As a loot shooter, The Division 2 has plenty of gear, items, and weapons for players to chase. Some of the best gear players can find are exotic weapons, designated by the color orange. These weapons generally offer the best statistics, as well as perks that make them worth going out of the way to acquire and also helping the player gear up for tougher challenges yet to come such as the 8 player raid called Operation Dark Hours.

Unlike some exotic weapons in the game, players who utilize the Merciless exotic rifle will find it features a completely unique way of firing thanks to one of the talents it drops with. Players who have found this weapon have reported it is capable of doing insane amounts of damage, hitting up to 1.2 million points of damage at a time. With that said, the power level of the weapon is based around the player's gear score, so better versions can be found at higher levels, maximum player level, and world tiers.

Where to Find Merciless

So far, players have not found a dedicated way to get this single shot rifle to drop. Even though it appears to be entirely around the game's RNG system, players have had more success when running the Bank Headquarters and Jefferson Trade Center missions on Challenging difficulty after hitting the level cap of 30. In addition, there have been other reports that the weapon has dropped after completing VIP Missions around the city.

In any case, the Merciless rifle is considered a Hyena weapon, so the best places to try and trigger the randomized drop would be to play through missions against the Hyenas. In addition, players can technically find this weapon on Normal difficulty, but the odds increase when doing missions at Hard or Challenging.

the division 2 hyenas

Merciless Unique Talents

Part of the appeal of this weapon is in the way it fires, which is due to its first talent, Binary Trigger. This causes a bullet to fire when the trigger is pulled and released.

Its second talent, Guerrilla Warfare, is really where the weapon gets interesting. Pulling the trigger fires primer rounds that embed in an enemy. When the trigger is released, the final round fired is a detonator that triggers the embedded primers in the enemy to explode. Each primer that's detonated gains a 75% damage increase per primer detonated. To limit this somewhat, only one enemy can have up to five primers embedded at a time.

Finally, the third talent is Brutality. While holstered, landing a shot has a 5% chance to deal +20% damage as explosive damage.

Merciless to Ruthless Conversion

the division 2 ultimate edition

For players who pre-ordered the Ultimate Edition of The Division 2 prior to launch, they can switch the Merciless to a similar exotic known as Ruthless. Players won't be able to perform this upgrade until they reach level 30 and have a Merciless with a gear score of 250 or more. The same process can be applied to the Lullaby shotgun, another pre-order bonus item inside of the Capitol Defender Pack.

Once both requirements are met, players that head to the crafting table at the White House will find the option to be available in the list. The process will cost 112 E-Credits, and the following materials:

  • 1 exotic component
  • 9 polycarbonate
  • 8 titanium
  • 20 receiver components

One thing to note with the Lullaby and Ruthless "upgrade" is that it's actually a method to make the original weapon resemble these new ones and isn't actually an upgrade as the name implies. It's something that has no doubt confused a number of The Division 2 players since it isn't explained well in-game.

The Division 2 is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: Gosunoob