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

The Trade in One Line

The Shotgun is the worksheet’s stopping-power king with a short leash: 1.5–2.2 damage tops every gun here, but the max range column says 12 — pistol distance — and the report says ‘everyone, everywhere within earshot’. Weight 4 is a dedicated carry, and condition 10 says it is not a tool you keep forever. You are buying the ability to delete the front rank before it reaches the porch.

What the Numbers Mean in Play Cross-Verified

• Damage 1.5 – 2.2. The highest ceiling in the entire dual-sourced gun set — even the M1A and the hunting rifles stop at 2. One solid hit at the good end does what a sledgehammer does at 2 – 3, from twelve tiles instead of arm’s reach.
• Max range 12 tiles. The same reach as a Patrol Revolver — shotguns live and die inside a courtyard (firearms guide). Past the treeline the rifles own the field; see MSR788 Rifle.
• Weight 4. Heavy for what it is: a full unit above the heaviest handgun and two under the sledgehammer. This is a main-arm choice, not a spare.
• Condition 10. Uniform across the set — the pump is no more durable than a snub revolver. Maintenance governs wear (skill leveling guide).
• Report. The loudest conversation in the worksheet — the reason shotgun runs around Louisville and the high-risk POIs are planned as extractions, not sweeps.
• Feed. Tube-fed pump: it keeps firing between shots in a way the two-barrel guns cannot, which is the actual difference this and the JS-3T have against the Double Barrel.

When Not to Use It

• In the open field. Twelve tiles of ceiling against a rifle’s 30 or 40 means the thing you want to shoot either closes the gap or never lets you get that close (M16 Assault Rifle).
• Where noise is debt. Clearing a town you intend to loot afterwards is a knife-and-perch job; every boom-stick shot converts remaining daylight into a crowd problem.
• When a tube-fed gun is already in the house. The JS-3T does the same damage and reach with a bigger feed — take it if found.

How It Compares

Four guns, one damage column worth of story: the base Shotgun is the balanced center — full power, tube feed, average reach. The JS-3T adds feed capacity for weight; the Double Barrel buys three tiles of reach at the same weight but twin barrels instead of a tube; the sawed-offs sell damage and reach to buy back a weight unit. Pick by terrain, not by power — they are all the power. Overall ranking is in the weapon tier list.

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.Shotgun:

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 most firearm pages against builds older than 42.21 — this one’s own stamp is the newest in the set — so treat this as 42.20-era agreement rather than 42.21-verified, and expect a patch note to move these numbers eventually.