Firearms

Shooting

With the weapon in hand, use it to shoot. An automatic weapon fires as long as you hold the button. A semi-automatic weapon fires one shot per press. The description of the weapon gives its fire mode.

Above your hotbar, you see the name of the weapon and the bullets left.

Reloading

To reload, you need a matching magazine in your inventory. Each weapon has its own magazine.

AK-47 Magazine
USP Magazine
AWP Magazine

To reload, hit with the weapon in hand.
When the weapon is empty, a pull of the trigger reloads it if you have a magazine.

Reloading swaps the magazines. The new magazine goes into the weapon. The old one goes back to your inventory with the bullets it has left. The game never refills a magazine: an empty magazine stays empty.

When you have no magazine left, the NO AMMO message shows.

Aiming

Sneak to aim. Only the AWP has a scope: when you sneak, you zoom in. Lying down with the AWP, you stay in the scope. See Poses.

Hit zones

A bullet in the head does far more damage than a bullet in the body.
In the legs, it does less damage, but it can break the target’s leg.
Each hit can also make the target bleed.
Damage goes down when the target is far away.

A bullet-proof vest blocks bullets to the chest, bar by bar, until it breaks. The name of the vest shows the bars left.

Silencers

The M4A1-S, the MK16-S and the USP-S have a silencer. Their shots make no echo.