Double Barrel Shotgun Build in Brotato — 4 to 6 Pellets

Six pellets for 149 gold

The Double Barrel Shotgun starts at 20 gold with 3 damage per pellet, a 1.37s cooldown and 8.8 base DPS. It ends at 149 gold with 45 DPS — a 411% increase — but the tier-4 row looks broken at first glance: damage stays 9 and cooldown stays 1.2s, identical to tier 3, while DPS jumps from 30 to 45.

The resolution is pellets. Divide the DPS column by damage-per-second-of-cooldown and you get the shot count: 8.8 ÷ (3 ÷ 1.37) ≈ 4 at T1, 18.8 ÷ (6 ÷ 1.28) ≈ 4 at T2, 30 ÷ (9 ÷ 1.2) = 4 at T3, and 45 ÷ (9 ÷ 1.2) = 6 at T4. The shotgun fires four pellets for three tiers and six at tier 4. That single change is the entire reason the last upgrade costs 75 gold and is still worth it.

“Double Barrel Shotgun parsed from brotato.wiki.gg and cached in src/data/brotato-weapons.json: 3/6/9/9 damage per pellet, 1.37/1.28/1.2/1.2s cooldown, 8.8/18.8/30/45 DPS, 350 range, 8 knockback.”

Every tier, with the pellet math

This is the only weapon in the cached table where the DPS-per-gold figure rises from T1 to T2 (0.44 to 0.48) before falling. The T2 upgrade doubles damage from 3 to 6 for 19 gold, which is the best single purchase in the weapon’s life.

Range and knockback are fixed at 350 and 8. That combination is the shotgun’s actual identity: 350 is 50 units past the Slingshot’s 300 and 50 short of the SMG’s 400.

Why 8 knockback matters on a Gun

Gun weapons mostly create no space. SMG, Rail Gun, Obliterator, Shredder, Laser Gun and Medical Gun all carry 0 knockback. Pistol and Revolver reach 15, Blunderbuss and Sniper Gun 30. The Double Barrel’s 8 sits above the zero-knockback majority, and on a 350-range weapon that is enough to reset a small crowd between shots.

The practical loop is: fire into the leading edge of a pack, watch the front rank slide back, reposition during the 1.2s cooldown. At 0.83 shots per second, you are spending more time moving than shooting. That is a fundamentally different rhythm from the SMG’s 6.7 shots per second, and it is why the two weapons complement each other rather than compete.

Four pellets versus one bullet

The pellet structure changes what stats are worth. Each trigger pull at tier 4 delivers 6 hits of 9 damage. That means:

• Flat Ranged Damage is applied per pellet, so it is worth six times what it would be on a single-projectile weapon of the same base damage.
• Crit is rolled per pellet, which with 6 pellets and 3% crit at x2 gives an expected multiplier of 1.03 — the same as any other 3% x2 weapon, but with more variance. Some pulls crit twice, most crit never.
• Attack Speed is weak. 1.2s to 1.37s across the ladder is a 12% window, so attack-speed items have very little to multiply.

The flat-damage point is the important one and it is the reason shotgun builds in Brotato feel spikey: small damage bonuses compound across six pellets, while crit bonuses do not.

The 29-character starting pool

Only Plank appears in more starting pools (30 characters) than the Double Barrel Shotgun (29). The list includes Apprentice, Buccaneer, Builder, Captain, Chunky, Curious, Cyborg, Entrepreneur, Farmer, Fisherman, Gangster, Generalist, Hunter, King, Loud, Mage, Masochist, Multitasker, Mutant, Old, One-Armed, Ranger, Renegade, Romantic, Soldier, Streamer, Vampire, Well-Rounded and Wounded.

Three of those synergies are worth naming:

Cyborg — “You start with 1 Minigun”, “Ranged Damage modifications are increased by 200%”, “100% of your Ranged Damage are temporarily converted into Engineering halfway through a wave (1 Ranged Damage = 2 Engineering)”, “Engineering modifications are reduced by 75%”, “Melee Damage modifications are reduced by 100%”, “Elemental Damage modifications are reduced by 100%”. The 200% Ranged Damage multiplier is the largest single-stat multiplier in the character table, and it applies to all six pellets.

Captain — “+60% XP Gain for every free weapon slot you have”, “+100% stats gained from level upgrades”, “+200% XP required to level up”, “+2% Enemy health at the end of a wave”, “+2% Enemy damage at the end of a wave”. Captain wants fewer weapons with better stats, which suits a 149-gold six-pellet weapon better than a screen full of cheap guns.

Masochist — starts with the shotgun and is built around taking damage. Worth checking in the character database before committing, because its perk line changes how you value the 350 range.

Wave plan

Waves 1–5. Buy at T1 for 20 gold. 8.8 DPS is modest, but 4 pellets × 3 damage at 350 range is enough to thin the front of early waves.

Waves 6–10. T2 at 39 gold doubles per-pellet damage to 6 for 18.8 DPS — the best value point in the weapon. Take it before anything else.

Waves 11–15. T3 at 74 gold gives 30 DPS at 0.41 per gold. Reasonable, not exciting. If you are slot-limited this is a fine stopping point.

Waves 16–20. T4 at 149 gold adds two pellets and 15 DPS. That is a 50% throughput gain for a 101% price increase — the efficiency drops to 0.30 per gold, the lowest of any tier. Buy it for the pellet count, not the ratio, and only if Ranged Damage is already stacked.

Boss waves. Six pellets at 9 damage each is 54 damage per pull before multipliers, delivered once every 1.2s. Against a single large target that is worse than a Captain’s Sword’s 80 per swing, but the 8 knockback keeps adds off you while you work.

Shotgun or SMG

The comparison comes up every run, and the data answers it cleanly:

Same price, 8.3 more DPS on the SMG, 50 more range on the SMG, and 8 more knockback on the shotgun. The SMG wins on throughput; the shotgun wins on control and on flat-damage scaling per trigger pull. Run both if you have the slots — they cover different distances and neither competes for the same stat investment beyond Ranged Damage.

Where to go next

Compare it with every other Gun weapon in weapons by class, and see the tier-4 ranking in best weapons tier list. The sustained-fire alternative is in SMG build, the mid-range Primitive option in Slingshot build, and the range-and-DPS decision framework in how to pick the right weapon.