Magazines and reloading

Every gun with a detachable magazine takes real magazines, and they're items you carry. A box of rounds doesn't go into a gun by itself: you load the rounds into a magazine, and the magazine goes into the gun.

Loading a magazine

• Open your inventory with F2 and drag a stack of rounds onto a magazine (or the magazine onto the rounds). You press them in one at a time, and every round takes about half a second. The higher your Firearms skill, the faster you are.
• You don't have to start with an empty one. A part-used magazine takes only what it's missing, so you can top it off after a fight.
• Right-click a magazine for Load rounds into it (it uses the best matching rounds you have), Unload the rounds, Check the rounds in it, or Load it into your gun. Right-click a stack of rounds for Load into a magazine, which picks the fullest one with room.
• You can walk while you load, but sprinting, getting hit or being knocked down stops you. Every round already in stays in.
• What you load goes in order: the last round in is the first one fired. If you load subsonic rounds on top of standard ones, the subsonic ones fire first.

Reloading

• Press R. You take the fullest loaded magazine that fits the gun, and the one you take out goes back where the new one came from, with every round that was still in it. Nothing is thrown away.
• If a round is in the chamber when you reload, it stays there, so a 30-round magazine gives you 31. If the gun ran dry, the new magazine chambers its first round and you have 30.
• Magazines on your rig are the quickest to reach. A belt pouch is a moment slower and your pockets a little slower again. If the only ones left are in your pack, you have to swing it off first, and that takes a couple of seconds.
• If you carry no loaded magazine for the gun, nothing happens except the click of an empty gun. The screen says No loaded magazines.
• Right-click a gun in your inventory to choose what a reload takes first: the fullest magazine, subsonic on top, factory rounds on top, or the quickest one to reach.

Knowing what's left

A magazine you took out in a fight hasn't been counted, so it shows ? until you check it. Press , to check the magazine in your gun, or right-click a magazine you carry and choose Check the rounds in it. A new shooter gets a feel for it (about half, nearly empty), and with some Firearms experience you count it exactly. Loading or unloading a magazine counts it too.

Speedloaders

A speedloader holds a revolver's six rounds in a ring. Load it from your rounds like a magazine (drag the rounds onto it). With the cylinder empty, R takes the fullest speedloader you carry and drops all six in at once, in about two seconds (quicker with Firearms), and the empty speedloader goes back where it was. With rounds still in the cylinder, R tops it up by hand; to use a speedloader anyway, right-click it and choose Load it into your gun, and the live rounds come out into your pockets with the empties. There's one for .357 and .38 revolvers and one for .44 Magnum. Police stations, houses, safes, the Haven quartermaster (.357) and other traders (.44) have them.

Guns that load a round at a time

Pump and tube shotguns, double barrels, revolvers and bolt-action rifles have no magazine to swap. Press R and you push loose rounds in one at a time until it's full, you run out, or you pull the trigger to stop and fire what's in it.

Extended magazines and drums

Longer magazines and drums are magazines too. A gun that takes one fits the longer magazine as you reload it in, and a drum takes a long time to load. An old extended-clip attachment turns into the matching empty magazine when you use it with the gun in your hands.

On the HUD

The big number is every round in the gun, chambered one included. Next to it, MAG is how many loaded magazines you carry for it. For a shotgun or revolver it shows the loose rounds you have for it instead.

Magazines come from police stations, military kit, bunkers and bodies, and from traders. Scrap pistols and scrap machine pistols take homemade magazines you can make at a workbench. See Combat and weapons and Cover, suppressors and brass.