Varmint Rifle

The varmint rifle is a weapon in Fallout: New Vegas.

Characteristics
The Varmint Rifle is a low powered starting weapon. You receive a free one in a poor condition and with a good supply of ammunition when you do the tutorial quests with Sunny Smiles in Goodsprings. They are a common weapon among low level Powder Gangers and are very inexpensive to repair.

Although its damage and DPS are low, it can be very accurate at long ranges if you manually target outside of VATS. With good Guns and Sneak skill, one-shot kills with sneak-attack head shots are possible against low level animals and humans. The night scope and silencer mods keep it useful in later game as well, and it can be useful to keep one as a "flyswatter" to save ammunition and repair bills on more powerful weapons.

Mods

 * Varmint rifle night scope - Adds mid to long range scope with night vision.
 * Varmint rifle silencer - Silences.
 * Varmint rifle extended mags +3 rounds per magazine.

Variants

 * Ratslayer

Locations

 * One is given to you by Sunny Smiles for talking to her in Goodsprings in the combat tutorial.
 * They can be found on various convicts.
 * They can often be found on lower level enemies; once a higher level is reached enemies start to carry Hunting Rifles or even semi-automatic rifles such as Service Rifles instead.

Bugs

 * Occasionally, for no quantifiable reason, the rifle will snap above your head. To fix this, simply move around, jump, change weapons, or, if all else fails, reload a previous save.
 * While having the varmint rifle with nightscope equipped on your back a black line will appear across the center of your screen.
 * When the rifle is on your back while not wearing power armor, it may occasionally float about 6 inches off your characters back, best seen from a 3rd person side view.
 * When you hold this weapon or the Ratslayer (unique Varmint Rifle) your character will hold it as a standard rifle and will not use the thumb hole.
 * The rifle may not appear on the character's back or in his/her hands when equipped in 3rd person view, although it will remain normal in 1st person.