Alpha Shot Weapons & Gear Reference

The six weapons

Weapons are unlocked once with Alphabucks and then keep forever. Everything except the Pistol can be levelled up to level 99. Levelling is deliberately gentle — roughly +0.6% to +1% per level — so a fully-levelled weapon sits about 60–90% above its base stats after around 3,300 Alphabucks. It is a long-haul sink, not a power spike.

Weapon unlock costs and base stats
Weapon	Unlock	Base damage	Fire interval	Levels?
Pistol	Free	1.0	800 ms	No — always level 1
Machine Gun	40	0.35 per round	140 ms (down to 90 ms)	Yes
Shotgun	60	0.55 × 5 pellets	1300 ms (down to 500 ms)	Yes
Microwave Pistol	75	1.2, 30% on pierce	900 ms (down to 400 ms)	Yes
Grenade Launcher	90	2.2 in a blast	1500 ms (down to 600 ms)	Yes
Laser	120	0.1 per 100 ms tick	Continuous beam	Yes

Pistol — free, forever level 1

Standard-issue sidearm: 1.0 damage on an 800 ms cycle, 500 px/s projectiles. It is dependable and it never improves. The Pistol exists so a brand-new player is never weaponless, not as a long-term option — replacing it is the first thing worth saving for.

Machine Gun — 40 Alphabucks

Sprays light rounds at a blistering rate with a slight 4° scatter: 0.35 damage every 140 ms, tightening to 90 ms at high levels. Its damage per second is the best in the game against ordinary chasers, which makes it the default letter-farming weapon. It struggles against high-health rare letters, where the low per-shot damage shows.

Shotgun — 60 Alphabucks

Five pellets at 0.55 damage each in a 28° cone with a 420 px range, on a 1300 ms cycle. Close range, real stopping power, and it hits several monsters at once when they line up. Uniquely, it gains an extra pellet at levels 25, 50, 75 and 99 — a rare step-change in a levelling system that is otherwise all fractions of a percent.

Microwave Pistol — 75 Alphabucks

A three-beam radiation cone in an 18° spread, 380 px range, 900 ms cycle. The first target takes the full 1.2 damage; everything behind it takes 30% as the cone passes through. This is the crowd-control pick — it deletes whole lines of monsters funnelling toward you and is at its best when you are circling and stringing enemies out.

Grenade Launcher — 90 Alphabucks

Lobbed shells with a 450 ms flight time that detonate for 2.2 damage inside a 110 px blast radius, falling off to 40% at the edge. The blast radius grows by 0.5 px per level. Slow (1500 ms) and it needs you to lead your shots, but nothing else in the game clears a cluster this fast. Excellent for opening a hunting lane through a crowded arena.

Laser — 120 Alphabucks

An instant lock-on beam with a 520 px reach that burns a single target for 0.1 damage every 100 ms — one damage per second, with no travel time and no aiming error. Its range grows by 1 px per level. The Laser is the rare-letter hunter's weapon: it deletes one high-health territorial monster from outside its 190 px aggro radius without waking the neighbours.

The pairing that works. Take one high-uptime farming weapon (Machine Gun or Microwave Pistol) and one precision or burst weapon (Laser or Grenade Launcher). Farm with the first, then swap with Q when you break for a territorial letter or get surrounded.

Utility items (one per run, `E` to use)

Utilities are active abilities on a cooldown. The first three are free from the start; the last two are permanent Alphabuck unlocks.

EMP Burst — free · 25 s cooldown: Zaps every monster within 260 px for 3 damage. The panic button — it will clear a ring of chasers outright and badly wound anything tougher.
Time Dilator — free · 30 s cooldown: Slows every monster to 35% speed for 4 seconds. Best used offensively, not defensively: 4 seconds of slow motion is enough to cross the arena to a territorial cluster and get back out.
Med Kit — free · 45 s cooldown: Patches up one missing health segment. With only two segments to start with, this roughly doubles your effective survivability on a long run.
Portable Terminal — 100 Alphabucks · 45 s cooldown: Deploys a single-use terminal wherever you are standing. Removes the walk back to the fixed terminal, which is the single biggest time cost in a hunting run.
Cybernetic Thesaurus — 100 Alphabucks · no cooldown: Shows a latched word choice when you use a terminal. If your bottleneck is spotting words rather than surviving, this is the strongest purchase in the game.

Passive items (one per run, always on)

Scavenger — free: 35% more power-up drops from kills. Compounds with a high kill rate; pairs naturally with the Machine Gun.
Adrenaline — free: +12% move speed at all times, and each kill adds another +25% for 3 seconds. The hunting passive — chaining kills across the arena keeps you permanently boosted.
Vampiric Rounds — free: Heals one health segment every 30 kills. On a long, high-volume run this out-heals the Med Kit by a wide margin; on a short careful run it does almost nothing.

Three loadouts that work

The farmer — volume and safety

Machine Gun + Shotgun · Med Kit · Scavenger. Stay near the terminal, kill everything that comes to you, spell constantly. You will not set a record, but it is the most forgiving way to learn where the clock breaks even.

The hunter — rare letters and big words

Laser + Microwave Pistol · Time Dilator · Adrenaline. The Laser picks off territorial J, Q, X and Z monsters from outside aggro range; the Microwave handles anything that follows you home. Time Dilator covers the run back. This build chases the score ceiling.

The word machine — for strong spellers

Grenade Launcher + Machine Gun · Portable Terminal · Adrenaline, with the Cybernetic Thesaurus unlocked. The Portable Terminal turns every full inventory into an immediate word instead of a trip. If your vocabulary is the strong half of your game, this converts it directly into clock.

▶ Try a build now

Related pages

Strategy guide — the scoring and clock formulas these builds are optimising for.
How to Play — controls and the round loop.
FAQ — progression, saves and the leaderboard.