Summary
- Starfield offers a variety of unique weapons, including powerful shotguns that are effective against melee-oriented alien enemies like Terrormorphs.
- The Riot Shotgun is a reliable choice with its ability to knock down enemies and its EM-Charged Shot attachment.
- While the Boom Boom shotgun has potential with its explosive rounds, its inconsistent damage and risk to the player make it an unreliable weapon compared to others in the game.
Between secret encounters during Starfield’s main questline, to hidden gems sold by weapon vendors, Starfield has a wide variety of unique weapons. Since players can’t necessarily craft their own weapons, it might be wise to consider finding and collecting some of the unique weapons in Starfield.
As far as Starfield’s unique weapons go, there aren’t as many shotguns as there are unique versions of some of the other weapon types. Still though, there are a couple of extremely powerful unique shotguns that players may want to put to use.
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S-Tier
Experiment A-7
Due to Starfield’s Aliens enemies mainly being melee-oriented creatures that will generally put themselves within optimal shotgun range of the player, Experiment A-7 is a surprisingly powerful weapon. Consequently, this is both a great unique weapon and one of the best weapons to use against Aliens, like Terrormorphs in Starfield.
Riot Shotgun
Between this weapon’s unique effect that can knock down enemies and its EM-Charged Shot attachment, this weapon will consistently leave enemies in a vulnerable state where players can safely dish out tons of damage. Not to mention, shotguns will occasionally stagger enemies anyway, which makes this weapon incredibly reliable because of its utility, but it also packs a punch.
A-Tier
Rapidshot
Rapidshot is a fully automatic, magazine-fed shotgun that players can encounter very early after following the beginning of Starfield’s main story quests. The only downside to this weapon is that like every unique weapon in Starfield, the attachments are locked in, so players who want to improve this weapon will have to do so by investing in skills in Starfield that specialize in increasing the damage of shotguns.
B-Tier
Brute Force
While the extra bash damage on this weapon is consistent, and players can put it to good use by using this weapon in its optimal range, even with double damage, weapon bashing in Starfield isn’t very powerful. Bashing is still an effective way to stagger enemies to give players the opportunity to reload, but it isn’t something that players should go out of their way to utilize. Overall, the base weapon of this unique shotgun, the Pacifier, is a decent gun, but the Brute Force’s special effect pales in comparison to more useful weapon effects in Starfield that can be found on random weapons or some of the other unique shotguns.
C-Tier
Boom Boom
The explosive rounds occasionally fired by this weapon massively increase its damage, but this effect can be very inconsistent, so ultimately, the Boom Boom isn’t a reliable weapon. Not to mention, shooting explosive projectiles at point-blank range can also harm the player, which isn’t ideal.
The Cursed
The special effect on the Cursed may sound great, but unfortunately, inflicting the Frenzy status effect can be very unreliable. Considering how obscure this weapon is to obtain, players will likely have at least one better weapon before ever collecting this unique shotgun and putting it to use.
Frenzy: A character or creature affected by Frenzy will become hostile towards nearby allies for the duration of the effect or until there are no nearby targets left to attack.
D-Tier
Jake's Hangover Cure
The only unique thing about this shotgun is its name. Otherwise, it’s a common Big Bang shotgun that can’t be modified. It’s a shame that the only unique version of the Big Bang shotgun turns out to be so lackluster, since overall, it's a fun and powerful weapon to use. Players should consider keeping their eyes out for a random world drop of the Big Bang shotgun in the meantime, but unfortunately, this unique weapon is more of a collector’s item in Starfield than a reliable gun.
Starfield
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 85 /100 Critics Rec: 83%
WHERE TO PLAY
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- How Long To Beat
- 20 Hours
- File Size Xbox Series
- 101 GB (September 2023)
- Metascore
- 86
