As I played Starfield for 160 hours or so, ramping up my difficulty to Very Hard by the end, I noticed that one weapon I had was outperforming everything else by a mile. And it really made no sense.
That would be the Va’ruun Inflictor, where the Va’ruun series of weapons, including a melee weapon and pistol, are generally a cut above the rest, but the Inflictor? It felt like it was its own category. You could hipfire it and blast through enemies in a handful of shots, and this was even never finding one higher that green rarity. It didn’t matter. On Very Hard, this thing still hit like a truck and I had practically infinite ammo for it, as not much else used that type.
I have seen many other players validate that yes, it’s not just me, this thing is insane. Much of that is just pure baseline damage alone, but it turns out it can compound itself into a weapon probably 10x better than anything else in the game because of some interactions and mods. So much so that if Starfield ever wants to have any semblance of balance, despite being a PvE game, it may want to scale it back, as it genuinely seems broken. And this is in a game where I’d already say Very Hard is not hard enough as is.
There is a very great thread about this from u/SaltyMeatBoy who talks about just how insane the Va’ruun Inflictor can get, and why. Here are all the points that come together to make it able to obliterate more or less any enemy in the game on any difficulty.
- It has high base stats already, it’s already the highest DPS weapon in Starfield by itself compared to everything else.
- It’s a Particle Beam weapon, one of just a few in the game and for some reason, Particle Beam weapons benefit from both Particle Beam upgrades and Laser upgrades.
- Then, it’s technically a non-automatic rifle that can have a scope, so it also benefits from both Marksmanship and Sniper Certification, where Marksmanship allows for near constant knockdowns at max level with the post-crit perk in that tree. This does not require scoping in with the weapon, just that the weapon has a scope at all, so you can hip fire this effect.
- Then, if you go down the Weapon Crafting tree, you can craft and apply a mod call Spread Nozzle, which will split your shot into three beams. And yet…this does not alter range or accuracy, meaning all three beams hit where you were aiming. And each of those beams, by themselves, has a chance to crit.
- The end result of this is a high DPS, permanently stunlocking weapon you can hipfire and practically use like a shotgun even though it’s supposed to be a longer range scoped rifle.
Nothing else in the game is even close to this. It’s to Starfield what Gjallarhorn was to Destiny 1, probably even more so. It does require a good amount of stat points to get to this level, and Spread Nozzle requires some advanced Weapon Crafting, but it’s not too bad.
I almost…wouldn’t even use it? It’s practically a Golden Gun, making the already not-hard-enough Very Hard difficulty a cake walk, and what’s the point of playing when you will never find a gun that’s even 30% as good as this one? But it’s cool this sky high damage has been found in general, I suppose. Once again, full credit to u/SaltyMeatBoy for the explanation here.
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