Plague Pistol

Overview

Plague Pistol is a Epic pistol-class ranged weapon in Windrose. It feels like this pistol's bullets have an unnatural thirst for someone else's blood.

Pistols are one-handed sidearm firearms that scale with Precision and occupy the off-hand slot alongside a melee weapon. See Pistols for ammunition capacity and the full class profile.

At a Glance

Effects

This weapon is Epic-tier only on the public item pages (no Rare variant listed). The effect line applies at the single Epic rarity.

Crafting

Craft at the Weaponsmith Workshop (Level 1). Base recipe: Wood x10, Copper Ingot x3, Ingot Arborum x5.

Upgrade Bands

Plague Pistol uses a dedicated Plague Pistol upgrade track that incorporates Ingot Arborum in every band alongside reduced Copper and Iron costs.

Item-level upgrades for Plague Pistol are performed at the Weaponsmith Workshop and follow the same per-band pattern documented for every weapon. See Weapon Upgrade Bands for the full per-band material costs.

How to Obtain

• Drops from Old Skeleton chests inside Ancient Ruins, Crypts, and Tainted Ruins at 5-10%.

• Requires Ingot Arborum at every upgrade tier; the upgrade path is gated by plague biome material access.

Loot Sources

Specific chests, vendors, and quest rewards currently listed on the live item card:

Tactical Usage

The healing-on-hit pistol. The 40% lifesteal return turns it into a sustain tool, so it pairs well with a tanky club or halberd main-hand for bruiser builds. Epic-only weapon with no Rare variant listed on the public item pages.

Keep a one-handed melee weapon in the main-hand to double the ranged loadout's options. Pistols reward quick pre-combat volleys before the fight closes to melee range. Reload management matters: without Gunpowder stockpiled, pistol shots dry up fast. Stock at least 30 bullets before a boss engagement.

Talent Synergies

Precision-scaling weapons pull from the Marksman branch of the Talent System. Relevant picks include talents that boost Pierce damage, Critical Damage, stand-still bonuses that extend the Buccaneer's Friend spread perk, and gunpowder efficiency. Precision firearms reward investment in talents that increase rifle-style precision at range.

See the Talent System article for the current list of unlockable talents and their exact bonus values. Every firearm consumes Gunpowder, so stockpiling Sulfur and Charcoal for the Workbench conversion remains a background chore for any ranged build.

Comparison Within Class

Plague Pistol sits alongside 4 other pistols on the current live index. Consider the alternatives:

• Pistol: Uncommon, 360 Pierce, Precision (B). no special effect

• Reliable Pistol: Rare / Epic, 380 Pierce, Precision (S). Can fire 3 shots without reloading.

• Drake's Double-Barreled Pistol: Rare / Epic, 420 Pierce, Precision (B). Can fire two quick shots in succession.

• Worn-Out Pistol: Common, 300 Pierce, Precision (C). no special effect

See Also

• Ranged Weapons for the full firearm index.

• Weapons for the cross-class roster.

• Pistols for the pistol category roster.

• Precision is this weapon's scaling attribute.

• Gunpowder is the ammunition every firearm consumes.

• Weaponsmith Workshop is the crafting and ascension station.

• Combat covers stamina, posture, and firearm animation frames.

Sustain Loop with a Tanky Melee

The 40% damage-as-health refund transforms the Plague Pistol from a damage dealer into a sustain tool for builds that would otherwise struggle with incoming damage. The loop works because the pistol fires from the off-hand while a heavy melee weapon (a Halberd or Club variant) does the actual damage work in the main-hand. A typical sustain rotation: heavy swing to punish the boss opening, swap to pistol for a headshot that refunds 40% of the dealt damage as health, repeat. Because every crit headshot returns a meaningful chunk of HP, the build can afford to trade hits with enemies that would otherwise force a retreat.

Why pistol lifesteal pairs with heavy melee. The Plague Pistol only deals 400 Pierce at Epic, which is a lot for a pistol but low relative to a fully-upgraded halberd or club swing. The 40% refund therefore returns less flat HP per pistol shot than it would per heavy melee swing. But the pistol is off-hand and does not interrupt the heavy melee rotation; it is a "free" health-refund slot in addition to the melee damage, not a replacement for it. A build that tried to use the Plague Pistol as its primary damage dealer would heal less than it takes, because the pistol's own damage output caps the refund amount.

The Ingot Arborum cost is real. Every upgrade tier from Level 1 to Level 15 requires Ingot Arborum to continue, which means the Plague Pistol progression is gated by Plague Wood access and Enchanting Table throughput. Unlike ordinary pistols that level off common materials, the Plague Pistol reaches its full damage coefficient only once the Plague Wood supply chain is producing regularly. Plan the upgrade cadence around Plague Wood runs rather than attempting to rush the pistol to Level 15 immediately after acquiring it.

Build Synergy and Hot Bar Pattern

Many late-game Cursed Swamps builds keep the Plague Pistol in the off-hand alongside two other ranged sidearms, with a heavy melee weapon in the fourth hot bar slot. The pattern works because each pistol covers a different combat role and the three of them stack cleanly without conflicting with melee resource mechanics.

The standard three-sidearm rotation pairs the Plague Pistol with two other firearms. Drake's Double-Barreled Pistol opens the fight by applying a +15% damage-taken debuff to the target, which boosts every follow-up melee swing, plague-mark consumption, and bleed tick. The Plague Pistol then sits in the second pistol slot as an on-demand healing tool: a single critical headshot returns 40% of the dealt damage as health, so it acts as a ranged emergency potion when the player drops below half HP and a swap to a flask would be too slow. Soul Eater takes the third slot as the cooldown nuke; its drain pulse hits everything in a wide radius and runs on a two-minute timer, so it doubles as a panic AoE heal during boarding actions or boss adds.

The fourth hot bar slot holds the main melee weapon, with the choice depending on the rest of the build:

• Plague Halberd for two-handed Plague Echoes builds. Important caveat: pulling out any pistol clears the Plague Echoes stacks on the halberd, so the off-hand rotation only fires between full five-stack swing-and-special cycles, never mid-stack.

• Arboris Saber for one-handed Plague Echoes builds. The saber's main quality-of-life advantage over the halberd is that pulling out a pistol does not reset its plague stacks, so the Plague Pistol heal-shot can be threaded between saber swings without losing progress toward the round-house special.

• Rapier of Devastation for one-handed plague-mark heavy-attack builds. Drake's debuff boosts the heavy-attack damage on the eight-mark consume, and the Plague Pistol fills the role of a backup heal during the build-up phase before the big consume swing lands.

The reason this loadout works on a single hot bar is that the three pistols share the off-hand and do not interrupt the main-hand melee animation when fired in quick succession. The Plague Pistol's 40% return is intentionally not the primary damage source in this build: it is the emergency heal that lets the player stay in melee range without burning a flask. Its 400 Pierce damage is high for a pistol but low compared to a fully upgraded halberd or rapier swing, so the heal it returns is meaningful but not enough to sustain full-time use as the main damage dealer. Use it as the in-fight reset, not as the rotation centerpiece.

Crit headshots amplify the heal because the lifesteal scales off the actual damage dealt, not off the base 400 Pierce number. A precision-stat build with crit-chance and crit-damage rings will return notably more HP per Plague Pistol shot than a flat-damage build, so even though the pistol does not need to be the main damage dealer, investing in precision and crit on the rest of the gear pays off twice: once for the overall ranged damage and once for the size of every emergency heal.

Field Notes on Acquisition

In the current early-access build, players have reported that pulling the Plague Pistol from a chest in the Cursed Swamps does not always unlock a usable Weaponsmith Workshop recipe for additional copies, even after the pickup is logged in the inventory. For many runs the pistol behaves as a one-time find per character or world: you keep and upgrade the dropped copy, but you cannot mass-produce additional Plague Pistols to hand out to a co-op crew the way you might with ordinary firearms. Builds that lean on the heal-shot loadout above therefore tend to plan around a single Plague Pistol per player, with each crew member running their own Cursed Swamps loop until the drop appears.

This behavior may change in a future patch as more recipe wiring lands. Until then, treat the pistol as a quest-style unique pickup rather than a craftable production weapon, and prioritize Ingot Arborum stockpiling for upgrade bands on the one copy you have rather than worrying about a second build.

Details

Properties

Crafted By

Crafted at: Weaponsmith Workshop

Disassembles Into

Where Found

The Old Skeleton chest sources, locations, and drop chances for the Plague Pistol are listed in the Loot Sources table above.