Weapon

"As an Inkling, you can use weapons and ink your turf. Be sure to experiment with different weapon sets!"

- Splatoon official site

Weapons are tools used in Splatoon and Splatoon 2 to spread ink and splatter enemy Inklings. They can be purchased from Ammo Knights with cash earned from online multiplayer matches. Weapons are always in a predefined set of a main weapon, a sub weapon, and a special weapon.

In Splatoon 2 new weapons have been added, and returning weapons have all new designs. Since no special weapons return from the first game, all the special weapons are changed as well. While some weapons retain the same sub weapon others have the sub weapon changed, such as the Splat Roller, which has Curling Bombs instead of Suction Bombs.

Main
Main weapons are the primary tool players use to spread ink and splat opponents. Main weapons generally have two variants: the original, and an alternate with a different appearance, a different sub weapon, and a different special weapon. With the addition of Sheldon's Picks, some weapons gained a third version with yet another set of sub and special weapons. Some weapons have re-skins that are used in singleplayer modes.

Sub
Sub weapons are secondary to the main weapon. Each sub weapon has a specialized use and high ink consumption, so they cannot be used for general-purpose splatting and inking like the main weapon. There are bombs, which can be used to influence enemy movement or outright splat them. Some weapons can give special effects to opponents, like location tracking, movement penalties, and ink usage penalties. In addition to weapons that focus on enemy effects, there are sub weapons that focus on benefiting the player's team by painting the ground or adding a Super Jump point to any location on the stage.

Special
Special weapons are powerful weapons that can only be used after filling up the special gauge by covering enough ground with ink. Generally, special weapons can make players invincible, allow players to track the location of opponents, damage opponents that step within a specified area of the battlefield, or grant the player a strong long-range attack. There are special weapons with highly specific effects, like allowing players to use bombs without ink restrictions, or creating explosive floating bubbles.

Trivia
In Splatoon, In Splatoon 2,
 * There are a total of 91 main weapons, 10 sub weapons and 7 special weapons as of Version 2.12.0.
 * To purchase every weapon set, a total of is needed.
 * There are a total of 102 main weapons, 11 sub weapons and 9 special weapons as of Version 3.2.2.
 * To purchase every weapon set, a total of is needed.