Sawed-off JS-2000 Shotgun in Build 42 — Stats and Verdict

The Trade in One Line

The sawed-off JS-2000 is the family’s best compact build: 1.3–2 damage at a 10-tile max, weight 3, condition 10 — beating its sawn-double cousin on every combat column at the same price and giving the full pump only two tiles and the bottom sliver of damage for a whole weight unit. It is the loud argument you can always have.

What the Numbers Mean in Play Cross-Verified

• Damage 1.3 – 2. Its ceiling beats every handgun’s (the Magnum and B-F top out at 1.6) and only the full shotguns’ 2.2 tops it in the set. At eight tiles or less, few triggers in the worksheet say more.
• Max range 10 tiles. Two under the full Shotgun, two over the sawn doubles. A ceiling, and a short one: this gun’s whole career is inside the yard (firearms guide).
• Weight 3. The compact class — a full unit under the pumps and the doubles. Light enough that the honest role is ‘always in the vehicle, always reachable’, which is worth more than the two tiles you gave up.
• Condition 10. Shotgun standard, sawed or not — see the skill leveling guide for what slows the drain.
• Report. Full shotgun volume from a stub barrel: the loudest short message in the game, and in Louisville every sentence of it schedules company.
• Feed. Tube-fed — the compact gun that keeps going: unlike the doubles, it cycles without stopping at the end of an opening, and that sustained rhythm is its edge over every other sawed-off.

When Not to Use It

• When the full pump is available. Shotgun buys back 12 tiles and the 1.5 floor for one weight unit — if reach is the complaint, that is the fix.
• When you need to reach out, not react fast. Ten tiles against a rifle’s 30+ is a different assignment entirely — see MSR788 Rifle.
• When weight 3 is still weight you do not have. A handgun at 1.5–2 keeps the belt free; this only wins if the extra unit is spent gladly.

How It Compares

Within the compact class this gun simply is the better purchase: same weight as the sawn doubles, more damage, more reach, more feed. Against the full-size pumps it concedes two columns but keeps a weight unit, and that unit is the entire product. If you can only have one shotgun and it has to go everywhere you go, these are the numbers to argue from — and the weapon tier list shows where guns sit in the wider plan.

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.ShotgunSawnoff:

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 tube capacity exist only on the PZwiki side (pzfans has no comparable column), so they are described qualitatively above and never printed as numbers. Per-shell pellet behavior is likewise single-source and absent here. Spawn locations are omitted for the same one-source reason. PZwiki stamps this page against a 41.x-era build and most of the set likewise predates 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.