Let's talk about guns

I felt I had enough ammo just from random drops of it while playing normally, to reserve the gun for what I felt was its purpose - doing good damage to enemies/bosses that I didn't want to engage up close. It strikes me as a special purpose/occasion weapon and when you want to play it safe rather than something you will need to constantly keep your crafts up for. Money and materials are too important for that anyways imo.

It's true, it seems clear that trying to use the guns like any other weapon isn't intended. It's certainly not rewarding to try to do so. Using them exclusively against bosses appears to be the only effective way to utilize them, but that said, I'd rather they were reworked to function like any other weapon.

As it stands, the player ends up with a variety of elemental bullets, and ostensibly, any given boss would be vulnerable to one of them, so the gun and its bullets have an obvious, singular purpose, but giving the player such a poly-versatile tool to use against what are supposed to be challenging encounters seems counter-intuitive: the bosses will either be designed with enough health to soak up all the powerful, elemental-weakness-exploiting bullets the players are expected to unload on them, or not. Either way poses problems for balance.

If the guns were reworked to function like any other weapon (as in, removing ammo, setting appropriate damage values for the gun's Infinite Rounds, and providing a variety of guns throughout the game at various levels of power), well, they'd be fun to use regularly, and wouldn't cause any issues with boss balance. Do you guys agree with that, or does the idea of a weapon that you only use against bosses sound fun?

Here's my thoughts and suggestions about guns and bullets:


- Ammo must be scarce, expensive and hard to make. 

- I think carrying too many bullets breaks balance, a cap of 999 bullets is too much ammo.

- Guns need to have different ammo capacities.

- Guns definitely need a reload mechanic.

- A button to swap bullet types on the fly.

- Some bosses must be immune to bullet damage, like Zangetsu, when you shoot him; he will repel all your bullets, even the elemental ones!

- Ammo that inflicts status effects like poison, stone, curse, stun, etc. It will be more expensive and hard to make, but will be worth it.

- Examples of hypothetical ammo types:

• Rebound bullets.
  
• Piercing bullets (Can hit several targets at once, quite effective to destroy armor and golem type enemies).
  
• Silver bullets (Holy property).
  
• Homing bullets.
• Explosive bullets.
  
• Fragmenting bullets (I know it’s the 18th century, but science?)
  
• Bouncing bullets (Like the drop shot in the Metal Slug games).
  
• Bullets that inflicts slash damage.
  
• Drill bullets that when hits the enemy it will continue doing damage. (Also science!)

- I think the infinite magic bullets need to cost MP and do better damage.

- Guns need several properties and tweaks in order to feel unique and fun to use. For example:

• A gun that shoots triple bullets.
• A gun that shoots several bullets per second.
• An ice gun that only works with ice bullets (Polaris).
• A gun that inflicts critical damage if you shoot the enemy at the back (Betrayer).
• A gun that shoots bullets that pass through walls and objects (in compensation of low damage).
• A magical gun that inflicts MP damage.
• A toy bubble gun (joke weapon, but you can inflict elemental damage and status effects depending of the bullet type equipped).
• A golden shotgun that uses money instead of ammo (Mammon's blessing).
• A toy dart gun toy (Joke weapon, but have a low chance to shoot a pretty powerful dart at random.
• A gun that increases damage as you explore a large % of the castle map (Wanderer).
• A gun that is more effective with beast type enemies (If enemy types are a game thing, equip the silver bullets for holy damage).
• A gun that don't do any damage, but instead pushes the enemies back.
  A Mega Man style charging gun.
• A demonic cursed gun that inflicts insane damage but if an enemy hits you, you will die instantly (Death Wish).

I know this isn't a FPS game, but the gun and bullet type variety is important because it gives the player more options to approach and fight enemies, also more gameplay variety = more fun, more strategy and more flexibility.


Obviously some of this guns will be pretty hard to make, because you need super rare materials dropped from powerful enemies and bosses.

- Guns are too powerful, some enemies need to be immune to bullet damage.

- A shard that have the ability to change money drops from candles to ammo drops.

- Guns need rekkas.

P.S. OPTICAL SHOT! MAX SHOT! VERTICAL SHOT! GLYPH AND BULLET! STINGER SHOT! LETHAL SHOT! GASPAR SHOT! GLYPH BULLET, BLAST CANNON!

Aside from the obvious crafting (im)balance issues raised by OP, I feel guns need at least the ability to quickly switch between "special" and infinite bullets, to avoid spoiling more valuable ammo on weak enemies and destructible items.

Some other ideas in this thread would also be quite nice like more bullet types or unique, more varied guns (slow but powerful, multishot, spreadshot,...).

It would also be nice to be able to aim your gun like you do with directional shards.