Into the Fire Weapons Tier List

This list grades Into the Fire’s extinguishing kit for playtest and pre-EA planning. Damage charts do not exist in public, so the grade is a role grade: how often the tool saves an extract. Pair it with the weapons guide for technique and with loadouts for bags. Starward can still retune feel; we will move letters when playtest notes demand it.

S-tier

Back-mounted extinguisher. The August 2026 diary refuses to let you leave home without one. It handles ordinary flame and basic spirits, and it is the only tool that stays useful while you carry a body. Craft tanks every morning in camp. If you skip this for a novelty launcher, you are writing a highlight clip, not a rescue.

Flamethrower (LAB unlock). Open Playtest no.2 hides this behind the LAB quest. It is not a starting gun and it is not permission to play a shooter. Until you have earned it, ignore trailer stills. Once you have it, treat it as a specialist chaos tool beside the fire-bomb launcher — never as a replacement for the back-mounted extinguisher.

Extinguishing shotgun. Interiors, alleys, panic cones. Playtest footage leans on it whenever a doorway is a wall of orange. It is greedy on ammo, which is why it shares S with the extinguisher instead of replacing it. Bring both shapes: constant drip plus cone.

A-tier

Suppression pistol. Default precision. Door fuses, distant spirits, planks you cannot afford to soak. Best friend of a carry because it does not demand a plant-and-spray stance. Slightly worse than the shotgun when the whole corridor is already gone.

Axe (with Durable or a craft plan). Not a gun. Still A, because interiors hide people. The diary’s broken-axe story is the whole rank. Without Durable or a spare, it drops toward C by minute ten. With a morning craft, it is how rescue even starts.

B-tier

Fire-bomb launcher. Plaza clearer and spirit-cluster answer. Also a self-deny machine on stairs. Pack it for wide districts and RV approaches, not for Ruins ladders. If you only have two slots, this loses to shotgun plus extinguisher.

Hose. Honest, heavy, excellent when you can plant. B on city streets, C on vertical Ruins. If the extraction map is the new indoor-cave space, leave it.

C-tier traps

Any second area tool. Two launchers is a cartoon. Kick-as-weapon. Kick is a key. The Kicker perk makes it a better key, not a shotgun. Empty prestige kits that skip water tanks. A dry S-tier extinguisher is a C-tier stick.

Map modifiers

• New Sindra / city: shotgun + extinguisher + axe.
• Crimson Pass / high skull: add launcher or pistol for spirits; never drop tanks. Read hazards.
• Ruins: pistol + extinguisher + breach; hose stays home.
• Supply run: extinguisher + axe, extra tanks, skip launcher.

Perks that rewrite a letter

Breacher makes the axe feel S on search-heavy jobs. Durable keeps A-tier from decaying. Stamina perks promote pistol-plus-carry play because you can still roll. None of them replace the extinguisher.

How to argue with this list

If your build’s extinguishing feel got more “immersive” (Starward’s word) and slower, shotgun may be the only cone that still respects the RV. If they buff hose pressure, it can join A for city. File that in playtests rather than in a comment about DPS. This is a single-player disaster. The only opponent is the island.

A practical morning test: take the S pair (extinguisher + shotgun) into a one-skull street and count how many times you actually swapped. If you never touched the shotgun, the district wanted the pistol, not a second cone. If you never touched the extinguisher, you got lucky or you were wasting ammo on glamour flames. Log that on the planner so the next kit is evidence, not a vibe.

Weight is the silent rank. Playtests talk about carry-weight skills because a launcher plus hose plus axe plus a person is a cartoon. If the bag UI is yellow before you pick up Zoe, the launcher is no longer B — it is a C that you insisted on. Drop it, keep tanks, keep breach. The gadgets list will try to steal the last slot; do not let a sled beat water on a city map.

Spirit-heavy streets can fool you into thinking the launcher is S. It is S for that plaza, then it is B again on the next ladder. Rank letters are defaults. Districts are modifiers. If a future patch adds a true lethal rifle, this list will have to be rewritten, because that would break Starward’s anti-combat bet. Until that post exists, do not theorycraft a sniper tree.

Take the letter, then force it into a bag on the planner. A rank without water is fan art.