Editing Single Piston Long Musket (section)

== Tactics ==

* S.P. Long Musket, is a modified version of Lever-action rifle to take care of big targets from a distance with a scope, as being a counter-part to M14 EBR rifle which has laser-sight module to decap big specimen from close quarters relatively quick. People generally tend to use this rifle for everything but at late waves it causes some ammunition problems and it's not a great weapon for crowd control, so pairing it with [[Handcannon]], [[MK23]], .44 [[Magnum]] or at least [[M14 EBR]] is required to spare ammunition of Musket for critical threats and big targets.
* Musket's biggest downside would be uninterruptible magazine reload. When you are [[Glossary#Kiting|kiting]] away or need to get away from a mayhem causing breach with casualties, reloading the rifle at the choke points ahead just might be your impending demise. Try to keep the musket for spare and don't reload it hastily until you are moving through long straight hallways or vast open areas that you can deny ahead spawns with sightline. Unless you're swarmed or blocked by trash specimen, accurate Musket's headshots would allow you to use a side arm like pistols or another rifle to spare its ammo and manage reloads.
*When fired from the hands of a level 6 sharpshooter; 5 headshots can kill a [[Fleshpound]] and 4 headshots kill a [[Scrake]] in 6-man [[Difficulty#Hell_on_Earth|Hell on Earth]] difficulty. It is possible to stun a Scrake as a level 5 Sharpshooter by a headshot from it, unlike Lever-action's requirement of being level 6 to do the same. Like Lever-action rifle and M14 EBR, Fleshpound only has 25% resistance against its bullets from headshots, unlike their general 50% innate resistance to everything else. This alone, makes it a pretty nice sidegrade to use at higher difficulties.
* Counter-intuitively, the tip of the arrow is not the actual center of the scope. The actual center is the middle of the arrow. The arrow, reaches just a bit higher than the actual center of aim. Just line up the sights and use the middle of the arrow to aim at specimens heads.
* When engaging big specimen like Scrake and Fleshpound standing your ground for clear shots is important. That is mostly ensured by doing controlled shots, and getting trash quickly killed before you engage the main threat. When carrying this rifle a panic situation of abusing rate of fire which causes recoil or moving around may ruin things for you. Because of obstructive sights Sharps generally use hipfiring combos to big targets and that requires contact with trash zeds and close quarter fending before going in for the big hit.
* Musket deals 180 damage per shot, that's not only enough to kill a [[Crawler]] in one shot right away but also can kill a [[Stalker]] at any difficulty. Backdraw is wasting such powerful ammunition with burst damage potential on trash specimen and 5% slower fire delay compared to [[Lever-action rifle]]. This downside hardly comes into play as Musket has plenty of ammunition and it's not hard to drop medium grade meat shield specimen such as [[Gorefast]]s and [[Bloat]] as long as you have considerable distance.