SYNTHETIK Ammo 101 (now with Update 25 tooltip info)

Dragonsbreath? Hypersonic? If "WTF?????" is your reaction, you're not alone. :-) Synthetic Ammo 101 will round up descriptions of (eventually?) all the ammo types in the game, and include some personal observations from me on using them in the game. It's a work in progress, and I'll try to update it regularly. Consider this only a start -- I'll add more ammunition types as I find them and use them in the game.

March 2, 2020 Update: Updating Guide With New Tooltips Screenshots from Update 25 Beta

Per the verbose headline above, I'm gradually updating this guide with new tooltip panel screenshots from the Update 25 beta. These will gradually replace our speculations about what the ammo types do. :)

Navigating this Guide

I arranged the list of ammo alphabetically by name. If the name technically starts with ammo caliber number, I alphabetized by the first letter in the name. You can also use the "Guide Index" list of ammo names on the right side here to jump to a specific ammo name.

Acid Tip Ammo

Personal Observations

In my limited experience, most effective against humanoid enemies. The corrosive effect didn't seem to kick in quite as easily on vehicles and stationary turrets.

Airburst Cluster (default)

Description

Fires clusters of 50mm size ammo that bursts in the vicinity of the targeted area.

Available on These Weapons

• Heavy Flak Cannon

Personal Observations

While the flak cannon is devastating on everything, it does use up ammo quickly. You might consider using this mighty weapon/ammo combination on heavier targets such as turrets, vehicles and aircraft.

AP/Sabot Ammo (5.57mm Armor Piercing)

Notes:

Available on the powerful AEK Special Elite assault rifle. Tooltip calls it "AP/Sabot Ammo," while the title on the weapon is "5.57mm Armor Piercing."

Generally speaking, AP/SABOT seems most effective on "hard" (armored) targets, so things like turrets, roving "ball turrets," vehicles and the low-altitude little jets. I would try not to waste it too much on entry level "grunt" humanoid-type robots.

Weapons Using AP/Sabot Ammo

Auto Needles (default)

Description:

Tiny heat seeking homing missiles in assault rifles, and also non bouncing impact grenades available for rocket/grenade launchers.

Available on These Weapons

• X512 Experimental assault rifle

Personal Observations

I don't stumble onto this experimental weapon very often but when I do, it's SPECTACULAR. :-) Especially good if you can upgrade its magazine capacity. This fires off these purple-control mini-homing missiles en masse, and the home ability lets you fire them in curved trajectory, which can let you fire more from behind the edge of cover.

I love it. :-) It's one of my favorite weapons in the game, but don't expect to find it on runs very often.

Ballistic Anti-Material

Weapons With Ballistic Anti-Material Perk

Ballistic Armor-Piercing Weapon

Weapons That Use This Ammo

Ballistic Scatter Weapon

Notes:

The K1 Vector SMG is one example of this weapon technology. The Super 90 shotgun is another.

Weapons Using 'Ballistic Scatter Weapon'

Ballistic Soft Weapon

Notes:

My favorite weapon, the FMJ-9 submachine gun, uses this type ammo, as does the Tactical Observer assault rifle.

Weapons Using 'Ballistic Soft Weapon'

Caseless FMJ (default)

Description

4.73mm caseless full metal jacket ammo.

Available on These Weapons

• Twin Mill MKII (twin barrel, semi-automatic rifle)

Personal Observations

The Twin Mill MKII is considered a combo Assault Rifle/Designated Marksman Rifle, and offers a Commando Bonus. It has pretty good punch but is what I'd call a somewhat sluggish semi-automatic weapon.

Chaos Ammo (default)

Description

4.73 mm caseless unstable core. Caseless ammunition with random damage and high critical damage chance.

Available on These Weapons

• Chaos Launcher assault rifle

Personal Observations

Chaos Launcher has a huge 44-round magazine. I found it effective against every type of robotic enemy in the game. But the super fast firing rate chews through the Chaos Ammo quickly. Awesome weapon overall imho.

Custom Bolt Ammo

Dragonsbreath

Description

Unlocked by Finding These Weapons

• Shotguns

Personal Observations

In my experience the burning damage-over-time done by Dragonsbreath is most useful against humanoid-type enemies in the game though it's pretty effective against everything. Do note that enemies can keep firing on you while they're on fire. :-)

Dumbfire Missiles (default)

Description

Jealous of all those missile salvo-firing robots? Here's your chance! Just remember that the Dumbfire missile launcher puts the dumb in dumbfire. :-) Powerful but not terribly well-guided missiles with spectacular smoke contrails behind them as they fly in the general vicinity of their target(s).

Found on These Weapons

• ML7000 Plus

Descriptions

While the ML7000 Plus's Dumbfire Missile salvos are spectacular showstoppers visually, most of the missiles act like they have NO IDEA where they are going. Enjoy it and try to point the poorly guided missiles in the general vicinity of your robotic enemies. :D

Explosive Weapon

Notes:

Seen in the Heavy Flak Cannon, M32 Multi Purpose grenade launcher and Annihilator ANH-5 explosives rifle.

Exponential Ultra-Piercing (Nemesis Prototype-only)

Weapon Using Exponential Ultra-Piercing ammo

Fire Weapon

Notes:

Seen on the Makeshift Firecannon flamer weapon.

Weapons Using 'Fire Weapon'

Fusion Weapon

Available in these Weapons

• Apollon 5 LMG light machinegun
  
• Enforcer Carbine assault rifle
  
• Object 29 assault rifle
  
• UMP-10 Tornado SMG

Hollow Point (aka 8.8mm Cataclysmic)

Notes:

Seen in the AMD 65 assault rifle. The tooltip panel refers to it as "Hollow Point," while the ammo text on the AMD 65 says "8.8mm Cataclysmic."

Homing Missile (Special)

Notes:

Used in the Human RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade launcher.

As a "Special" ammo, it requires ejecting the 'default ammo' and pressing Ctrl (on kb) to switch to this ammo type. The default RPG ammo consists of "Dumbfire" missiles, which are better for certain situations.

Hypersonic

Developer Comments

Originally posted by dev Taro on Discord March 17, 2018:

Hypersonic has 10 additional armor penetration, a bit of bonus speed and a chance for a "visible" bullet with 50% more damage. 7% chance for the "lucky" bullet, to be specific.

Available on These Weapons

• PSX Covert Ops Rogue-class silenced pistol (default ammo)
  
• K1 Vector submachine gun (special ammo)

Personal Observations

The K1 Vector SMG is fun to use, but has shaky recoil and consumes ammo quickly. You'll want to use attachments that alleviates recoil, increases magazine capacity and/or reduces consumption.

Note that on the Rogue's PSX Covert Ops silenced pistol Hypersonic is the default ammo, so it's the only ammo type available on that.

Incendiary Laser Cells

Inverse Fusion

Available on These Weapons

• Human Model 9800K sniper rifle

Personal Observations

I've generally found this more effective on humanoid-type enemies, though it's fine on anything.

Kurz Ammo (default ammo)

Description

Default 8.8mm ammo in the MAG47 Heavy MG machine Gun. Dev says "Kurz" is just German for essentially "larger" ammo. :) Or Kurz may just mean "short."

Available in These Weapons

• MAG47 Heavy MG

Personal Observations

The larger Kurz ammo seems devastating on just about everything, and the large ammo capacity will let you fire this gun just about all day. The one I tried had a "Steady Heat" module, which seems to mean you can fire it for a long period of time without it ever overheating. However, this MAG47 seems to have a rather sluggish firing rate for something billed as a machine gun. Still, I felt near omnipotent using the weapon in the game, until the Raptor fighter evsicerated me anyway. :p

Laser Weapon

Liquid Ion Array (default)

Description:

Ion "blast bolts" spat out by an ion rifle.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1340164149

Availble on These Weapons

• Ion Obliterator

Plasma Weapon

Found in These Weapons

Shotgun Multi Slugs (12 Gauge Triple Slug)

Notes:

Seen on the KSG 2000 shotgun.

The ammo phrase on the weapon is "12 Gauge Triple Slug," and the tooltip is labeled "Shotgun Multi Slugs."

Weapons Using 'Shotgun Multi Slugs'

Soft Point (special)

Unlocked by Finding These Weapons

• Spectre submachine gun
  
• Tactical Observer assault rifle

Usable by these Weapon Types

• All Pistols and 9mm ammo-using weapons
  
• All 5.56mm / 7.62mm ammo-using weapons

Personal Observations

Although you may not always want "reduced damage," Soft Point's chance to stun can be very helpful, especially if you're feeling overwhelmed by large numbers of enemies on a level. Balance that with whether the enemies are "hit point sponges," in which case you may prefer the weapon's default FMJ ammo that does more damage reliably, every shot.

Split Shot (default)

Description

Available in these Weapons

• Bren Anti Air

Personal Observations

This mighty machine gun -- I hestitate to call it "light" :-) -- sometimes appears as a time-limited, self destructing Nemesis variant. The split shot ammo is devastating on any target you point it at, in my experience. Fairly large magazine (40 rounds).

'Sprayer' Lithium Cell (default)

Description:

This "cell" serves as the "ammo" for a laser shotgun, which sprays red laser "bolts" in a wide pattern. Think Star Wars. :-)

Used in These Weapons

• 'Raptor' Laser SG shotgun
  
• SCR Laser SOCOM assault rifle

Personal Observations

Tungsten Arrow (default)

Description

Steel bolts in the single-shot crossbow gun.

Used in these Weapons

• K3 Auto Boltcaster (10-arrow "crossbow gun")
  
• 420 Sniperdragon (single-arrow "sniper crossbow gun")

Personal Observations

I don't like using bow weapons in this game so maybe I'm the wrong person to provide observations. :-) The Auto Boltcaster at least has a magazine of sorts so you don't need to reload it every time like the Sniperdragon. The bolts provide some useful stun effects, and their weapons have decent range.

[BlackjackGT]

>>random tiny change, could you edit the ap sabot ammo section where it says that its for the REK Special Elite to the correct AEK Special Elite?

Oh, yikes. I thought that "A' was an "R." Thanks, I'll fix it. :)

And sure, feel free to visit the wiki. I love Gamepedia's Helldivers wiki. :) I'm busy these days working to death and I don't play Synthetik much for now.

[ilLineaR]

For anyone reading the comments section, refer to this page on the wiki/gamepedia for a detailed list of ammo types, along with their stats: https://synthetik.gamepedia.com/Ammunition

[Minish_Cap]

random tiny change, could you edit the ap sabot ammo section where it says that its for the REK Special Elite to the correct AEK Special Elite? its just been bugging me a little bit that its off.

[BlackjackGT]

Update - I'm gradually replacing the speculative ammo descriptions here with the official tooltips description info in the Update 25 beta branch. It's going to take me a looooooong time, but eventually this should be be more up to date.

[BlackjackGT]

I moved on to other games, though I revisit from time to time. I think the devs have gradually added tooltips to some of these items.

I'm open to updating this if anyone wants to chime in with some updated descriptions.

[Bruurbs]

Outdated.

[Outside Agitator]

I assume its just a mistake and was meant to sound cool.

There are several real rounds that are labelled kurz- usually to differentiate if two rounds were the same diameter and had different cartrige lengths. 9mm kurz is 9x17 while standard 9mm is 9x19.

Anyways, I appreciate the work, and hope that the developers make it a little easier for you.

[BlackjackGT]

Thanks! I dunno, devs said it was intended to mean 'larger' ammo. I guess I'm a bit unclear what it means in terms of what the ammo does. Maybe it means both "big and short." :)

I think devs said in discord they hope in a few updates to fully flesh out tooltips (my phrase anyway) -- I think they hope to eventually have detailed tooltips for just about everything.

[Outside Agitator]

Kurz is german for short. Otherwise, thanks for the info- most of this is a mystery in game.

[BlackjackGT]

Thanks. This list is mostly limited to ammo types I've encountered (either in beta or after release) and have at least a screenshot of.

For my part, I ran into some sort of "Cataclysmic" variant on Hollow Point ammo in the AMD 65 assault rifle last night. I'm a little confused as to what "Cataclysmic" means, though it may just mean an ammo size variant.