Grenade
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“The frag grenade releases a dense cloud of sharpnel in a large area of effect around its detonation zone. Use with caution.” —Trader description
The grenade is a hand-thrown, offhand explosive weapon, which requires the player to aim in an arc. One grenade can explode multiple weak specimens, or inflict a large amount of damage upon a strong specimen. Grenades are not randomly spawned on the map, but some ammo boxes contain exactly one Grenade.
The support specialist, demolitions, field medic and firebug perks receive bonuses to their grenades, although the weapon itself is categorized as a commando item.
Grenades can also be "stacked", meaning that when several grenades are successively thrown onto the same place, it will result in a single explosion that is proportional to the number of grenades thrown. This tactic is one of the most effective for damage against a powerful specimen, particularly the Fleshpound. However, it is dangerous because with poor timing, the last grenade thrown can detonate near the player if it is thrown just before the first grenade explodes.
As with any explosive, anyone or anything that takes damage but lives through the explosion will burn with a small fire for a few seconds. This deals no damage, but can be useful for tracking cloaked specimens such as the Patriarch and Stalkers without relying on a commando.
Grenades are a good way to destroy a group or a powerful and strong specimen, but keep in mind that the player must be cautious as a Grenade underneath the thrower's foot will result in a lot of health loss depending on how many Grenades were thrown there.
Specimens will notice thrown grenades and instinctively scatter a few feet away from one when it lands.
The firebug uses a special kind of grenade at level 3+. It does not do any additional damage (in fact, they seem to have much less explosive power than conventional grenades) but they are incendiary. These grenades inflict minor fire damage on all specimens caught within their blast radius, and ignite them. Weaker zeds can burn out and die as a result.
The Field Medic uses a special grenade at any perk level, which releases a constant cloud of gas over several seconds, healing players (including the thrower) for the duration of their stay in the cloud, and dealing light damage to specimens who come in contact with it.
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[edit] Tactics
- Welding a door for specimens to break and then throwing many Grenades when the door breaks would most likely kill all the specimens who broke the door. However, if timed wrongly, the door will be destroyed by the Grenades thrown and will not damage the specimens behind it.
- "Stacking" grenades is a good way to kill powerful specimens without expending a lot of resources.
- Dropping a grenade at your feet can be useful when surrounded. It can sometimes kill everything around you while leaving you at low health. Specimens not killed outright will likely be staggered for a short time, giving you an opportunity to retreat.
- For the firebug at level 5+, being caught in the blast of your own incendiary grenade does no damage at all. This provides a useful tactic for 'pest control' when surrounded by crawlers. Even at level 3 or 4, the fire damage is tolerable, with body armour on.
- The medic's grenade is only useful as a weapon when dealing with masses of weak specimens, so rather than waste them trying to combat a large foe, deploy them among a group of wounded teammates to heal everyone within the area of effect. This means that you can heal teammates from a range without medic guns, and you can heal yourself without using the syringe's alt-fire or the quickheal button.
- For the medic, deploying a grenade at your feet is amazingly useful, it heals you and damages any zed that is close enough to attack you by melee, and any teammates that come to your aid will also be healed.
- Some players like to employ 'suicide grenades' in a hopeless situation: dropping all remaining grenades just before death can be a good way to weaken a powerful enemy and help the rest of the group - and to kill as many specimens as possible so that you get more money at the respawn.
- Grenades can deal blunt damage when thrown on specimen. Gibbing any corpse on their way or killing weak ones.
- On higher difficulties like Suicidal or Hell on Earth; where specimen gains extra speed, they can successfully avoid grenades. For preventing your grenade to be wasted, you should kite them a bit towards the grenade by running back. All specimen have a tendency to chase you but when you stand still they'll try and avoid grenades tossed at them.
[edit] Advantages
- 2-3 Grenades can be thrown in one second.
- "Stacking" of Grenades is allowed.
- Grenades inflict 100% more damage to Fleshpounds
- Can effectively eliminate clusters of specimens.
- Sometimes the only way to escape after being surrounded.
- (Field Medic, Firebug) Dropping a perk's specialized grenades at one's own feet produces an AOE damaging effect while doing little to no damage to the user, in fact healing the Field Medic.
- (Field Medic) Unlike the healing of the Med-Syringe, the self-healing of the medic grenade does level the player's Medic perk when used on Solo and Multiplayer. This allows players to (admittedly, very slowly) level their Field Medic perk in Solo mode, by doing self-damage and dropping a grenade, or by allowing zeds to partially injure you.
- Experienced Field Medic's may use their special Grenade's area of effect against raging Fleshpounds to have certain control over their movement similar to this can be done with a regular grenade, but Medic grenades effect last longer.
[edit] Disadvantages
- Unsellable as they use up one kilogram,no matter how many grenades you currently own.
- Blast radius can easily kill the thrower, if careless.
- Expensive (£40 per grenade).
- Grenades bounce off of enemies and other objects, and may thus explode near the player who threw them.
- May break welded doors and gates accidentally.
- (field medic,firebug) very low burst damage.
- (support specialist) though grenade damage is increased, self-damage is not decreased, making accidental self-killing more an issue.
- Due to their long fuse, grenades are very vulnerable to Siren screams.
- On Suicidal and Hell on Earth difficulties, specimens become better at avoiding grenades.
[edit] Statistics
The damage bonuses for the support specialist and demolitions expert are different, but their carry capacities are equal.
| Level | Support damage |
Demolition damage |
Carry capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base | 300 | 300 | 5 |
| 0 | 300 | 300 | 5 |
| 1 | 315 | 330 | 6 |
| 2 | 330 | 360 | 7 |
| 3 | 360 | 390 | 8 |
| 4 | 390 | 420 | 9 |
| 5 | 420 | 450 | 10 |
| 6 | 450 | 480 | 11 |
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[edit] Bugs/Exploits
- A field medic can use his specialized grenades to self-heal, which, contrary to Med-syringe self-heal, counts toward the player's perk, despite that he is not healing teammates. It also displays a heal-message. (Player's name is Stohner, he heals himself, producing the message, "You healed Stohner")
