Sometimes classic weapons are just not good enough, but the Atomic Heart cartridges can put some extra oomph into your favourite guns. If you’re hoping to use more elemental attacks to help you get through hordes of robots, you’ll want to know about these.
We messed around with plenty of cartridges during our Atomic Heart review playthrough, and they work great with all of the Atomic Heart weapons. They’re great if things are a bit difficult, but you can always change the Atomic Heart difficulty options if it is too hard. Otherwise, if you’re ready to learn more about cartridges, read on.
Atomic Heart cartridges explained
Atomic Heart cartridges are consumables that can be used on weapons with the cartridge slot upgrade on them. When used, they give attacks or bullets elemental properties.
If you know how to use the scanner in Atomic Heart, you can scan and analyse enemies to see their weaknesses and resistances, and use the according cartridge types (which you can find below) to deal increased damage to robots.
Atomic Heart cartridges types
There are three types of cartridges in Atomic Heart:
- Fire
- Ice
- Electric
Each cartridge type can be found in the world or crafted, so long as you have the blueprint for the specific type.
Atomic Heart how to use cartridges
First, you need to ensure that you have the cartridge upgrade on your weapon of choice by heading to NORA. After installing the upgrade, you can open the weapon wheel (square on PS4/PS5, X on Xbox) and install a cartridge by hovering over the hexagon at the bottom of the weapon wheel.
If you have more than one cartridge type in your inventory, you can cycle through them to choose the one that is great for your situation. It’s worth finding out how to increase inventory space in Atomic Heart if you want more cartridges on-hand.
That’s everything you need to know about Atomic Heart cartridges. If you need extra help while playing through the game, you should check out our Atomic Heart walkthrough, which has plenty of guides to help you out.
Developer Mundfish has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks after it was alleged that the Russian government stands to gain financially from the release of Atomic Heart. This is due to the fact that investors involved in the financing of Mundfish include GEM Capital, an investment fund whose founder has ties to Gazprom and VTB Bank, both of which are majority-owned by the Russian state.
Mundfish is also partnering with VK (formerly Mail.RU) for the Russian release of Atomic Heart, evading sanctions on Steam – VK is also majority-owned by the Russian state through Gazprombank, and Mundfish’s CEO is a former Creative Director at Mail.RU.
With Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, many players are now choosing to boycott the game in protest and donate money to organisations like The Ukraine Crisis Appeal, International Rescue Committee, and the British Red Cross.