Items, armor and throwables

How gear works

Your guns do most of the killing in Nothing 2 Lose, but gear decides whether you live through the bad moments. Gear comes in two kinds. Items are things you use up: medkits, grenades, fire bottles, ammo boxes and a few odd tools. Armor is one piece you wear for the whole round, and it raises your health and often gives extra magazines or a special protection.

You buy both in the ARMORY from the main menu, with the Cash you earn from playing rounds. Event gear costs Tickets instead. Gear is kept as stock: buy five Medkits and you own five. When a round starts, the game takes one of your equipped armor and one of each equipped item type out of your stock and hands them to you. Think of every piece as a round's worth of supplies.

You can equip up to 3 item types from the menu. During a round you can carry up to 5 different types once you add pickups, on the number keys 3 to 7. Most items stack to 2 of the same kind, a few (like Extra Ammo) to just 1. If you turn on AUTO-RESTOCK in the store, the game buys one of each equipped Cash item and armor for you at round start, so you never walk in empty-handed by accident.

Some gear also needs a rank. The rank shown in the tables below is the rank you must reach before the menu store sells it to you. Each new account starts with 2 Grenades, 2 Medkits, 2 Lifevests, so you can try the basics right away.

Where items come from

The menu store is only one source. Once a round is running, items show up in four more places, and good players use all of them.

The in-round Armory

Open the Tab panel during a round and you will see Armory tiles. These sell 9 items for the Cash you have earned in this round, so a good start pays for an emergency Grenade later. You can buy each tile once per round, there is no rank gate here, and the Extra Ammo box is dropped at your feet for the team instead of going into your pockets. The in-round shop is closed in PvP.

Supply Boxes

Many maps have red Supply Boxes on the walls. Opening one puts 2 items inside it for everyone, and the box opens only once per round, so it is often a race. You can open them through walls. Items left in an open box stay there, so if you are already full, leave them for a teammate. Press F to pick up the item you are looking at. Loose items on the ground disappear after 120 seconds.

Supply drops

In most co-op rounds, once per round, a crate falls from the sky on a parachute, marked by red smoke and a banner. When it lands it spills a big pile of items around it, drawn from every Cash item except the ones that are never dropped. Drop items last 180 seconds. The drop also leaves your own Tickets on the ground: 6 to 10 pickups worth 5 each, which only you can see and collect. Tickets pay for event gear. There is a short pause between two ground pickups, so one player can't sweep the whole crate.

Ammo Stations

Ammo Stations are not items, but they are where most of your ammo comes from. Press R near one to refill the gun in your hands. Each survivor gets 4 refills per station, and it works through walls. Stations light up when your gun is nearly empty. Armor with extra magazines also raises how much a station refill gives you.

Tip: You can drop a carried item with Backspace. Hand a spare Medkit to a teammate who has none.

Healing and support items

Healing items are the first thing to pack: one heal at the right moment saves more rounds than a better gun.

The Medkit is a full, permanent heal. You hold it for 5 seconds, which is long enough to get you killed in a crowd, so back into a corner or let a teammate cover you first. It can heal a teammate too. It sits in your back slot, and you can only wear one back-slot item at a time (the Medkit, Defibrillators and Ammo Bag all share it).

Vitamins are the fast option: 1.5 seconds to use, then all your missing health comes back as a temporary bar that slowly drains away at 0.27 HP per second. Damage eats the temporary bar first. Use them to survive a fight, then use a Medkit once it is quiet.

The MRE has 2 uses. Each one heals 35 HP and gives 5 seconds of endless stamina, and if you eat it while under 20% health it heals you fully, once. Energetik is a drink for running: for 20 seconds you move 25% faster, get 20% more max stamina, and sprinting drains 50% less.

Defibrillators bring a downed teammate back. Aim at an unconscious teammate within 5 studs and click. They are not used up by a revive, and with nobody down they give the zombie in front of you a shock that knocks it back. In co-op they turn a lost teammate into a short delay.

For ammo, Extra Ammo and the Ammo Bag are boxes you put down. Any survivor presses R next to one to refill, 2 refills in total. Drop one where your team is holding out, not where you happen to be standing.

Grenades, fire and other throwables

Throwables deal with crowds and with the big zombies your guns struggle against. Take one out and press the left mouse button to throw it. In co-op your explosions never hurt your teammates, but they can hurt you, so don't throw at a zombie that is already biting you.

The Grenade has a 3 second fuse that starts when you pull the pin. Holding the button cooks it in your hand, so it explodes sooner after landing; hold it too long and it goes off in your hand. It deals 205 damage in a 25 stud radius and knocks zombies over. Damage is highest at the centre and falls off toward the edge. The Steil Grenade explodes on impact instead and throws further (120 studs against 90), which makes it the easier grenade to land on a charging zombie.

The Pipebomb is a lure. It beeps for 6 seconds and zombies chase it instead of you, then it blows for 200 damage. Throw it away from your team when you are being swarmed or need time to reload or revive. C4 gives you 3 sticky charges that you place and set off together with a detonator for 250 damage each, perfect for a choke point you know zombies will walk through.

The Molotov shatters where it lands and leaves a burning area that sets zombies on fire, even through walls. Fire keeps hurting after the throw, so it works best on a doorway or a corridor. The Flash does no damage but stuns zombies for 5 seconds in a 25 stud radius. Every survivor who sees it is stunned too, you and your teammates included, for 3 seconds, so throw it away from your team.

The Tomahawk is a pair of throwing axes: hold to charge, and each one hits the first zombie for 250 damage and bounces off walls. The Propane tank and the Jerry Can are set down first and go off when you shoot them, and several of them set each other off in a chain. The Jerry Can can also pour a fuel trail. The Ticket items Eggs and Pumpkin Pie are pranks: they knock over whoever they hit, zombie or friend, and deal no damage. Finally, the Fire Ext. sprays foam for 6 seconds in total. It knocks zombies over and only damages elemental zombies, for 55 damage per second of spray.

Tip: Save one explosive for the first big zombie of the round instead of spending it on a small group you could shoot down anyway.

Armor: what it does

You wear one armor per round. Its numbers apply when you spawn:

• Max HP is added to your health bar. There is no separate armor bar: armor simply makes you harder to kill.
• Extra mags add that many magazines of spare ammo to every gun you carry, and Ammo Stations refill up to the higher amount. Shotguns that load shell by shell get a few shells per extra mag instead. The M249, M60 and Minigun get extra ammo only from armor that names them.
• Stamina changes how long you can sprint. A few pieces lower it as the price of their perk.
• Damage cuts lower one kind of damage, such as explosions or fire, and immunities block a status completely: Burning, freezing, shocks, pins or trips.

For a new player the order is simple. Start with the 2 Lifevests you got for free, then save for armor that adds health and a magazine. Good early upgrades are the Tactical I and the Tactical II. Later, the Flakvest cuts explosion damage by 80%, which lets you use your own grenades up close, the Firevest makes you immune to Burning for a tiny price, and the Scout adds 120 stamina if you like to run.

Event armor costs Tickets and is sold only while its event is on. Right now the store sells Boopack, Animatronic Bear, Pumpkin Vest, Hallowed Pumpkin. Event armor you already own keeps working after the event ends.

Building with the Hammer

The Hammer is a melee tool from the store ($70, rank 13) that also builds. With it in your hands, press B to step through the buildings, R to turn the ghost and the left mouse button to place it. Buildings are paid with the Cash you earn in the round. Zombies break them with their hits, and broken parts fall away after a few seconds.

Each player can have up to 20 buildings at once. Planks are free and don't count toward that cap, but one Hammer places at most 10 planks per round. Fences block zombies, Sandbags also stop bullets and break one layer at a time, and the Tower has a ladder so you can shoot from above. The Hammer can't be used in PvP.

A good starter loadout

If you are not sure what to bring, this works on every map:

• Armor: the best Cash vest your rank allows. Health plus one extra magazine is worth more than any trick.
• Item 1: Medkit (rank 8) or Vitamins before that. One full heal saves more rounds than any gun.
• Item 2: Grenade. Cheap, strong and on sale from the start.
• Item 3: a Molotov for holding a door, or a Pipebomb for escaping a swarm.

Spend your round Cash in the Tab Armory when a fight goes wrong, and grab the supply drop when the red smoke goes up. In co-op, one player carrying Defibrillators and another dropping Extra Ammo makes the whole team much harder to wipe.

All items

Every item the store sells right now. "Carry" is how many of that item you can hold at once in a round.

Throwable stats

All armor

Every armor on sale now, Cash pieces first by price, then this event's Ticket pieces.

Buildings

Titles

Titles are cosmetic name tags. They change nothing in a fight; you earn them from achievements.