Firelance

The Firelance is a unique Alien Blaster.

Characteristics
In addition to its 100% critical chance and high damage, the Firelance sets its target on fire upon strike causing 2 points of damage every 5 seconds. Both the Pyromaniac and Xenotech Expert perks affect this weapon and it uses the rare Alien Power Cells as ammunition.

The Firelance can fire 63 shots, about 6 cells, before burning out.

The Firelance can kill any enemy on very hard mode within 10 shots (one shot being a sneak attack critical and the rest towards its weak spot, normally the head). This assumes your character has the weapon in 100% condition, that he/she has 100 in energy weapons and 10 in luck, and has the 'better criticals', 'pyromainiac', and 'xenotech expert' perks.

Feral Ghoul Reaver: 3 shots

Behemoth: 7 shots

Albino Radscorpion: 10 shots (The albino radscorpion is especially tough because of its high armor, and the fact that it does not have a weak spot that suffers bonus damages, ie. the behemoths head takes much more damage than normal)

Locations
The Firelance can only be obtained in the "Unidentified Flying Debris" random encounter or through console commands. See Fallout 3 random encounter locations (type A) for locations where this event may take place. The encounter only occurs once per player character.

Appearances
The Firelance appears only in Fallout 3.

Behind the scenes

 * The Firelance is a reference to an identically named Martian weapon appearing in the Wasteland paragraph book, in the red herring Mars plot.
 * Both the Firelance and the Alien Blaster resemble Commander Adams' pistol from the 1956 movie the Forbidden Planet, both in design and firing. The "bullets" disperse in a very similar way when they hit solid objects, such as walls.

Bugs

 * If the event occurs while passing through a rocky part of the Wasteland, the Firelance may drop onto rocks and not be retrievable by Dogmeat, as he often gets stuck in them. (the same with ammo)
 * It is possible that the spacecraft can glitch and leave 24 Power Cells and a Firelance stuck in the sky in addition to the regular 24 Power Cells and a Firelance on the ground.