Ammunition types

Most calibers come in more than one kind of round, and the kind matters as much as the gun. A box of rounds says what's in it, and when you open it from your inventory the rounds go into your pockets as their own stack: they fit the same guns as any other rounds of that caliber.

What each kind does

• Ball (full metal jacket) is the standard round. Everything else is measured against it.
• Armor-piercing (AP) has a hardened steel or tungsten core. It goes through vests, rifle plates and walls that stop ball, but it punches a narrow hole: against someone with no armor, or the infected, it wounds less and they bleed less. Military, private-security and armory stock only, and it's dear when a trader has any.
• Hollow points and soft points open up in flesh. They wound and bleed far more than ball and drop game cleanly, but armor stops them, and so do doors and stud walls. A hollow point that has gone through a wall or a vest doesn't open at all. Police and civilian stock, and every hunting camp.
• Tracers burn as they fly, so you and everyone near can see the streak to where each round went. Walk your fire onto a target in the dark with them; just remember that the streak points straight back at you, and the infected find you sooner. Load three at the bottom of a magazine and you'll see when you're nearly dry.
• Subsonic rounds are slower than sound: through a suppressor there's no crack, only the action, but they hit softer and drop sooner. .45 ACP and the 9x39 rifles are subsonic already.
• Shotgun shells: buckshot is the standard. Birdshot is a cloud of small pellets for birds and small game; it hardly hurts a person past a few meters. A slug is one heavy lead slug that flies true out to about 100 meters, breaks bone, and goes through car doors and soft armor up to Level II.

Which round is next

The weapon readout on your HUD shows the caliber and, when it isn't ball, the round that fires next ("5.56x45mm NATO · AP"). Rounds go into a magazine in order and come out last in, first out, so you can load a few AP on top for the first shots. Checking a magazine lists what's in it, top first. A shotgun or a revolver loads from the stack you use from your inventory first: use the slugs, and the slugs go in. See Magazines and reloading.

Making your own

At an armory bench with a reloading press you can load hollow points and soft points (with expanding bullet heads), birdshot and cast slugs, as well as plain rounds. You can't make AP or tracers: those cores and that compound aren't bench work. Expanding heads come from hunting camps, homes and traders, or cut a cavity into cast heads at a workbench.

Hunting: a soft point kills a deer far faster than ball, and an AP round pencils straight through and leaves you a long tracking job. Birdshot is what you want for birds and rabbits; a rifle round leaves nothing worth cooking.