RIG Riot Weapons and Volatile Mods

This page is for pilots who keep opening chests and still feel like the gun chose them. RIG Riot weapons are assembled from components, sorted into light / medium / heavy, and limited by a weight-based capacity on the RIG. Volatile Mods are a separate six-slot board that changes how you play, not a seventh gun. If you need raid timing more than loot math, use the raids and objectives guide and come back when you have tokens to spend.

Starter weapons come from the Armory, not from a full owned-weapon picker. During a raid, encryption tokens open chests for more weapons and for Volatile Mods. Level-ups can also hand you a new gun, then later upgrades for that same gun. Weapons save to loadouts in the garage. Mods do not persist as a second Armory — they are the run. Combat movement that makes those guns usable is in the how to play guide.

Weapons: weight, statuses, and augments

Guns, melee, and launchers all eat capacity. A heavy is not better — it is a bigger slice of a budget balanced to that cost. Four heavies is a capacity build, paid for with Assassin load limit and inner parts. Fortified no longer sprinkles flat capacity onto every frame.

Two statuses on one weapon combine into a unique stronger status. That gun becomes a build identity. Protect it with weapon-only augments. Unlocking a slot offers three options; settlement rerolls prevent those three from returning unless the pool is empty.

Weapon customization lives in the garage. A setting fires semi-automatic guns as if they were automatic — comfort, not hidden damage. Void Slot (Blocked Slot after the rename) keeps a mount out of the upgrade generator so the pool stops offering junk for an empty hand.

Fire Demon’s gatling base damage per projectile went from 210 to 60. Do not plan around old clip math. Termite and Repeater saw tiny bumps (50 to 52, 120 to 123). Base weapon damage now scales with overall upgrade level, which is kinder to a late gun. Dual-wielding a second copy requires selecting a valid open slot first. Ammo is LS / RS / LH / RH — keep two pools. Melee is hold-and-release with optional auto-lunge.

For rankings after you understand capacity, open the weapon tier list. Lists go stale; the capacity rule does not.

Game development is hard | RIG Riot weapons and systems

Watch this next: why weapons and mods keep changing

The “game development is hard” devlog is Sage talking through systems that refused to stay simple. Watch it for why weapons, mods, and upgrades were rebuilt, then come back and respect the six-slot cap instead of treating every crate as mandatory.

Volatile Mods: six slots, no stacking, real playstyle changes

You get six Volatile Mod slots. They do not stack. Rarity exists. Filling six copies of the same idea is a waste. Pick mods that change a verb you already do: dodge, dash, dump energy, land, apply lightning.

Developer examples are the right model. Dodged missiles become friendly. An explosion on landing during a downward dash boost. Zap nearby enemies when energy depletes. Devlog 0’s lightning example: enemies destroyed by lightning leave zones that chain lightning and boost energy recharge. Retaliation Clause fires a homing Nanite projectile. Infernal Cycle fireballs apply Burning. Vicious Circuit’s energy restore was cut from 1x to 0.1x because electric damage was refilling the bar for free.

Later patches added status procs for mods that previously needed another source, and chain procs can fire on projectiles spawned by augments or mods. A dead slot is usually “I cannot proc this,” not a hidden bug. Do not open every chest. Upgrade a mod you already trigger before you collect a rare you cannot. Consumables (health, ammo, Scrap) are valid when you are one fight from the transport.

Shortlist on the Volatile Mods tier list, then test on a frame you built in garage customization. A landing-explosion mod on Quad Legs can be a brick on a hover-heavy Biped.

Armory, Scrap, and not locking the run

The Armory is starter quality. Scrap is the meta spend; encryption tokens are the raid spend. Do not buy a starter you will immediately Void Slot. Do buy rerolls. Lightning zones and explosions strobe — if a mod board is unreadable, check settings as well as the build. When a patch rewrites a gun, believe the patch notes over muscle memory, then test in Mission before Assault.

Next steps after your first six-mod run

Keep one loadout that is “two statuses plus three mods you understand” and stop rerolling it every chest. Tune the frame around that board in garage customization. Use the weapon tier list and the Volatile Mods tier list as filters, not as shopping lists. When the board is stable, practice spending it on real majors in the raids and objectives guide instead of the firing range forever.