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 splat enemies. They can be purchased from Ammo Knights with cash earned from online multiplayer matches. Most weapons may only be unlocked to purchase after reaching a certain level, and some can only be obtained after completing missions in the single player game mode. Weapons are always in a predefined set of a main weapon, a sub weapon, and a special weapon.

In Splatoon 2, new weapons were added, and returning weapons have all-new designs. Since no special weapons returned from the first game, all the special weapons were changed as well. While some weapons retained the same sub weapon and similar special, others changed, such as the, which has s instead of s.

Main
Main weapons are the primary tools 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 and the Kensa Collection, some weapons gained a third version with yet another set of sub and special weapons. There are also Rare weapons which have been heavily modified which are exclusive to Salmon Run.

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, while others 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:
 * There are a total of 91 main weapons, 10 sub weapons and 7 special weapons as of Version.
 * To purchase every weapon set, a total of is needed.
 * In the initial release, there was a total of 32 main weapons.

In Splatoon 2:
 * There are a total of 139 main weapons, 4 rare main weapons, 13 sub weapons and 12 special weapons as of Version.
 * To purchase every weapon set, a total of is needed.
 * In the initial release, there was a total of 46 main weapons, 11 sub weapons and 8 special weapons.