Thirteen tools of survival: your fists, ten guns, and three deployable gear items. Buy them between waves in the Armory. This guide covers each weapon's role, behaviour and tactics — your Damage and Fire Rate upgrades scale every gun up as you invest in it.
"Wave 1 is fists-only. Earn cash, then arm up."
Your permanent fallback. A short forward punch arc with light damage, a little knockback and a brief stun, on alternating fists. It takes a few punches to drop a basic zombie. Each swing draws on your stamina, so you can't spam it. It's the whole of the opening wave and your out-of-ammo safety net forever after.
The first thing you buy. A stepping-stone you upgrade away from.
Cheap, reliable, never runs dry — but weak, and its damage falls off noticeably at range (full power up close, much weaker far away). Buy it the moment you can afford it in the opening Armory, then treat every later gun as an upgrade from it. Because it's semi-auto, fire rate is capped by how fast you click.
A fast, affordable bullet-hose. Per-shot damage is low but the blistering cycle rate melts loose groups. Accuracy "blooms" wider the longer you hold the trigger, so tap-fire for distant targets and hose only when the horde is on top of you. The natural first full-auto pickup after the Sidearm.
Fires a wide cone of pellets. Up close, where every pellet lands, it's one of the highest burst weapons in the game and shoves the front rank back with a stun — the king of "I'm surrounded" panic clears. Falls off fast at range as the cone spreads. Short magazine, so manage your shells.
The dependable mid-game workhorse. Tight spread, solid rounds fired in 3-round bursts, and a big magazine. Effective at every range and forgiving on ammo. If you're unsure what to main through the middle of the Campaign, it's this.
Rounds ricochet off walls several times, hitting harder with each bounce, and the gun crits often. In the game's tight, walled arenas this turns corridors and corners into kill-boxes — bank shots wrap around obstacles to hit enemies you can't even see. Rewards players who learn each map's geometry.
A short-range torrent of fire. Each tick is small, but the sheer rate shreds packed crowds and applies burn, and now and then it leaves a patch of ground fire that keeps dealing damage. Murder on swarms (Spawnlings, Brood) and chokepoints — but the stubby range means you take hits while you cook, and the flames hurt you too.
A devastating shot that fires a near-instant beam and pierces everything in a line — line up a packed lane and you delete the whole row at once. Slow to cycle and a tiny magazine, so it's a precision/boss weapon, not a panic button. The single best damage-per-shot in the arsenal.
Pin-accurate energy bolts at a brisk cadence, each punching through one enemy. A precise, sustained damage gun that rewards aim — excellent for picking off ranged threats (Devils, Spitters, Shamans) and trimming the front of a line. The mid-late-game "skill" weapon.
The top-tier crowd-deleter: a rocket that bursts for heavy area damage, accelerating after a short arming distance and trailing smoke. One rocket erases a clustered wave. The blast hurts you too, so never fire it into a target that's already on top of you — lead the horde and detonate at range.
Gear is placed, not fired — select it and "fire" to drop it at your feet. Use it to seed escape routes and chokepoints before a wave hits.
Drop a barrel on a chokepoint and shoot it when the horde funnels past for a huge blast that leaves a lingering fire patch. The cheapest way to delete a tight crowd — just don't stand in your own kill zone.
Set-and-forget: a mine detonates on its own when an enemy steps on it, dealing heavy damage plus strong knockback and a long stun. Lay a string of them along the lane you plan to kite through and let the horde walk into them.
A standalone turret that auto-targets and sweeps fire onto nearby enemies for a short while before it burns out. Drop one to cover a flank or add a second gun to a boss fight. You can have several active at once — ring an arena with them and let them thin the wave while you reposition.
