Shotgun Shells

Lore & Background

The Lethal Company does not hand its employees a loadout. What you carry into a facility is whatever the previous crew left behind, or whatever you scavenge from supply crates and abandoned workstations. The Shotgun and its shells sit in that liminal space between tool and terror: they are industrial hardware, the kind you'd find in a maintenance closet, yet in the hands of a desperate employee they become the difference between a completed quota and a name on a missing-persons file.

Facilities in the Lethal Company's operational zone are vast, decaying complexes—half factory, half something older. The Shotgun's short effective range is a deliberate design echo of that environment: hallways are narrow, doorways are chokepoints, and the AI creatures that prowl the dark rarely give you the luxury of a clean long shot. A shell spent on an empty corridor is a shell you won't get back. The community has learned to respect that economy, and the Shotgun's scarcity in any given run makes it a trophy you hoard until the moment demands it.

There is a particular grim poetry fans attach to the Shotgun. In a game where you are a nameless, faceless worker in a grey jumpsuit, the Shotgun is the one piece of equipment that feels genuinely *yours*—loud, ugly, and absolutely final. It does not whisper. It does not aim with surgical precision. It simply ends the conversation.

In Their Own Story

The VHS hum in your ears is the only sound left. The facility's third floor is a graveyard of rusted conveyor belts, and the Stalker's shadow has been tracking you for two minutes now. You back into a storage alcove, boots scraping concrete, and your hand finds the Shotgun leaning against a crate of half-eaten rations. You don't count the shells. You don't need to. You just need one.

The corridor floods with that terrible, dragging gait. You raise the weapon, brace your elbow on the crate, and pull. The report is a physical blow behind your sternum, a wall of noise that drowns the Stalker's screech. The pellets find the gap in its ribcage and it folds, slow and wrong, like a marionette with cut strings. You lower the gun. Your hands are shaking. The VHS filter makes the whole scene look like a memory you're already losing.

Somewhere below, the ship's horn will sound in twenty minutes. You have to move. You tuck the Shotgun under your arm, pick up the scrap you came for, and walk.

Reader's Guide

SHOTGUN SHELLS — Ammunition for the Shotgun. One shell, one devastating close-range burst.

• Damage: Very high per shot; multiple pellets in a tight spread • Effective range: A few metres; drops off sharply beyond that • Shells per pickup: Single-digit (treat every round as precious) • Weight: Negligible in inventory terms

TACTICAL NOTE Use the Shotgun when a creature is already in your face or in a narrow corridor where its movement is constrained. It is the single best answer to a Hound lunge, a Crawler skittering across the floor, or a Stalker that has closed to point-blank. It also shreds groups of smaller AI (spiders, vultures) that would otherwise overwhelm a pistol-wielder.

Avoid it in open warehouse floors where enemies can strafe and stay at range, and never waste a shell on a distant silhouette you haven't confirmed. The spread is tight but not a laser; at distance you are spraying pellets into the dark.

COMMON MISTAKE: New crews treat the Shotgun like a rifle and fire it down long hallways. You will miss, you will waste your most expensive round, and the creature will be on you before you cycle the next shell. Get inside the corridor. Get inside the room. Then pull the trigger.

Did You Know?

• The Shotgun's shells are among the scarcest ammunition types in a typical facility run, which makes the weapon feel like a one-or-two-chance trump card rather than a sustained-fire tool.
• Because Lethal Company is fully co-op (up to four players), a single Shotgun can be the difference between a crew surviving a multi-enemy encounter and losing a teammate to the dark.
• The game's VHS/camcorder filter applies to all weapon fire, meaning the Shotgun's muzzle flash and pellet impact are rendered with the same grainy, timestamped aesthetic as everything else—reinforcing the 'found footage'
• The Shotgun's close-range design mirrors the game's core tension: facilities are built around tight corridors and chokepoints, rewarding players who commit to the fight rather than kiting.