The Division Weapons & Weapon Mods Explained

Ubisoft’s The Division seems to have captured the hearts and minds of current-generation console and PC gamers. Available right now on Xbox One, PS4 and Windows PCs, The Division is a third-person shooter set in New York City. Naturally, those that love the game, love the game’s cover shooting mechanics.

Those mechanics aren’t the only reason that The Division is seriously addictive. In The Division, you create your own activated agent. As you level up your character, you add Skills, weapons and Mods. If you’re smart, the Skills, weapons and Mods that you choose are specific to your play style.

Gotta Be Mobile walked through the different Skills in The Division recently. Here’s what you need to know about The Division’s Weapons, Weapon Mods and clothing for your character in the online role-playing game.

Read: The Division Skills & Skill Mods: What You Need to Know

The Division Weapons

The Division’s core gameplay revolves around weapons completely. In the absence of any formidable authorities, Manhattan has been overrun by street gangs. It’s your job as a member of Strategic Homeland Division to roam the city and take it back from these gangs and their leaders. In short, you have to kill them.

Pistols, Shotguns, Submachine Guns, Assault Rifles, Designated Marksman Rifles, Light Machineguns and Grenades make up the different categories of weapons available in The Division. Your character can carry three weapons and an assortment of grenades that don’t count towards your main weapon allotment.

Weapons are included in Gear Set add-ons available in the Xbox Store or can be simply found as a drop when you kill an opponent. Every single weapon in the game, regardless of category, has a level. Often times the level of a weapon that drops from an opponent’s death matches your own. Certainly, they’ll always match the level of the enemy you were fighting against and successfully killed. Ideally, you want to stick to a weapon level that’s roughly close to your character’s level.

Besides weapon level, you have other things to think about. Even all weapons aren’t created equal. Perks and performance upgrades unique to each weapon can make two visually identical weapons perform very differently. This is called the Rarity system, and you know how rare your gun is by the color that it shows in your inventory or before you pick it up.

Worn, Standard, Specialized, Superior and High-End is the scale that all weapons are judged on. Worn is the most common, with High-End being the least-common and difficult to obtain. Each weapon has a talent that factors into that Rarity system. For example, when closer to a target, the Military P416 in our example does 5% more damage than it normally would.

When judging a weapon, you’re looking for how much ammo it can carry without reloading and how much damage it can do. Pay attention to Accuracy, Reload Speed, Range and Stability too.

As you browse through the weapons that you’ve collected in the Inventory screen, notice the red or green arrows for each weapon. They provide a quick overview of how adding that weapon to your line-up will affect your character’s different attributes including the amount of damage that he or she is capable of inflicting. Ideally, you always want to be in a situation where these meters are green, but lateral moves between two weapon types are great if you’re getting a bonus to a different skill or attribute that you weren’t with a more powerful weapon.

The Division Weapon Mods

The good thing about the way The Division handles Weapons is that Mods allow you to slightly modify some of a weapon’s attributes. Besides, being able to pick up and purchase weapons themselves, you can also pick up different weapon parts and mod your gun to your liking.

The Military P416 used in this tutorial has been modified extensively with gear to change how it handles. The Mod Slots available for each weapon type are a bit different. Besides changing the look of a weapon with a new skin, you can add a scope, magazine, grip and silencer or compensator. Items for these slots can be crafted or picked up in the game world. They change a weapon’s function and feel significantly. They’re importance aren’t to be underestimated.

Adding Weapons Mods to a particular weapon doesn’t permanently bind them to that weapon. You can remove them and add them to other weapons too.

Getting The Division Weapons & Weapon Mods

The easiest way to get weapons and weapon mods in The Division is to wait for them to drop when you’re in combat. Every time you kill an opponent, there’s a chance of getting a great weapon to add to your character immediately or keep safe in your Stash. Don’t be shy about snatching up drops in a co-op match. Everyone gets a gear drop, the entire group doesn’t have to share.

One discrepancy that comes up a lot is exploring. Early on, some believed that weapons would also be scattered throughout the game world. That’s not necessarily inaccurate, but don’t go exploring apartment buildings thinking you’ll get some great weapons. You won’t.

Instead, head to your local Safe House. Safe Houses each have access to weapons vendors that’ll allow you to buy a weapon of your choice. There’s always crafting too, using the different materials you find in the game and weapons that you can break down into smaller elements, you can craft your own weapons at Safe Houses and your base.

For the game’s best gear, you’ll need to venture into the Dark Zone. There you can extract high-end equipment, but you’ll have to do so while trying to not get killed by other agents.

Good luck in Ubisoft’s The Division.