Weapon Wheel

The weapon wheel

The Weapon Wheel serves as the quick inventory in Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide. It is available from the very beginning of the game but will only have the fists and two slots either side available. However, the maximum 8 slots will be available as the player levels up and/or unlocks the deeper pockets skill

The weapon wheel is essentially a list; it goes in a specific order. It can be though of like a clock in a way... The bottom middle circle is 1, the bottom left is 2, the middle left is 3, the top left is 4, the top middle is 5, the top right is 6, the middle right is 7, and the bottom right is 8. But, the weapons will not cycle in that order. When the quick selection button is pressed, the next weapon in the wheel's order will be equipped. That order is as follows: 1, 2, 5, 6, 4, 7, 3, 8. See the uploaded, numbered image for a visual example.

The 'clock' configuration

Appearance

The wheel shows the available weapons in the character's quick inventory in a circular pattern, with the statistics on the currently selected weapon and its name in the centre. Each weapon's icon is either bordered by its durability gauge for melee weapons, accompanied by its ammo count for firearms, or the number of them the player has for projectiles.

Usage

The primary use of the weapon wheel is to quickly select a weapon for combat without having to open the inventory and select it from the list. There's a maximum of 8 weapon slots available, though one will always have the fists in it. This is not possible to change, though weapons can be swapped out of the other 7 slots at any time, once the slot is unlocked. The main benefit of this is to quickly switch through weapons during a fight, whether it's because one is low on durability, has broken, has been thrown or, in the case of a firearm, needs to be reloaded but there's no time to do so.

Multiple different items can be equipped in the wheel. All types of melee weapons can be placed in there, as can all firearms. Any throwable is also able to be placed in the wheel. Other consumables like alcohol and medkits can also take up a slot on the weapon wheel, though only in the original version of Dead Island. Some things can't be equipped in the wheel, however, like ammo, food items for healing or cash.

The other use of the weapon wheel is more of a passive one, but handy when needed. By pressing the weapon wheel button, the game will show the rest of the HUD. This allows you to quickly see how much money you have, your current health, how full your XP bar is towards levelling up, as well as the health of any co-op teammates you have. This saves you having to go into your pause screen and navigating the menu there.

The weapon wheel is also useful for quickly selecting between different types of weapons by using the quick select hotkeys. By having a throwable, firearm and melee weapon on your weapon wheel, you can easily fire at a zombie at long range with the firearm, throw a throwable at a different group of zombies before taking out a melee weapon to finish off any remaining. This can be done without opening the weapon wheel but by hotkey selecting weapons currently equipped on the wheel.

Notes

• If the player is doing a quest in which they have to escort a survivor, it will display the health status of the survivor.
• In the original game, if the player picks up several bottles of alcohol in quick succession, it can replace the currently selected weapon in their hands and in the weapon wheel. This is especially problematic if in combat.
• Also in the original game, if the player picks up two items of food in quick succession, they will be defaulted back to their fists and will have to reselect their weapon. Again this is problematic if trying to use food to heal mid combat.