How to clean and upgrade weapons in Metro Exodus Learn how to upgrade your weapons and clean them in Metro Exodus. Your weapons are vital to your survival in Metro Exodus. While you’ll have a few different weapons to work with, upgrading them will help you tailor them to fit the situation on hand. You’ll also need to clean and maintain your weapons, as they will have a much higher chance to jam or have other issues when they become dirty. How to Upgrade Your Weapons When your journey first kicks off in Metro Exodus, you’ll find yourself working with basic weapons. As you dive deeper into the story and unlock new regions, though, you’ll find yourself with even more weapons to work with. As you explore and acquire new goods, you’ll be given the chance to upgrade your weapons. To upgrade your weapon, you’ll want to visit a Workbench. We’ve already shown you how to find a Workbench early on in the story, so head to the nearest one and interact with it. After interacting with it, you’ll be given a series of different options. You can craft items like medkits and ammo, or you can visit the weapons tab on the Workbench and situate different attachments onto your various weapons. You can install different attachments in the Workbench. All of the weapon parts you’ve pulled from the world will find their way to whatever Workbench you want to use to upgrade your weapons. Here you can see the various stocks, sights, and even firing mechanisms and magazines that you have available. To place an upgrade on a gun, simply highlight the gun and choose the attachment. This will place it on the weapon, allowing you to start using it. Keep in mind that the stats of the item will change depending on the different parts you attach to it. How to Clean Your Weapons Cleaning and maintaining your weapons is crucial to survival in Metro Exodus. Running around with dirty weapons will lead to less damage, accuracy and even jamming, which can turn a simple situation with enemies into a battle for life or death very quickly. To clean your weapons, you will need to visit a Workbench. Once here, select the Weapons tab at the top and then highlight the weapon that you want to clean. Here you’ll be able to see the overall status of the weapon, as well as the stats that are currently being affected by the gun’s dirtiness. Follow the prompts on the screen to clean the item and restore its basic stats back to normal. Now that you know how to upgrade and clean your weapons, make sure you visit our Metro Exodus guide for more helpful content and strategy guides. You can also check out our review of Metro Exodus to see how the third installment in the series stands up to the rest.<doc-sep>Metro Exodus wants you to be stealthy, but sometimes you need to put some lead down range. Thankfully, 4A Games gives you plenty of guns to play with, from six-shooter pistols to Gatling guns and sniper rifles—you’ll soon find your favourites. But managing your weapons in Exodus is no simple task. You have to decide which weapon loadout works best for a given situation, and you often don’t know what lies ahead. You have to hunt down upgrades strewn about the world, searching off the main path for minor improvements in damage or accuracy. And you need to keep your weapons clean of water, sand and snow to make sure they’re performing at their peak. It sounds overwhelming, but you’ll soon get used to it—and this guide is designed to help you do just that. Here’s everything you need to know about the weapons in Metro Exodus, from which guns are best to where you can find the most important upgrades. Metro Exodus weapon types Pistols and shotguns Revolver: A reliable, powerful pistol that kicks heavily, so you have to wait between shots. Ashot: Wildly inaccurate, but dishes out more damage than any other gun in the game. Shambler: A revolving shotgun with high damage and low accuracy. Takes a long time to reload. SMGs and rifles Bastard: A rapid-fire SMG that stays accurate when you spray, but is prone to overheating and jamming. Kalash: An all-rounder—it doesn’t deal much damage, but it’s decent at any range. Bulldog: An AR that’s an upgrade on the Kalash in every way, except that it fires slightly slower and degrades faster. Valve: A high-damage sniper rifle with a hell of a kick. Gatling gun: A rotating barrel machinegun that’s powerful and fun to use, but requires you to spin it up. Inaccurate at any sort of range. Air-powered weapons Tikhar: A makeshift air gun that you have to pump up regularly to keep firing. It doesn’t deal much damage, but it’s accurate and mostly silent. You pick up another air-powered weapon later in the game—but I don’t want to ruin the surprise. How to choose your weapons You always carry three weapons: two regular guns and one air-powered gun, which will be the Tikhar air rifle for most of the game. There’s no restriction on which regular guns you can carry, so you could roll with two revolvers kitted out differently, if you wanted to. You have two ways to change which guns you’re carrying—either you can swap a weapon with one you find on the floor, usually on a downed enemy, or you can choose between all the weapons you’ve previously found when you’re back at your workbench on the Aurora, the train that acts as your home base throughout the story. To swap weapons at your workbench, click on the gun icon at the top of the screen, then the two arrows in the menu on the left. You’ll see a comparison of your current weapon and the one you’re swapping in, so you’ll know whether you’re losing stopping power. How to customise your weapons Upgrade your gear Looking for the best upgrades? Check out our feature on the best Metro Exodus weapon upgrades and attachments, and where to find them. Every weapon in the game is customisable. You can change the grip to improve stability, switch out the barrel to alter damage, pick new sights, fit a new magazine and attach a gadget, such as a laser pointer. You have to find new attachments before you use them, usually by picking them off the weapons of downed enemies. When aiming at a weapon on the floor, you’ll see an outline of the gun, and any attachments you haven’t seen before will be shown in orange. You can hold E to swap the gun with your current weapon, or hold R to just grab the attachments. When you take the new attachments, you’ll get a small orange icon on the right of your screen. Note that if you grab an attachment for a weapon you’re not currently carrying, the icon won’t show up. But don’t worry—the attachment will be available when you’re back at the Aurora, where you can flick through and customise all your guns at will. To slap on your new attachments, open your backpack by holding the I key at any time. There, you can flick between all the available upgrades for each weapon, and the game will tell you how each one changes the gun’s accuracy, damage and stability. Not every weapon can take every type of attachment, but some weapons share the same pool of attachments. It’s therefore worth grabbing the parts off every gun you find (by holding R as described above), just in case you can get a spare. And if you can’t find a specific weapon attachment that you’re sure you already picked up, check that it’s not on one of your other guns. The whole upgrading process can be fiddly, especially when you’re picking up attachments from weapons on the ground. It’s often hard to tell what upgrades a weapon has before you pick it up—the best thing to do is to swap the gun with your current weapon and then immediately open your backpack to see what you just picked up. Make sure you also find the eight-shot cylinder for your revolver, which you’ll find at the bandit camp at the location below. The best weapons and weapon combos Every player will have their own favourite weapon in Exodus, and I recommend you try them all out to get a feel for what fits your playstyle. But there are some that are just downright better than others—as well as some general rules to follow when figuring out which guns you should take on a mission. The revolver is a beast at every stage of the game. Seriously, it doesn’t have a weakness. It can fill any role thanks to its long list of possible attachments: I’ve used it as both a silenced pistol in stealth missions and a loud sniper rifle with a 4x scope. It’s not quite as powerful as the Ashot or Shambler, but it still makes light work of most enemies. Pistol plus shotgun is a very good combo, especially early on. The revolver’s accuracy makes it good at mid-range, and pairing it with a shotgun or the powerful Ashot pistol will cover all your bases early in the game, where there are very few long-range fights. The Valve is the only sniper in the game, really. It’s streets ahead of every other gun at range, and you can slap a 6x scope on it for faraway enemies. Get it as soon as you get to the desert (it’s in a small tower to the left of the road between the Aurora and the main part of town). The Kalash is fine, but use the Bulldog instead. You’ll find the Bulldog in the desert area—I got mine during the lighthouse assault when you’re meeting up with Guil. It’s better than the Kalash in every way. It’s amazing silenced, too, so don’t be afraid to screw the suppressor on. Take an Ashot with you if there are monsters about. Shotgun ammo does extra damage to monsters, so if you know you’re facing beasts rather than humans, reach for your Ashot. It melts enemies at short range. How to clean your weapons Weapons deteriorate as they’re exposed to the elements, including sand, rain or blizzards. This affects their condition and damage output, so you’ll want to clean them as often as possible. You can do it at any workbench by selecting a weapon, clicking on the brush icon that pops up on the left of your screen and holding down F. Cleaning uses up your chemical resource pool, but it’s cheap, so don’t worry about exhausting your reserves. And finally, some general weapon tips Always aim for the heads of humanoid enemies. Even a battered, low-damage gun is a one-hit kill. Body shots deal little damage. When facing monsters, look for their weak spots. Often, that’ll be their head, but sometimes it’ll be elsewhere on their body.<doc-sep>Metro Exodus’s hostile world starves you of resources. Vital med kits, ammo and gas mask filters are hard to come by, which means you need to craft your own from materials you scrounge on your travels if you want to survive. Developer 4A games has kept the crafting simple, but there are still nuances to learn as well as tricks that will help you avoid wasting precious materials. In this guide, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about crafting in Metro Exodus, including how to craft, where to find components and how to prioritise which items to make. What you can craft in Metro Exodus Every consumable in Metro Exodus is craftable, which means you can make med kits, gas mask filters, throwing items such as grenades, and ammo for all your weapons. There are four different types of regular ammo to craft, split by pistols, assault rifles, shotguns and snipers. Air-powered guns have their own separate ammo types as well as special ammo variants, such as incendiary bullets. In terms of throwables, you can make grenades, Molotov cocktails, throwing knives and tin cans to distract enemies. You can also upgrade your gear—such as your vest and helmet—by finding modules out in the world and bringing them to a workbench. How to craft in Metro Exodus There are two ways to craft. Either you can open your backpack at any time (hold the I key) or interact with a workbench. If you’re using your backpack, you can only craft med kits, gas mask filters and ammo for your air-powered guns, one of which you carry in a third weapon slot. If you want to craft ammo for your two regular weapons—the ones you’ll be using most of the time—as well as throwables, you need a workbench. Workbenches are only found on the Aurora, the train that acts as your home base, or in safe houses. There’s no sure-fire way to find safe houses other than to explore points of interest, marked by question marks on your map. Safe houses are marked green after you discover them. Whether you’re crafting from your backpack or at a workbench, the interface is easy to navigate—you just click through the menus to highlight the object you want and hit E to craft it. Provided you have the required components (I’ll go into that below), it’ll be added to your inventory. There are two crafting components There are only two crafting components: materials, represented by a gear icon, and chemicals, represented by a chemistry flask. You don’t need to worry about the difference between them because most recipes require a bit of both, and you’ll find them in roughly equal quantities. Where to find crafting components You can’t miss them. They’re on shelves in buildings, on corpses in the middle of the road, in the boots of rusting cars, lying around abandoned campfires—basically, you’ll find them in any place that looks even remotely interesting. However, they can be hard to distinguish from other objects because they mostly look like any old junk, so the best thing to do is just mouse over any likely spots. If the object is harvestable, you’ll be prompted to pick it up by pressing E, which will give you anywhere between 1 and 10 crafting components. It’s hard to tell whether you’ll get materials or chemicals (or both) just by looking at the item beforehand. There are also specific types of containers to look out for that will always contain components, including small blue lock boxes and lockers, which you can open and then loot. Dead bodies nearly always have crafting materials on them, so make sure you loot all the enemies that you kill. Don’t bother trying to loot monster corpses, though—you don’t get any resources from them. You should also strip dead enemies’ weapons of their attachments by holding R. If the attachment works with your current weapons it’ll move to your inventory, but if it’s a duplicate of what you already have you’ll get crafting components instead, which is handy. As a last resort, you can dismantle consumables into crafting components. You only get around 20% of an item’s cost back, so only do it if you’re desperate. It’s usually more efficient to just explore your immediate area. What to prioritise when crafting If you have a small pool of resources (less than 100 of each component, say) then you should prioritise med kits. Without them, you’re toast. If you’re in an area where you need to wear your gas mask, make sure you have spare filters, too, because being caught short means instant death. You can craft both from your backpack. While crafting on the fly with your backpack, the only other thing you can make is ammo for your air-powered weapon slot—most likely the makeshift Tikhar air rifle early in the game. This ammo is cheap to craft, but I’d only recommend it if you’re running low for your two primary weapons, which are likely more powerful than the Tikhar. If you’re well-stocked on med kits and ammo then save your resources instead, because chances are you’ll need to make more med kits at some point. Some tips on maximising your resources To conserve ammo, go for headshots—you’ll drop enemies in one, compared to four or five body shots. Avoid taking fall damage. You can’t drop very far before you get hurt, so don’t jump off anything if you’re uncertain, because you’ll need to waste a med kit patching yourself up after. If you're low on bullets, opt for a stealthy approach to conserve ammo. it's safer too, which means you'll use fewer med kits. Save throwable objects. Generally you won't need them in firefights, and you'll want to hoard them for the occasional mini-boss battles in Metro Exodus. Molotovs are particularly useful here. Move quicker in areas with deadly gases. Chances are you ahve five minutes or less of filter time before you start choking, so don't linger. How to upgrade your gear While not technically part of crafting, you upgrade your gear—your armoured vest, gas mask, helmet, etc—at a workbench too. It doesn’t cost crafting resources, but you’ll need to find the specific upgrade parts out in the world first. You can find ammo pouches to add to your vest, or armoured glass for your helmet, for example. These upgrades are unique and you can only select one at a time: you can’t have, say, the armoured glass upgrade equipped at the same time as the reinforced helmet upgrade. It’ll be obvious when you come across an upgrade because you’ll see the E key prompt alongside an icon of whatever item you’re improving—it’s your wrist guard in the example below. These items are either found during main quests (you’ll have to look in side rooms sometimes), or at major points of interest, such as bandit camps. Once you have the upgrade part, you can improve your gear at any workbench. You can also upgrade your weapons, which is covered in our Metro Exodus weapons guide.<doc-sep>
When it comes to finding the best weapons in Metro Exodus, you’ll quickly find that you don’t have all that many weapons at your disposal, or even enough ammunition to kill every enemy you come across. So, you’ll have to get a little creative. Understanding the basics of the game’s arsenal is extremely important as it can make fighting enemies easier and less frustrating. The best weapons in Metro Exodus Bulldog “2012” You’ll start Metro Exodus with the Kalash rifle, which is great for spraying bullets down hallways and quickly taking out mutants or humans at close-range, but you’ll find the weapon struggles to stay relevant when you start facing enemies using sniper rifles or crossbows. The Bulldog is capable of hitting targets accurately from a much longer distance, enabling you to save ammunition you’d be wasting on the Kalash. If you prefer, you can also equip a larger magazine as well as a reflex sight, turning it into an all-purpose weapon. Ashot “Duplet” As soon as you have the opportunity to swap out your pistol for a shotgun in Metro Exodus, you should take it – the class is crucial to your survival when you’re being swarmed by mutants or need to take down a larger target. The Ashot’s “Duplet” configuration gives you two high-damage shotgun shells before you have to reload, and it strikes a good balance between power and maneuverability. Because conserving ammunition is so important, it’s a better option than the four-barrel variant, which will encourage you to waste your shots as targets move closer. Valve There are few places in Metro Exodus where long-range sniping makes sense from a resource perspective, but a particular forest region late in the game all but demands you do. The Valve is a bolt-action and extremely powerful sniper rifle that you can use to land shots to the head or chest of enemies from long distance, and with an increased magazine attached to it, it can turn you into a one-man army. The weapon is fairly loud, so you won’t want it for stealth scenarios, but it can serve as a great backup plan in case you’re spotted sneaking around. Helsing The same forest segment where the Valve is useful is also a great opportunity to try out the Helsing crossbow. An excellent stealth tool, the Helsing is capable of killing targets at a medium distance with high accuracy, particularly if you’re making use of a sight or night-vision scope. The weapon is more than a stealth tool, however, as it can be equipped with special explosive bolts. If fired in the right locations, these bolts can kill several human targets at once, and they’re also extremely useful for taking on some of the larger threats roaming the area. Tikhar The Tikhar pneumatic air rifle is the most iconic weapon in the Metro series, as its compressed air pumping system and steel ball projectiles mean you don’t ever need to locate ammunition for it. Instead, you can make your own from metal scraps you find, and as long as you keep it fully pumped, it should be your go-to choice for taking out both mutants and humans quietly. The Tikhar naturally loses some of its pressure if you fully pump it, but this drawback can be eliminated by fitting it with an airtight device found early in the game. If you’re running low on ammunition for other guns, it can also be your last resort. Metro Exodus weapon tips and tricks 1. Clean all of your weapons When you stop by a workbench to craft supplies and get your inventory in order, you have the option to clean your weapons for a small number of resources. What Metro Exodus doesn’t do a great job of telling you is that you don’t just do this once in order to clean them. Instead, you have to make sure every weapon is cleaned individually. This seems like a small responsibility, but guns jam almost immediately when they’re dirty, and you need to un-jam them before they’ll fire again. In combat, those few seconds can and will get you killed. 2. Swap attachments regularly The sight, magazine, or barrel you have on your rifle might be good for your current environment, but there’s a good chance they won’t be when you enter a new area. Don’t be afraid to swap out the components of your weapons to suit new environments, especially if you’re going from a sneaking section to one with full-on gunfights.