Magnum in Build 42 — Damage, Weight, Range and Verdict

The Trade in One Line

The Magnum is the full stop at the end of the handgun scale: 1–1.6 damage out to 18 tiles, the longest reach of any sidearm in the verified set. It gives up nothing on damage to anything smaller and only one tile of reach to the B-F at identical weight 2. The costs are the cylinder’s pace between shots and a report that ends any claim to subtlety.

What the Numbers Mean in Play Cross-Verified

• Damage 1 – 1.6. The handgun ceiling — matched only by the B-F, beaten by nothing that fits a holster. It still eats a shotgun’s 1.5 – 2.2 for breakfast, so keep expectations at “best sidearm”, not “answer to a mob” (weapon tier list).
• Max range 18 tiles. Six further than the Patrol Revolver, one past the B-F. As always with this column it is the ceiling, not the effective envelope — the firearms guide covers what connects.
• Weight 2. The same as the B-F and the machete — the Magnum is where the sidearm conversation stops being about grams and starts being about what the extra half unit over a Patrol actually buys.
• Condition 10. Uniform gun durability; a long barrel is not a long life. Maintenance gates wear — skill leveling guide.
• Report. The loudest thing a one-handed gun in this set can say — firing it inside Louisville or the high-risk POIs is a decision about the next ten minutes, not the current zombie.
• Feed. A full-size cylinder: deliberate, slow between shots compared with the B-F’s magazine, and part of why one tile of reach is not the whole ranking.

When Not to Use It

• When you will be firing repeatedly at close range. The B-F does the same damage at the same weight with a faster rhythm and one lost tile — see B-F Pistol.
• When the pack is at weight 2 decisions already. The Patrol does 0.95 – 1.4 at 1.5; a spare sidearm is a lighter conversation.
• When one shot will not end it. Against a group, no handgun cycles fast enough; that is the shotguns’ job, from Shotgun down to the sawed-offs.

How It Compares

The Magnum and B-F share the top rung exactly — same band, same weight, one tile apart — and the choice between them is the cylinder-versus-magazine rhythm the dual-sourced columns cannot score. Below them the Magnum’s lead over the Patrol is real on every axis but weight. If you only ever carry one handgun, these are the two numbers to decide between.

Sources & Verification

Every printed figure on this page is agreed by two independent sources we can read today, matched by the in-game item ID Base.Revolver_Long:

What this is not. Neither source is our own measurement — nobody fired this gun in a test sandbox for this page. The noise value and the cylinder capacity exist only on the PZwiki side (pzfans has no comparable column), so they are described qualitatively above and never printed as numbers. Spawn locations are omitted for the same one-source reason. PZwiki stamps most firearm pages against builds older than 42.21, so treat this as 42.20-era agreement rather than 42.21-verified, and expect a patch note to move these numbers eventually.