Flamethrower

"A portable flamethrower that discards the old and highly dangerous backpack fuel delivery system in favor of pressurized canisters of napalm. Inexperienced agents will find that a flamethrower can be difficult to maneuver, however."

- description of Flamethrower

"The canister is double-walled to minimize accidental detonation caused by stray bullets during a firefight."

- Sam Carter

The flamethrower is a heavy skill weapon appearing in Deus Ex.

Background
Used in combat by various organizations in 2051.

Game item
The flamethrower shoots a stream of flame at enemies. Any enemy that the fire touches, no matter how long they were hit with the flame steam, will be set on fire. While on fire, they will run around screaming while taking damage. They will never attack the player while in this state.

Flames from the flamethrower do full damage to most enemies. The exceptions are robots, which take 25% damage, MJ12 Commandos, which take half damage and cannot be set on fire, and grays, which take no damage.

Tactics

 * A brief burst is very effective against troopers and animals because it's all that's needed to set them on fire.


 * The Flamethrower consumes 10 rounds of napalm per second. This, combined with how rare napalm ammo is, makes firing small burst an even better idea. The extra damage caused by holding the flamethrower on a target simply isn't worth quickly going through one's ammo supply.


 * Hit and run tactics work very well with the flamethrower. Go into a room, fire the flamethrower just long enough to set everyone on fire, then run back and let the fire on them do the rest of the work.


 * If enemies are on fire, the player can also simply run past them instead of waiting to let the fire take them out. However, if the player touches an enemy that's on fire, they'll take flame damage as well, so caution is advised when going through or exploring a room that's recently been torched with the flamethrower.


 * A Man in Black will only die when set on fire once if the player is at Advanced or Higher heavy Weapon skill level. However, players with lower skill levels should still set him on fire anyway because the MiB will be completely harmless while on fire. Once he recovers, the player can tap him with another burst of flames, which will set him on fire again and, after taking some extra flame damage while on fire, kill him.


 * Even though MJ12 Commandos take some damage from a flamethrower, using it against them is not recommended because they will never play the "on fire" animation, which is the flamethrower's greatest strength. In fact, Commandos will not take extra flame damage period, meaning the player will have to unload one or more full magazines to kill a Commando, depending on their skill level.


 * Always reload whenever given a chance. The weapon's reload speed is slow enough that trying to reload in the middle of combat can put the player in real danger.


 * A flamethrower will take up eight blocks in the inventory. Be aware of this when planning how many items JC will hold.

Locations
It can be found very early in the game; one of the NSF soldiers in tunnels under Castle Clinton wields it.