Metal Blaster

The Metal Blaster is a unique AER9 laser rifle in the Fallout 3 add-on The Pitt.

Background
The Metal Blaster is a unique laser rifle that fires nine laser beams while expending only one microfusion cell. Everett explains that it was created by a man from The Pitt using parts he found lying around the The Mill, including a series of prisms that split the beam. Everett came into possession of the rifle by looting the man's corpse in the Mill.

Characteristics
The Metal Blaster is essentially a laser shotgun, shooting nine projectiles at a time with one microfusion cell. It deals considerably more damage than the normal AER9 laser rifle, but lacks the precision of the standard laser rifle, making it less effective for long-range attacks. It is repaired with the standard AER9 laser rifle or the Wazer Wifle.

The 55 base damage is split between each of the nine beams, but outside of V.A.T.S. each beam can cause a separate critical hit, doing +27 damage per beam. Furthermore, a sneak attack critical automatically scores critical hits with all beams. The combination of a sneak attack and the Better Criticals perk will result in 839 total damage. The Metal Blaster can fire 455 cells, or about 19 full batteries, before breaking. That's 631 fewer cells than a regular laser rifle.

Variants

 * AER9 laser rifle, the common variant.
 * Wazer Wifle, a unique variant of the AER9 laser rifle that does more damage and is more durable.
 * Tri-beam laser rifle, another laser shotgun.


 * A "demo" version of the laser rifle is included in Fallout 3, presumably left from the game's E3 demo. It does one point less damage per shot and less than half the critical damage than the standard variant, but has a much higher critical chance percentage. It is not used anywhere in the game and is only accessible through the use of console commands.

Location
It can be obtained in The Pitt by bringing Everett 50 steel ingots.

Behind the scenes
The Metal Blaster is the second item in two-part reference to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Two characters, Master and Blaster, correspond to the Metal Master armor and the Metal Blaster, respectively. Raider blastmaster armor also exists in Fallout 3.