you don't own a pistol it may still drop wasteful handgun ammo (so I've heard, never tried with it myself as I always swap to pre-order black gunpowder case at first typewriter and later large resource case when merchant has it depending). This tip relates back to the ammo manipulation (hold 3 gun types max, no more, in active case inventory and don't use default starting case to manipulate ammo drops to weapon types you want, plus ammo drops more frequently for X type of weapon the lower you are on said ammo so don't be afraid to use it as long as you aren't like missing 90% of the time...).

The first shotgun is totally fine, but the Riot Gun is typically considered a clear upgrade and the best shotgun for most people. Note: You can recover about 95% of your gun's expenses when selling so if you upgrade 1st shotgun this is safe and you can then sell it later to respend that money on the next gun you want. You can also buyback sold guns at merchant.

Stingray is good and more user friendly if you haven't gotten used to the BAR. Make no mistake, this weapon is very powerful. However, the BAR's power level is so imbalanced Stingray often gets neglected and is outclassed otherwise Stingray would be a highly rated weapon, displayed solely because BAR is even more broken than it. I do recommend BAR over it, though, just because of how absurd it is but feel free to enjoy this gun, esp on your first playthrough or until your aim gets better.

Crossbow gun sucks. The mine part is very powerful for instantly killing a few bosses, though, with the right setup but I wouldn't use it unless you know the process to do this such as YouTube/Google or ask on here.

Knife is useless for dmg usually except prompt attacks (huge multplier like 30x knife dmg or w/e, or instant kills like down transforming plaga, sneak attacks). You don't get a new one until near end of game, Combat Knife which has more dmg but that doesn't matter aside from the dmg multiplier prompts like on bosses.

[Krypto]

Every weapon in the game is good and can be used to complete the game.

[SaintTrina]

the bolt action and the SG are worth upgrading, dont upgrade the combat knife game gives you plenty of knives

[Dank Sidious]

Originally posted by Krypto (Jaded Grumpus):

Every weapon in the game is good and can be used to complete the game.

But some weapons are better than others and can be used to complete the game more efficiently.

[Sonnebirke]

You can upgrading the starter weapons, because you sell them 1:1 back to the merch, after you get the better weapons.

[Meowtistic]

Bolt-action rifle is the best weapon in the game considering its damage and utility, plus how early you get it
I never use shotguns in either version of RE4 so I wouldn't know

[Krypto]

Originally posted by Dank Sidious:

Originally posted by Krypto (Jaded Grumpus):

Every weapon in the game is good and can be used to complete the game.

But some weapons are better than others and can be used to complete the game more efficiently.

Everyone knows the bolt thrower is the best weapon.