Weapons

"Long as we still got guns, we gonna' fight."

- Coach

"Guys! Big, badass, nasty weapons over here!!!"

- Zoey

The main weapons in Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 are divided into two tiers. The first tier weapons are the kind available to any Survivor when the scenario starts. Second-tier weapons can only be found later on throughout the maps such as at the end of each campaign just before or at the finale, and they are considered upgrades from Tier-1-weapons. Melee (shove-back, default "right-click (mouse2)") can be used while holding any weapon, on Infected (excluding the Tank, the Charger, and the Witch (except in some situations) within close combat, pushing them back and delaying a threat.

There is currently no way to distribute weapons or ammunition among teammates without picking up another weapon to replace the slot of the weapon you wish to give. All weapons have an attached flashlight with an unlimited battery.

Picking up a weapon from a table or other location holding new weapons (not from a dead Survivor) provides a full ammo refill of that weapon, equivalent to interaction with an ammo pile. This is useful for unloading an entire magazine, then picking up a new one so as to avoid having to reload the weapon.

Weapons will continue reloading despite the lack of reloading animation during melee attacks, provided that reloading starts before the melee attacks. This is extremely useful if out of ammo, or both primary and pistol need to be reloaded as it allows the player to shove back attacking Infected while their weapon reloads in the background. When it is fully reloaded (after 2-3 melees' time) it can be used to kill the staggering Infected.

All bullet based weapons have penetration. This means you can fire through thin walls, although sniping-based rifles are more efficient at this.

Left 4 Dead
Tier 1

Tier 2

Left 4 Dead 2
The following weapons are found in Left 4 Dead 2. The original Left 4 Dead weapons also make an appearance in Left 4 Dead 2, although some of them appear to be slightly tweaked, renamed and have a new reload animation.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Other Tier
There are only two weapons that don't qualify as a tier 1 or tier 2 that can be found in Left 4 Dead 2. These are sometimes classified as Special Tier weapons.

Sidearms
Other than primary weapons, Survivors are provided with a sidearm weapon at all times in case their primary runs low on ammo.

Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead only features one sidearm, the M1911 Pistol which can be dual-wielded.

Left 4 Dead 2
Unlike Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 features two firearms and 11 melee weapons under the sidearms section.

Melee weapons
Other than handguns, Survivors can also use close combat weapons and improvised items they find throughout the campaigns to deal with Infected nearby.

Counter-Strike:Source Weapons
Due to the censorship of the German version of the game, Valve has decided to port some weapons from Counter-Strike into the game exclusively for German players to make up for the censorship. Though this is exclusive to those who own the German version of the game, anyone who plays with someone who owns the German version will encounter these weapons as well. They may also be encountered occasionally on modded servers or custom campaigns for all players.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Melee Weapons

Weapon Upgrades
Special items lay scattered across maps to boost their weapon's abilities. Only found in Left 4 Dead 2.

Grenades
Each of the Survivors can carry at any time one of the following grenades.

Usable Items
These items are found throughout campaigns, and when picked up, you can't use any weapon until you throw them or drop them. You can shove with them, however. When shot, burned, or otherwise detonated, these items blow up or spread flames, making good tools for defending areas during Crescendos or Finales.

Special Items
These items, like the items above, take over all of the Survivor's abilities to use weapons, and can be used to knock back Infected. Though these are special that in some cases are required to fulfill a certain task.

Fixed Weapons
Over the course of the campaigns, the Survivors find fixed gun emplacements left behind by the military in their failed attempt to contain the Infection. They appear at certain finales and crescendo events and have an infinite supply of ammo. However they are prone to overheating, which renders them temporarily unusable. When a Survivor uses a mounted gun, they cannot move and can only fire in a fixed arc.

Weapon Characteristics
The following are common characteristics shared by most weapons.

Reload
Reloading (default "R" on PC and "B" on the Xbox360) is the in-game action of moving ammo from your reserve ammo count to your usable loaded ammo.

The Hunting Rifle and Sniper Rifle take longer to reload than the other five magazine-fed weapons, but the person using it should have the least close quarters contact of all other Survivors anyway.

Pistols have a similar reload time to the submachine guns, but have a much smaller magazine capacity with slightly higher damage. Dual Pistols make reloading take slightly longer, and incapacitated players take twice as long as normal to reload their pistols.

It is best to always reload before a finale or when a Tank is drawing near. While reloading in the heat of battle, it is best to run away when you are almost out of ammo and use your melee attack while reloading. Listen closely when a teammate yells "Reloading," and offer cover fire, especially if they are using shotguns or the Sniper or Hunting Rifles.

If you melee while you are reloading, this will not interrupt your action. You will continue to reload until you are finished or attacked by a Special Infected such as the Hunter, Tank, Smoker, Charger, or Jockey. This is extremely helpful against horde attacks, as it allows you to push them away from you to finish reloading you weapon.

One thing to remember when reloading is that if you press the reload button before your gun or magazine is empty, you will reload just a little bit faster than if you empty your magazine entirely. This proves useful if you need to take down a Tank, and need a fast reload. One way to bypass this is to leave exactly one or two bullets left in the gun, then press reload. You still have the fast reload, but get to empty your entire magazine.

Flashlight
The Flashlight is an item that is always in the Survivors' inventory and is attached to every firearm the player can obtain. You cannot drop it, but you can turn it on and off, which makes a clicking sound. It allows the player to see in dark areas when exploring for items and weapons. It also allows the player to scout out such areas for groups of Common Infected, and spot Special Infected much easier. Also, the flashlight is attached in a fixed point on your weapon which means that when using the melee attack, changing weapon and reloading, you lose the benefit of the light as your weapon moves and changes angles. Although when using melee weapons in L4D2, you still have a cone of light which is larger and much more useful than any of the guns, as swinging your melee weapon won't disturb the light source. This is a lot more useful for exploring and examining items and artwork, although it is strange that the light seems to be coming from nowhere. When looking at a teammate who has his/her flashlight turned on, you can only see the cone of light while the light which shines at his/her crosshair is not visible. A possible reason can be seen in third-person view (PC only); the crosshair light only follows the head's facing, not the flashlight's. This is no longer the case in Left 4 Dead 2 as the character's heads no longer turn. The flashlight is a sure-fire way to disturb the Witch, as demonstrated in the introduction cutscene. The Survivors will often warn each other when they believe they hear a Witch, telling them to turn their flashlights off. Shining the light on her will disturb her more than standing near her, so you should aim your crosshair away from her, or turn it off altogether. Also, idle Common Infected are disturbed faster when you shine your flashlight on them.

Cooldown
Cooldown is the minimum length of time in the Left 4 Dead series that a Survivor or an Infected needs to wait after using an ability before they can use it again.

The Survivors
Main article: Fatigue

In Left 4 Dead the Survivors have no special abilities and therefore do not need to wait to use their abilities other than healing, shooting and reloading. However, in all gameplay modes of Left 4 Dead 2 and Versus or Survival modes of Left 4 Dead there is an exception called Melee Fatigue. After a couple of melee uses, the Survivors will need to wait two seconds until they can use it again, and if they will keep using it, they will have to keep waiting two to three seconds between each melee attack until fully rested for couple of seconds.

Originally this was not in the game until Valve received complaints of people not actually "firing their gun" in Versus and Campaign matches. When the Left 4 Dead DLC known as the Survival pack was released, Valve added in this new system, but left it out of the Campaign mode for unknown reasons.

The Infected
The Infected have different abilities, and therefore different cooldown times.


 * The Boomer has to wait 30 seconds before being able to vomit on the Survivors again.
 * The Hunter does not have a cooldown on Pouncing, but it must wait 2 seconds before being able to leap if it stood up.
 * The Smoker's tongue takes 15 seconds to regenerate if it bends or is removed from a Survivor. In Versus, it takes 5 seconds to rewind if it misses.
 * The Tank takes 3 seconds to swing his arm again after punching and to rip the ground to throw concrete. The Tank has no punch delay after a rock throw, meaning it can hit a Survivor twice.
 * The Charger has to wait 12 seconds to be able to charge again.
 * The Spitter has to wait 20 seconds before she is able to spit again.
 * The Jockey has to wait 1 second after he jumps if he misses a Survivor, 7 seconds if he is knocked off of a Survivor, and 30 seconds if he incapacitates a Survivor.
 * The Hunter, Boomer, Charger, Spitter, Jockey and Smoker's secondary claw attack has a 1 second cooldown.

Behind the Scenes

 * In the game_sounds_weapons.txt file, listings for a flare gun and a LAW rocket launcher can be found. It is likely that these weapons were scrapped early in development, as none of the pre-release footage shows either of these weapons.
 * All of the weapons in Left 4 Dead are based on the programming used for Counter-Strike: Source's weapons. Most of the weapons are based on either weapons usable by both teams or Counter-Terrorist-exclusive weapons, with the only exception being the Dual Pistols, which is based on the Dualies, a Terrorist-exclusive weapon.
 * Weapons originally did not have flashlights on them, as seen in pre-release pictures. In addition, their world models had blood on them.
 * All weapons originally had two reload animations; when the magazine is empty and when the magazine is not. The animation that played when the magazine was empty is longer than the other animation because the player need to cock the gun in order to load a new round. Most of the "empty" animations were removed from the game, but can still be seen in the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools. The only weapons that still use their empty reload animations are the pump and auto shotgun. In Left 4 Dead 2, most of the weapons have the empty animations (Except the Hunting rifle).
 * It appears that the animations relating to the other 3 weapons (Uzi, Assault Rifle, and Hunting Rifle) were removed shortly before release, as they can be last seen in gameplay footage dated September 2nd, 2008, but are gone by the time footage is released on October 15th, 2008


 * Originally, weapons did not have flashlights on them. The light came from the player's chest, like in the Half-Life series. Flashlights were attached to the guns to make it so that the player wouldn't have a light source when either reloading or using melee.


 * The old flashlight behavior is still in the final game; turn on the flashlight when holding a melee weapon, molotov, pipe bomb, bile bomb, medkit or pills to see it.
 * Laser Sights were originally set to be an upgrade for Left 4 Dead, but, the concept of upgrades were cut. It then was put into Left 4 Dead 2 as a lone upgrade.

Cut Weapons
In Left 4 Dead 2 there were originally going to be a riot shield and a didgeridoo as usable melee weapons in the game. However, they appear to be cut. The riot shield was fully modeled and textured and can still be spawned in-game both via the console and during custom campaigns, while the didgeridoo had a model, but no textures. A line of text referring to a wrench can also be found (models/weapons/w_models/w_wrench.mdl).

In Hard Rain, there was also suppose to be a flare gun, but was cut during early development. Found somewhere near the end of the level, with the possible ability to help Survivors see in the rain. A clue that there was a flare gun originally is reflected in an occasional conversation at the start of Hard Rain where Nick wonders how they can signal Virgil, to which Ellis replies "Oh there's flares in the gun bag." Nick replies "What gun bag?"

Ammo Packs were also set to be an an alternative to the health kit. When deployed it would let all Survivors be able to restock on ammo. It was cut because players found it less valuable than the med kit and expected to find more ammo further on.

In early development Coach was seen with a compound bow which was never put into game, as seen

Combined

 * On each Survivor model, the pistol is the only weapon that actually has a reasonable excuse to stay attached to you, as survivors have one pistol holster and pockets. Weapons and health kits/defibrillator/ammo packs put on your back don't have a strap keeping them on; and bile bombs/pipe bombs/molotovs and pills/adrenaline also seem to float on the player's waist.
 * When picking up ammo from a stock pile in Left 4 Dead, it would only fill the reserve ammunition to its maximum capacity; which means players would have to reload twice or before they picked up ammo. In Left 4 Dead 2, picking up ammo from a stock pile would fill the weapon up entirely, eliminating the need to reload again.
 * You can still somehow use the flashlight even when wielding items such as pills, Melee Weapons, and gas cans, even when they do not have one attached to them.
 * Even though the common tactic is to switch off your flashlight when a Witch is nearby, it is usually unnecessary as the Witch is only disturbed by the light when you aim it directly at her.
 * While you cannot see the light made by another Survivor's flashlight, you can tell if they have their light on or off, by looking at the bottom of their gun. If the flashlight is on, there will be a cone of light there.
 * Sometimes in Versus, Infected players can turn off their "flashlight", but however, it will turn immediately back on. This can perhaps be viewed as blinking.
 * The flashlight is not shown on the HUD icons for the weapons in the PC version of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, but it is shown on the Xbox 360 version.

Left 4 Dead

 * The posters before each level sometimes show characters with scoped MP5s, but they are not usable in the actual game.
 * With the exception of one area each in the 3rd and 4th chapters of Death Toll and in Crash Course, all tier 2 weaponry spawns in groups; allowing players to choose which weapon they want to wield against the Infected.
 * For unknown reasons, turning on your flashlight while you're aiming the minigun will cause your flashlight to rapidly turn on and off continuously until you dismount. If you actually need to shine your flashlight while mounting one, you need it turn it on on the weapon you were using before mounting the minigun.
 * If you observe a fellow Survivor reloading their gun, they will always cock their weapons regardless of the amount of ammo the magazine has left, excluding the two shotguns and dual pistols. These animations were supposed to be cut (at least in the firstperson view) but the Survivor can resume shooting even while cocking their gun. In addition, the sounds of the cut cocking animation will also play.

Left 4 Dead 2

 * The melee fatigue timer comes up when you shove with firearms, but not when swinging a melee weapon, although shoving with the melee weapon will cause fatigue.
 * Upon picking up a melee weapon, Survivors drop their pistol (if they are dual wielding, they will drop both pistols). However, when they are incapacitated, they still pull out a pistol, and once revived, the pistol is no longer part of their inventory and the melee weapon is still in the pistol slot.
 * Typing "give melee" in console will give you the base for melee weapons. When taken out it appears to be glitch arms flying all over the place, and has no HUD icon. If traded for a different melee weapon or a pistol, the world model will appear as a Hunter's arms.
 * Typing "give [name]_claw" in console (replacing[name] with the name of a Special Infected, will cause an apparent error. These 'weapons' are the only 'equipment' a player Infected can use. When given to a survivor, they will drop on the ground and appear as the game's default pistol, due to the need for a world model "even if it will never be used".
 * Currently, the weapon smoke effect is bugged, as the smoke comes from behind the gun, rather than from the muzzle.
 * Originally the melee weapons were supposed to break after prolonged use, but the development team ultimately decided against it after testing. Break sounds for the Axe and Frying Pan weapons can still be found in the game files.
 * Every melee weapon delivers a one-hit-kill against Common Infected and can take 2-5 hits against Special Infected (apart from the Tank).