GTFO is a hardcore 4-player co-op action horror FPS where you and your friends explore terrifying environments and fight against horrific monsters. GTFO will test your team coordination, ability to traverse quietly through floors of sleeping monsters, and precision when all hell breaks loose. The key to your survival in every expedition in GTFO is what weapons you bring and knowing their strengths.
We will give a rundown of the best weapons to bring on your expeditions in GTFO. For those newer to GTFO, we must provide a disclaimer before we begin our list. GTFO has notable gameplay changes with each unique Rundown. A Rundown is a series of expeditions available to all players over a set period. Once the duration window to complete a Rundown is up, levels are cycled out and replaced with new ones and weapons.
As of writing this, GTFO is currently in Rundown seven, and some weapons from the previous Rundown have been removed. Some recently removed GTFO weapons include the following:
- Machine Pistol
- Sawed-off Shotgun
- Burst Rifle
- Scattergun
- HEL Gun
Since each Rundown has a chance of removing curtain primary or secondary weapons, our picks can be temporary. With that in mind, let’s get into our picks for the ten best weapons in GTFO.
The 10 Greatest Weapons in GTFO
10. Sledge Hammer / Bat
No matter how much you love to blast and dismember any creature that sprints or skitters toward you, in GTFO, half of your survival is won through managing your resources and ammo. Over half of your expeditions will be skulking through the dark and smashing any sleeping monsters, otherwise known as “Sleepers.” Bashing in the heads of Sleepers is the best way to conserve your precious ammo for unlocking alarm doors or retreating at the end of a mission.
Why the Bat and Sledge Hammer are the Best Melee Weapons in GTFO
While there are four different melee weapons to choose from, including the Spear and Knife, we highly recommend the Sledge Hammer or the Bat for multiple reasons. While all weapons can effectively take out Sleepers, choosing to equip your melee weapon when enemies are alerted allows you to strike your foes while sprinting. The Spear doesn’t allow you to sprint with its charged attack, but it can pierce enemies at a greater distance. The Spear is meant to multi-kill Sleepers but suffers in alerted combat.
The Knife is a step above the Spear, dealing double damage to sleeping enemies, but its advantages aren’t worth choosing over the Bat or Hammer. Its charge time is the fastest, but its main strength is stealth. The difference in clearing a room full of Sleepers compared to any other melee is minimal.
The Bat and the Sledgehammer are the two strongest melee weapons, but it comes down to a personal preference. The Bat charges faster than the hammer, has better stagger on light, and costs less stamina. While the SledgeHammer deals the most charged damage and charged stagger, but at the cost of the longest charge time.
If you prefer to hit the hardest and deal the most damage to any enemy in a single strike, choose the Sledge Hammer. If you want a faster charge speed at the cost of a slight amount of damage, choose the Bat. Both options make great melee weapons, but they tie for a spot on our list.
9. HEL Shotgun
The HEL Shotgun is one of the newest weapons added into GTFO with their seventh Rundown. It is currently the only Shotgun not listed in the Special Weapons category, giving it a lot more ammunition in exchange for less overall damage.
The HEL shotgun has a 14-round magazine and is fully automatic, allowing you to mag dump shell after shell. It’s a beautiful addition and a significantly better alternative to the recently removed Sawed-off Shotgun.
The HEL Shotgun is the first Shotgun to feature functional piercing rounds, allowing you to take down an average of two targets with one shell. The HEL Shotgun suffers significantly outside of melee range but works great at mowing down crowds of clustered enemies. It suffers from disposing of enemies one by one, but its ability to two-shot weaker enemies makes up for the lack of range.
Thankfully, since the HEL Shotgun is a primary weapon, its ammo reserves are far better than Special Shotguns. Still, its ammo increase is only good if you can control yourself from mag dumping at enemies further than four meters. If you can reliably manage your burst fire and enjoy sticking close to enemies, then the HEL Shotgun can be one of the best weapons in GTFO.
Related Article: The Terrifying Lore Behind GTFO
8. Assault Rifle
The Assault Rifle is the best all-around weapon in GTFO. Sporting average damage, moderate recoil, and an effective range of ten meters. With a 30-round magazine, an abundance of ammo reserves, and an average rate of fire. The Assault Rifle does excel at dealing high amounts of stagger and puts down basic enemies between two and five shots.
The Assault Rifle is reliable but has no overwhelming strength in any area. It’s excellent for clearing and keeping hordes of enemies at bay. Despite its effective range of ten meters, you can still reliably hit targets with controlled bursts up to 50 meters away. On top of having a short reload time and decent hipfire, the Assault Rifle is always reliable. However, the Assault Rifle only suffers when fighting bosses or extremely tanky enemies.
This weapon is average to a fault, and that’s a good thing to have in your arsenal. Between weapons that fluctuate between highly powerful but no ammo or lots of ammo but dealing no damage. It’s nice to have a gun that’s straight down the middle.
7. Revolver
The Revolver is a great horde killer but requires an above-average aim to get full efficient use. The Revolver possesses great damage with moderate recoil, reliably one-shotting smaller to medium-sized creatures. Sporting an effective range of 12 meters up to roughly 60 meters and a two-second reload gives you the stopping power to clear Strikers and Shooters before they come close to your team.
As for its ammo efficiency, it’s one of the better guns you can choose. One-shotting common enemies or two-shotting them from body shots, your ammo tradeoffs are amazing so long as your aim is good. If your aim isn’t great, you will run out of ammo fast with the Revolver, but it’s still a powerful hand cannon worth grabbing.
We would rank the Revolver weapon higher in GTFO, but encounters against larger Sleeper variants make resource dumping shots much more costly if every shot isn’t landed perfectly.
6. Heavy Assault Rifle
The Heavy Assault Rifle is another excellent horde-clearing weapon that sports serious damage and great ammo efficiency but comes with a slow reload and high recoil.
The Heavy Assault Rifle drops basic Strikers and Shooters in one or two bullets and kills in four shots when hitting the body. It is a fantastic horde-clearing weapon and dials up the damage from its regular counterpart at the cost of less overall ammo.
However, the recent nerfs to its recoil introduced in Rundown seven make its effective range of 12 meters challenging to aim with precision. These tweaks allowed the weapon to stick more to its horde-clearing strengths rather than being nearly on par with precision weapons like the Revolver.
We would have placed this GTFO weapon higher on the list before this recoil nerf, but as the gun stands, it’s a lot harder to use outside of controlled bursts or fighting the recoil and bloom during hordes.
Still, the Heavy Assault Rifle’s power makes it highly effective at combating all creatures down in the dark. Still, its lengthy reload times will leave you wide open without cover fire from your team, or swapping to a secondary weapon. If you can manage the recoil and make use of its effective range, then the Heavy Assault Rifle is an excellent pick for you.
5. Pistol
The Pistol, aka the old reliable, has lots of utility in place for its lack of flashy over-the-top elements. It has excellent damage and high stagger, making for easy follow-up headshots, solid ammo efficiency, and a fast reload. As one of the best weapons in GTFO, it only lacks range and damage per shot. This makes more formidable enemies more challenging than most guns.
The range nerfs hit the Pistol pretty hard, making its short 6-meter range hard to utilize sometimes. On top of the range nerf, the time to kill is drastically impacted if the target is roughly seven meters or further, requiring twice the amount of shots to bring down an enemy.
We always love accompanying a more powerful or high ranged weapon with the Pistol. Despite the nerfs to its range, it’s a fantastic close-range weapon. Its reliable ammo tradeoff is nearly better than any other weapon and boasts the best hip fire accuracy in the entire game.
The Pistol is by no means the best horde-clearing firearm and doesn’t excel in high single-target damage. Its reliable but limited use makes it an amazing gun to bring. These incredible upsides are only met when you’re in a close-range situation and if you’re only aiming at basic enemies.
4. Shotgun / Chokemod Shotgun
The Shotgun or its Chokemod counterpart tie for our spot on the list, as both offer equal killing power, but at slight differences. The Shotgun has extremely high damage at a low range and kills any small, giant, or boss enemies with relative ease. While the Chokemod Shotgun offers the same killing power at a more extended range and a higher rate of fire but reduced magazine size.
Any enemy that isn’t a giant or a boss will explode from the Shotgun’s effective four-meter range or the Chokemod’s 10-meter range. Giant enemies will fall in a few shots, but where both Shotgun’s practical usefulness falls short is their ammo capacity.
The Shotgun and Chokemod Shotgun are universally helpful in every situation, but their drawbacks stem from the lack of ammo they can carry since they are Special weapons. If you are unsure what weapon to bring, or enjoy using Shotguns to bring down even the most prominent foes, then we recommend these two weapons.
The 3 Best GTFO Weapons
3. HEL Revolver
The HEL Revolver is the second highest damaging primary weapon next to the HEL Shotgun. This great GTFO weapon boasts high damage, excellent ammo efficiency, high stagger, and great hip fire accuracy. The HEL Revolver is essentially a mini DMR. Like the Pistol, the HEL Revolver has strong stagger, allowing for follow-up headshots, but can two-shot kill smaller monsters up to 20 meters away.
The HEL Revolver is ridiculously strong and GTFO veterans will attest to how powerful this weapon is. The only downside to this weapon is the slow reload, which can be reload canceled, thus cutting the downtime in half. Even with this minor downside, this godlike side arm can pierce two enemies and one-shot stagger chargers.
Where it lacks in ammo or overall stopping power, it’s the strongest non-Special weapon and is always a must-take for us. You won’t regret taking the HEL Revolver.
2. DMR – Runner-Up to the Best GTFO Weapon
The DMR sports the same efficiency and power of the HEL Revolver but exchanges fire rate for greater range and less ammo. This GTFO weapon deals slightly less damage than the HEL Revolver but makes up for it with an extreme range akin to the Sniper Rifle. The DMR blows up heads in one shot, one-shots Shooters, and staggers chargers with a single bullet.
The DMR’s time-to-kill is lower than other weapons, and its reload speed is subpar to other weapons on this list. However, its damage is high enough to nearly one-shot any regular enemy and pump out considerable damage to giants for a non-Special weapon. It’s especially strong due to its increased range, allowing you to pick off high-value targets before they come close.
Like the HEL Revolver, veterans will attest to this weapon’s popularity and firepower. However, be mindful of its low max ammo, but other than this minor drawback, it is a must-pick for at least one person in your squad.
1. Sniper – The Best Weapon in GTFO
The Sniper in GTFO is the weapon you bring if you need something dead within seconds of pulling the trigger. It has the highest single target damage in the game, with 40 damage per bullet.
The Sniper kills giants with one headshot, and bosses die exceptionally quickly. Anything smaller than a giant dies in one hit and has an average kill time of 0.5 seconds to back it up. This weapon has an effective 60-meter range, and there is almost no situation in GTFO where you would be firing from beyond 60 meters. Combine that with its 2x damage multiplier for headshots, and you will see why it will kill anything that moves.
We always recommend having one party member bring the Sniper Rifle, especially on more challenging difficulties. Make sure not to stand in front of whoever is wielding this gun unless you want to lose roughly 80% of your health bar. Having the power to put down some of the biggest threats or any monster that stumbles out of the dark in a single bullet is unbelievable.
Honorable Mentions for the Best Weapon in GTFO
Most of the weapons in GTFO serve a role or purpose to combat specific threats. We haven’t had extensive playtesting with every new gun with Rundown seven. However, we would like to mention the High Caliber Pistol, the Machine Gun, and the Precision Rifle.
Wrap Up
Teamwork is key to survival in GTFO. Every weapon, tool, and option you have to bring with you will influence what support or role you provide to your team. Communicate with your team to ensure everyone knows which great GTFO loadouts you and your friends are bringing down into the depths.
It’s critical to work with your team to pick the best GTFO weapons to cover different effective ranges, kill certain enemies, or help with hordes or dispatching giant foes. Because if everyone brings horde-killing weapons, you will struggle against giant Sleepers and much more. After all, if you don’t work together, you will die together.
We will be adding lots more GTFO articles. Until then, check out our list of 21 great action-packed games like Warframe you can play now.