The Most OVERRATED Rifle? Vetterli 71 Mastery | Hunt: Showdown 1896

Intro

Hi guys, Rex here! Whenever I mention the Vetterli, everybody loses their mind. It is clear that this weapon has a special place in the hearts of the Hunt community, but how good is it really?

The Vetterli is a medium ammo rifle that comes with five main variants. The Regular Vetterli, the silencer, the deadeye, the marksman and the cyclone. This weapon does it all moderately well, but doesn’t really excel in any area, well – except the cyclone, that is. The Vetterli deals 130 damage, which is enough to one tap with a shot to the torso if a hunter is missing a health chunk. The velocity is 410 meters per second by default, which isn’t fantastic, but luckily this can be brought up to 510 with high velocity ammo, at the cost of slightly lower damage and slightly higher recoil, which is particularly great for the scoped variants. The drop range is 125 meters, which is decent as well. With a silencer, the weapon loses about 50 velocity and 10 meters drop range.

Then there’s the cyclone. This beast of a weapon, while technically a Vetterli, operates very differently and is significantly more powerful in capable hands. The cyclone is a semi-automatic rifle, featuring a 4-bullet spring loaded magazine and very quick fire rate. The cyclone has slightly lower damage and won’t one-tap previously downed hunters with a shot to the torso, and it also suffers a somewhat lower drop range. Despite this fact, the cyclone excels with its extremely fast fire rate. Two shots will usually be enough to kill, and when paired with fire ammo you will consistently set enemy hunters on fire on longer ranges as well. As per usual, fire ammo cannot penetrate surfaces, and for medium ammo rifles such as the Vetterli it will ignite hunters on the first hit up to 20 meters away if they don’t have the salve skin trait.

The Vetterli comes with 4 special ammo types, two of which I have already covered. Third, FMJ ammo has increased penetration power and better damage retention over distance at the cost of lower velocity, and finally, subsonic ammo reduces the noise made by gunshots at the cost of greatly reduced velocity and somewhat reduced drop range.

I played all 5 Vetterli variants over a few days, and this video features the best rounds. At the end of the video I will share my thoughts and recommendations for the Vetterli, but without further ado – let’s dive into it!

Thoughts & Recommendations

After having played the Vetterli for a few days, I have to say I am amazed at how average this weapon is. I don’t hate it, and I don’t love it. I say I don’t love it, but that’s just because I don’t consider the cyclone an integrated part of the Vetterli family, as it outshines all the other variants by far. In fact, the cyclone quickly became one of my favourite rifles, and I will likely do a dedicated video on it soon. As for the other 4 variants, they do everything quite well, but they don’t really outperform other available options in any aspect. The scoped variants offer lower velocity than other comparable weapons, even with the use of high velocity ammo, and the damage and velocity on the silenced variant is drastically outperformed by weapons like the Krag for example, which – while significantly more expensive, is still a far better option in every single way. This means that the only reason to choose the Vetterli would be a low budget, and by every means, this is a very decent weapon if you are running low on money.

Personally, if I was on a budget I would rather choose another weapon like the ranger 73 or the infantry 73L though, which drastically outperforms the Vetterli in most cases in my opinion. I recently posted a mastery video for both of them, as well as the Krag, so make sure to check those out if you missed them! I’ll leave links in the description.

The cyclone could arguably be considered S tier, and is highly effective even in the highest MMR brackets, unlike the other variants. Like I mentioned I’ll do a video on the cyclone soon, so stay tuned! What is YOUR favourite Vetterli variant, and do you agree with my assessment of this weapon? Let me know in the comments, and until next time – I’ll see you in the bayou!