Guides/Starting out
Engineer: the shortest weapon list and the most buttons in the game
The tool belt as a second row of skills, seven kits, turrets and elixirs. Why the engineer has the smallest weapon choice and the largest choice of everything else.
On this page
The engineer has the shortest weapon list of the nine classes and the most buttons on screen. The reasoning holds up: it barely needs weapons, because it carries its own arsenal.
The tool belt
The class mechanic is the tool belt. Every utility skill you slot automatically grants a second skill on the belt.
Where other classes have three utility buttons, the engineer has six. You choose nothing extra: slot a skill, receive a pair.
Kits
A kit replaces your weapon skills entirely while you hold it. There are seven:
- Med Kit for healing
- Bomb Kit for explosives at your feet
- Grenade Kit for thrown damage at range
- Flamethrower
- Elixir Gun for support and condition cleansing
- Tool Kit for melee and turret repair
- Elite Mortar Kit
Kits are how the engineer works around its weapon list: a rifle in hand, grenades in a kit, and the swap is instant.
Turrets, gadgets, elixirs
Turrets are immobile emplacements: drop one and it attacks and holds an area. You can pack it up again or detonate it.
Gadgets are one-off devices such as Rocket Boots and the Personal Battering Ram, the most engineer-flavoured part of the class.
Elixirs grant boons, clear conditions, revive allies, and occasionally make you invulnerable.
Weapons
Two-handed: hammer, rifle, short bow, spear. Main-hand: mace, pistol, sword. Off-hand: pistol, shield.
The list is short, and in practice you spend more time inside kits than on your weapon.
Why it is hard for a newcomer
There are many buttons and no two behave alike. A kit changes five skills, the belt adds six more, and all of it has to live in your head.
The engineer is also, along with the elementalist, one of the two classes with no weapon swap in combat. Kits stand in for it, and they have to be slotted in advance.
Practical advice: take a rifle and the Grenade Kit and leave the rest alone until they feel natural. Those two carry you to 80.
The elite specialisations
Scrapper (Heart of Thorns) adds gyros, hovering helpers built through wells, plus the hammer. The sturdiest version.
Holosmith (Path of Fire) adds the Photon Forge, hard-light weapons that overheat you if you hold them too long. Risk traded for damage.
Mechanist (End of Dragons) gives you a battle mech commanded through signets. The engineer effectively gains a pet like the ranger, and it is the easiest way into the class.
Amalgam (Visions of Eternity) uses stances to morph and evolve.
Advice for a newcomer
If you like the look of the class but the button count worries you, wait for 80 and take Mechanist. The mech holds the enemy, you shoot, and half the complexity goes away.
The comparison against the other eight sits in the overview.