STALCRAFT – Ultimate Weapons & Ammo Guide

There are 6 main weapon categories in Stalcaft plus melee weapons and a couple of special ones. Some weapon types have unique modifiers to make them stand out.

Guide to Weapons & Ammo with Descriptions

Please note: all credit goes to GoblinLootLord!

Important note

If a quest weapon has attachments on it, they cannot be changed or removed.

Weapons

Pistols

Pistols (except for full-auto ones) have a modifier that makes them deal increased damage for every % of the missing health of the enemy making them very effective against mutants, in addition to this using EXP ammo makes their effectiveness increase drastically. They’re so effective in fact that many players in the mid-late game choose not to use shotguns for the most of the time.I strongly suggest not to ignore your secondaries but also don’t improve past lvl 5, it’s not worth it.

SMGs

While some SMGs are quite effective in early game they are severely handicaped by their range and weak caliber in the later portion of the game. Because of this, lack of a unique modifier and the fact that we still don’t have a Master tier SMG I don’t recommend investing into them.

Shotguns

Shotguns have a unique modifier that makes them deal 1.5x dmg to mutants and access to ammo such as Buckshot and Hunting Slug making them effective for farming mutants. Unfortunately tube-fed shotguns have a really annoying bug that sometimes makes you deal almost 0 damage for the first shot if you reload cancel, so waiting for a full reload is generally recommended.

However pistols are quite effective at killing mutants, you get decent shotguns from quests and most shotguns aren’t chained in the barter tree so if you want to focus on other items you won’t lose much. If you want a shotgun for the early game, you can get Shorty (can be equipped in your secondary slot) in Swamps, there’s also a quest from Bullet in Cordon for both factions that gives MP-133 and Bandits also have a quest in Rostok for Mossberg. Later Stalkers can get MP-153 from a quest in the Forest if they want to make morally questionable actions and later get depressed and cry. Bandits have to stick to SPAS 12 from the barter if they want a semi-auto shotgun at blue gear tier.

Later you’d strongly recommend to barter Saiga 12 as it is relatively quick to reload and essential for an effective farm in Limansk (AA-12 is also great but at the time of writing this I don’t yet know how the monetization will work).

Assault Rifles

The most diverse and expansive category of weapons. ARs don’t really have any sort of unique modifiers with the exception of those that use .308 caliber IRL (G3, FAL, DSA, SCAR-H, HK417, AK-308) with their increased limb damage modifier. AR barter tree has a lot of branches some of which even end up in different weapon categories as well as many options that come from monetization system (unclear how at the time of writing). As the vast majority of players will go for this category of weapons I won’t give any recommendations so as not to ruin the experience of discovery.

LMGs

LMGs have a unique modifier that increases their damage based on the number of hits, however it resets if you hit another target. LMGs are quite underrepresented compared to ARs with the only Master tier LMG being PKP Pecheneg (which I absolutely love). Unfortunately to get PKP you’ll have to get RPD which I rather do NOT like for several reasons but I feel like it’s ultimately worth it as PKP is great in both PVE and PVP. LMGs that don’t come from barter such as RPK, RPK-16 and M249 are also good options for Veteran tier servers.

Sniper Rifles (and DMRs)

There are two types of weapons in the Sniper Rifle category: Bolt action rifles and DMRs; and their modifiers vary. DMRs just deal 1.5x headshot damage from normal 1.2 (or 1.25, I don’t remember so don’t quote me on that) while bolt action SRs have a bit more going on.

In addition to dealing 2x damage on headshots they have 95% of inflicting heavy bleeding that deal quite a bit of damage and drains stamina. While SRs seem quite strong in the early game killing players with just 1 headshot, they lose that 1-shot potential rather quickly in the mid-late game becoming support weapons by inflicting a lot of bleeding.

Generally speaking bartering SRs are hard to recommend considering they’re rather niche and quite expensive unless you’re playing in a squad with a few others and want to provide long range support (but there’re decent Veteran tier options that come from MTX/auction so if you really want an SR you can get it there) or if you’re capable of farming Limansk and Clan Wars then get MTs-558, it is good.

On the other hand when it comes to DMRs I can safely recommend VSS as it’s basically an AR with 1.5x headshot damage multiplier; M14 is a lof fun to use (especially if you manage to get 50rnd drum) but as there’s no Master tier weapon in that branch I struggle to recommend it at this time and WA2000 is just outclassed by SCAR SSR so just save money for that.

Special weapons

Despite being considered a sniper rifle by the game, I’ve included Gauss rifle here as well. Out of these weapons Gauss and PTRD come from MTX/Auction and flamethrower and Tinderbox can be obtained during Anomalus Blizzard event with the rest that can be seen in PDA currently unobtainable.

  • PTRD – anti-tank rifle that holds only one shot. It can oneshot-headshot pretty much any player in the game unless they have a really good artifact build and you won’t probably see them for a couple of month after launch. But that power comes at great cost – the weapon is heavy, has long reload time, slow ads, noticeable movement speed penalty as well as huge spread if you’re standing forcing you to lay down if you want to reliably hit your shots. While this definitely isn’t a weapon you take with you when going farming, it can be great fun to use it in TDM as well as being quite useful in Clan Wars.
  • Gauss rifle – basically an upgraded PTRD in every way but is extremely rare and ridiculously expensive so starting playing this game don’t expect to get this weapon unless you are one of those absolute no-lifers
  • Flamethrower – should be obtainable during Anomalus Blizzard even in March 2023. While pretty good against mutants and even players up close, it is heavy and ammo is expensive so there aren’t really any circumstances when you’d want to use it over shotguns/pistols with two exceptions: farming Anomalus Rifts and Blizzard event itself where it’s probably the best gun to use.
  • Tinderbox – is basically a miniature version of flamethrower that goes into your secondary slot. Pretty much worse in every way so no real reason to use it.

Devices

This category houses two types of items: metal detectors and short range detectors.

  • Metal detectors – required to loot caches to get some barter resources. SN-1 detectors are a nightmare to use and you get the best metal detector from the first Main Story quest so just don’t bother getting any from the barter.
  • Short Range Detectors – used to locate Signals. You get Candle SRD from the first Main Story quest and its function is limited to finding Signals. Buryat and Elbrus SRD can scan for nearby artifacts as well which can help you earn a lot of money. You can get Buryat by farming a lot of different trackers and exchanging them at a vendor near mechanic in the Bar while Elbrus comes from MTX/Auction.It should be noted that depending on the price of Elbrus on the auction it may be faster to simply farm enough money for it instead of farming signal trackers for Buryat.

Ammo

There are a number of different caliber types in Stalcraft however this is not Tarkov. In Stalcraft 7.62 ammo works as 7.62×39, 7.62×51, 7.62×54 and even .338 while 9mm ammo is used for every pistol except for RSh-12. Each caliber has several ammo types (some calibers don’t have certain types):

  • Standard.
  • EXP – more effectiveness against mutants (use for pistols).
  • AP – more effective against players.
  • Incendiary – has less pen than AP but inflicts burning that significantly reduces target’s healing.
  • Sniper – is only available for 7.62 and 12.7 and only compatible with bolt-action snipers.
Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 8080 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

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