SMART PISTOL

BASE ITEM
WEAPON
RANGED
LEVEL 10

REQUIRES LEVEL 10

SMART PISTOL is a ranged weapon, wielded from level 10. DEXTERITY is the stat that scales it.

The requirement cuts both ways: nothing below level 10 ever drops one, and a hero below it banks the find rather than wearing it.

It is a pool base, so it climbs: the same shape returns later in the campaign as GENIUS PISTOL and ORACLE PISTOL, at requirements the endgame can actually meet.

Printed overnight by the colony AI: white ceramic, no visible trigger. The darts do the aiming — the machines long ago stopped trusting humans with even that.

What it does

HOMINGThe shot steers toward whatever is ahead of it, so it corrects for a target that moves after you fire.
PRICED FORAbout 1 target a swing. That is what the damage budget assumes it reaches, which is why a wide weapon carries a smaller blow than a narrow one of the same level.
CRIT WEIGHTA critical hit lands for 2.05× — a flat trait of the ranged class, the same on every weapon in it. Your build earns the crit CHANCE; the class fixes what a crit is worth.
PRECISEIts blows land within ±10% of the average — a metronome next to the usual spread.

It feeds on bullets, one round per trigger pull however many projectiles that pull throws. In exchange it never wears out and never needs a repair kit — it runs dry instead, and the hero puts it away for whatever he can still fire.

A fresh find in the hands of a hero who has spent no stat points — the piece itself, with nothing of the wielder in it. Your own STRENGTH, DEXTERITY or INTELLECT lifts these from there, as does an item level found deeper than the requirement.

Make quality

Every plain drop of this base rolls a make quality on top of the numbers above — the craftsmanship of that particular copy, stamped at the moment it drops and frozen for life. It scales the damage and the wear budget together, and it leads the name: a BROKEN SMART PISTOL and a PERFECT SMART PISTOL are the same base item and not the same find.

The bands overlap on purpose, so a good CRUDE can out-swing a poor NORMAL while a PERFECT always clears a NORMAL. Which one you get depends on the level of whatever dropped it: the two odds columns below are a level-1 killer and a level-60 one, and everything between is interpolated. Craftsmanship and magic are exclusive — a magic-or-better find is always normal make.

MAKE	DAMAGE	SCALE	ODDS AT MLVL 1	ODDS AT MLVL 60
BROKEN	15–21	0.58–0.82×	20%	0%
CRUDE	19–25	0.73–0.97×	25%	6%
NORMAL	23–29	0.90–1.10×	52%	54%
SUPERIOR	27–33	1.03–1.27×	3%	28%
PERFECT	30–37	1.16–1.44×	0%	12%

What it becomes

The same shape comes back twice more, further down the campaign: an EXCEPTIONAL version and an ELITE one, generated from this base rather than authored beside it. They keep its look, its cadence, its reach and its arc; what changes is the level they ask for and the numbers priced onto the curve at it. A venue that pays this base pays its whole ladder, so a first-map find keeps dropping — as something else — into the endgame.

GRADE	REQUIRES	DAMAGE	DPS	REACHES
SMART PISTOL (normal)	10	23–29	72.6	1
GENIUS PISTOL	35	52–64	161.9	1
ORACLE PISTOL	66	88–108	273.5	1

The per-hit blow barely moves up the ladder, and that is the point: a longer-reaching weapon in a bigger build sweeps a wider slice of the crowd, so the same damage budget buys more total output at a similar figure per target. Read the REACHES column beside the DPS one.

Named items built on it

These relics wear this shape, with an authored block of bonuses on top — each on the rung of the ladder it names.

THE INEVITABLEGENIUS PISTOL
THE LONG SILENCEORACLE PISTOL

SMART PISTOL, a base item weapon in Ada's Trail, shown on the map of MARS where it drops — SMART PISTOL — where it drops, in MARS.

Where it comes from

MARS carries it in its drop pool.
MARS hands it over on the scripted opening drop, around 10–22 kills in.
THE RIFT carries it in its drop pool.
BOOT HILL carries it in its drop pool.
THE GARAGE carries it in its drop pool.

Every one of those pools carries GENIUS PISTOL and ORACLE PISTOL along with it — the game expands a pool entry into its whole grade family at roll time — so the same venues keep paying this shape out at requirements 66 deep.