Weapons, Gadgets, and Bonecharms

You’re going to love this chapter! Here we go over all weapons, traps, tools, and charms you find in Dishonored 2. We talk about the general use of these items, and how you can use them to overcome a variety of challenges!

Weapons

Sword

Corvo and Emily both carry Swords and are highly adept in their use. These intuitive weapons are used at close range to dispatch enemies, whether they’re aware or oblivious to your presence. Unaware enemies can be killed instantly via assassination. This can be accomplished by jumping down at them, attacking from behind, or making an attack from the front if they don’t have their weapons out to defend themselves.

In our Gameplay chapter, you learned about combat, which included attacking, parrying, counterattacking, and blocking. Your Sword is required for all these techniques. When using it, stay close to your victims and dispatch them one at a time.

Sword-fighting is reliable against individuals and small groups. Against larger groups or distant, ranged enemies, it suffers a little. To survive these situations, invest in abilities like Reflexes and Blood Thirst so that your swordplay is both deadlier and more defensive.

After upgrading your Sword, you can craft a Masterwork version of it. Corvo and Emily get the same option here.

Pistol

Pistols are short- or medium-range weapons that deal moderate damage. They badly wound most targets if you strike them in the chest or limbs. Score a headshot and you’re likely to get an instant kill. When you wound a target, they are briefly stunned. When in this state, you can assassinate or grab your victim to begin a choke or use them as a human shield while you decide what to do.

The Pistol is best used during battle to weaken or eliminate enemies while you’re in between Sword swings. This makes it much easier to prevent your hero from being overwhelmed. Once you’re good at aiming, it’s fairly easy to take down someone with a Sword strike, fire a Pistol shot into another, and then finish a third victim all in the span of mere seconds. Even without additional abilities to help you, this can turn the tide of many battles throughout the game.

At really close range, the Pistol has a small amount of damage spread. This means that you can briefly stun a cluster of enemies if they’re right on top of you.

Be cautious about using the Pistol to start your encounters. This weapon makes a huge amount of noise, and you’re often better off killing enemies with your Sword or Crossbow if they’re unaware of your presence. Save your Bullets for fights that are already joined against multiple targets who clearly know where you are.

If you get all the Pistol upgrades [Accuracy 1 and 2, Reload 1 and 2, and Magazine +1 (3)] you get to craft a Masterwork Pistol. Each character has two choices for the type of Pistol they receive.

Explosive Bullet

Explosive Bullets are meant to be saved and savored! These expensive items have an area of effect that damages everyone close to the place of impact and throws them around as well. This kills weaker targets immediately, and badly wounds just about anything else in your way. Never use these in smaller or easier battles. Save Explosive Bullets for risky fights. The more targets you can group together, the more effective this ammunition becomes.

To aid effectiveness, lure groups of enemies toward narrow hallways and corners. They naturally group together in these smaller spaces, allowing your explosives to do their work!

Crossbow

The Crossbow offers a different ranged weapon compared to the Pistol. Instead of a loud weapon for use in the middle of battle, you get an ideal assassination tool. Though still functional if you need extra damage during a fight, this weapon kills targets at long range without making much noise. Use it to eliminate ranged enemies before a fight starts so that they don’t give you trouble after someone raises an alert.

Headshots with Crossbow Bolts bring down almost any target. Because you’re going against unaware opponents with most of your regular Bolts, take your time and aim carefully. Never waste a Bolt on a body shot because you might not kill the target. They’ll make plenty of noise, call buddies, and then you’ve wasted your chance to thin the ranks before getting into a large melee battle.

Special Bolts are used to expand the versatility of your Crossbow. Once you get far enough into the game to gather these, you can use this weapon in even more exciting ways.

Merciful players sometimes forget to use their Bolts. Try to remind yourself to spend these whenever you fight targets that don’t count toward Chaos or general slaughter. For example, any player can kill wolfhounds without negative consequences. Use Bolts for this to remain quiet and stealthy. Also, you can shoot Crossbow Bolts into walls and other objects to draw people’s attention without immediately triggering an alert. Set up ambushes with this method.

If you get enough Blueprints to upgrade your Crossbow far enough, you can create a Masterwork version of it. Upgrade your Accuracy, Extended Range, and Reload Speed to enable this. You can then choose from two Masterwork versions of the weapon.

Sleep Dart

Sleep Darts give you the rare ability to bring down targets at range without ending their lives. For non-lethal players, this is a massive boon, because everything else in your arsenal requires more setup time or a lethal conclusion.

Watch enemy patrollers to find out when they’re out of the way. That’s the best time to put them to sleep. They won’t be discovered, so you don’t need to move their bodies. If there aren’t any secluded locations on their patrol, hit the target when they’re close to your hiding spot. Dart out, grab the sleeping guard, and get them someplace they won’t be found.

Normally, these darts take a few seconds to knock someone out. Headshots negate this problem and take out the target almost instantly. With a vital upgrade, Sleep Darts can be improved to work instantaneously, even during combat. This doesn’t help Ghost players, but it’s perfect for stealth users who sometimes get discovered yet don’t want to kill anyone. Pop someone with a combat Sleep Dart and be done with it!

Major stealth players in general should also look for Bonecharms that give a chance to recover Sleep Darts. Break these charms and remake them with Bonecharm Crafting. A charm with four sets of this ability gives you a very good chance to recover your Sleep Darts, allowing you to use them almost with impunity.

Incendiary Bolt

Incendiary Bolts do initial damage like a normal Crossbow Bolt, but then also deal damage over time to anything they hit. This supplementary damage is useful for helping to kill off heavier targets. However, Incendiary Bolts cause a huge amount of noise because the victim screams like murder. Use these during combat, or when a large fight is unavoidable.

Howling Bolt

A gang of criminals in Karnaca developed the Howling Bolts. These special weapons blind and deafen a target for several seconds. The blindness fades first, and then the deafness goes about a second later.

Use these shots to disengage from combat with really dangerous targets you don’t want to fight directly. Slam a Howling Bolt into them and get out of their line of sight before they recover. You get a second chance to assassinate these victims, or you can leave the area altogether.

These weapons don’t have any effect on mechanical targets. Save them for Elite Guards, Veterans, and other tricky foes.

Stinging Bolt

Enemies struck with a Stinging Bolt flee from the intense pain this item causes. This buys you time to finish a fight, escape, or get into more trouble. People who’ve been affected by a Stinging Bolt forget what they were doing. If you shoot a single target and move away before they recover, they’ll go back to their post and continue doing whatever they were doing.

If a single target is in your way and you don’t have a better solution, use a Stinging Bolt and get them out of your hair for a short time.

Gadgets and Consumables

Health Elixir

Health Elixirs are bright red in color and restore quite a solid amount of Health. Their effect is instant, and you can save your life by drinking these when a battle turns against you.

Enter your Ability menu and look for your Elixirs to the upper left of the Radial section. That’s where you see how many Health Elixirs you have to spare.

Mana Elixir

Mana Elixirs restore lost Mana instantly. They’re hard to find, and heavy casters will rarely have more than they can spare. Mitigate the shortage by casting slowly and giving your character time to regenerate after each spell. Low-cost abilities like Blink, Far Reach, and Dark Vision can be used indefinitely as long as you do this.

The Heart

Equip the Heart to make Runes, Outsider Shrines, and Bonecharms appear on your HUD. You get to see their location, distance, and the type of item in question. This is invaluable for hunting rare collectibles.

If you highlight one of these items with the Heart out, you can pin the item’s location as a waypoint, making it even easier to track down the item you want.

Listen to the sound of the Heart as you approach a rare target. The Heart beats louder and louder to let you know how close you are. Once you’ve picked up the item, the Heart stops making noise so that you can focus on a new goal.

Using the Heart while targeting an area gives you more information about the background of that locale. Do the same thing while targeting a person to hear about that target’s thoughts and deeds.

Timepiece

This item is only used during a single mission, over halfway through the game. Equip and use it to shift between two time periods. This does not cost you any Mana, so it can be used constantly. The only restriction is that you can’t switch timelines if there is an object blocking you in the other timeline.

A lens is attached to the Timepiece. Unfold this to see the effects your actions have on the other timeline without having to go there. This is a fast way to see what is blocking your transition, and if there are any enemies ahead of you in the other time.

Impact Grenade

This is a standard thrown weapon. It explodes after four seconds of being lit, or instantly if it makes contact with a living target. You can cook your Grenades by holding down the Item button. This lets you burn down some of the fuse before throwing if you need the Grenade to explode soon after landing.

Don’t ever hold a cooked Grenade for too long. The effects are about as grim as you might guess.

Impact Grenades are wonderful when you have enemies coming toward an enclosed area. You can bounce one off a wall and into a group of enemies without exposing yourself. Very powerful.

Sticky Grenade

Sticky Grenades attach to walls, living targets, ceilings, floors, etc. They explode in four seconds and do a huge amount of damage to anything close by. When you’re chased by enemies, leave a Sticky Grenade on the wall as you sprint away. The fools who run after you are likely to get a painful surprise as they approach.

Spring Razor

Spring Razors are useful traps because they don’t have a timer or detonator. Instead, they go off whenever an enemy gets too close. Set up lethal areas ahead of time in a place you’ve already cleared. Then, use noise to lure an enemy closer. Or shoot at a group from range, and run away through your trapped location. If you put the Spring Razor at a corner, people are almost certain to run over it as they chase you.

Watch out, though. Spring Razors won’t trigger on you, but they blow up whenever anyone else gets too close. That can kill civilians just as easily as it kills Guards. Use these in areas where there aren’t any friendlies around.

Stun Mine

Stun Mines take several seconds to activate, but when they blow up they’ll disrupt everyone within a moderate area of effect. Use this to safely take down targets without killing them. If you’re comfy with murder, you can always slice them up later.

Stun Mines are perhaps the best weapon in the entire game against Clockwork Soldiers. Two of these, placed near each other, will kill a Clockwork Soldier outright. Even a single one is quite disabling for the powerful machines.

Place these in an area where you know the Clockwork Soldiers will follow, and then lure them over the mines.

Spyglass

The Spyglass lets you zoom in on distant targets. You can hear their conversations much more easily, and see what they’re doing. This helps with aiming ranged weapons, figuring out patroller routes, and with general scouting.

Using precision weapons (like the Crossbow) is really fun when you have the Spyglass out. Headshots, even at very long range, are much easier to pull off. Use the Spyglass outside of combat to ensure you don’t miss when going after tricky shots.

Rewire Tools

Rewire Tools allow you to change the properties of various mechanisms. These turn off security, allow you to use Walls of Light safely, reprogram Clockwork Soldiers, etc. Though expensive to purchase, these items are very powerful. Search carefully around people’s apartments to stock up on Rewire Tools; there are often enough of them in missions that you don’t need to buy them from the black market!

Upgrades

Purchase these improvements to your gear are at the black market. Some of them have no requirements (save for money to get the work done). Others require special Blueprints you find as you proceed through the game. These Blueprints are called out in the Walkthrough and again in our Collectibles section at the end of the guide.

Crossbow Upgrades

Gear Upgrades

Gun Upgrades

Grenade Upgrades

Spring Razor Upgrades

Stun Mine Upgrades

Sword Upgrades

Bonecharms

There are almost 100 Bonecharms in the game, not including those you craft on your own. This leaves a huge number of effects to improve Emily’s and Corvo’s stats. You get to equip several of these as soon as you get a collection together, and additional upgrades to your gear let you put on more and more of them.

Use Bonecharms to focus your build around your primary activities. Don’t add effects for Health and combat if you’re a stealth player; get Bonecharms that help with your Mana supply, movement, and ability to remain undiscovered. Similarly, combative players should focus on their Health, ability to kill quickly, and anything that improves their deadlier abilities.

Some Bonecharms have only a single effect, but others can have multiple effects (some of them negative). Look carefully at each as you decide what you need the most and what you’re willing to sacrifice. Some negative effects might be irrelevant to your character, so these corrupted Bonecharms can still be incredibly powerful. For example, Shivering Silhouette lets you avoid ranged damage more often, but you are spotted more easily. This is absolute garbage for a stealth player. However, it’s perfect for a combative player who doesn’t care about being seen. If you like wading into battle, there is no tradeoff here to worry about.

Later in the game, you get enough Raw Whalebone and Runes to master Bonecharm Crafting and use it heavily. Crafting multiple Bonecharms with your favorite bonuses is incredibly powerful and allows you to make your character focus almost entirely on your preferred style of gameplay.

Regular Bonecharms

Corrupted Bonecharms

Black Bonecharms