U26ish Newbie Reference Guide -- Understanding Basic Mechanics (minimal spoilers)

Guide for the Synthetik Ultimate update focusing on the moving parts common to an in-progress game. Information on difficulty modifiers and supply hacking is also included.

A Sudden Introduction

After loading into a couple games, these were the first few things that I noticed:

• Bullets are slow, you can dodge most of the non-shotgun attacks without need for cover given a little space. Enemies do not seem to track movement, so simply strafing in a single direction is enough to significantly mitigate damage against non-shotgun types.
  
• Moving greatly decreases accuracy.
  
• Reloading is unfamiliar, but not too hard.
  
• Health regeneration is very important. You may wish to plan this out extensively in your starting loadout.
  
• The game doesn't give out lots of ammo at all. Moreover, though I didn't notice this until later, different weapons even of the same type gain more ammo than others, with many purple weapons having especially severe problems with this (I found out later that this challenge is substantially mitigated by weapon upgrading).
  
• For the most part, you can take it slow. There is no obvious time limit or scaling difficulty based on time (unlike, say, Risk of Rain), and the game doesn't inundate you with adds if you stay in one place. While there is ultimately scaling difficulty in the form of Terror, it doesn't scale especially with time unless you go for a snack during a longer level or something.

The basic idea then is to keep moving as much as possible when not behind cover (dash, dash dash!), but to stand still briefly when shooting at range. For the most part, you can arrange for yourself to face only a few enemies at a time, possibly only one or two. If you have headhunters coming after you and you don't have space to retreat, you'll need to be more aggressive. In that case try to bunch your enemies up so they can't all shoot at you, but so that you can shoot at them conveniently. Many classes have crowd control that they can employ in such situations as well. Other than that (and in the case of one of the possibilities for the first boss that requires you to run and gun) proceed deliberately and methodically, looking ahead by putting your cursor far ahead of your character so as to gain as much information about what you're walking into as possible, and you'll stand a better chance of both survival and gaining loot.

There are a few controls that are easy to forget or even possibly outright miss:

TAB: Brings up the minimap. The minimap is great at showing you when you've been and where you haven't, which is important for getting all the chests and bolts.

CTRL: Swaps active ammo types if and only if the magazine is ejected and you have another ammo type.

L: Drop your current weapon. Generally you'd not do this and only use 'F' to swap weapons.

Additionally the left and right arrow keys can swap between options at shrines where there are options (and also at teleporters that offer a choice, though at least I managed to figure that one out). This is pretty important, and I missed it for my entire first 10 hours of play. Yes, you can upgrade items other than the one bound to RMB.

Right mouse drag and drop on your useable items can rearrange them, or recycle them, or drop them on the ground. The latter is strange and unintuitive, but useful in a somewhat obvious situation that you may run into later ;).

One last quick note before the meat of the guide: I'm not actually very good at this game, so it is a "newbie guide" in more ways than one. I've also drawn very heavily on the wiki, which was still being updated for U26 at the time of writing. While I've tried to keep the information presented as current as possible, there will be some information that is simply old news that I've failed to update.

Gameplay Mechanics

Reloading

When one wants to reload, one must first 'E'ject a clip. Only once the clip is ejected is it possible to 'R'eload. Ejecting a full clip wastes no ammo, but ejecting a partial clip (even if it is only missing one round) will lose all of the remaining ammo in that clip. Ammo management is a very substantial game mechanic. It is possible to make reloading more automatic in the difficulty settings, but because this method of reloading is so core to the game, that is not recommended. Moreover, when you get used to it, this default manner of reloading can be done much faster.

In addition to this, there is a third, optional keypress that can further increase the speed of reloading. Rather than wait for the reloading bar to fully complete, one can perform an "Active Reload" with proper timing.

When you begin a reload, there is a circular progress bar both on your cursor, and a straight one by your character. Pressing the 'R'eload key during the blue (or a colour appropriate to your class) part of this progress bar will perform an Active Reload, immediately completing the reloading process and providing a small bonus to damage and firerate, as well as a reduction in heat produced for the next clip. Some weapons are much more generous with Active Reloads than others.

With the Haste difficulty modifier enabled, there is also a light-blue (or a colour appropriate to your class) section of the progress bar which is always near the end of the Active Reload window and completing the reload in that section will perform "Perfect Active Reload", substantially increasing the Active Reload bonus for the next clip. Getting a late Active Reload that is not a Perfect Active Reload is quite difficult, so it is safer to aim quite late when going for perfect.


If the Haste difficulty modifier is not enabled, the Active Reload window will be the same size and at the same timing every time you reload a clip for a particular weapon.

By default, SPACE is also bound to both the Eject and Reload actions. This makes it easy to reload while moving and aiming. You can, of course, change this binding in the options menu.

Jamming

Every so often your weapon will jam. When this happens, you appear to combine clips for free rather than lose ammo. Each jam will require approximately five or six presses of the reload key to clear and you'll have a full clip again. Because this can happen in the middle of a clip it requires some awareness to clear efficiently. Failure to do so in a timely manner can result in some...awkward situations. The image on the left should require two more keypresses to clear.

Headshots

To score a headshot you will need to hit the head of a humanoid target (as one might expect). As with most shooters it helps to aim slightly above the head if you are not yourself above the target. Headshots deal 200% damage by default (slightly more than a critical hit by default), but higher caliber ammunition may have a greater bonus for headhots while shotgun ammo will have less. Especially in the early game, headshots can greatly increase your damage, compensating for otherwise lackluster firepower or deleting enemies in one or two shots.

You do not need to be aiming at the target's head to get a headshot, any shot that connects with that part of the model will work. For this reason, if you are facing humanoid enemies and have the option of engaging from above or below, choose above, since you'll likely deal more damage that way. In earlier updates shields used to prevent headshots or perhaps even gain bonuses against armor, but that hasn't been true since about U24 from what I gather.

Terror

Terror determines the amount of enemies, increases enemy reaction speed, I think increases the likelihood of special events, and increases the health of bosses (confirmed in 24.2 patch notes). Terror can change (either up or down, depending on I know-not-what) when picking up items including the random module that you can choose to receive in the loadout screen (!), there are terror-causing chests, and choosing a High Alert teleporter choice will also increase terror. I believe terror increases when you take an exceptionally long time in a level or sit still for a while, but that is rare. The first time one opens the character screen, Terror will appear to increase, but I don't know what affects that. Terror may also be very deliberately increased by a few obvious methods (madness button, etc). The precise mechanics of terror are not well documented by myself or the community at large.

High Alert teleporters tend to have more chests to search, but the increase to terror is permanent. Choosing a Low Alert teleporter decreases terror permanently (the only thing I know that reliably does this), and I've seen terror decreases as large as 15. You can view your current terror in the character screen by using the 'c' key.

Incoming Headhunters are not necessarily caused by a Terror or Alert increase, nor does the alert increase message always coincide with a Terror increase. After seeing how few things increase terror after tracking that carefully for a run, as well as the possibility (but not certainty) that Terror is a percentage increase to the things it affects (as in, 120 terror could mean +20% boss health), I highly recommend choosing only Low Alert teleporters if you want to live as long as possible.

Headhunters and other hit squads

Headhunters and other hit squads (Railgun squad's etc) will notify you when they spawn. Headhunters will always come looking for you, but the others may pick an area to loiter around instead. These units tend to be slightly more difficult than regular elites (Headhunters vary a bit more and may essentially be like regular elites).

A hit squad of some sort will nearly always be spawned as the result of an Alert increase warning, so High Security zones tend to have them. Such squads can also be spawned as a seemingly random event. Headhunters can also be spawned as the result of a quest.

While some Chrono Troopers can give a similar message, they are never spawned this way and instead are indicating that they were summoned by alarm bots.

Anti-shield Mines and other environmental hazards

A complete lists of hazards is available on the wiki here[synthetik.fandom.com] (some spoilers in the link, more spoilers if you look further down that page). But I want to give some special attention to what has until recently been a terminator of my existence, the anti-shield mine (as one can tell, although I can do research, I am decidedly poor at this game).


Here you can see directly to the left of my cursor a mine that not only stuns, but completely removes shields. If followed up by an enemy attack, this can be very deadly, and it was only after being affected multiple times that I realized what was going on, and how incredibly nasty those little buggers are. The wiki says they 'appear' near snipers, but I'm beginning to suspect they can appear or be set again after the original ones are triggered. Beware that they don't appear next to you when fighting snipers.

Barbed wire and ground spikes are not dangerous by themselves, but they can make a dangerous encounter more dangerous (handling or avoiding those dangers is essentially the key challenge of one of the possible first boss fights). All such hazards can be safely dashed over. Some hazards can be triggered by enemies, and sometimes enemies can be damaged by triggered hazards even if the player was the one who triggered them (especially anti-shield mines).

Gameplay Mechanics Continued

Core Parts and Bolts

Each level contains exactly one Bolt until all six are collected and may contain one Core Part until all four Core Parts are collected. They can be hidden behind map objects, but cannot be hidden in wooden crates. Core Parts are not to be confused with Module Cores, or any other sort of cores.

Picking up all four Core Parts grants a particular item: the Heart Core. This item increases your maximum health for every enemy you kill 12 seconds after use, and fully heals the user. But it can only be used once.

Gathering a full set of six Bolts on the other hand grant a random item, usually a rarer one.

Pickups in General

There are other things that can show up on the ground besides Bolts and Core Parts. Weapons and Item Boxes excepted (which can also be be from chests and shrines), I believe these are all drops, mostly from from enemies. Consult the wiki article[synthetik.fandom.com], and you will recognize the things you see on the ground, or simply look for what the game tells you happened when you pick them up, because aside from Bolts and Core Parts, the effects of each pickup should be readily apparent.

The weapon pickup is is a weapon, obviously, and if you have the maximum number of weapons you will need to switch it out with one of your current weapons to acquire it. The item pickups are the Item Box (of course), Upgrade Kit, Module Core, and Ring. You can hold up to eight items. With those inventory exceptions, moving on top of a pickup will immediately add it to your character. This can have irrevocable effects, such as wasting a medkit that you might need later, or picking up a red weapon and increasing terror (not usually something you'd worry about).

If moving on top of a weapon pickup does not immediately equip it, you can see what weapon it is before you pick it up. Items however will remain a mystery until they are equipped. Temporary Powerups will disappear after a short time, but all other pickups should remain where they are until the player goes to get them, or leaves the entire level behind.

Recycling

To recycle an item, drag an item using the right mouse button to the recycling symbol to the right of your item slots. While dragging an item you will visibly see that you have eight item slots and can also use this to rearrange items or even drop them on the ground, rather than recycle an item.

Recycling an item destroys the item and gives credits based on rarity and item power. I cannot find any good resource for quantifying this, but recycling a regular item could net you 200-300 credits. This is the main purpose of recycling. Recycling items with charges will recycle the item along with all of its charges, multiple upgrade kits do not function as a stack of items but rather one item with charges.

However, there is a 'secret' portion to recycling (not a spoiler though, it's obvious when hovering over the recycling item in the research menu), and that is that some items continue to function (at least in part) after they have been recycled. To find more information about that, look up spoilers on the wiki[synthetik.fandom.com], or instead purchase the ability to see that data from the research shop and explore this for yourself! I will write a common minor one here though: Lighting Boots retain their speed bonus when recycled. There is also exactly one item that is mildly annoying to recycle, which I also mention here because it is possible to not know what's going on when it happens: the 'Seth-up' Suitcase Sentry, which consumes some of your credits for an Unidentified Potion.

Chests, Curses, Credits, and Shrines

This one I'll leave mostly to the wiki, as the articles on Chests[synthetik.fandom.com] and Shrines[synthetik.fandom.com] are concise and essential reading.

Check out the wiki's list of chests[synthetik.fandom.com], first, as that is the most important for understanding the game. All of the chests are very beneficial, except for two, which are situational. Firstly the alarmed weapon chest raises terror by 15 and summons an enemy. More importantly the black and red cursed chests which have significantly rarer contents than normal, but will curse the player with the following status effect:

• -100 max shields
  
• +10-15% more damage recieved
  
• Negative status effects last longer

And also the following immediate effects:

• Sets the player's current health to 100, this can heal, though that would not be much of a salve.
  
• Terror level increase
  
• -50 max shields (this is not a status effect but a change to character stats and is permanent)

The status effect is removed upon killing a boss. A similar curse can be acquired by dying in co-op.

As the wiki notes, a few of the chests can require a small amount of credits to open. This is one of the only two uses of credits, the other and more substantial one being shrines.

Shrines[synthetik.fandom.com] tend to offer options to the player that will give the player an item or weapon or modify the player's items or weapons or stats, but with some sort of catch such as a payment of a substantial sum of credits. Missing from the wiki's shrine list at the moment is the new-to-U26 Alchemy Shop. Alchemy shops contain cheaper-than-normal items from a very limited list of weird, synergy-focused items. They otherwise function like a regular shop, just look different. Shops of any variety will not sell an item or weapon the player already possesses upon teleporting in, nor will chests contain an item the player already possesses.

One of the shrines offers special, useful curses[synthetik.fandom.com] (possibly minor spoilers depending on what you consider a spoiler).

Luck, Scavenging, and Currency stats

These stats don't seem to me to be as important as the game seems to want me to believe. Each of these works like a percentage.

• Luck is a modifier on many sorts of chance-based factors. Most importantly this includes finding high-tier weapons and items in chests, and getting procs (like the stun from Soft Point ammo or an item's "extra chance"). The effect on critical chance and item abilities is halved compared to its other effects. Of the potential stat upgrades obtainable from a chest, luck and critical chance are the two that will increase your damage, but luck also does other things. High levels of luck can be especially potent.
  
• Scavenging is the weirdest one, increasing the likelihood of enemies dropping stuff as well as the amount and type of chests you find (but not what is inside the chests, that's luck). The most important part of it is increased ammo drops. Like currency, it scales like a percentage.
  
• Currency increases the credits you gain, one point, one percent. In my opinion, this is the least valuable of the three, but can on occasion pay dividends (somewhat literally) if gotten early.

More info can be found on the wiki[synthetik.fandom.com]. You can view your current stats using the 'c' key.

Unstuck

If you find yourself in a place that you cannot move from, press ESC, go to options, and search the menu for the unstuck option. Click it, and hope it sets you free! If not, try again. It should work eventually, and so you won't lose a run solely to having dodged outside the map or something. Whether you'll be in a real pickle thereafter is another matter...

Gameplay Mechanics Continued: Weapon Stats are Kinda Weird and I Cannot Fully Explain Them

There is one universal rule about weapon stats: the tooltips contain all the useful information.

Pressing 'x' opens the weapon stats sidebar. Doing this causes an indicator to appear next to your heat bear showing you if you have only one ammo type for your weapon (if you have multiple, that will already be visible). Above the weapons name would be shown the variant of the weapon (this one is a starting weapon and did not have a variant). Below the stat bars is the weapon attachments, and below that the weapon's special characteristics. Hover over all of those indicators to get an idea of what is going on.

Weapon Info Stat Bars

With that, it is time to get to the hard bit. The stat bars I find, for the most part, rather unhelpful, but it's useful to talk about it nonetheless.

Unless you understand ammunition, the weapon damage modifier and the accompanying bar doesn't really mean much. Actually, even if you understand ammunition, it is more than a bit arcane. The number on the right is a much better number to go by. That is the amount of damage that weapon is known to do on average from shots that you fire -- so it includes a lot, possibly even your innate crit chance. Following that number and ignoring the length of the bar is the way to keep your sanity. If you really want to explore weapon damage modifier however, as a reference the wiki gives the following damage numbers for the common default ammo types:

• Laser Cell: 311
  
• Buckshot: 109x8
  
• FMJ Basic and other basic pistol/SMG ammo: 253
  
• 5.57mm Kaida SC: 226 (Assault Rifle ammo)
  
• 8.8mm Kurz: 270 (Assault Rifle ammo)
  
• 12.7mm Accelerator SC: 450 (Anti Material Rifle ammo)

The heat modifier likewise is hard to understand, and I can't help you much there. It affects heat gain, clearly. Heat will damage you if it reaches 100%, but even with the Scorched difficulty modifier, that can take some work to pull off in single-player. On the bright side, hovering over the bar will tell you exactly how much heat you'll gain per shot. It has seemingly little relation to how full the modifier bar is, but that will give you an understandable number at least.

Firerate is in Bullets Per Minute, and is actually well-presented.

Deviation is the starting maximum possible fire angle (in degrees) away from the aiming reticule.

Recoil is how fast deviation increases during sustained fire, but I don't know the units here. Recoil control affects how fast one recovers from recoil. The proper stats are available if you hover over the relevant bar, but the values displayed for Recoil/Control so far don't make any real sense to me.

R+E Time is easier, it is the Reload+Eject time, simple and straightforward. Hovering over shows the breakdown between the two.

Mag Size and Max Ammo are self explanatory. However, what is less obvious is that Mag Size directly scales ammo gain from ammo-printer type attachments. Mag size is also somewhat correlated to ammo gain from pickups. Hovering over Max Ammo will helpfully inform you of this most important ammo-collecting stat.

Mastery...doesn't actually do anything. It's how much you've used a weapon. Actually if you play with Jamming (which is kinda a core game mechanic IMO), it's more like how much you've jammed a weapon.

Weapon Variants

Weapons can sometimes appear with different stats as variant versions. The wiki lists weapon variants here[synthetik.fandom.com]. Variants from boss rooms are Alpha variants that gain less ammo and deal more damage, which is pretty good on the whole, though a bit annoying for some weapons.

Heavy (bad movespeed), Printing (bad ammo gain), Kaida-Elite (bad movement accuracy), and Taiga Hunter (just bad, even after the buff) are variants that are usually particularly undesirable. Most other variants are usually some flavor of good, but it depends on weapon and playstyle (for instance, C-charged, Stabilized, and Siege increase deviation, which makes sniper weapons harder to use). A few variants will show up in the weapon name like the highly-desirable Siege and Divine modifiers.

The modifier that needs the most care is the Cursed modifier. Cursed weapons deal damage to the wielder occasionally. For some weapons that isn't so bad. For others it makes them completely unusable. Test to see if you can handle the self-damage before attempting to employ these in combat. If you have no means of health regeneration somehow, cursed weapons are completely unusable to you. Cursed weapons have greatly reduced ammo gain (-33%), but even greater improved damage. A cursed variant of an already ammo-starved weapon may also simply not be worthwhile (though some classes have abilities that can remedy the ammo issue just fine).

Gameplay Mechanics Continued: Upgrades

Weapon Upgrades

Weapon Upgrades may be gained from Weapon Upgrade Chests (the blue UPG chests, not the yellow ones), Weapon Upgrade Shrines, and the Weapon/Custom Upgrade Kit items. Weapon Upgrade Chests apply to the weapon you are currently holding when opened, so be sure to be holding the right weapon.

A weapon takes about 12 upgrades to be fully upgraded, roughly 2 to each stat I think, with more upgrades for damage and some other stat(s). When a weapon is fully upgraded, each further upgrade improves the damage of the weapon by 1% (additive, not multiplicative, so your overall weapon damage will increase by less than that). Because fully upgrading a weapon increases firing rate, fully upgraded weapons are more prone to overheating. Because the upgrades to the maximum ammo pool are very substantial and damage upgrades means fewer bullets to kill, fully upgraded weapons tend to be much, much better with ammunition availability than non-upgraded weapons. Upgrading weapons is very important in the later stages of the game.

Using a Weapon Upgrade Kit grants a choice of (usually three) attachments, listed here[synthetik.fandom.com] (some are much better than others), to add the current weapon and increases damage by 5%. Once a weapon has all four attachment slots filled, using further Weapon Upgrade Kits will begin to provide weapon upgrades, four at a time by default (affected by item power, see below).

To give you an idea of how that works in practice, the Weapon Upgrade Kit usage shown below increased the magazine size of this Yoko Lagann by 1, maximum ammo by 20, reload and eject time from 1.62s to 1.35s, and improved recoil/ctrl from 94 to 82:

I do not know what precisely '++' means as compared to simply '+' in this context (obviously the former effect is greater than the latter).

Weapon Upgrade Shrines seem to upgrade every single stat on the weapon at once, so only two upgrades from shines will be necessary to fully upgrade a weapon. After that, Weapon Upgrade Shrines will no longer upgrade a weapon multiple times, but will also be much cheaper. This may be worth occasionally taking advantage of because each upgrade will still provide stacking +1% damage buffs (again, additive, so more like a fraction of a percent, but still).

Weapon Upgrade Chests are a bit different from the other sources of weapon upgrades because they just upgrade the damage of the weapon by 10%, equivalent to either one or two regular damage upgrades, I think.

Body Upgrades

Body upgrades may be gained from Android Upgrade Chests (the yellow UPG chests, not the blue ones), Quest Shrines, and Core Upgrade Kits. In all of these cases you'll be provided a choice, usually of three. Body upgrades are one of the following list and if I remember correctly come in the following amounts (don't trust the amounts at the moment, I'll fix this later):

• (+40) Move Speed
  
• (+60) Shield Maximum
  
• (+50%) Shield Recharge
  
• (+200) Maximum Health
  
• (+4) Health Regen
  
• (+4) Dodge Chance
  
• (+4) Critical Chance
  
• (+20) Luck
  
• (+20) Scavenging
  
• (+20) Currency
  
• (+10) Armor

Item Upgrades

Items upgrades are gained through Item Upgrade shrines. Upgrading an item increases the item power of the item as noted by the shrine. What that itself does is rather item dependant, but will usually decrease the cooldown of items with a cooldown, increase the damage of items that deal damage, and so on. Because each upgrade gets substantially more expensive, upgrading items has a very strong diminishing returns effect.

Items come in quality levels that change the starting power of the item, so if you are wondering why it is somewhat more expensive to upgrade your ultra weapon, that would be why. Upgrading certain items is substantially cheaper due to factors I do not completely understand. After gaining a vial charge from a medkit chest, methadone will be cheaper to upgrade, as likely will other items that heal the player (such as Field Supply).

Item power for a few items with charges can have rather irregular effects that are important to know. The Unidentified Potion gains increased maximum charges. Upgrading Weapon/Custom/Core Upgrade Kits gives a small chance to upgrade without consuming a charge. Additionally, when using a Weapon Upgrade Kit after filling out the attachment slots, every 50% extra power provides an additional random upgrade.

Gameplay Mechanics Continued: Armor

Armor

Armor reduces incoming damage by a percentage value equal to the armor value to a max of 75%, barring any armor penetration. The cap appears to be applied before armor penetration, so armor penetration of 75 should completely nullify all armor. Some level of armor penetration is ubiquitous. Just about everything except shotguns has at least 10 armor penetration. The exotic damage types of plasma and ion completely and utterly ignore armor. I am not sure about Psyonic weapons.

What I've managed to read about armor and explosives would suggest armor is very useful against explosions, though I'm not entirely sure I believe that, but if that is the case explosions tend to to do enough damage for that not to matter too much.

Armor Penetrating Ammo

This next bit waxes a little theoretical, if you are uninterested in that you can skip to the "Armored Enemies" section without missing much. Some of the more salient bits will be repeated anyways.

The highest laser armor penetration is 15 AP, a quality held by most laser weapons. However the 'Sprayer' Lithium Cell used by the Raptor Laser SG and the Battle Hymn has only 5 AP (using wiki information, which may be outdated in the current patch). Shotgun armor penetration may be a bit confusing on the wiki. The only regular shotgun ammo that has any armor penetration at all is the Triple Slug with 10 AP made available by the KSG 2000. However, most shotguns can use power bolts, from the Pressurized Impaler, which have 15 AP and are probably superior to non-Triple-Slug shotgun ammo.

The only ammunitions (other than, as mentioned plasma and ion) with an armor penetration of 60 and above are the ballistic anti-material ammunition as follows:

• 12.7mm Accelerator Venom (60 AP, Acid)
  
• 12.7mm Accelerator Sabot (60 AP, this AP variant strangely has the same armor penetration as the acid type above)
  
• 12.7mm YL Anti Material (75 AP, Yoko-Lagann only)
  
• All Nemesis prototype restricted ammo (90/100 AP)
  
• The Liandry Rail Gun restricted ammo (100 AP)

The following ammunitions have armor penetration 30 and above:

• 5.57mm Armor Piercing (40 AP, a surprisingly high AP that can even be used by 5.57mm assault rifles)
  
• 12.7mm Accelerator SC (30 AP, the default for anti-material rifles)
  
• 8.8mm Kurz (30 AP note: this is the default for 8.8mm assault rifles)
  
• 8.8mm Armor Piercing (40 AP)
  
• 8.8mm Acid Rounds (35 AP)
  
• 8.8mm Cataclysmic Hollow Point (35 AP)
  
• Shock Arrow Soft Point (30 AP, slightly better than the default Tungsten arrow)
  
• 4.73mm Caseless FMJ (35 AP)
  
• 4.73mm Unstable Core (35 AP)

Ammunition not in these lists tends to do 15 AP or 10 AP with only a few exceptions. The default ammo for most SMGs and pistols is 10 AP and the default for 5.57mm assault rifles is 15. That should give you an idea of what is normal for armor penetration in the game. Enemies, however, tend to have a lot of armor penetration compared to the player. Expect endgame enemies with projectile weapons to have at least 30-40 AP.

Armored Enemies

Enemies with 'tank' in the name or that have tank tracks as well as enemies that wield shields will have armor (the very first unit that you see with a riot shield has 45 armor). Additionally Stinger Gliders, Devastors, and Room Clearing Units all have some armor. Hyper Troopers have, shall we say, no shortage of armor. Many bosses have substantial armor. This is an important consideration in weapon type as well as taking the 'Deflect' difficulty modifier. Shotguns may do fine against your average shield-weilder due to sheer damage, but will suffer against bosses.

With the Deflect difficulty modifier, you will still experience damage resistance from armor on most enemies that have it unless you are using an anti-material rifle with special ammunition (Stinger Gliders and Devastators have less, so that may not be the case for those two), whereas without it you will mostly cease to notice armor when using an 8.8mm assault rifle. That said, even if you stick to more normal weapons, it is still just a +15% increase in the effective hitpoints of certain enemies (even if it does include bosses).

Gameplay Mechanics Continued: Ammunition

Generally each weapon starts with a basic type. 8.8mm Kurz (30 AP, 270 base damage per shot) and 5.57mm Kaida SC (15 AP, 226 base damage per shot) are the standards for assault rifles. FMJ Basic (10 AP, 253 base damage per shot) is the standard for SMGs and pistols, and buckshot (0 AP, 109x8 per shot) is the standard for Shotguns. Finally, 12.7mm Accelerator SC (30 AP, 450 base damage per shot) is the standard for anti-materiel rifles. Outside of the red weapons, the projectile weapons that do not conform to the standard largely are pretty bad (Brent Anti-Air being a major exception). Weapons that use 8.8mm ammo tend to be especially well regarded at the moment.

Alternate ammo types can be found in rare ammo chests, given by class features, acquired by simply picking up the right weapon, or the Hotswap rare attachment (which gives all ammo types). For regular projectile weapons those ammo types generally come in Hollow Point (bleed), Soft Point (stun/slow), Acid, and Armor Piercing.

• Hollow Point does additional 5 additional armor penetration and has a 25% chance to inflict a pretty decent bleed effect for no sacrifice in damage.
  
  
• Soft Point has no substantial damage reduction for 5.57mm assault rifles, but a ~10% damage reduction for SMGs and pistols. It has a 25% chance to inflict a stun on hit, which is handy. 8.8mm assault rifles do not get Soft Point.
  
  
• Acid ammo can inflict a DoT every 5th shot at the cost of that shot doing 35% less damage. The 5.57mm version has a 50% chance to do so, the 8.8 version always does so and also has an additional 5 armor penetration, but loses enemy penetration. The wiki says that Acid does a very weak DoT, but as of U26, Acid ammo should deal a DoT similar in magnitude to Hollow Point.
  
  
• AP ammo has wildly differing increases in armor penetration depending on ammo size. The SMG/Pistol ammo has 25 AP compared to the default 10. The 5.57mm ammo has 40 AP compared to the default 15. And the 8.8mm AP ammo has an underwhelming 40 AP compared to the default 30. AP ammo also has bit of extra critical chance (I believe it was buffed to 10%, reading the U26 patch notes), and enemy penetration.

The analysis here appears to be that 5.57mm/SMG AP is the best, followed by any Hollow Point. After that any AP is next most valuable. Whether you prefer Acid or Soft Point depends on how much you value the stun.

Additionally, most default projectile ammunition has either a ricochet chance or enemy penetration. Ricochet is double edged, but normally the ricochet chance is low enough that it doesn't matter too much. The default anti-materiel rifle ammunition has lots of ricochet, as does the default Nemesis-restricted ammunition and the default grenade-launcher ammunition. The Bren Anti-Air has a 40% chance of ricochet.

Enemy penetration is always nice to have, however, allowing you to hit not only the target you are shooting at, but also some of the enemies behind that. Most 8.8mm ammo, though not acid and hollow point has enemy penetration, as well as all non-restricted 12.7mm ammo. The enemy penetration on 8.8mm Kurz will always go through at least one enemy which means effectively doubled damage against clumps of enemies, a lovely special effect to have on an already absolutely loaded default ammo type. If I read things right, 8.8mm AP ammo will penetrate every single enemy in a line, which is a feat even (non-restricted) anti-material rifle ammunition cannot achieve.

Ammunition does have other characteristics, such as travel speed and headshot modifier, and damage against shields, but these are less important. Headshot damage is 25% greater for 12.7mm, 8.8mm, 4.73mm, and fusion ammo, with an additional bonus for the former on elite enemies. There is a surprisingly powerful 10% extra critical chance for the nonstandard 4.73mm ammo. 8.8mm and 4.73mm ammo are only 75% effective against shields, shotgun ammo is somewhat more effective against shields (125% by default), laser ammo only 50% effective against shields (but destroys plating), and finally, fusion charges do significantly more damage against shields (the default is double).

Using ammunition

With that out of the way, lets get down to actually using the ammo. To switch ammo types you need to eject your clip (ejecting completely full or completely empty clips does not waste any ammo), and then press CTRL. But to do that you actually need an optional ammo type. When there is an optional ammo type available there will be a pair (or trio, etc) of little bullet symbols to the right of your weapon's heat bar (thanks to this visual guide to the Synthetik interface for cluing me in on this part):



You can also see the bullet symbol even if there is no optional ammo type available by pressing 'x' to show weapon details. The alternate ammo that I can equip here is an incindiary shotgun ammo. That ammo is actually pretty bad when used normally because the DoT it applies doesn't really synergize with the shotgun way of thinking very well. Actually, that's true of all of the regular shotgun ammo as a whole with the exception of the Triple Slug made available by picking up the KSG 2000. Of the Pressurized Impaler ammo, the Power Bolt ammo seems better than the alternative unless I'm misreading. The majority of shotguns can use both Power Bolts and Triple Slugs, but the former isn't really what shotguns were made to do.

List of weapons that give ammo

Taken straight from the wiki[synthetik.fandom.com]:

• Spectre - Soft Point (Stun/Slow)
  
• Tactical Observer - Soft Point (Stun/Slow)
  
• R2000 'Sour' DMR - Acid
  
• RPK-12 Tundra - Acid
  
• Damnation - Hollow Point (Bleed)
  
• AMD 65 - Hollow Point (Bleed)
  
• AEK Special Elite - Armor Piercing
  
• Sturmgewehr 44 - Armor Piercing
  
• R5000 'Sudden' DMR - Armor Piercing
  
• Chaos Launcher - Unstable Core (High Crit - Limited to Chaos Launcher and Twin Mill)
  
• Pressurized Impaler - Power Bolt/Accelerated Coil X1
  
• KSG 2000 - Triple Slug
  
• 'Eraser' DMR - Lithium Cell (Burn)
  
• Human Model 9800K - Cold Fusion Charge (Slow/Pierce)

Weapons give that ammo type for all weapon types that can use it. So the AMD 65 gives Hollow Point for your pistol too. Moreover, you retain full use of that ammo type for the rest of the game, even after dropping the weapon. The Hotswap rare attachment gives every ammo type on acquisition, you have them for the rest of the game.

Supply Hack Mechanics and Considerations

The wiki article is pretty succinct[synthetik.fandom.com] about the basics of this. Using occurrence up tokens you increase the liklihood of finding a weapon or item. Using occurrence down tokens you decrease the liklihood. You have four of each type of token to spend for weapons, and another set of four of each for items. Occurrence tokens cannot be used on red items or weapons, and there are a fair few items of the other rarities that also cannot receive occurrence tokens.

The in-game tooltips disagree concerning what power tokens do for weapons, however. The tooltip in the research menu says that power tokens increase the ammo gain of a weapon whereas the tooltip in-game says that power tokens also increase weapon damage by 5%. The wiki sides with the latter and is probably correct, and if so, that is a rather large benefit indeed. The ammo gain is also extremely significant 20%!, so it is well worth your time to place the power tokens well. For items, the wiki says that power tokens increase the item's power by 20%, which is about one level worth of upgrade from an item upgrade shrine, and is admittedly less important.

What the wiki does not mention (but the tooltip in the research menu does) is that one of a shop's saleables will always be selected from one of your occurrence increase tokens (the item in this slot will be slightly more expensive by about 200-300 credits). This means if you want a particular weapon, or one of a couple weapons, it may be worth only occurrence increasing one (or two) weapons so as to ensure the very maximum availability for that weapon. Because the player can hold more items than weapons, I recommend using at least three of the item occurrence up tokens. Shops are not rarity locked, meaning that it is unwise to use occurrence increase on light blue items and weapons unless you really want that as your endgame weapon (tactical observer, for instance). Weapons and items of higher rarity will cost more in a shop, so you may have to save up. I do not believe the old exploit of using a power token on a red weapon/item works anymore.

Being able to avoid weapons/items you don't like, and also get more of weapons/items you like is so powerful, I recommend that this be one of your first research purchases.

Weapon Token Recommendations?

I'm hardly qualified to give any recommendations for which items to hack up at all. However, I have tried to look through the available information, including this strategy guide google doc[docs.google.com], which admittedly is out of date (there is a shortage of up to date weapon commentary that I've been able to find), as well as this steam guide (possibly controversial?), and this other steam guide (which is class specific, but at least up to date). Suffice it to say that I don't have the best sources right now, and my ability to evaluate them is...not the best. Take this well salted, but I feel reluctant to simply say nothing because supply hacking weapons is one of the more powerful ways to make the game easier. Weapons to consider making more common that are generally applicable for all classes within their categories (most categories are better suited to some classes than others, particularly Shotguns and DMR-esque weapons):

• AEK Special Elite (crazy powerful assault rifle, gives AP ammo, always token) / Bren Anti-Air (great auto weapon, but lacks effectiveness against armor, technically an LMG)
  
• Assault Rifle: AEK Special Elite (see above, always token) / AMD 65 (lifesteal and gives Hollow Point ammo)
  
• SMG: UMP-10 Tornado (solid SMG, somewhat less ammo issues than other SMGs) / LS Laser Sub (shield growth weapon that adds more shields than the UMP-10 after 75 kills, some ammo issues) / Chaos Launcher (some ammo issues, only good SMG with high armor piercing)
  
• LMG: RPK-12 Tundra (excellent LMG due to un-LMG-like moving accuracy, gives Acid ammo and passive scavenging to boot, mostly buffed for run-n-gun in U25 and buffed again in U26, absolutely useful for all classes)
  
• DMR-ish: Tuned M14 EBR (Arena DLC) / R2000 Sour DMR (gives Acid ammo) / AS-VAL (this one has more significant ammo issues than most purple weapons)
  
• Shotguns: Viciator Ultra (ammo issues, very strong) / RRX Coil Shotgun (very solid growth weapon) / SPAS-12 (DoT shotgun, shotguns in general are very dependant on taste) / T 8-00-Gauge (unique due to constant reloading, which can be pain)
  
• Health Regen Weapons: Medic FMG-9 (growth regen SMG, get the growth bonus then dump it, tokening this may make it harder to get the weapons you want to main though) / AMD 65 (lifesteal AR and also gives Hollow Point ammo)
  
• HIG-S (High damage, low ammo gain, Ion weapon in U26 which was previously unavailable in non-red rarity, mostly worse than the AS-Val, strangely enough)

Almost all of the listed weapons are purple or dark blue rarity (IIRC text color isn't a thing for steam guides which is why the other guide I linked uses images I guess), however the Tactical Observer and SPAS 12 are light blue. Many of the purple weapons have annoyingly low ammo pickup and pools or at least lower than the dark blue options (though there are a few that are very much the opposite), so it is somewhat useful not to go all-purple unless you've planned ahead.

Once you have some familiarity with the weapons, planning for specific pairs of weapons is useful. A high ammo weapon with a low ammo weapon, a weapon without armor penetration like a shotgun or the Bren with a weapon that has decent armor penetration, a weapon tailored for a specific range and a mid-ranged weapon, things like that. At the time of writing the wiki pages for each weapon[synthetik.fandom.com] are the only places to find online information on specific ammo pickup rates. Naturally Supply Hacking only lets you boost the drop rate of four weapons and four items, and due to shop randomness you likely wish to limit that further to two or three, so choose wisely.

Difficulty Modifiers (Base and 10% modifiers)

One of the first things that may be useful to do in the game is to adjust the difficulty downward somewhat. The default difficulty has a few unnecessary complications. Here's my run through of the difficulty modifiers. I am, however, not very good at the game. So I'll be relying on the same sources I used for the prior recommendations.

Base difficulty: 10% more enemies forces, 10% faster enemy reactions, 25% more incoming damage on floor 1 (that is, the levels before the first boss fight), 15% more incoming damage on floor 2, 5% more incoming damage on floors 3+. Grants better loot.

This is worth 30% difficulty for a reason. In a game where most of your character loadout decisions are designed to reduce incoming damage this is the last thing you need when starting out. 10% faster more enemy reactions also makes playing certain classes a tad harder. To make matters worse, no one knows what "Grants better loot" even means. If it means rarity, the section on weapon Supply Hacking should hopefully convince you that it is completely unnecessary.

Manual Ejection: The active reload mechanic. Ejecting and reloading is much slower with this turned off.

Core mechanic, and the bonus for keeping it on is substantial enough that eventually it makes the game easier.

Jamming: Weapons have a realistic chance to jam and require unjamming. Unjamming grants high weapon mastery.

Since weapon mastery doesn't do anything, the first thought is that this is unncessary. Jamming doesn't usually kill you, but it can result in some awkward moments. However, jamming is a really fun and kinda core mechanic, so I leave it on, YMMV. Occasional jamming is rare but will still occur even with this difficulty modifier turned off.

Jamming does make the game easier for the Heavy Gunner as of gaining class level 15, since eventually that class will gain slightly more Onslaught System time than it takes to clear a jam, and additionally gain a powerup and item cooldown reduction.

Flinch: Taking health damage briefly decreases accuracy and movement speed. Move slightly faster.

As the google doc strategy guide says, the movement speed increase is substantial, but the downside is killer. Though it may not look it at first, this is likely the nastiest +10% difficulty modifier.

Scorching: Weapons cool down 20% slower and overheating causes double damage. Weapons fire slightly faster.

This is definitely one of the easier modifiers because overheating is fairly easy to avoid with a little discipline. However, this will limit your damage against bosses somewhat, especially late-game since upgraded weapons will reload and eject faster, fire faster, and have larger magazines.

This is somewhat class and player dependant because Heavy Gunner's Onslaught System and weapons that have larger magazines like LMGs will be more limited by heat. This modifier is also enough of a consideration that some weapon variants become better (Alpha gives free heat venting) or worse (Overclocked, which is much, much worse). On the other hand, there are certain ways (certain weapons, modules, and items) of gaining a benefit from having increased heat (not just heat production, which this modifier does not affect).

The upside is increased weapon fire rate, and I'm not really sure how much of an increase it is. Be aware that increased fire rate will mean harder-to-control recoil on some weapons. Despite the potential of the drawback, unless you intend to make plenty of use of the SS58 Plasma Charger that automatically overheats on reload, this modifier likely makes the game slightly easier, so turn it on.

Deflect: Armored enemies gain 15 additional armor. Gain +4% dodge chance.

15% damage reduction on a small subset of enemies? Doesn't kill my survivability but instead enhances it? I'm not rushing to turn this on right away, but this sounds like a pretty easy +10% to difficulty. The nasty part here is that you will likely very much notice the extra 15% effective hitpoints on bosses, especially the later ones.

Haste: All projectiles fly faster. Active Reloads are randomized. Active Reloading gains a smaller Perfect portion of the bar which grants increased damage, rate of fire, and jamming immunity to the next magazine.

Lots to unpack here. Firstly projectiles are about 50% faster, which isn't crazy because of how slow projectiles in this game are by default. The tracking ability of enemy weapons isn't improved to compensate. This makes dodging missiles much, much, much easier. Tracking weapons are not uncommon in boss fights, so some boss fights are also made easier by this. However, walking through small arms fire is much harder, which makes the average combat quite substantially more deadly, especially if you end up having to face more than five enemies at once (which you should try as much as possible to avoid, but sometimes it happens). This is potentially quite a dangerous modifier for this reason, but this effect becomes much less deadly with experience.

On the other side of the modifier, the perfect reload bonus is quite nice indeed, certainly in excess of 5%. Moreover, many weapons can usually be reloaded faster with the randomized active reload than they can by default. On the other hand, muscle memory can't be used to reload, which makes using the T-8-00-Gauge a pain in the ass and can really kill player's rhythm on their usual weapons. Unless you're making use of a lot of shotguns and RPGs however, this part of the modifier seems very desirable to me.

In summary, haste could be a desirable modifier because its effects are very mixed, not merely hindering the player but also helping to an extent. However, it is harder to cope with as a new player and requires flexibility.

Difficulty Modifiers Continued (15% modifiers and Lightning Start)

Hard Core 1: Taking damage can cause bleeding. Using substances can poison. Explosives cause shell shock. Active Reloads are less forgiving. Stat upgrades grant 25% more stats.

Probably the easiest +15% there is, under the right circumstances. The downside is class dependant, however. I am actually unsure of exactly what "substances" refers to here. At minimum, "substances" includes Methadone, Overdose, and Unidentified Potions. It likely includes Cell Replacer, Brawndo, and Chaos Potion but likely does not include Stim Pack.

For players and classes that don't care about poisoning (most players, probably), the main noticeable part is the bleeding effect, which makes taking what would have been small amounts of health damage much nastier. With that being what it is this is firmly one of the last things to take in order to reach 140% difficulty for the class challenges.

Critical: Enemies have a 10% chance to crit for 150% damage. +4% Increased crit chance

Sounds nastier than it is, apparently. However, one day some enemy with a sniper rifle or ion weapon will ruin your ruin your day solely because of this. For faster firing enemy weapons you can think of this as being a 15% reduction to your survivability, which you may or may not consider to be worse than the Base difficulty modifier.

Fragile: Health damage taken also decreases your maximum health by 5% of that damage. Medical crates add back 50 lost (maximum) health, and a boss kill adds back 75. +5% damage

If you're good, you can end up very positive on maximum health after the first boss. For the rest of us plebians, this is the single nastiest modifier one could think of.

Lightning Start: More difficult floor 1 (first 4 levels). Headshots deal 15% more damage.

Once you reliably get through the second floor, this makes the game easier and becomes a no-brainer. Snipers want to turn this on pretty darn quickly.

Achieving 140%

There are basically two schools of thought regarding achieving the requirement for the class challenges with minimal modifiers:

• Lightning Start + Manual Ejection + Jamming + Scorching + { (Deflect/Haste + Hardcore = 140%) / (Deflect + Haste + Flinch = 145%) }
  
  
• Base + Lightning Start + Manual Ejection + Jamming + Scorching = 145%

The increase in both enemy count and damage taken from Base is just severe enough to consider taking the bleed effect from Hardcore. However, the other school of thought is that whatever increased loot quality from Base that exists ought to be important enough that the increased difficulty is more or less worth it.

Miscellaneous

• The full clip counts towards your maximum ammo limit for a weapon until it has been ejected, even if it is partially or completely spent.
  
  
• Effects that activate upon killing with a weapon take effect upon killing with the weapon currently equipped, there's no need to actually score the finishing blow with the weapon.
  
  
• Sometimes chests are hidden behind terrain. Pressing TAB to open the minimap, however, will reveal their location.
  
  
• Some burst weapons like the SCR Laser Socom are fully automatic, just with burst delay. The AN-95 Deathstalker is not fully automatic, however.
  
  
• Bursts can be interrupted by switching weapons to save ammo.
  
  
• If you're using the AS-VAL, you can switch it to the default Kurz ammo for armored bosses -- doing so should be a ~10% damage increase against enemies with at least 30 armor). This sort of thinking doesn't often apply, but there are probably a few other cases where special ammo is undesirable.
  
  
• A tip from the google doc strategy guide[docs.google.com]: if you find and item in a chest and a shop on the same floor you can obtain two of the same item, which is not normally possible. A lot of times this is very powerful.
  
  
• The pistol you start with can be changed in the loadout screen. This is pretty important, because the default pistol does an annoyingly pitiful amount of damage. That and other useful tips I found in a very useful FAQ here[gameplay.tips]. That link also has a promo code for one of the better pistols in the game (saves nothing more than a tiny bit of grinding). Having a better pistol means being able and willing to use it even very late in the game, though it won't outshine your better weapons. Alternatively, the fusion pistol grants a shield bonus from it being in your inventory, even if you never use it, which makes it arguably the best pistol in the game.
  
  
• The above doesn't apply as much to the Riot Guard because the class passive uniquely permits dropping the starting pistol for advanced weaponry. For this and other reasons (health regen!) the Riot Guard is widely considered one of the beginner-friendly classes. I will say that I got further with my very first game of the Riot Guard than I had ever been, despite being level 10 in another class.
  
  
• Prioritize survivability with the modules in your loadout. If you're going to progress through the game, you need to live through it first. Generally I think the community has arrived at a consensus on which modules go best with which playstyle, or at least had prior to the new patch. For the old consensus (U24ish), check out the google doc strategy guide[docs.google.com].
  
  
• You can remove a module or item from your loadout by right-clicking, this will replace it with a guaranteed random module drop (which you will usually pick up soon after the first teleporter).

[Simonsis13]

Exactly. It's best if you test it yourself, I don't know everything about these either. Blood vial is in both categories, meth aswell and that's all I've been using over the last weeks.

[F50]

So it turns out "substance" and "items affected by medical crates" are more complicated categories than I thought. Because I believe Field Supply is affected by medical crates, I think the latter category includes some items that are not vial items.

[Simonsis13]

sorry, 3 kits to max the weapon, not 4

[Simonsis13]

Each upgrade kit gives 2 ticks + 2 ticks each 50% item power. Ergo 4 ticks on base power and 5 ticks on 150% power. This simply means that you need 4 upgrade kits on base power to max your weapon. Afterwards, each kit will grant 4% dmg. Now what about modular variant and demos dmg boost? They simply double the amount of ticks you get. Simple as that. 8 ticks on base power. Ergo you max your weapon with 2 base power upgrade kits and also gain 4% dmg. There is no "all damage from every source is doubled" and also no "less upgrade kits required to max". Simply double the number of ticks. Demos boost and modular stack multiplicative, giving you 16 ticks on base power. Hope I explained this properly and no, stuff like the dmg boost from tacobs is not affected by modular.

[Simonsis13]

let me explain how the whole upgrade stuff works. 4 attachment slots. Depending on weapon, class, mode and luck, you get between 2 and up to 7 (I think 7, doesn't matter tho) attachment choices each upgrade kit you use. Most of the time it's 3 tho. Each of these 4 first upgrade kits will additionally increase the damage by 5%. All these dmg boosts are additive, not multiplicative. Afterwards, you upgrade stats directly. I will call these upgrades ticks. As you may have noticed, the weapon gets upgraded 12 times before it says maxed. So the first 12 ticks are improving general stats. Each tick afterwards increases dmg by 1%. So far so simple. Weapon upgrade chests simply increase damage. weapon upgrade stations simply upgrade your weapon by a certain number of ticks, I think 5 or 6 times. Then, once the cost of these shrines drops very low, which is the point once the gun is maxed, you only get 1 tick.

[Simonsis13]

Substances means stuff like meth, u-potion, rogues "once per floor healing" item, injection, the potion which grants random healing or damage which you can find during the run, branwando or however it's called and I think that's it. Not sure tho. Also not sure about stim pack from commandos. Arma shard will kill you after 3(?) floors. I recommend you recycle it right after you pick it up, or to not pick it up at all. Although if you want to end your run, it is a good way to do it(by taking it).

[F50]

"The % total of the difficulty modifiers also adds another overall difficulty modifier, IIRC modifying enemy reactions, speed, and the amount of XP you gain." Hrm, I've not read this anywhere else, is this true?

[F50]

I'm still rather confused about what Hardcore means by "substances" and what items qualify for vial charges (is there more than two?). Additionally, I've added a section on upgrades, but I'm afraid that section is probably wrong about at least a couple things. I've possibly done the dumb there. I'm also debating just explaining the Armageddon Shard in some detail, since the mechanics of the room in which it is found are more explained in the patch notes and not as much in the actual game.

[F50]

Thanks about the comments on luck and the body stats in general. It helps. My source on 'every level' was an old guide. I was wondering if core parts appeared every level though, it certainly didn't feel like it. Thanks for that.

[F50]

I'm getting conflicting comments about Hardcore difficulty, I'll test and fix that soon (should be really easy to test). The pistol advice is very useful, I'll add some of it to tips, the fusion pistol really is important once you stop using it. Speaking of which, I still think the game doesn't give out much ammo. Yes, you'll be good with the right attachments and with weapon upgrades, but I think it is only because of planning out which weapons to use and upgrading them that each weapon has plenty.