The Heavy Bolter is one of many weapon types in Rogue Trader, offering players a choice of a heavy weapon that can dish out some serious firepower. Many players are running it, including our own Argenta build, and is something that players should consider running in their playthrough to unleash plentiful damage against a boss or multiple targets in a funneled location. In this guide, we go over how to get a Heavy Bolter in Rogue Trader, alongside useful tips and tricks on using the weapon.

How to get a Heavy Bolter in Rogue Trader¶

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Heavy Bolters are among the best weapons to create builds in Rogue Trader. Here’s why.

To get your hands on a Heavy Bolter, there are two locations you can find them. One is by purchasing it from the Drussians trader in Chapter 2, while another is to kill the Chaos Space Marine at the end of Chapter 1. It is important to note that the Chaos version requires the player to be a level 2 Heretic, while the one purchased from the Drussians simply requires you to have the Profit Factor and Reputation with the Drussians to use. Both will also need a strength score of 60, or 35 if you are running Heavy Weapon Proficiency.

Once you have the Heavy Bolter, equip it on the target you wish to use it with.

Tips for using the Heavy Bolter in Rogue Trader¶

Okay, it is important to note that the Heavy Bolter in Rogue Trader is an amazing weapon. Its damage on the weapon sheet says it only deals between 3-8 damage per round, but that couldn’t be any further than the truth, with the weapon scaling from Ballistic Skill, effective fire range, damage and gear modifiers, talent modifiers and deflection reduction. It is very easy to dish out several hundred damage per round using a Heavy Bolter.

The first thing to note is that the Heavy Bolter is a weapon that requires two key talents to work. One is the Rapid Fire skill, and the other is Bullet Hell. Rapid Fire doubles the number of rounds a weapon can fire using a Burst Fire attack. For the Heavy Bolter, it means its Burst Fire moves from eight to 16 rounds per attack. In addition, Bullet Hell removes the damage penalty for using Rapid Fire, so you can go back to dishing out the dakka on the attacka. You can also combo this with items that increase your Rapid Fire count, such as the Gloves of Rapid Desolation if you want to use them.

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The other major thing you need to know is that the Heavy Bolter is affected by a mechanic known as Recoil. Recoil is an important part of the game, as it affects the accuracy of any other bolt after the first round is fired from a Burst Fire. It means that you’ll likely find many other of your rounds missing after the first few. So, it is important to always have debuffs to an enemy’s dodge chance, improve your recoil, and increase your ballistic skill.

There are a few ways you can do this. One is using tools like Pasqal’s Machine Spirit Communion ability. Any Pasqal build running Intelligence will greatly assist in predicting a burst fire attack. In addition, there’s also some boots you can get called the Recoil Warboots, which offers a -15% reduction to Recoil if you wish to use them. There’s also the Recoil Gloves for another 50% reduction to Recoil. An Operative on Expose Weakness duty can also lower an enemy’s dodge, and thus make it more likely your rounds land. These are all tricks you can use to ensure your burst fire accuracy on your Heavy Bolter lands as often as possible.

Heavy Bolter Damage Tips - Rogue Trader¶

By setting up a party composition and build to get your Burst Fire and Heavy Bolter combo going, you will need to increase the damage it can deal. Once again, there are a few key Soldier talents here, like the Fired Up skill. This talent will increase your crit damage by 1% every time you deal damage. You can get upwards of +24% crit damage in a single turn if you can land all your shots and use Run and Gun. You can also get another potential eight by receiving Bring it Down!

In addition, the Arch-Militant Archetype can get a talent called the Confident Approach. This allows all attacks you do while the skill is active to guarantee critical hits. When you have ramped your Fired Up stacks, your crit damage will ascend to new heights, offering some very strong late combat round damage potential. But, once you get your Ballistic Skill high enough, and gear that improves your crit strike chances through other builds and accessories, you likely won’t need this as every other round will crit and increase your damage ceiling exponentially. You can even get Bolt Weapon Expert and get better synergy with the armor penetration for your Bolts so you can deal more damage to armored foes.

You can have your Heavy Bolter user benefit from Exemplar talents like Eager Subordinates for an additional 15% damage. So, get those extra turns to your Heavy Bolter user, and have them fire their burst fire several times within a turn window once all Dodge and Recoil buffs and debuffs have gone out. You’ll find that stacking all of these types of buffs and using this tactic will allow this build and playstyle to carry your fights in all difficulties.