There are several weapons to be found in Fallout 76’s West Virginia wildlands, but we’ve compiled a list of the best. Others must be prayed for during a Nuke raid. Others can be built and discovered early in the campaign, while others must be prayed for during a Nuke raid. Although the RPG features of Fallout 76 can significantly impact the viability of some weapons, rare versions (identified by a special name, a star, and the inability to scrap them at the workshop table) can give players a significant advantage early on, with some being so decent that they’re actually worth keeping around in the (limited) C.A.M.P. Stash.

After an exhaustive series of beta sessions, Fallout 76 was released in November, bringing a strange departure from the franchise for an action RPG with no NPCs. Since then, negative reviews of Fallout 76’s alleged lack of emphasis, along with the game’s high price (along with microtransactions), have stung sales scores and received a lot of customer remorse. It’s been around a month since the game was out, and while it still has its devoted fans, something is disappointing about its success and continued appearance in the news.

Despite the absence of dialogue trees, Fallout 76 offers plenty of gameplay hours and a heavy focus on war. Most guns in the game have a balancing trade-off — high damage at the expense of high ammunition use, precision, and range at the expense of long reload times, and so on — however, others provide more bang for your buck. Screen Rant has compiled a list of the best popular and exotic weapons in Fallout 76, as well as several strategies for obtaining them (or at least increasing your chances), so keep reading to see what’s worth your inventory room.

Combat Shotgun

When you’re outmanned and need to unleash some serious firepower, the Combat Shotgun is your best bet. With a large number of enemies to farm this weapon from, high base damage, and a large ammunition capacity (starting at eight), you’d be foolish not to have it in your arsenal.

Increase the shotgun’s Damage Output with the reinforced receiver, and add a perforating magazine to maximize armor penetration with a perforating magazine. When combined with the shotgunner bonus, you’ve got yourself a harm machine; remember to stock up on bullets!

Hand Made Rifle

Without a doubt, one of the most valuable non-legendary firearms in the series. This will take on even the hardest bosses if you give it the best bonuses and modifiers. All you have to do now is wait for one to drop with your requirements’ appropriate combination.

This is better said than done in most situations, but if you play long enough, you might find the right one. Try to farm the appropriate tasks and destroy enemies with a high drop rate for this weapon.

Sledgehammer

Even early in Fallout 76, there’s still a crowd clogging up some relay towers on the map, and Eastern Correctional is another solid early-game haunt. This comparatively simple two-handed pistol does not sound overpowered but bear in mind the amount of Super Mutants all over Appalachia.

Most of them lose boards and other low-tier melee garbage. Still, you’ll sometimes come across a Skirmisher version who drops a sledgehammer, and the big arc of these powerful arms allows them ideal for taking down tougher low-level mobs without wasting ammunition.

Sledgehammers aren’t made until later in Fallout 76 (at least level 30), so you can apply mods to them at a weapons bench to turn them into a reliable one-hitter. The most noticeable drawbacks are their heavy weight and sluggish wind-up. Still, for a free common arm that’s in pretty plentiful supply throughout starter areas, it’s a smart idea to have around, as well as a stress-free disposable tool when your inventory’s clogged up. Non-melee builds will also benefit from these, and that’s long before they face the Super Sledge.

Assault Rifle

The backbone of any wastelander’s arsenal should be assault rifles. This weapon can engage enemies from a long distance and provide continuous fire towards them before they hit you.

The player has many options in terms of plugins and loadouts, which gives them a lot of flexibility. Installing the extreme receiver mod to increase damage and vital hits, for example, will convert the assault weapon into a DMR (Designated Marksman Rifle). If that’s not your thing, consider setting up an automatic receiver to fire lead at enemies instead.

The firearm also has a variety of optics to aid in target acquisition and range. It’s a great tool to have early to mid-game because it drops from many enemies and has perks that fit both auto and semi-auto gunplay (rifleman and commando).

Gatling Gun

This weapon is a colossal monster. It can spit bullets directly into whoever it is facing with a turn of the crank. Even if it’s just a mid-range pistol, anything captured inside that range is doomed. Supply dumps, crates, and mid-game enemies are the most popular places to encounter it. However, if you happen to find yourself in the Watoga Shopping Plaza, you can purchase it there.

Combat Knife

Even if you’re not optimizing melee in your build, combat knives are highly functional, light, and rarely a poor backup tool to hold in a quickslot. Plus, if you happen to come across a fighting knife with the Legendary Vampiric influence, you get the bonus of lifesteal, which can make those high-level encounters a breeze.

Legendary knives can be found in nuked areas or prime loot caches, and the Vampiric modifier can be found on a variety of weapons. Still, it’s particularly effective when combined with the knife’s ludicrous pace.

Any Fallout 76 players say that stabbing the air with this modded knife causes a tiny amount of healing to happen on its own, although this is likely to be fixed in upcoming updates. Combat knives can be seen all over the world map in Fallout 76, and they can also be conveniently made at a gun bench, with quality levels varying from 1 to 50.

Hunting Rifle

Nothing beats holding your breath while watching your target and gently pressing the button to dispatch your prey. With high damage and range, the Hunting Rifle rewards those with patience and a steady hand. It’s a common weapon around the wasteland, and with the right mods and bonuses, it’s the ideal weapon for engaging enemies from afar.

Modifying the receiver, barrel, stock, and finally, the optics will give the player a weapon capable of one-shot kills or, at the very least, severely crippling opponents. When combined with the rifleman and Covert Operative Perks, the Damage Output and the sneak multiplier can quickly take down objectives.

Gauss Rifle

This is a high-powered energy device that can annihilate whatever foe it comes into contact with. It hurls materials at enemies at such a high rate that they can’t avoid collapsing. It can be purchased, but it can also be obtained from high-level opponents. When you’re nearing the end of the game, keep an eye out for it.

The easiest way to improve this weapon is to boost its strength and add a sneak attack bonus. It’s a smart idea to use perks that increase harm, improve accuracy, and generally improve the rifles you have in your hands. Last but not least, the ammunition for this weapon is simple to make. You don’t need to do something silly; what you need is simple ammunition, readily available.

M2 Browning

Fallout 76 Perks, including Bear Arms, Lock and Load, and Heavy Gunner, can easily transform the M2 Browning from a hefty inventory drag to a lightweight DPS rig prioritized by character builds that aim for heavy weapon use.

Aside from that, the M2 is remarkably easy to locate, but it can necessitate some mild server hopping. Players searching for the gun in Fallout 76 could travel to Clarksburg and begin their hunt on the lake’s southern shore.

Suppose you’re at the Clarksburg Shooting Range, head southeast on the road until you reach a blown-out pickup truck. The M2 would be mounted on the truck’s flatbed, facing downhill, like a turret. If it’s not available in your server case, it’s simply because it was claimed by someone else shortly after it spawned — go to the main menu and look for a new world, and you should be able to claim an M2 Browning of your own.

Black Diamond

Black Diamond is one of Fallout 76’s stranger guns, and it’ll stay with you for a long time. This melee weapon is a modified ski with angry-looking teeth welded on. It’s a fast and heavy-hitting machine with the added advantage of +1 power to your stats.

This cool weapon can be obtained by completing this fairly basic questline, as detailed here, courtesy of News Week. It is better to purchase this weapon when you are Level 50, much like the perfect storm SMG, to guarantee that the weapon is awarded at that level.

Since it is a melee tool, it is recommended that you combine it with the Martial Artist Perk to increase Swing and the Gladiator Perk to increase Damage Output to slash through the enemy after you have modified it.

Fat Man

It’s difficult to write about guns in Fallout 76 without mentioning the Fat Man in the Bed. The Fat Man, who has become synonymous with the Fallout franchise, is predictably strong in the new game, but overburdened players can easily notice the whopping 20-pound weight, with 6 lbs required per mini-nuke.

For those unfamiliar with Fallout, the Fat Man is a handheld nuke launcher, boss-killer, and long-range crowd destroyer that wreaks havoc on enemies with its mini-nuke payload and does 450 base ballistic damage in a 14-foot radius.

Aside from the Fat Man’s raw disruptive power, there’s also the Daisycutter, an alien MIRV launcher version. The Daisycutter is technically weaker than the normal Fat Man, but its damage radius is theoretically larger. It transforms a single mini-nuke into six discrete missiles that disperse in mid-air (and it weighs 90 percent less without Perks, thanks to its built-in Legendary effect).

Perfect Storm

The Perfect Storm, like many exotics, can be outclassed by late-game RNG weapon drops, but as a lightweight level 10 SMG, it can get newcomers into Fallout 76’s early quests. The Perfect Storm inflicts 24 burning damage on enemies for 3 seconds in addition to its base 14 ballistic damage (with a nice accompanying visual effect).

Notice that the burning damage does not accumulate, but 3 seconds of 24 damage ticks are enough for lower-level opponents. To obtain their own Perfect Storm, players must complete the “Cold Case” search in Fallout 76. To begin the search, go to Wavy Willard’s Water Park and battle any ghouls you come across before prompted to talk with the Miss Annie robot.

Since Fallout 76 uses a strict stats scheme, some weapons will not be beneficial on all builds. Heavy arms can be too much for an unoptimized player without the right Perks, particularly in their inventory-crushing ammunition. Black powder weapons with fast reload and damage Perks can be overwhelmed in a unique construct.

Multiple loadouts may be fairly managed in compliance with the Stash, given that the Perks scheme provides for card-swapping, while certain weight perks extend to personal inventory. In other words, reducing the weight of heavy guns would not prevent a Fat Man Launcher from clogging up your Stash.

Fallout 76 also has a lot of DNA in common with the looter-shooter genre. Low-tier weapons with a randomized Legendary buff can be more valuable than higher-tier exotics that are sophisticated but vanilla.

Others seem to be awesome on paper but fall short in practice, either due to glitches in the code or a lack of Perks. Consider this a starting point for figuring out any realistic combat options before you’re storming nuke sites and dispatching Legendary Scorchbeasts in no time.