An Actual FLAMETHROWER?! Flame Rifle Mastery | Hunt: Showdown 1896

Intro

Hi guys, Rex here!
With Update 2.6 — Post Malone’s Murder Circus Encore — Hunt: Showdown introduced a brand new scarce weapon: the Flame Rifle.

and it’s unlike anything we’ve had in the game before — both mechanically and tactically.

The Flame Rifle is a medium-slot scarce weapon, and during the event it spawns every match inside the main circus tent.
You’ll find it mounted on the central wall, opposite the Shredder — which also still spawns at the same location.

Unlocking the Flame Rifle costs one Pledge Mark, compared to the two required for the Shredder, making it slightly more accessible — but still very much a high-value pickup.

While it’s tied to the Murder Circus right now, I fully expect this weapon to stick around long-term, similar to the Homestead and Wildland. Once the circus disappears, its availability will likely drop and shift to limited spawn locations like weapon boxes in watch towers.

Now, let’s talk about what this thing actually is — and how it works.

The Flame Rifle is, quite literally, a flamethrower.
It uses a completely unique fuel system that’s new to Hunt: instead of ammo pickups, the weapon is refueled by interacting with incendiary barrels.

Each barrel can be used once per player, and fully refills the weapon’s fuel, so keeping an eye out for these barrels as you’re traversing the map is recommended.

Mechanically, the weapon revolves around pressure management.
Before firing, you must manually pressurize it using the X key by default. This takes a few seconds, and the current pressure level is shown on a gauge on the weapon itself.

Once pressurized, you can either hold fire for a continuous stream or tap-fire to conserve pressure.
With a full charge, you only get about two seconds of effective firing time, and pressure drains very quickly while shooting.

Pressure also slowly drops over time after pumping — but you can swap to another weapon and back without losing it immediately.

In terms of damage, the Flame Rifle deals direct damage and ignites on impact.
If you connect well, it can down a full-health Hunter extremely fast — almost instantly at close range. But actually landing that damage consistently is much harder than it sounds.

On top of that, any flames that hit surfaces will create lingering fire pools on the ground for a few seconds, which is extremely helpful for applying pressure, denying space, and forcing movement.

Range-wise, this is very much a close-range weapon.
The flames reach almost 50 meters before dissipating, and beyond that it simply won’t connect, but realistically the weapon is not very effective beyond 15-20 meters or so.

Where the Flame Rifle really starts to stand out is utility.

It absolutely deletes most AI in the game.
Crows, ducks, grunts, armoreds, meatheads, brutes — all gone almost instantly.
It can even one-shot water devils, surprisingly enough, and makes shooting beetles out of the air a walk in the park.

Against bosses, it’s incredibly strong — Scrapbeak, the Assassin, and the Spider melt almost instantly.
However, fire-resistant targets like the Butcher, Hellborn, and Rotjaw take drastically reduced damage – or in some cases – no damage, making the weapon useless against them.

One of the strongest — and most fun — aspects of the Flame Rifle is its tactical potential.
You can set the ground on fire and throw dynamite into it to trigger instant explosions, flush enemies out of cover, or deny entire angles without line of sight.

That versatility is where this weapon really shines.

For this video, I mostly paired the Flame Rifle with the Hunting Bow.
The bow let me handle close to mid-range fights, apply bleeding and pressure — and if the bow didn’t finish the kill, the Flame Rifle made cleaning up incredibly easy.

Because the Flame rifle is a 2-slot weapon, Quartermaster isn’t required unless you want to pair it with a three-slot primary.

In this video, I put the Flame Rifle to the test in both PvP and PvE to see where it truly fits in the current meta.

Make sure you stick around until the end for my final thoughts and recommendations — but without further ado, let’s dive into it.

Thoughts & Recommendations

After spending a good amount of time with the Flame Rifle, I think it’s a very interesting — and surprisingly balanced — scarce weapon.

In PvP, it’s situationally strong, but I wouldn’t say it’s overpowered.
The time to kill can be extremely fast — but only if you land your flames cleanly and manage pressure perfectly.

In most straight-up 1v1s, especially against shotguns, the Flame Rifle will usually lose unless you already have the advantage.
Missing even slightly is heavily punished, and the low pressure window leaves very little room for mistakes.

That said, once I stopped treating it as a primary PvP weapon and started using it as a finisher and utility tool, it clicked much better.

One important thing I want to clear up is the effectiveness of the Salveskin trait.

We tested the time to kill both with and without Salveskin, and in practice, the trait does not have any meaningful impact on time to kill.

Salveskin does reduce how much permanent health you lose when you die — roughly 25 health instead of 50 — but it does not noticeably change how fast you go down.

So while Salveskin technically helps with bar loss, it doesn’t counter the Flame Rifle in any practical PvP sense.

We also tested the time to kill whilst affected by the wet status from water bottles or standing in deep water, with no noticeable change in time to kill or health lost upon death.

Where the Flame Rifle really goes crazy is PvE.
It’s arguably one of the strongest PvE tools in the entire game, clearing AI and most bosses with ridiculous efficiency.

Overall, I think the Flame Rifle absolutely justifies its status as a scarce weapon.
It’s powerful, extremely versatile, and very fun — but also demanding, somewhat inconsistent in PvP, and held back by a very high skill ceiling.

As it currently stands, I don’t think it needs any major changes.
In the right hands, it’s already strong — and in the wrong ones, it will punish you hard.

But now I want to hear your opinion:

What do YOU think about Hunt adding a flamethrower — and do you think the Flame Rifle is actually balanced?
Let me know in the comments — and until next time, I’ll see you in the Bayou.