Heavy Weapons?

[Johnman]

What is a heavy weapon in game?
I have bounty quests to kill plague hearts and screamers at the moment with heavy weapons and have not either found one or using the right one.

I assumed a 40mm grenade launcher of a .50cal rifle would be a heavy weapon but apparently not.

[rtwjunkie]

Heavy weapons are melee weapons, and will be identified as such, just like others are identified as Bladed and Blunt. Examples would be Big Ol' shoverl, Coffee Can mace, Driveshaft Club, Hog Splitter.

[Johnman]

Oh... sigh ok
I suppose i missed the labels entirely there.
What I would "THINK" would be heavy weapons are not.

Course, heavy weapons are not as I would have thought, literal.... Like heavy weighing weapons.

Might be hard and dangerous to kill a plague heart with a heavy weapon that exhausts you. Unless its right at the edge of death.

Thank you rtwjunkie

[rtwjunkie]

Originally posted by Johnman:

Oh... sigh ok
I suppose i missed the labels entirely there.
What I would "THINK" would be heavy weapons are not.

Course, heavy weapons are not as I would have thought, literal.... Like heavy weighing weapons.

Might be hard and dangerous to kill a plague heart with a heavy weapon that exhausts you. Unless its right at the edge of death.

Thank you rtwjunkie

You're welcome. Hiring an enclave person (and thus expendable) can really help with that. Make sure you have stims or energy drinks, and the sacrificial person will take on most of the plague zeds for you. You're going to have to run away anyway every so often before it releases a cloud of plague gas.

[Synavix]

Heavy weapons are actually one of the more efficient ways to kill plague hearts. They will do massive damage with regular or charged-up attacks compared to trying to attack with any other type of melee weapon.

Of course they aren't as safe as using only explosives and guns from your car, but once you get used to them they're really good on higher difficulties because they don't require any resources/crafting. (But like rtw said, you have to make sure to avoid the gas it spews when it screams and changes phases)

On Nightmare difficulty you can kill every plague heart with 2 or 3 partially charged attacks and 1 C4 charge, which you can detonate from safety after getting your melee attacks in and running away. It's a bit more dangerous to do it the other way (a few grenades or C4 before the melee swings for the bounty) but it's still a lot easier than it sounds, since once it dies all the zombies around you will die too, unless you're on Lethal.

A heavy weapon will also stunlock a single feral as long as you chain your attacks right after each other. It can be a bit difficult indoors because you'll get caught on corners, but if you run outside to face the feral with the heavy weapon it should be easy to kill even with drained stamina once you get used to it.

[Protectron]

With some Tubes of Fireworks, 1 scentblock and 1 high-end Heavy Melee Weapon like Beetle Mallet or Groundbreaker Shovel, you'll do short work on Plague Hearts even on Lethal.

Hell, with the mentioned C4 charge or a full-auto high-capacity gun with an Advanced Brake, you don't even need Scentblock. Just arrive with your car and draw out the zombies inside with it so that you can kill them off before you park it. It should now be empty inside, so you don't even have to worry about being attacked until after the first shockwave. Place the C4, whack away, then run out to the roof of your car and fire the charge. The tiny sliver of health that is left you can just shoot at it, or run in and whack it a bit more.

The key to effective Plague Heart duty is to never actually fight the waves that spawn in.