Ratslayer

The  is a weapon in Fallout: New Vegas. It is a unique version of the varmint rifle, found in Broc Flower Cave.

Characteristics
The has a black synthetic stock instead of the standard wood, parts that look like stainless steel, and it has markings on the stock that might indicate the previous user killed 69 rats with it.

Compared to the varmint rifle, the Ratslayer boasts a higher damage-per-second, a much higher critical multiplier, and lighter weight, as well as coming with all of the possible varmint rifle modifications already built in. This includes the extended magazine, night scope, and silencer. Nevertheless, it remains repairable with common varmint rifles.

When looking through the scope, there is little to no recoil.

Variants

 * Varmint rifle, a standard variant found throughout the Mojave Wasteland.

Location

 * Inside the Broc Flower Cave, on the upper level, below a desk in the cement fortification. It may be quite hard to find as there are lots of Giant Rats in this room.

Strategy

 * The Ratslayer is one of the only weapons left in the game with a x5 Critical Hit multiplier. This means that with 10 points in Luck (or 7 Luck and Built to Destroy, the First recon beret, and the Finesse perk, this weapon will land a critical hit 100% of the time. This renders it much more powerful than its statistics might otherwise suggest, and it remains an effective weapon against relatively soft targets into the middle- and late-game.

Bugs

 * When looking through the scope, the screen might be seen as green and pink, making it impossible to use the scope. This may happen on any scoped weapon (including binoculars). To fix this, just save the game, shut down your PS3, then restart the game and the problem should be fixed.
 * It appears that the night vision scopes for varmint rifles work off of the in-game clock, making them activate at 6:00pm, while the sun doesn't go down until around 7:00pm.
 * When using the "player sight" final/first kill cam, the scope will momentarily turn clear, no matter what time of day it is.
 * The onHit effect for this weapon is defined as "Dismember only" (the weapon will only calculate the chance to sever limbs), as opposed to the varmint rifle, which uses "No Dismember/Explode" onHit effect (all limbs hit by the weapon will remain intact). There is a bug associated with the "dismember only" effect, which will immediately alarm all enemies in the vicinity of the killed enemy. This is not triggered by the sound level of the Ratslayer, which is the same as the standard varmint rifle's sound level, but by the onHit effect itself. Because of this bug, this weapon is mostly useless for sneak attacks, as only one sneak attack is possible before enemies become alarmed.