Weapons & equipment

Your gear is limited by slots, some of which only take specific items. Most items fill a single slot, others take two (note that this is not shown graphically, just some items disable more slots than others). You can’t have all slots filled. Even though you can’t select some items in the menu because you already have maximum amount of gear, you can still pick up secondaries and grenades from bodies. (You can always pick up additional ammo until the amount of magazines/rounds normally available with the extra ammo item is reached.)

You have one primary weapon slot, one secondary slot, sidearm (pistol) slot, grenade slot, and three item slots. You can use secondaries in primary slot¹⁾ but not the other way around. The minimal legal gear is primary (or secondary as primary), pistol, and one item in the first item slot (no matter whether you carry grenades or not).

You can select your gear anywhere, in any situation, but if you have moved or fired a shot, the changes will not take place until you respawn.

To script your gear or set it in CFG, you can use the gear cvar that’s used internally by the game to store your current setup.

Most of the weapons in UrT have fictional stats: either wrong ammo count or incorrect burst-fire capability, to speak nothing of the rate of fire (comparing the stopping power to their real-life counterparts would be just plain silly). Like in its spiritual predecessor Action Quake 2, the ejection port is usually on the left side for the cool effect of sending brass flying across your screen. The heavy Heckler & Koch prevalence was caused by one of the first modellers being German. The lineup has stayed mostly the same since UrT 2.0, released in June 2001. The weapons are not team-restricted — although there were plans for more differentiated sides²⁾, this will only become true when HD is released.

The accuracy-affecting stats can be classified as

• accuracy: determines how far the first shot can deviate from the zero (most weapons are claimed to be 100% accurate by the developers, PSG and SR8 are completely inaccurate when not scoped in)
• spread: dynamic deviation from the zero, grows the more you spam. This is perhaps the most important bit that gives even similar-powered weapons distinct personalities. AK103 for example has high spread that kicks in almost instantly, whereas Negev has very high spread that takes a lot of time to reach the maximum value.
• recoil: moves the point you aim at the higher the more you spam (spread is random and a bullet could hit zero; linear recoil takes care of that)

Different weapons have different cool-down rates, meaning the time between stopping shooting and the spread falling back to the normal for that weapon and aim zeroing (in UrT, recoil affects the aim only temporarily). Snipers are 100% accurate while scoped in, but completely inaccurate when not. All three scoped weapons also have very noticable movement penalty: walking, running, jumping, sliding or being on unstable footing (swimming, in the air) reduces the weapon’s accuracy to nothing. (The scope ring displayed around the crosshair center that shows your current spread works on a zero-small-medium-large principle, it doesn’t display the area the bullet would hit in.) The movement penalty of other weapons is negligible; crouching does not offer any advantage. See the items and grenades section below for reducing the spread.

All weapons other than launched and thrown grenades and knife are hitscan, meaning that there’s no bullet drop or flight time — each shot draws a straight line and instantly hits whatever it passes through. Possible delay between the shot and the hit is purely a networking artifact. Bullets can’t penetrate objects (other than breakables) so killing two people with a single shot is not possible. By default hit sounds are enabled, playing a “plink” every time a shot hits a living body (you can disable this with cg_hitsound 0). The hit sound is always the same regardless of the damage, but you can additionally enable a kill sound (cg_killsound 1).

The following table shows all the weapon numbers and settings for weapmodes.

You can use weapon <number> in binds and scripts (instead of ut_weaptoggle primary/secondary/sidearm/grenade/knife) to avoid problems when you’ve picked up smoke nades, using a secondary as primary, etc.

weapmodes_save is a string with all the firemodes you have set in format "00000100220000020002000" that’s saved whenever you change them (weapons and non-weapons with no firemodes will always have mode 0 set). For historical reasons the first digit is boots, always set to default (“kick”), and you can’t change it. If you have trouble getting the settings stick, you should remove this line (and weapmodes, if such exists) from your q3config.cfg completely, set all the modes again, and exit the game.

Butt, groin, upper/lower leg and foot⁴⁾ are 4.2 hit locations; all other damage values are identical between this version and 4.1(.1) (arms and legs were rated the same in the older one). In 4.2, only hits to lower leg and foot make you limp.

The ammo counts in the following table read as 15 × 3 = one 15-round magazine in the weapon, two spares (except in the case of Spas and HK69 where the second number is loose rounds).

Knife (Ka-Bar Next Generation Knife5))	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	60	44	35	20	40	37	20	18	15
	Ammo: 5 knives
	Fire modes: slice, throw6)
	Attachments: N/A
	Unlike in Counter-Strike, switching to knife doesn’t affect your speed in any way. The reason jumpers are commonly using knife is that it’s one of the smallest weapons, obscuring your view very little. Another reason might be that back in 2.x era the manual erroneously claimed that equipment reduces your stamina, so apparently people started dropping everything other than knives before going jumping (this is one of the myths that are refusing to die). Thrown knife has a very flat but slightly rising trajectory and the range is limited to less than 600 units (when thrown straight up from the “bottom” of Riyadh, it won’t hit the skybox). In pre-3.0 versions, knife was part of the weapon cycle, so people who used the mouse wheel to switch weapons had a habit of throwing all knives away at the start of the round.
Beretta (Beretta 92G7))	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	34	30	20	11	25	22	15	13	11
	Ammo: 15 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: semi
	Attachments: laser, silencer
	Beretta is one of the weakest weapons in the game, offset by its incredible accuracy, no recoil even while shooting at maximum rate, and fast reload. It’s similar in power to MP5 and Negev, with the exception of headshot being 100%.
Glock (4.2 only) (Glock 188))	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	60	40	33	23	14	28	25	17	14	11
	Ammo: 12 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: semi, burst
	Attachments: laser, silencer
	Glock is an attempted middle ground between Beretta and Deagle.
Colt (4.2 only) (Colt 19119))	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	60	37	27	15	32	29	22	15	11
	Ammo: 10 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: semi
	Attachments: laser, silencer
	Relatively low recoil that allows shooting it like Beretta, and rather good damage values seem to have made this pistol an instant hit.
Deagle (.50 Desert Eagle10))	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	66	57	38	22	45	41	28	22	18
	Ammo: 7 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: semi
	Attachments: laser
	Deagle or DE is the only weapon other than snipers capable of blowing heads off.
Spas (Franchi SPAS-12)	Body
	In 4.1(.1), Spas does not recognize hitzones; single pellet does 4 damage, the full blast is 80.
	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	~ 100	~ 80	~ 80	~ 40	~ 32	~ 59	~ 59	~ 40	~ 40	~ 40
	Ammo: in 4.1(.1): 6 + 20 (+ 40 with extra ammo) / in 4.2: 8 + 24 (+ 48 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: semi
	Attachments: N/A
	Spas is the only weapon in UrT with incremental reload: you load the rounds one by one until you release the key or the tube magazine is filled, being able to cancel the process and shoot at any moment. It’s also the only weapon you can’t reload while bandaging. Its random damage (even at point blank, some of the shot can miss) and horrible spread beyond short range makes it a rather unpopular weapon, carried only by a few snipers. Its ability to hit several zones with a single blast makes the target more likely to bleed out however, minimizing the effect of kevlar.
Mac (4.2 only) (Ingram MAC-11)	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	34	29	20	15	11	18	17	15	13	11
	Ammo: 32 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: auto
	Attachments: silencer
	Mac is the fastest-firing weapon in UrT, but its very low damage and high recoil and spread make it suitable for close quarters only.
MP5 (Heckler & Koch MP5K)	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	50	34	30	20	11	25	22	15	13	11
	Ammo: 30 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: burst, auto
	Attachments: laser, silencer
	MP5 is one of the few weapons that can’t kill with a single headshot. Its accuracy is mediocre, but its fire rate is among highest of all UrT weapons, only surpassed by that of Mac.
UMP (Heckler & Koch UMP45)	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	51	44	29	17	36	32	21	17	14
	Ammo: 30 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: spam, auto
	Attachments: laser, silencer
	A unique feature of UMP is the spam mode, introduced in 4.0: on every other weapon, burst is simply full auto restricted to three shots per trigger pull (with slightly tighter spread), but on UMP, spam has several times faster fire rate than auto. (In real life, such capability is called “hyper burst”; probably the only production-ready weapon with this feature is the Russian AN-94.) This is not a miracle mode though: if you miss, there’s a short delay before you can shoot again, not present in normal burst modes.
HK69 (Heckler & Koch HK69)	-
	Like HE grenades, HK69 nades do not show damage percentage on hit and the actual damage received from an explosion varies depending on distance.
	Ammo: 1 + 3 (+ 6 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: short range, long range
	Attachments: N/A
	HK69 single-shot grenade launcher is the trickiest weapon to use, not just because its nades do not explode on contact, but also because its code is full of funny bugs and edge cases. Direct hit by a nade can seemingly randomly vary from no damage at all to about 40%, but occasionally the nade kills the victim instantly (called a squirrel after the alternate death message). A nade can get stuck in the hit mesh — and if the hit player moves, the nade will stay in the air. HK69 is most useful for plugging chokepoints from farther away than you could do with HE nades, and of course random noobtubing. Due to its high miss rate, it’s perhaps the only weapon where taking extra ammo makes sense.
M4 & LR300 (Colt M4A111) & ZM LR300 ML)	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	51	44	29	17	37	33	20	17	14
	Ammo: 30 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: semi, burst, auto
	Attachments: laser, silencer
	LR300 is perhaps the most iconic UrT weapon, having appeared in just a few other games, and even then as one of the gazillion rifles — on the other hand, in UrT it’s the weapon for competitive players. M4 and LR300 are actually twins in every aspect, the history behind this being a bit convoluted. In UrT 2.6, LR300 was introduced as the replacement for M4 — while the officially stated reason was differentiating UrT from other games12) and the model for M4 showing its age, the possible reasons may include Colt being a bit of a trademark troll back then, and SID13) deciding to play it safe to avoid the possibility of having to pay licensing fees. This proved an unpopular move and after the developers got fed up with the community complaining, M4 was reinstated alongside the LR300 in UrT 3.2, their specs having drifted slightly apart by then. (The competitive scene, previously mainly M4 users, had switched to LR300 and have stayed with it.) This was the start of an argument lasting to this day whether the two weapons have any differences at all, and if, what exactly might they be. (The programmers have changed over time and nobody’s bothered to actually check the gamecode, which means that when developers chime in, its usually with “yeah, might be”.) In real life, LR300 is a licensed version of the AR-15 platform, with the direct impingement gas system replaced with a more conventional piston, and the action modified to work without the buffer tube, enabling the use of folding stock.
AK (Kalashnikov AK10314))	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	58	51	34	19	41	34	22	19	15
	Ammo: 30 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: semi, burst, auto
	Attachments: laser, silencer
	High damage, but low rate of fire and high recoil and spread make AK somewhat unpopular weapon (in the competitive scene, it’s seen in the hands of some CTF players).
G36 (Heckler & Koch G36)	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	51	44	29	17	37	33	20	17	14
	Ammo: 30 × 3 (× 5 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: semi, burst, auto
	Attachments: silencer
	Nicknamed “Gay36” by its detractors, G36 has the power of M4/LR300, but comes with a scope, offset by having fire rate as slow as that of AK103. It’s one of the preferred weapons in CTF, used mostly by defenders and/or on large maps. Although the model used since UrT 3.0 is the German domestic version with dual sights (reflex on top of scope), only the latter is usable.
Negev (IMI Negev)	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	50	34	30	20	11	25	22	13	11	9
	Ammo: 90 × 2 (× 3 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: auto
	Attachments: silencer
	Negev has mediocre accuracy, but low spread and recoil — you can spam the whole 90 rounds and still get hits (that’s the reason it’s the stereotypical aimbotter weapon). Its high ammo capacity is offset by very low damage, very long belt change, and the inability to carry a secondary. In 3.x versions where it was first introduced, Negev had 150 round belt, could only attach laser and reduced your stamina the same way kevlar still does. The stamina reduction hasn’t been true for ages, but since Negev is considered a gimmick weapon by most players and rarely used, the myth still persists.
PSG (Heckler & Koch PSG-115))	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	100	97	63	36	70	70	41	36	29
	Ammo: 8 × 4 (× 7 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: semi
	Attachments: silencer
	Nicknamed “PSGay” by its detractors, the “plink” (alongside with G36) is a beloved camper weapon on pub servers; on the other hand, its semi-auto action means easy headshots if you have to clear out a camper yourself. Its lower damage compared to SR8 is offset by the ability to shoot the whole magazine without unscoping and noticably lower movement penalty. A hit in the torso is usually a bleedout, but even if you manage to bandage in time, you’re just a very slow-moving target. In real life, PSG1 (a hand-built derivative of H&K G3) is claimed to be the most accurate semi-auto sniper ever, and is hilariously expensive — prices start at about US$10,000.
SR8 (Remington SR816))	Head	Helmet	Torso	Vest	Arms	Groin	Butt	Upper leg	Lower leg	Foot
	100	100	100	100	50	97	90	60	50	40
	Ammo: 5 × 4 (× 7 with extra ammo)
	Fire modes: bolt-action
	Attachments: N/A
	The “finger of God”17) of UrT is not as widely used as LR300 anymore, but its status as the quintessential l33t weapon has remained unchallenged for a dozen years. SR8 merrily ignores any protective equipment you might wear, but it’s power is offset by a long bolt-cycling animation that cannot be cancelled, meaning that getting hit immediately before/after a shot can end with bleeding out helplessly. Having been the sniper rifle ever since it was added, this weapon has received more than its share of changes, most notably high movement penalty after its power was increased to differentiate it from PSG in 3.x, and unscoping on getting hit, added in 4.1 (this is a major scource of complaints, since large ping difference can mean the SR8 user can still kill you before the unscoping happens). The latter was intended to keep SR8 from becoming a BFG after nobody liked the previous attempt in 4.0, the three-round magazine. Starting with 2.6a, the rifle does not re-scope automatically after the bolt cycle; since this gives control to you and doesn’t interrupt your current action (like evasive jumping), it’s a universally liked feature. In real life, SR-8 was a prototype based on Remington M700, developed for the Italian Army and rumored to go into production around the time UrT 2.0 was developed. This didn’t happen though; there were just a dozen test builds, most of them destroyed after the project was shelved.

Goggles, silencer and laser can be turned on and off with ut_itemuse (they all are turned on when you (re)spawn). Starting with 4.2.015 this command takes an argument (nvg, silencer or laser), allowing you to toggle them directly. In older versions the item in the first item slot is always toggled by default; to toggle other items you first have to select them with ut_itemnext or ut_itemprev.

Although listed as items, grenades can only be dropped with ut_weapdrop.

Grenades are dropped when you die and can be picked up by anyone; none of the following items share this characteristic, but it’s possible to deliberately drop them and then pick up.

Note for those familiar with US military slang: in 4.1, “kevlar” always means the vest, not the helmet. In 4.2, vest is called “vest”.

Kevlar vest cuts down on damage from all weapons except for SR8, but also reduces your stamina by half — competitive players usually have a kevlar drop bind to quickly get rid of it when low on health (TS) or escaping with the flag (CTF). Hits in the vest never bleed (except for those from knife). Although there’s no evidence to support this, dropping the kevlar supposedly also reduces the time it takes to fully bandage yourself.

Wearing a helmet means that only snipers can kill you with a single headshot, all others needing at least two. Helmet does not affect your stamina.

See also the beginner’s guide.

This is not a powerup but a tool — dropping the medkit won’t give any health to the person who picks it up. A person carrying it can heal other people up to 90% (without medkit, it’s only 50%); medkit also speeds up the healing process. You can’t heal yourself, but other people can heal the person carrying a medkit up to 90%, only at the normal bandaging speed though (to avoid this, many competitive players have a medkit drop bind). Regardless of how much it’s used, a medkit will never get depleted.

Although some claim medkit will also speed up bandaging, using this being the only way to avoid bleeding out from PSG hit in the torso, this is not true.

“Tacs” for short are some of the most unstable items in UrT history, having being buffed, nerfed and mangled in every major version. The “thermal imaging goggles” of 1.x simply highlighted all players, bodies and items, as did the “night vision goggles” in 2.x. However, the visibility of everything else was severely reduced over the point releases to the extent that by 2.6, it was impossible to walk around without bumping into things. In 3.x, the NVG acquired the familiar brackets around the active objects; back then these were colored, red for enemies and blue for friends (regardless of the actual teams). This was recognized as a problem, essentially turning tacs into the perfect camper tool (dubbed “noobvision”), and in 4.0, the map visibility was increased and team colors removed — the only way to tell a friend from a foe now is by aiming at them: the crosshair color changes and the health/name bar is displayed. Tacs are still among the least popular items, most useful in CTF matches where heavy smoke use takes place.

You can change the tacs color either in the menu (Options → Tac Goggles Color) or with cg_nvg:

• 0 green
• 1 red
• 2 blue
• 3 yellow
• 4 cyan
• 5 magenta
• 6 pink
• 7 orange

Laser gives you tighter groups (better accuracy), but also requires you to mind where you’re pointing the weapon — the red dot can alert an otherwise unaware enemy. It’s not intended as a replacement for your crosshair since the apparent size of the dot changes rather a lot depending on distance. The laser pointed at your eyes does not blind you and in fact isn’t visible to you at all.

Silencer reduces the sound and removes the muzzle flash; it does not reduce the damage. Although the description says it reduces the spread “a little”, it’s most likely a mistake (a remnant of a planned feature that was never implemented) — the actual effect measured by some players is just a percent or two, well within the margin of error. The developers have mostly avoided saying anything on the topic, but when they do they tend to deny that there is any spread reduction.¹⁸⁾

You can use both items at the same time on weapons that support them.

Perhaps the most useless item — the aggressive close-quarters nature of UrT means you’d be dead or the round over long before you’d need more ammo (and even so, picking up the ammo or the weapon of a dead player would be a better idea). Only HK69 users find it indispensable. You can’t drop this item.

Only used in bomb mode, this item is assigned randomly to a member of the red team, but can be dropped at will and picked up by others. Bomb can be switched to and dropped using weapon binds, not item binds.

More specific data about accuracy and reload times on Taggedzi’s UrT Oasis (these pages don’t discuss Spas, snipers or HK69 though)