Due in equal parts to its unlimited supply and versatile set of roles, the Dart jockeys for top spot as the player's most valuable asset. Launch a dart at lights to shatter them, guards to distract them, or power sources to disable them. Players obtain the dart midway through the tutorial-like first level, adding further to its consideration as an essential item.
While they have an approximately half-second cooldown when throwing them normally, Focus mode allows all three action slots to be used for throwing darts (although these must be aimed at three separate targets), which will upon commitment release simultaneously – after which the usual half-second cooldown applies.
Using Focus mode to throw darts allows aiming at specific entities, which would otherwise be blocked by other targets. Consider, for example, two guards standing next to each other, or a room light situated beyond a guard standing in front of the grate you are currently peeking out from. Straightforward throwing will produce the expected result of hitting the obstructing guard instead – but if the player instead uses Focus, the dart will pass straight through all intervening objects and is guaranteed to hit the specified target (this can even turn it into essentially a homing dart in the case of fast-moving targets like Stalkers or birds).
Conversely, throwing them without Focus allows the player to take advantage of their unlimited range, which stretches well past the most distant Focus-Mode screen panning, to draw guards from extreme distances. It also allows players to manually aim at a spot adjacent to a guard and use the noise of the impact itself as a small-scale, local distraction.
Darts also prove to be very effective weapons during an encounter if ever you are spotted. Shooting darts at alerted enemies will "mini-stun" the guards long enough for you to throw another dart at them. With the help of Focus mode, effectively spamming darts at enemies while jumping around trying to look for grapple points can let you escape without damage even in the midst of battle against three alert guards.
Related Achievements[]
| Image | Name | How to Unlock |
|---|---|---|
|
Trickster | Distract 25 guards using environmental objects. |