Shotgun

Shotgun
Type	Area of Effect (AoE), Projectile
Description	Fires a spread shot, stronger at close range. Can be manually aimed.
Unlock	5% drop chance from breaking a Tumbleweed on Desert Stage 2
Upgrades With	Damage, Crit Chance, Projectile Count, Knockback, Size
Silver Reward	2
Special Effect	Projectiles pierce enemies. Projectile Count scales damage instead of firing more times. Deals less damage the further away enemies are.

The Shotgun is an unlockable weapon in Megabonk that fire a spread of bullets at an enemy, with each pellet doing damage. This weapon fires in a 2 round burst before resetting its cycle.

Unlocked by interacting with Tumbleweed in Desert Tier 2, with a 5% drop chance.

Strategy and Synergies

Projectile Count works differently for the Shotgun than other weapons. Instead of increasing the amount of times the weapon fires per attack cycle it will increase the amount of pellets fired in each shot, which increases the maximum amount of damage that can be dealt each time the weapon fires. This does not increase the total amount of hits dealt to a single enemy as the game seems to only check how many pellets pass through a single enemy and then add that value together for a single damage instance. Pellet count stops visually increasing after a point but you will still receive the increase to damage output.

Any Size bonuses: Size functions very uniquely for the Shotgun and provides 3 extremely powerful bonuses to the weapon.
- The first is that it will increase the maximum range of each shot fired allowing you to hit enemies from a greater distance.
- The second is that Shotgun's natural distance based damage reduction scales proportionally to size, meaning that when firing from the same range you will lose less damage if you have more Size.
- The last is that Size appears to give each pellet an invisible radius around it that will still count as a hit if enemies are within it. This is difficult to explain properly but the gist is that as your size increases, the Shotgun's odds of missing an enemy gradually decrease and eventually you will hit every single enemy within the cone of each blast 100% of the time. More importantly, this effect is seen in every individual pellet meaning that eventually every enemy caught within your Shotgun's blasts will be hit by every single pellet it fires no matter where they are within the cone.

Any Attack Speed bonuses: Increasing Attack Speed helps mitigate the weakness of the Shotgun's inability to fire more often via taking Projectile Count upgrades.

Best Characters:
- Noelle gains +1% Size per level which allows you to optimize for the Shotgun in long runs by ignoring Size upgrades and the Size Tome while still gaining enough to maximize its damage potential.
- Bandit gains +1% Attack Speed per level which will maximize your fire rate without relying on Tomes, items, or Charge Shrines. Bandit also already appreciates Size & Crit Damage bonuses due to them scaling well with their starting weapon.
- Bush gains 1% Crit Damage per level which can massively increase the damage gained from Shotgun's Crit Chance upgrades.

Upgrades

The Shotgun can receive the following upgrades upon leveling up:

Stat	Common	Uncommon	Rare	Epic	Legendary
Damage	3	3.6	4.2	4.8	6
Crit Chance	7%	8%	10%	11%	14%
Projectile Count	1	1.2	1.4	1.6	2
Knockback	0.35	0.42	0.49	0.56	0.7
Size	15%	18%	21%	24%	30%