Your travel kit
In Star Citizen, the right equipment plays a big role. It affects how well you hold up in fights, how you handle missions or simply how safely you get around. In this section I’ll show you what matters with weapons, armor and tools, how to get them and what to look out for.
Weapons
Weapons in Star Citizen are diverse and specialized. The range goes from knives and pistols for up-close encounters to assault rifles and sniper rifles for more distance to your target, all the way to rocket launchers and railguns for greeting vehicles and smaller ships.
You can buy the standard versions with different skins in shops on planets and space stations, and stock up on ammo. Many shops also sell optional weapon attachments: laser pointers, optical sights, suppressors and much more.
But for the best versions of weapons and attachments, you’ll have to get your hands dirty and search areas guarded by plenty of enemies for crates. Low-light sights, special barrels, and even entire weapons like railguns and rocket launchers can only be found on missions.
Attachments
Press J to open the weapon modification view. Here you can point your mouse at an area, such as the scope, and then cycle through all available modifications with the mouse wheel.
Another option is to drag the attachment onto the weapon with your mouse in the inventory menu I.
Attachments under the barrel, like flashlights or laser pointers, are activated with the U key.
Armor and backpacks
Armor protects you from damage and affects your mobility at the same time. Right now, though, the system is fairly simple. There’s light, medium and heavy armor, which protects you and restricts your movement accordingly.
Just as important, though, is protection from the environment. To survive in a vacuum, all you need is your undersuit and a helmet. Everything else you wear also protects you from radiation, heat and cold. So on a scorching hot or freezing moon, the right armor isn’t just a question of being bulletproof.
CIG’s plans go further, though. At some point there are supposed to be stealth armor, pilot armor, utility armor and lots more, but all of that is still written in the stars.
The weight of your armor also determines the size of backpack you can equip. The heavier the armor, the bigger the possible backpack, and the more room for extra stuff like ammo and spare weapons or loot from your enemies.
What you lose when you die
Sooner or later, it’ll get you. The good news: you keep everything you’re wearing. That means your weapons, armor, ammo and grenades, your Multi-Tool, MedPens and the MedGun.
What you do lose is everything you’re carrying around in your inventory, whether it’s in your backpack, your pockets or your chest armor. And that’s exactly where all the loot usually is after a successful bunker run.
Better fly the loot you’ve collected back to the station once in between instead of hauling everything around until the very end. It’s safe there. You can read what exactly happens to your body and your inventory under inventory after death, and how to get back on your feet under health and respawn.
(Multi-)Tools
If you ask a Star Citizen what the most important item is, the one that must never be missing on any mission, whether in the deepest bunker or just on the way to the nearest toilet, the most common answer will be “the Multi-Tool”. Need to repair something, clear debris out of the way, load crates, mine ore, pop your co-pilot’s shoulder back in? The GreyCat Multi-Tool is your savior in times of need.
Is your ship broken? Multi-Tool. Did you get shot? Multi-Tool. Stuck in zero-g with no thrust left in your suit1? Believe it or not, Multi-Tool!
Available in all well-stocked shops in the galaxy. Just make sure you don’t only buy the base, but also the attachments you need:
- TruHold Tractor Beam Attachment for moving loads or flying through zero-g.
- LifeGuard Medical Attachment to top up your HP.
- Cambio-Lite SRT Attachment helps you strip ship materials or repair your ship.
- OreBit Mining Attachment for small mining nodes. Mine gems and earn a little pocket money on the side.
But if you want to see your favorite tool in a different color, you’ll be disappointed. In stores it only comes in practical warning yellow. But there’s a fix for that too. For that, you’ll have to get the guns out of the cupboard once again and head deep into the bunkers. And again: don’t forget your Multi-Tool!
And if you ever run into something your favorite tool can’t push aside, there’s still its big brother, the
Soon™ ↩︎