Frostrail weapon tier list

Ez Jämsen told interviewers Frostrail is “guns first,” with a classic WW1-esque lineup: pistols, shotguns, rifles, machine guns, plus a handful of melee tools. All of those guns are craftable and sit on a modular upgrade path. Ammo is a luxury. That last sentence does more ranking than any spreadsheet.

This list grades archetypes, not invented item IDs. When Early Access (Q4 2026) names specific guns, we will split the rows. Until then, pick a lane that matches How to Play and the doorway you keep dying in.

Letter grades are defined on the Tier List hub. S means it solves a common wipe without starving the crew.

S — Shotguns (doorways, carriages, Revenants)

Revenants are the melee, high-count faction. They want your ankles in a blizzard and your spine in a carriage aisle. A shotgun is how a rear guard turns a door into a plan. Playtest images from inside a wrecked car — teammate on the left, creatures on the tracks — are shotgun screenshots whether or not the model in the hands is a rifle.

Why S: ammo still matters, but each shell has a job in the fights FakeFish actually shows. Modular upgrades that tighten spread or speed reloads will matter more here than a range mag that turns it into a bad rifle.

When it falls to A: open tundra peeks against corrupted soldiers. Do not duel rooftops with buckshot. Hand that lane to a rifle.

A — Rifles (soldiers, walks home, scouts)

Corrupted soldiers are fewer, smarter, and ranged. A rifle is how a scout calls a target and actually deletes it before the blizzard eats the trace. On the walk home, a rifle makes the difference between “we see them” and “they see us first.”

Why A not S: rifles punish panic mag-dumps. If your crew crafts rifles for everyone, you will be dry when a Revenant pack hits the rear door. Pair at least one shotgun or a melee backup. See enemies before you clone loadouts.

A — Melee (dungeons, ammo bankruptcy, quiet rooms)

Melee is not a meme in a game that hands you a torch and a hammer on the hotbar. Cellars, shrines, and repair jobs already put tools in your hands. A dedicated melee weapon is S-adjacent when you are broke, and A when you use it to finish downed Revenants instead of spending the last three rifle rounds.

Risk: corrupted soldiers. Charging a gunline with a hammer is how highlight reels and wipes are born. Melee is a dungeon and carriage tool, not a tundra tool.

B — Pistols (sidearm, scouts, “I can still shoot”)

Pistols are how you stop treating the hotbar like a single gun. A scout with a rifle and an empty pocket is a tourist. A scout with a pistol still has a vote in a carriage fight. Modular pistol upgrades that cut reload or recoil will probably punch above weight if ammo for bigger guns stays scarce.

Why not A yet: trailer language and interviews still center long guns. Until a test build makes a pistol the best dungeon clear, it is a sidearm. Craft it second, not never.

B — Machine guns (train defense, if you can feed them)

Obstacle-clearing now includes train-defense encounters. A mounted or lugged machine gun is the fantasy of those fights. It is also how a crew of four discovers they have no ammo for the walk back.

Rank B until proven: excellent if the Eden Engine player is stable and one person is clearly on the gun. Catastrophic if four people “needed” one. Modular belts and recoil parts may push this to A in Early Access. Do not pre-spend your identity on that hope.

C — “One of every bench toy”

Crafting everything because the station is there is how you skip clothes and fuel. Clothes are survival; see Survival. A fourth firearm variant that nobody can feed is a C-tier decision even if the model is pretty.

Crew craft order (not a DPS order)

1. One shotgun or strong close-range answer for the rear of the train.
2. One rifle for the person who actually peeks snow.
3. Pistol or melee backups so reloads are not death.
4. Machine gun only if defense encounters keep beating you and the salvage pile can feed it.
5. Modular parts on the gun you already shoot, not on a stash gun.

Co-op jobs should own these crafts. If everyone crafts a rifle, you did not read enemies.

What we are waiting on

Named weapons, attachment lists, exact ammo types, and bench costs. FakeFish has not published a public spreadsheet. Early Access will add more loot and crafting depth — roadmap. When a patch note names a gun, it gets its own row. Until then, argue about lanes, not about a wiki-invented “Type 8 carbine.”

If your deaths are heat and repair, this page cannot save you. Go back to Survival and the checklist. If your deaths are “we shot the wrong thing,” stay here, then open Enemies.