Dart Gun

The dart gun is a constructible Small Guns skill weapon in Fallout 3.

Characteristics
The dart gun is a player-crafted weapon which functions like a small pistol-crossbow. It can be assembled at any workbench by using at least one dart gun schematic, and the appropriate components. A paint gun serves as the framework for the gun, with the paint can containing the venom from a radscorpion poison gland. A toy car is used as the bow, with elastic surgical tubing attached to the car's wheels in order to propel the ammunition.

The weapon fires darts that have been dipped in radscorpion venom. A hit anywhere on a target's body will instantly cripple the legs, making it extremely useful against fast melee opponents such as deathclaws, yao guai, feral ghoul reavers, super mutants, and aliens. Although the venom will affect radscorpions, it will not reduce their speed as dramatically as for other enemies.

After the initial hit, the darts inflict additional poison damage upon the target for 8 seconds unless the target is non-organic, such as a robot, in which case the poison will do no extra damage. The poison damage effects of the dart do stack; more darts in the target at once will cause it to lose health at a faster rate.

The dart gun is treated as a silenced weapon, and has 0 spread (perfect accuracy when shot with a Small Guns skill of 100), making it an effective stealth weapon.

Durability
The dart gun can fire a total of about 883 darts from full condition before breaking.

Locations
The dart gun must be created at a workbench using dart gun schematics. It is not otherwise found in the Capital Wasteland.

Bugs
If one crouches with the dart gun equipped, the rod on the back of the paint gun component will constantly move back and forth (as if it were being reloaded). This only happens when viewing the player character in 3rd person.
 * Note: This bug has been patched.