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There are three main types of weapon-grenade, fixed and projectile.

Grenades

Grenade-the pineapple (hand grenade)

All classes except for the scout have the good old pineapple. This trusty grenade always comes in useful for destroying fixed guns and for spreading limbs along the sniper balcony. It is primed by pressing "f" normally and will start counting down from 4 seconds. It is not shown on the screen other than a little icon on the left. Once released you have three seconds or less before it blows up depending on how long you held it. The pineapple if held too long does go rotten and will discharge in your face and is extremely embarrassing. The blast radius is formidable and can take out a few of the weaker classes in one blast. Another good use other than hurling it into a fray is throwing one while under retreat. You will gently walk over your grenade and the following class will be thoroughly annoyed when it blows up beneath them.

Caltrops

Only used by the scout-these "grenades" that do not explode are new to TFC. The caltrops are metals spines which look like a piece of barbed wire. Once primed they are immediately dropped and scattered. Each drop is random but five caltrops are always dropped. Once walked upon by the defence they will loose some health (6) and some armour (3) but will drop in speed considerably. A little icon on the left comes up on their screen looking like a foot which has treaded on some spikes. They find it difficult to go at normal speed let alone chase a fast scout.

Concussion Grenades

Used by the scout and medic these grenades are very useful in stopping snipers from aiming and stopping people from walking straight. The grenade looks like a metal box with a green covering. It takes four seconds for it to blow, but the blast radius is large. The scouts concussion grenade is larger (note) and its effects last longer. Once hit by a concussion grenade, the screen aims by itself in random directions and it is difficult to aim with. If hit by this grenade, you loose no health but you get shot away from the grenade at a fast speed and upwards. It is possible to CG jump very high, or to quickly gain speed by jumping near to the grenade. You get pushed away from the grenade and so it is possible that you will push team-mates back to the base if they follow you.

Gas Grenade

The gas grenade is the most fun and sinister grenade. Released only by the spy by pressing "g" a large pill shape capsule which is blue on one side and pink on the other will settle on a flat surface or in the water. It releases after being in the air for two seconds a toxic hallucination gas will spread in a large radius and will make anyone within it hallucinate for a period of time. The longer they are in it the more affected they get. Other than hallucinating them, it also slowly drains there health while they are in its radius. The grenade is not everlasting though and will eventually run out but its affects last longer. While hallucinating you cannot make out real from unreal. Depending on how badly affected you are, you will see shots ricocheting of walls in front of you and grenades landing beside you. If a spy has lad this grenade and is still in the vicinity-run back to base as you will make easy prey otherwise.

Nail Grenade

Only used by the soldier this grenade is lethal to the weaker classes. It is red in appearance and look exactly like the MIRV grenade. Once it is ready to explode after a few seconds like a MIRV it instead raises off the ground spins and shoots nail in all directions. Although each shot is weak, it releases about 50 nails or more. This can pin down scouts to stop them from getting the flag. Once it has fired all the nails it will explode with the damage of a grenade, after this shrapnel will hit anyone who was near it at the time taking a small amount of damage which is sometimes lethal.. This tactic can be used for good use to stem the flow of enemies. If you throw one of these into an enemy respawn room, any one inside will take a lot of damage. Each nail takes 1-5 health and 12-20 armour points. The shrapnel takes away 0-4 lots of 2-4 damage depending how far away you are.

MIRV Grenade

Boom! BOOM! You can't say anything other than that about this grenade. A feat that only Half-Life's scientists could develop for use against the aliens. These grenades are the size of four clenched fists put together and look red. Surrounding the red explosives is a metal casing which explodes in a way so that it fires shrapnel. It looks almost exactly like a nail grenade but a nail grenade most can survive if you run. This is difficult to run away from and not take any damage. Once thrown the grenade will blow up after 3 seconds and it will firstly blow the casing off with the same affects as a grenade. As it does this, it spreads 5 balls of plastic explosive around it before it burns up. These land on the ground and quite hard to see after an explosion. Two seconds after the casing blows up, these plastic explosives in turn blow up causing double grenade damage each! These lethal explosives are only issued to the strong and the experts in the field of explosives. For this reason only demomen and heavy weapon guys can carry them.

Napalm Grenade

This is an unusual grenade as it fuels it self on the surface it is on whether it be wood or even water! It looks like a little flask of oil and browny stuff which after 4 seconds blows up and covers a small patch of ground with flames which will burn anyone who goes over it with heavy duty flames. The flames rip through armour and go straight for the flesh (taking some armour) and will burn slowly even when they are out of the original blast area. The flames will die out quickly though but it is useful against scouts who can't take much damage. These can only be used by the pyro.

EMP Grenade

The engineers second love. If the engineer is chased by a demoman a grenade won't help much. Nor will that puny shotgun or even spanner... What you need is the engineers "Room Cleaner 2000". The EMP grenade is unusual in that it does not have any explosives in it-yet it causes more damage than a MIRV if well positioned. It looks like a frisbee (green) with an outside metal shell which only helps to stabilise it. Almost invisible in dark places and ideal if being chased it explodes like a concussion grenade (i.e.. a green wave which expands instead of white one) and with its electrical sensors it blows up all ammunition and explosives on a person. This means the damage caused is different depending on how much ammunition a class can carry but not how much it is carrying for some reason. If thrown in an enemy respawn room it can wreak havoc....

Detpack

I do not know where to place this piece of kit, it is fixed but it is similar in action to a grenade. It is used by a demoman and is really underused. To lay it press and hold "m" until it says detpack laid. If you press "m" it will blow up in 5 seconds so you have to run! The detpack will cause a massive (not Hollywood massive) explosion and will clear a whole room of personnel quickly. The radius is three times as big as a grenade and it will automatically kill anyone in the radius. The detpack is also special in that it can clear obstacles in some maps. For example on the level "rock2" you can make a hole right in the middle of the enemy yard!

Fixed

Sentry guns can only be made by engineers, they are emplacements which actively search the area it is facing and to automatically attack enemy soldiers.

Sentry Gun Level 1

Rather weak, but it is the ultimate ant-scout device. Cuts down armour slowly but cuts through flesh quickly. Uses ammo sparingly and it will withstand one grenade only. The gun is a light machine gun and so needs to be constantly filled up with ammo.

Sentry Gun Level 2

Significantly stronger and fires at a much faster rate. Cuts through armour much quicker than a level 1 sentry gun. This can take out every class other than a soldier, demoman and heavy weapons guy. The armour will protect the gun for a while but it can't cope against more than three people without being repaired. The gun is a gatling gun and so fires extremely quickly-fill it up before you do anything else.

Sentry Gun Level 3

The highest level a sentry gun can get to. The armour is extremely strong and can cope against almost anything. Its rocket launcher destroys armour quickly but signifies which direction the sentry gun is. The double gatling guns are the business though. They wreak havoc and can kill scouts by the bucket load. Even heavy weapon guys will find a level three sentry gun a hard task to destroy. For some reason the ammo capacity is much larger and does not need constant maintenance

Sentry guns are good killers but they are not strong at all. Two hand grenades will destroy any sentry gun and so spies are often used to destroy sentry guns. Two or even better three, sentry guns positioned near the flag or a hotspot (place where enemies keep having to go through :-also known as a bottleneck) are almost unstoppable. Two or more spies are needed against two or more guns. Sentry guns are excellent in spots that are unshootable by the enemy. Within a base, sentry guns are the backbone of the defence. Sentry guns are avoidable as they turn slowly and can only scan 45 degrees in front of them. Just remember more sentry guns means that more spies are needed and so the enemy will have less of a defending force. You can only build one sentry gun unfortunately.

Dispenser

Not a weapon but useful anyway. Made only by engineers, they give out ammo and armour to all players who touch the dispenser. It is useful not in your base but near the enemies as a resupply. They can be used as explosives when detonated but are more useful near to door ways and corridors to slow down enemies especially when they are going for the flag. You can also build dispensers on dropped key cards to hide them.

Fixed Gun Emplacement

Another type of fixed gun is the emplacement available in some maps only. It is for the use of all players and is found at certain points in a level. To use them press "e" and aim using the mouse. They can only fire in a limited area. They have unlimited ammo and are quite useful for killing scouts. Not as many maps as I would like have them.

Projectile Weapons

There are quite a lot of weapons and so I will often use references to describe common weapons. I will describe the weapons each class has.

Scout

1) Crowbar-All classes other than the medic and the spy have a crowbar as weapon one. The crowbar has slowed down a lot since the original Half-Life multiplayer game. It should only be used as a last resort and you should blame yourself for getting into the situation of having no ammunition. The crowbar however can be used to finish of people who have been wounded in combat and have only a tiny bit of health left. While using your crowbar, you move faster as a heavy weapons guy.

2) Light Shotgun-Used by some but not all of the classes. Inaccurate, it has no real purpose for long range use but it does have a wide spread-so is useful against snipers, either short or long range. At long range only minor damage is dealt (about 1-10 health) and a bit of armour is taken off (2-5) but at short range and point blank, when aimed at the head can take off 20 health and 40 armour. The difference between the light shotgun and the super shotgun is that the super shotgun can carry 4 more shells (12 instead of 8) and the damage is slightly greater aswell as the fact that the dispersion is much wider. Produces 7 shots which each have a damage of (2-4). 50/200 ammunition.

3)None.

4)Nailgun-A special nailgun used by the scout. Has a maximum of 200 nails. It has a mixed use. It can kill snipers and scouts and other lightly armoured units easily but it does have the drawback that it takes lots of nails to destroy armour (1 nail takes 2 points of armour). Although the gun does fire rapidly, the nails are unaerodynamic and move quite slowly. Another use is for destroying sentry guns that can't see you.

5)None.

Sniper

1)Crowbar-See Scout

2)Sniper Rifle-Special to the sniper, it has two modes of fire. Sniping and auto fire. Auto fire is accounted as a different gun though. The sniper rifle is the most lethal weapon in the game. As you hold the fire button, the gun butt is propped up and you move slower. When aiming the gun shine a red laser dot which is massive-on purpose for all to see. If you want to see your target zoomed up 20x then "right click" and you will zoom in. The gun will power up as soon as you see the red dot. A fully powered shot takes 3 seconds to power up. If you aim at the head with a fully powered shot then you automatically kill as it causes more than 350 armour to be lost, and more than 120 health to be lost. That is more than a HWGuy and so a fully powered head shot will kill anyone. Sniper jumping is also possible. Go to Tips for more details.

3)Auto Rifle-The sniper rifle's second mode is for when the sniper is on the run and can't afford to wait for the sniper rifle to charge up. It fires like a light machine gun but it is almost as weak as a nail gun. If you have to use this then head back to base, or call for support. It uses the same ammunition as the Sniper Rifle and so is extremely accurate.

4)Nail Gun-Exactly the same model as the scouts except that the ammunition is 100/200 maximum.

5)None.

Soldier

1)Crowbar-See Scout.

2)Light Shotgun-Same as scout but with 100/200 ammunition.

3)Super Shotgun-Powerful version of light shotgun. More powerful, more ammo, and a larger dispersion. Get behind a scout with this, aim at the head and with two shots your flag problems are over. Produces 14 shots which each cause 3-5 damage. An underused weapon.

4)None.

5)Rocket Launcher-Woohoo, I'm behind you. This industry designed rocket launcher has all the creature comforts a Quake 2 user would expect. It causes massive damage and even has splash damage which means that anyone caught in the blast sets on fire for a short period of time. You can knock people away from you, using the splash damage. To top off, the rocket launcher can make you rocket jump. See Tips. The rocket launcher has its downs though. A slow reload time-not as slow as the shotguns, a maximum of 4 rockets at a time in the launcher and the rocket moves rather slowly over long distances.

Demoman

1)Crowbar-See Scout.

2)Light Shotgun-Same as the scout other than this shotgun has 75/200 maximum ammunition.

3)None.

4)Grenade Launcher-Another mighty weapon. Fires timed grenades which explode after 3 seconds. Blue in appearance, they also explode on impact with a person. Takes armour quickly but health even faster. 6 grenades can be stored at one time. It uses the same ammunition as the pipebomb launcher, but it does not use grenades.

5)Pipebomb Launcher-Looks like the grenade launcher except with the aiming flap down. The grenades also look the same but are yellowish. You can lay 7 pipebombs at a time. Right-clicking at any time with any weapon blows up the pipebombs. They explode automatically after 2 minutes and if you lay more than 7 pipebombs the oldest will blow up. These pipebombs can be used to launch the demoman up into the air with a large cost to their health and armour.

Medic

1)Medkit/Bioweapon-Heal your team-mates soldier! Double click on a team-mate to get their health back to 100 and then if you click again you can increase their health by using adrenaline. You can increase 10% each time up to a maximum of an extra 50 health. This health wares out though. If you click on an enemy you can infect them with a fatal disease. The disease slowly eats away at the enemies health. If an enemy passes by a friend with the disease, it is passed on. (Note: a medic can heal any other affects a team-mate may be suffering such as hallucination and sore foot from caltrops. A medic is the only one who can cure an enemy medic's disease. You can call for a medic by pressing "z".

2)Light Shotgun-Same as scout except with 75/200 shells.

3)Super Shotgun-Same as soldier except with 75/200 shells.

4)Super Nailgun-A powerful version of the nailgun which is quicker and cause more damage to armour as it is armour piercing. It has the most nails possible 150/150 and is useful when finishing off an enemy patient.

5)None.

Heavy Weapons Guy

1)Crowbar-Same as the scout's.

2)Light Shotgun-Same as the scout's but with 200/200 ammunition. For use when the jerk of the super shotgun firing is not an option.

3)Super Shotgun-Same as the soldier's but with 200/200 ammunition. AC ammunition run out? Chasing someone slow? Use this to finish them.

4)None.

5)Autocannon-Ripped off an Apache Attack helicopter, it reduces the HWGuy's speed to a crawl. Fires massive amount of shells in a reckless fashion. Death looms over anyone who is the near the user of this weapon. The gun takes 1/2 second to power up and so makes you an easy target for spies.

Pyro

1)Crowbar-See scout.

2)Light Shotgun-Same as scout's but with only 40/200 ammo.

3)None.

4)Flame Thrower-Want things toasty warm? Burn them to a singe with this very powerful weapon. Takes about 4 damage with each blast but it multiplies using a weird formula depending on how many times you shoot someone with the flame thrower. Heat splashes go through walls and so it is possible to get snipers out of their dark holes by burning then through the wall. You can even burn through the ceiling! The amount of ammo this gun holds is amazing 200/200. The more you keep hitting someone with this, the faster they burn. Pyros can easily take out a lone HWGuy without loosing any health if they circle strafe around them using this weapon. When under water this gun still fires but slowly, but without any affect other than making the water steam. It is just a waste of ammo.

5)Incendiary Cannon-A rocket launcher that fires 'fireballs'. This gun is superior to the rocket launcher in almost every way. It doesn't need to reload as the ammo goes straight from your backpack to the gun. The rocket doesn't hurt you as much if you attempt to rocket jump. The blast radius is larger. Why isn't this used then? The maximum ammo is 20 and the rockets fire very slowly. You can't rocket jump and it hurts team-mates by burning them. Useful though underwater and against scouts.

Spy

1) Knife-Use this weapon wisely. It is the most lethal melee weapon in the game and the second most powerful weapon. By using any weapons with a spy, you automatically return back to your own colour and look like a spy again. This weapon is meant to be used behind enemy troops. Aim for the head, hold the left mouse button and then once you have killed your prey, return to the shadows. This weapon is the strongest unpowered weapon and so enemies will try and run away from you. If they turn around then it makes your task easier.

2)Tranquilizer Gun-A very slow James Bond weapon. Use it against pursuing troops or those who can't see you. Once hit the enemy will become dazed and will walk slowly. The problem with the gun is that it fires at a very slow rate and the shot moves even more slowly. Once you hit the target though, you can run beside them and knife them. Another tactic is shooting scouts and slowing them down for others to kill.

3)Super Shotgun-Same as the Soldier's but with 40/200 ammo. Very useful if you have the flag for destroying the defenders' morale.

4)Nailgun-If you run out of grenades finish off sentry guns for your team-mates but using the nailgun. It has 100/200 ammo though and easily runs out if you are a spy.

5)None.

Engineer

1)Spanner-Not very useful as a weapon, but it is needed to upgrade sentry guns and to add ammo to dispensers. Left click on a sentry gun or dispenser to get an upgrade menu. Right clicking will get the build menu.

2)Railgun-For a slow weapon it cuts through health well. Armour it can't cope with though and so is only useful against scouts or enemy snipers in their battlements. Useful in combination with the shotgun.

3)Super Shotgun-A modified gun for the engineers use. It has a maximum of 16 ammo and is extremely useful against spies who try to destroy your sentry gun. A blessing that all engineers love is to have this weapon reloading and herding scouts towards their sentry guns.