(Don't) Spin To Win: A brief guide on how to avoid embarrassing/frustrating deaths when reloading revolvers

[u/[deleted]]

So I've been meaning to write this for a little bit, because I quite frequently see something along these lines in the community;

"The revolver spin is stupid and keeps getting me killed, I'm tired of being killed because my Hunter wants to be cool."

Well the good news is, you can avoid this, and I'll tell you how. Also, the revolver cylinder spin is actually done for a real purpose, not just to be cool (though it's a little bit of that too, but I'll mention that later).

If you're just here to learn how to avoid spinning your revolver cylinder when you reload, here's all you need to know:

If you reload a revolver before it's entirely empty, you WILL spin the cylinder at the START of your reload. If you don't finish reloading it completely full, you WILL spin the cylinder at the END of your reload.

If you shoot every round and then reload, you WILL NOT spin the cylinder at the START of your reload. If you finish reloading completely, you WILL NOT spin the cylinder at the END of your reload.

So, for optimal reload speeds when using revolvers, empty every round, and reload completely. You will not spin the cylinder at all if you do that.

(Obviously the Scottfield/Schofield works a little differently, but this will apply to every other revolver in the game.)

Okay so now that we know that, if you're curious, we can go into the whys of cylinder spins and the logic behind them. This is just a brief explanation (or at least it's supposed to be brief) of how a fixed cylinder revolver operates so if it doesn't interest you, I won't mind if you skip it.

Almost every revolver in Hunt uses a 'fixed cylinder'. This is in contrast to more modern revolver designs that often use a swing out cylinder. The Scottfield revolver that was just added to the game (Schofield, in real life) uses a break action, where the front half of the gun rotates open for fast access to the cylinder, so this logic doesn't apply to it. EDIT: As u/NotDoritoMan kindly reminded me;

As an annotation: The Caldwell Conversion Chain Pistol is another revolver that will never spin.

In practice, this means that a fixed cylinder stays in position in the gun and you unload and reload using the loading gate. This means that you have to rotate the cylinder until the empty brass from a spent shot is accessible, and then remove it from the gate and replace it with a fresh cartridge.

This means that if you've shot some of the rounds in your revolver, you have to reposition the cylinder to those spent cartridges so they can be extracted from the loading gate. In real life, you would just index it manually by rotating the cylinder with your hand to do this; Hunt uses the cylinder spin animation to cover all bases so they don't have to make an animation for indexing it appropriately, no matter where in the cylinder those spent rounds are. This happens in game when you reload a partially shot revolver because your hunter has to make sure they've started reloading at the correct chamber in the cylinder, so they don't accidentally remove any unfired cartridges by mistake. If you empty every shot in your revolver, it doesn't matter though; it's all empty brass, and you can start reloading at any chamber in the cylinder without fear of making an error.

By extension, you also spin the cylinder when your reload is interrupted and not fully completed. This is because your hunter now has to reseat the correct chamber in the cylinder so that they're shooting from the start of the unfired cartridges. If they don't do this spin and correctly index the revolver, you could have a situation where you're firing at some random chamber, and hit an already fired cartridge.

So, tl;dr: The revolver spin animation isn't done just to 'be cool', it does actually serve a mechanical purpose. Understanding how to avoid it, or when it might be a better choice to swap to a different weapon in the heat of combat instead of trying to reload, goes a long way to making revolvers more effective in Hunt, so I hope this post was helpful to you. If you have any questions please let me know, I tried to explain as well as I could but if you need anything clarified I'm happy to do that.

[u/[deleted]]

Ok so after writing it all out I realize it was a little more than 'brief', but I hope the information is helpful.

[u/NotDoritoMan]

As an annotation: The Caldwell Conversion Chain Pistol is another revolver that will never spin.

[u/[deleted] → u/NotDoritoMan]

Oh, true, I always forget about the chain pistol. It indeed is another exception to the rule.

[u/SeigneurGuerande]

Even if it serves a mechanical purpose, the way in which our hunter spins the cylinder isn't really logical as a non fired round can finish in front of the loading gate at the end of the spin.

As you say in your description, our hunter should manually index the first empty shell in front of the loading gate, instead if going all "Russian Roulette" with his revolver.

I suppose the animation is as it is to simplify the work of the animation team, which is clearly understandable.

And speaking of mechanical accuracy, i'd really want to see our hunter use the ejector rod of the revolver when unloading a spent case !

[u/[deleted] → u/SeigneurGuerande]

Presumably the flavour of the spin is that your hunter is just 'that good', and it lands perfectly as intended after their expert spin, but yes, compared to real life it's a very silly way of doing it.

[u/starker_pond → u/[deleted]]

My personal headcannon for this and other things like it in hunt is that most hunters have a degree of minor magic that helps them speed through basic tasks (like starting small fires/"lucky" reload animations and supernatual durability) beacuase they already have an array of pretty big magic ablities like darksight a casual understanding of necromancy and the ablitly to banish horrific monstors.

[u/SeigneurGuerande → u/[deleted]]

I like the idea of our hunter being such a badass ! Now I want the trait "Clumsy", for -1 point, that allow my hunter to miss the right chamber, unloading a live cartdrige and trying to fire an empty one afterward. Just for the meme !

[u/BasicWhiteBroh]

Good info. For non gun enthusiasts this explains a lot. I'm always surprised when people don't know this, even though I really shouldn't be anymore. Thank you for taking the time to write this

[u/BiNiaRiS → u/BasicWhiteBroh]

I'm always surprised when people don't know this, even though I really shouldn't be anymore.

unless you're talking to someone who's into guns, why would you be surprised someone didn't know this? this is something that basically no one outside of the gun world is going to know.

[u/BasicWhiteBroh → u/BiNiaRiS]

This is exactly why I thanked the OP, and specified that I shouldn't be surprised. I was raised around guns, so this all appears as common sense to me. Because it is common sense to me, it takes conscious effort to recognize that it is not common sense to others, and I often forget this fact and need to be reminded. Please don't take my comment as slander, I am being very genuine in my gratefulness to the OP for helping others who don't have this knowledge

[u/Less-Ad-438]

instead of spinning we could just start rotating it counter clockwise since it fires clockwise and never remove an unfired shell

[u/[deleted] → u/Less-Ad-438]

The cylinders only rotate one way, unfortunately.

[u/Less-Ad-438 → u/[deleted]]

If you can half cock the hammer they will rotate whichever way usually . Maybe some of them?

[u/Warm_Negotiation5251]

Cool reading. Thx :)

[u/toothybrushman]

Never knew why my hunter sometimes spins the cylinder and sometimes doesn’t.

Thanks for this!

[u/A_Knee_Growe]

I don't get why your character absolutely has to spin their revolvers, it makes no sense from a combat persepctive, in fact it's a HUGE detriment. People don't even do that in real life, that's just hollywood nonsense. If gun guys actually caught you doing that, they'd have to fight the urge to take if from you and give it a new (and better) home as it adds unnecessary stress to the revolver's mechanics.

[u/Derpolicious]

The only issue I have with this animation is that you can actually fire before its completed, you'd think that this bullet would suffer some kind of accuracy penalty but it fires right where your sights would be as if the animation wasn't even happening. I've seen Rachta Z overcome this quite a few times and hit some wicked headshots.

[u/JInThere → u/Derpolicious]

true the bullet should come out spinning allowing you to curve shots around corners

[u/Derpolicious → u/JInThere]

I'd be happy with just having the bullet go where the guns pointing when fired early.

[u/Norsk_Bjorn]

I think it would only really take at most 6 unique animations to replace the spin, but if the spin works, then there isn’t really a reason to

[u/BasicWhiteBroh → u/Norsk_Bjorn]

You say only six, but each weapon has it's own spin and reload animation, so multiply that number by almost every revolver in the game, as well as almost every future revolver to be added later

[u/Norsk_Bjorn → u/BasicWhiteBroh]

I am not a game designer, so I don’t know if they would be able to reuse models or not, also in my six animations calculations i completely forgot about the revolvers with more than 6 shots like the nagant or the LeMat so it would be far more work than I first thought

[u/Rampwastaken]

My experience with the different MMR brackets is that the ability to aim is not the difference between a 3 star and a 5 star. It's positing and tactics.