Dart Gun

The Dart Gun is a small guns craftable pistol in Fallout 3. It is built from a paint gun, toy car, Radscorpion poison gland, and surgical tubing. The paint gun serves as the framework for the gun, containing the launch mechanism for the darts, and the paint can which contains the Radscorpion venom. The surgical tubing launches the darts and is attached to the toy car's wheels in order to propel the darts smoothly.

Building
See Schematics - Dart Gun.

Strategy



 * The Dart Gun is best used for sneak attacks.


 * Low level players may find this critical for fighting Yao Guai and Deathclaws. With their legs crippled, they cannot use their pounce attacks, nor can they run faster than you.


 * Great for players with a Stealth Boy, the Silent Running perk, or the Chinese Stealth Suit.


 * The critical damage bonus for humanoids is presumed to be +76 (12 + 64 poison), or +82 (with the Better Criticals perk). Note: don't expect a big critical bonus for robots, monsters, or super mutants.


 * Sneak attack critical head shots will silently 1-hit kill most Raiders and Ghouls on Normal difficulty. Add in the 64 poison/8 sec effect that follows and one shot can total for as much as 160 damage. It is notably useful when taking out the Raiders at Evergreen Mills as this can be done from the top of the cliffs, and also when fighting through the metro tunnels infested with Ghouls during the Tenpenny Tower Quest.


 * The Dart Gun is silent, and functions the same as a Silenced 10mm Pistol in that when you miss you often don't alert any enemies, so you can feel pretty safe setting up several long range 50% V.A.T.S. head shots, even if the first one misses it won't alert the enemy and ruin your sneak attack for the next.


 * The Dart Gun can be used to easily stop Deathclaws and Behemoths in their tracks, allowing you to finish them off (with a different weapon) while their legs are crippled.


 * As a result of it being a silent weapon, when sneaking around, double or triple darting a single enemy often won't result in attracting attention. The enemy himself doesn't know what happened, so it doesn't go directly into attack mode (like when hit with a rifle), instead it searches for you in  mode, then drops dead from poison effects a few seconds later. Upon its death you snap right back to  status because the only thing looking for you just died.


 * A good way to get 2 schematics is to let the ghouls into Tenpenny Tower, there you can buy one schematic. Then go to the temple of the union and do the quest for them, the Ghoul Mask may come in handy.


 * It is the only weapon stealthy enough to let a hidden player silently kill multiple Raiders in one batch of V.A.T.S. (without giving away his position). Starting characters can kill three, but as many as ten silent kills in one V.A.T.S. can be performed utilizing +AP edibles and equipment (See: The Fallout 3 AP Bonuses table).


 * Well equipped humans (NPCs, Brotherhood, Enclave) may use stimpaks when they're poisoned.


 * Darts seem to do full damage against Power Armor, the piddly 6 pts of weapon damage is reduced, but the 64pts of poison still take effect. Yeah, who knew you could penetrate power armor with rubber tubing and children's toys?!


 * Really shouldn't be used against Robots or Turrets, who ignore poison dmg and limb crippling effects.


 * Darts are typically sold by most weapons dealers. Lucky Harith is always a good bet for 10 darts at a time. After making friends with the vampire family, Karl of Meresti Trainyard will often sell 100 darts at a time. If you give this gun to a companion he/she will cripple the enemy allowing you to make the kill. Xbox 360 Note: Star Paladin Cross appears to be one of the only companions willing to equip the Dart Gun. Her default ranged weapon (the Laser Pistol) is the weakest of all companion weapons, (most have a base damage of 50+) and might explain why her character A.I. favors the Dart Gun. Butch DeLoria will also use this weapon, since his 10mm Pistol is a weak weapon as well, and Charon will choose to use it over his shotgun at longer range.


 * This weapon can even take down characters such as Lucas Simms or Jericho on normal very easily for even a starting character. The critical damage alone is enough to knock off quite a few bars of health but then the added effects of the poison will knock off another good bit. Used consecutively in V.A.T.S, and despite this weapons overall poor looking damage, it makes for one of the best stealth weapons in the game right up there with the Perforator and the Infiltrator.


 * So lets say you have the Better Criticals perk, and you have maxed out Small Guns. You only have 4 shots in V.A.T.S, you're in sneak mode and have not yet been detected. You fire four shots consecutively. Thats 24 damage + 82 damage for the sneak attack critical + 4(64) or 256. That is exactly 362 points of damage for 1 round of V.A.T.S, now picture ten shots in one rounds, and lets say you have the Grim Reaper's Sprint, you're dealing over 900 points of damage in 1 round and if you kill just one person out of that round, you get to deal all that damage again.

Trivia

 * It appears to be launched as a spear gun, not with pneumatics. The paint gun works as the trigger and as storage for the radscorpion venom.
 * The container which supposedly contains the rad-scorpion venom has the words BUG JUICE and a skull and cross-bones written/drawn on it.

Glitch

 * Sometimes while you're firing the Dart gun, the Surgical Tubing (which is the part of the weapon in the schematics that shoots out the Dart) just stays there and it looks that the Dart itself shoots from the weapon. Also when you're reloading, the pulling part of the weapon had already been pulled and the dart that supposed to been shot is still there. There's no interference on any condition to the weapon but it looks odd.

If you crouch whilst having the dart gun equipped, the rod on the back of the paint gun component will constantly move back and forth (as if you were reloading)note:this only happens when viewing your character in 3rd person.

Videos
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