Weapons and Gear in No More Room in Hell 2

Torn Banner’s road-to-1.0 overview promised 38 melee and ranged weapons across two modes. You will not see all of them in one driveway. You will see a starter Mallet, a desperate pipe, and a decision about whether the rifle on the seat is worth the noise. This page is the encyclopedia companion to the Weapons Tier List and Melee Combat—names, roles, and 1.0 rules rather than a second ranking essay.

How gear enters a match

Responders spawn with a loadout purchased from Credits or Merits—see Loadouts and Credits. The world then adds floor loot, containers, police trunks, stash rooms, and Survival supply drops. Firearms can now spawn with varying ammo already in the magazine, and that amount leans on difficulty. Nightmare leans harder on weapons that arrive emptier. Tier 3 weapons were tuned to appear later in map flow, so do not expect a dream rifle at the first garage.

Weight is real. Scavenger and mule skills change how ammo feels; a 1.0 fix made Scavenger weight math honest again. If you cannot sprint to a Critical, you are over-geared.

Melee families after the rebalance

Tier 1 starters: Mallet (default, down from a higher tier), Hockey Stick (moved down), other light improvised tools. They exist to reach the next container.

Tier 2 workhorses: Small Pipe (moved up, better headshots), Large Pipe (moved up, harder hits), Baseball Bat (cut from a Tier 3 statline—slower quick swings, less raw damage, charged hits still launch), mid-weight axes and poles.

High-value blades and tools: Machete and Hatchet (buffed to 20 / 25 / 34 base), Shovel (large damage and headshot buffs), Fire Axe (extra quick stability), Cleaver and Small Knife (bugfix damage now applies). Tree Trimmer also gained base damage.

Niche notes: Tire Iron heavy-attack damage was fixed. Rebar lost some quick damage and gained a stronger headshot. Large Wrench got slower. Small Wrench charged faster and hits a bit harder on strong attacks.

Blunt wants heads and knockdowns. Blades want limbs. That split did not change; the numbers around it did.

Firearms and throwables

Guns are force multipliers, not default weapons. Controlled shotguns earn interiors and bunkers. Service pistols and carbines cover runners when melee spacing breaks. Heavy rifles belong on one Marksman, not five tourists. Ammo-hungry automatics are late-map toys unless the squad is swimming in a matching caliber.

1.0 combat fixes that change how guns feel: sprint interrupts reload; flashlight plus two-handed weapon no longer blocks shove and kick; several suppressor and muzzle-flash bugs were cleaned. If your “broken gun” report matches a known note, update before you reroll the whole kit.

Throwables—pipe bombs, IEDs, molotovs—are squad tools. 1.0 fixed IEDs doing no damage on Survival maps and closed a molotov-drop exploit that full-damaged players. Call the throw. Friendly fire still ends Responders.

Medical and mission gear

Phalanx Pills, kits, and Experimental Gene Therapy are higher value than a third firearm. Rescue Beacon is a loadout-slot consumable that spends itself to stop one permadeath—details on Rescue Beacon. Carry-and-place objective items come in one-handed (you can sprint and flashlight) and two-handed (you cannot). 1.0 lets you kick while holding one-handed objectives and start held interacts before a melee swing finishes.

Flashlight and compass are also cosmetic slots after 1.0. Pretty bezels do not add ammo.

Sharing rules that keep people alive

• Announce calibers. An exotic rifle nobody else can feed is a temporary pickup.
• Unload and pass boxes to the actual Marksman.
• Drop excess melee at the bus stop or speaker reset so the under-armed player can upgrade.
• Do not hoard Gene Therapy “for later” through a Critical.

Best Builds tells you which role should hold which family. This page tells you why the bat is no longer a personality.

After a patch

Weapon tiers moved once already. When Patch Notes mention melee or firearms, re-read tooltips in the range before you trust last week’s pocket meta. The pool is large; your inventory should stay small: one melee you trust, one gun you can feed, meds, and space for the objective.