Weapons of New Bordeaux
You carry one sidearm and one two-handed weapon; everything else lives at the Arms Dealer, who delivers anywhere in New Bordeaux. Early on grab a Silentium for stealth work and the Elmwood 1925 or Riot 550 for stopping power, then let the Gunsmith perk turn them into laser beams.
Two carried weapons, one Arms Dealer who appears wherever you are, and a stat sheet that rewards a very specific kind of patience. Mafia III's arsenal is small by open-world standards but every gun has a job — here is what the numbers say, which favour weapons are worth the assignment, and where the weird stuff hides.
How the weapon system works
Lincoln carries exactly one sidearm and one two-handed weapon. Ammo is pooled by family — pick up any fallen gun of a similar type and its rounds are yours — and the Arms Dealer (Cassandra's free perk) sells everything and delivers to your position. The Gunsmith perk turns that same dealer into an upgrade bench: magazine, barrel and finish mods that flatten recoil and sharpen the baseline. The DE's Judge, Jury & Executioner Weapons Pack adds its own themed hardware, and the story DLCs sprinkle in one-off tools (the Dart Gun, Throwing Knives) that live in the equipment wheel.
The best picks, by the numbers
| Slot | Weapon | Why it earns the slot |
|---|---|---|
| Shotgun | Elmwood 1925 | 97% damage, the hardest-hitting tube in the game; slow but final |
| Shotgun | Riot 550 | 96% damage with triple the rate of fire — the practical choice |
| Shotgun | Barker 1500 Tactical | 96% damage and the best fire rate; magazine mods make it a room-clearer |
| Handgun | Masterson Phoenix | 47% damage — the most punch a sidearm offers |
| Handgun | Blackburn FAF-33 | 40% damage with a 15-round magazine and the best sustained fire |
| Automatic | M1N8 | 22% damage and a 30-round drum; the closest thing to a proper SMG |
| Rifle | Viper 55 | 69% damage, 95% accuracy — the best precision rifle in the base game |
| Special | Hartmann 7.62mm | A 100-round belt at 73% rate of fire; the Party Animal trophy weapon |
The Gunsmith upgrades matter more than the base stats once the mid-game starts: a modded Riot 550 or Barker 1500 outperforms anything you can pick off a corpse in the last districts.
Silenced weapons: how to get them early
Your first suppressor should not be a purchase. Underboss favors offer three silenced sidearms across the first favor set — the Silenced M1N8 (Cassandra), the Silenced Masterson (Vito) and the Silenced Deacon .22 (Burke). Whoever receives your first district hands one over, and a silenced pistol plus the combat knife covers every stealth takedown you will ever need. The free Silentium from the Arms Dealer remains the budget backup: low damage, but it keeps sentries deaf.
Where the rest of the arsenal comes from
- Favors: the third set adds a Deutsche M11B, a Scoped Phoenix and a Clipper .44 — the scoped Phoenix is the closest thing to a designated marksman rifle in the base game.
- Arms Dealer tiers: everything else unlocks with cash, including the heavies you saw in the walkthrough's office fights.
- Stones Unturned: adds Sniper Support markers to the equipment wheel — call a shot on marked targets from anywhere, which earns its own achievement at 30 kills.
- Sign of the Times: adds Throwing Knives (20 kills for Blade of Death) and the investigation gear that shares the same slot.
- Faster, Baby!: adds the Barker 390 Gator Skin variant and the county-scale firepower that comes with it.
- Weapons Pack (DE bonus): the Judge, Jury & Executioner set — showpiece guns, statistically sidegrades to the best base weapons.
Explosives, traps and the equipment wheel
The equipment wheel covers Frag Grenades, Molotovs, Proximity Mines (30 kills for Danger Close; the vehicle-trap routes in Tickfaw Harbor count separately), the Screaming Zemi for silent luring, and — once earned — the Dart Gun from the bounty hunting missions in Stones Unturned. Vehicle combat gets its own toys: handguns and thrown explosives work from the driver's seat, and ramming a target hard enough counts as a takedown. Ten of those is a trophy; thirty grenade kills is another. The achievements page has the full kill-count list if you are chasing 100%.
