The Attractor Sawblade Launcher is the blue variant of the Sawblade Launcher. Its alternate fire can shoot up to three magnets at once, each of which can be used to attract magnetic objects such as nails, sawblades, rockets, and chainsaws.
Mechanics
The Attractor's primary fire can withstand 15 wall bounces and can hit the enemy 3 times before breaking. Upon hitting certain weak enemies such as Soldiers, the damage output on the subsequent enemies is increased.
The Attractor's alternate fire shoots out a magnet projectile which sticks to surfaces and enemies. Magnets have a cooldown of 0.35 seconds between firing, and up to three magnets can be placed at one time. Magnets will last 12 seconds before breaking, indicated by a rapidly increasing alert sound and flash emanating from the magnet. Magnets can be prematurely broken by shooting them with any hitscan attack, ground slamming them, or overloading the weight of a magnet. Once broken, a magnet will be instantly able to fire once again.
When attached to a surface or enemy, magnets will cause nearby magnetic projectiles (nails, saws, rockets and chainsaws) to be attracted to them in a pull radius. Magnetized nails will become suspended in midair and will attempt to get as close as possible to nearby magnets, or to the closest point between each if multiple magnets are present. Magnetized saws and chainsaws will begin to orbit magnets in a circular motion.
Magnetized rockets shot by the player will home in towards the closest magnet when fired, but will only do so if the magnet is attached to an enemy, otherwise ignoring it. However, magnetized rockets that were shot by enemies such as the Guttertank will home in on magnets even if they are attached to a surface. Magnets break after 3 hits from any rocket. Normal rockets count as a single hit, while freeze-charged rockets count as two.
Magnets have a maximum weight value that determines the amount of projectiles that can be attracted to them before breaking. A single magnet can hold up to 75 nails, 30 normal saws, 15 silver saws, or 5 orange saws/chainsaws. Rockets do not possess magnet weight. When a magnet breaks, any nails, saws or chainsaws that were attracted to the magnet will fire outwards in random directions. The damage of nails which fire out from a broken magnet is dependent on the total number of nails that were attached to the magnet before it was destroyed.
Magnets are one of multiple projectiles which can receive and transmit conductor shocks from the Jumpstart Sawblade Launcher or the Electric Railcannon. In the levels 5-2: WAVES OF THE STARLESS SEA and 5-4: LEVIATHAN, magnets attached to enemies will slowly cause lightning to target and eventually strike the enemy.
Usage
The Attractor Sawblade Launcher's magnets, although not able to deal damage directly, are a very powerful tool with the ability to augment the strength of the player's arsenal. In the weapon's own case, magnets greatly amplify the potential for sawblades as trap weapons. By shooting sawblades towards a magnet, the player allows them to persist for a much longer amount of time without breaking, creating a grounded hazard that won't harm the player and quickly clears through large crowds of low-health smaller enemies. Multiple magnets can further increase the area of effect as sawblades will circle between more than one at a time, allowing the player to form barriers that cover common paths in arenas or surround enemies in big areas. This is particularly effective with the Attractor Sawblade Launcher's own silver sawblades, due to their higher damage and durability.
Sawblade magnet traps also work particularly well against bosses who initiate cutscenes upon appearance, allowing ample setup time to fire more saws or combine the trap with weapons such as the Freezeframe Rocket Launcher and maximize immediate damage upon the start of a fight. This technique can also be effective against regular enemies with predictable or slow movement patterns who will be easy to bait into traps.
Although the Attractor Sawblade Launcher's magnet traps struggle in midair due to the grounded nature of magnets, airborne enemies such as Malicious Faces or Virtues which happen to be positioned close to a wall or other surface can be attacked by firing a magnet there instead. The player must be mindful, however, of the fact that not having the magnet in a horizontally open area will cause sawblades to bounce along the wall and break much more quickly.
Particularly large enemies such as the Flesh Prison and Flesh Panopticon, The Corpse of King Minos and Leviathan can be weak to magnet-based sawblade traps, as placing a magnet along the enemy will cause attracted saws to nearly always hit them. This technique also works very well against a Hideous Mass by placing a magnet on the enemy's stomach weakpoint, causing the orbit of the saws to hit its tail and deal multiplied damage.
Magnet sawblade traps may receive an extra damage boost from the use of a detached Sawed-On Shotgun chainsaw, which can circle magnets in a similar fashion to sawblades, albeit with much more durability and hits per enemy.
The Overheat Sawblade Launcher is the green variant of the Sawblade Launcher. Its alternate fire releases a bright orange sawblade with increased durability, damage, and the ability to set enemies on fire.
Mechanics
The Overheat Sawblade's primary fire can withstand wall 11 bounces at low heat and 4 wall bounces at maximum heat. When below 50% hear, the primary fire have a piercing ability, being able to hit two times.
The Overheat Sawblade Launcher's alternate fire must be initially charged up by using the weapon's primary fire for a few seconds. It can also be fully charged instantly by heating up the Sawblade Launcher using the primary fire of any other Nailgun or Sawblade Launcher variant (with the exception of an untethered Jumpstart), then swapping to the Overheat. If the alternate fire is not used after being charged, it will slowly decrease back to having no charge over time.
While the Overheat's alternate fire is at low charge, the weapon will fire sawblades at a rate of 4/sec. At high charge, it will fire sawblades at a rate of just under 2/sec.
When using the alternate fire, the Overheat will perform a heatsink, releasing a powerful orange sawblade. The Overheat Sawblade Launcher has only one heatsink at a time. Once it has been expended, the primary fire will be reduced to a firerate of 1.5 sawblades per second, and the heatsink will begin to recharge over the course of 8 seconds. Heatsinks will be unable to recharge while firing the primary fire in this state.
The bright orange sawblade produced by the Overheat's alternate fire possesses much greater durability and improved damage from a normal sawblade. It also has the ability to set any flammable enemy in comes into contact with on fire for a brief time. The orange sawblade bounces in a much more predictable fashion, ricocheting off surfaces in an orthogonal manner. Depending on how much the alternate fire of the Overheat Sawblade Launcher was charged before an orange sawblade was fired, the sawblade will have a different number of hits on contact with each enemy. At low charge, the orange saw will hit an enemy once on contact. At medium, it will hit an enemy twice, and at full charge, it will hit an enemy three times on contact. If an orange sawblade hits its number of 20 maximum hits while in an enemy, it will finish the remainder of the hits it had on that enemy before breaking afterward.
Notably, if an orange sawblade leaves an enemy right after dealing its exact number of maximum hits, it will be able to survive for one more cycle of hits on an enemy before breaking, meaning an orange sawblade can technically deal up to 23 hits.
Usage
The orange sawblade fired by the Overheat Sawblade Launcher can be a powerful up-front damage dealer against big enemies due to raw strength alone, and also functions as a decent damage-over-time weapon against flammable enemies or those doused in gasoline by the Firestarter Rocket Launcher.
Due to its orthogonal, predictable bounce pattern and its greater durability than most saws, the orange sawblade can work exceptionally well for traps, bouncing between walls and covering common enemy paths. This also makes it powerful against stationary enemies and bosses such as the 1000-THR "Earthmover" Defence System. The orange saw can be more easily saw-punched than most sawblades due to its bounce pattern and durability, able to persist for a significant period of time and even one-shot Schisms when punched.
The Overheat Sawblade Launcher also serves well in combination with the Attractor's magnet traps, as its increased initial firerate and lack of ammo allows it to fire many saws with low durability, then quickly charge up an orange saw and attach it to a trap, which will last a longer time and clear out low-health enemies very quickly. The player must be cautious, however, not to overload the magnet's weight and break it when firing large quantities of sawblades at a time.
Due to other Sawblade Launcher or Nailgun variants being able to charge the Overheat's heatsink instantly, it may be more optimal in many situations to fire another variant first and then quickly swap to the Overheat for faster attacks.
The Jumpstart Sawblade Launcher is the red variant of the Sawblade Launcher. Its alternate fire shoots out a cable that can attach to enemies, continuously charging electricity into a large shock. Sawblades shot by the weapon can shorten the time taken to charge and increase the damage of the shock.
Mechanics
Jumpstart's primary fire fires saws that can bounce up to 4 times. Unlike other saw blades, they do not have any piercing capabilities.
The Jumpstart Sawblade Launcher's alternate fire releases a small plug attached to the player by a cable with limited range. The cable can be repeatedly fired with little to no cooldown. It will break instantaneously on contact with surfaces, and will attach to any enemies that it comes into contact with. The cable will persist even when swapping to different weapons. When a cable is not tethered to an enemy, the Jumpstart Sawblade Launcher's primary fire shoots at a rate of 4 saws/sec and will not heat up other variants, but when it is tethered, the firerate will increase to 2 saws/sec and be able to heat up the weapon.
Upon attaching to an enemy, the Jumpstart will begin to charge an electric shock over the course of 5 seconds which will eventually damage the enemy, or immediately if the enemy dies before the shock is complete. During this time, the player must stay within a range of 20 units indicated on the weapon's UI, and not have any objects directly between the player and enemy, to keep the cable from disconnecting. If the player leaves indicated cable range, the Jumpstart will alert for 1 second to allow time for the player to move back in-range before breaking. The damage of the Jumpstart's electric shock can be increased and charge time decreased by hitting an enemy with sawblades while the cable is attached. After a shock, the Jumpstart will enter a 5 second cooldown before it is able to shoot a cable again. There is no cooldown if the cable is broken before the shock is performed.
If the enemy which is shocked by the Jumpstart has nails embedded inside of it, the weapon will perform a conductor aftershock, causing the enemy to be launched into the air if they are Light or Medium weight, destroying all nails previously embedded inside, and causing the shock to be chained to all nearby grounded enemies and conductive projectiles, dealing damage based on the number of nails inside the original target (2 base damage plus 0.06 damage per nail, up to a maximum of 2 + 6 damage at 90 nails embedded in an enemy). Conductive projectiles include magnets, coins, rockets, tethered chainsaws, and Screwdriver Railcannon drills. Conductive projectiles will receive and transmit the shock to other nearby enemies or projectiles, functionally extending the shock's range. If any enemy chained to also has nails embedded inside it, they will do the same. Airborne enemies will not be able to receive shocks transmitted by conductors, but are able to transmit them to other enemies themselves. Underwater, the Jumpstart's electric shock will always trigger conductor aftershocks, regardless of whether the enemy has nails embedded in them or not, as well as dealing the player with 50 self-damage.
The Jumpstart Sawblade Launcher's cable has the ability to activate certain electrical coils used in some level secrets. It can also charge trams on contact to make them move much more quickly for a brief period.
Usage
The Jumpstart Sawblade Launcher's conductive shock can deal strong damage on its own, but it functions best with the support of other attacks. Due to the cable's persistence when swapping weapons, it can be maintained alongside other weapon combos and techniques. As well as this, the Jumpstart incentivizes firing at enemies which are attached to the cable by greatly increasing its firerate when tethered, meaning that the weapon has the ability to maximize its damage over the course of the shock's charge-up time.
The Jumpstart further supports conductive shocks via the ability for sawblades to both speed up and increase the damage of a Jumpstart cable shock, making the Jumpstart Sawblade Launcher a very strong single-target damage weapon against large enemies. With its increased firerate, the weapon can quickly deal bursts of electric damage which reduce huge chunks of health on bulky enemies with relative ease. Underwater, this can be used to deal with large crowds, but at a higher risk of death from self-damage.
The Jumpstart's conductive shocks can be made even more powerful alongside Attractor magnets and other conductive projectiles. Magnets will cause the aftershock of the cable to transfer between them if the enemy is embedded with any amount of nails, and sawblade traps created using magnets will reduce the cable's charge time at a much faster rate than regularly firing the weapon alone. Any conductive projectiles are very useful for extending the range of aftershocks in larger arenas, and can also transmit shock damage back into enemies that have already been hit, increasing the overall strength of a single aftershock.