This guide is an in-depth look at the cocking mechanics of the Deringer and how to best use them. If you're new to this game it's probably not the guide for you!
There's a lot of embedded gifs so it might be slow to load if you're on mobile and/or have a bad connection. Next to each gif is a link to a higher quality version on gfycat if the little gifs aren't clear enough.

Alright, let's talk about cocking! You may or may not already know that there are four guns in this game that need to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ after every shot before they can be fired again. These are:

• Yellowboy
  
• Spencer
  
• Pump shotgun
  
• Deringer

But the Deringer is the odd one out here, because it's a handgun while the other three are two-handed weapons. And along with that comes a bunch of little intricacies and bugs that we can use to our advantage - that's what this guide is all about.

Unfortunately, we can't use the word "cocking" in its base form on Steam so I'll be using cocq instead for sake of readability. And if you want to snicker about it then take your time now because I'll be saying it lots throughout the guide...

Anyway, here's an example showing cocking in action on the deringer.


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As you can see you have to wait for the cocking animation after each shot when firing normally. There's a way to skip it but I'll talk about that later. For now, I just want to make it clear that the cocking animation is there, it takes time, and you can't do anything with the weapons in your hands while it's happening. That means you can't shoot a gun in your opposite hand, you can't shoot the deringer that's being ♥♥♥♥♥♥, and you can't cocq another deringer.

However you can still kick, put guns away, and throw or drop guns.

The next thing you should know about cocking is that switching to another weapon does not make it so you don't need to cocq the deringer. In other words, if you shoot and then quickly swap to another weapon, you'll need to cocq it the next time you draw it before it will let you shoot.


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Even if you drop the gun and pick it up again, you still need to cocq it. And if you pick up someone else's uncocked deringer, that one needs to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ too. The state of the deringer (same goes for yellowboy and pump shotgun, by the way!) is saved when it drops to the ground. Funnily enough, it also saves which hand it's supposed to slot into, but that's a very broken and complicated topic for another day...


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And of course, if you're firing two deringers, then both of them need to cocq individually. After you shoot one, there's a period of time between the end of the natural shooting cooldown you get when firing with two handguns drawn and the beginning of the cocq animation on the deringer you fired. That means you can fire the other deringer during that time frame, but not after or before it because you'll get stopped by either the first deringer cocking or the firing cooldown. So here's an example of me doing just that, which is the normal mode of firing deringers: Shoot shoot, cocq cocq, shoot shoot, cocq cocq, reload reload.


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Building on this, you probably know that you don't need to make an individual click for every shot you fire in this game. You can simply buffer it by holding down the fire key and waiting for your cooldowns to end, and it'll shoot as soon as possible. Buffering the deringers is a good way to save time if your tracking aim is good enough to keep your shots on-target, but you need to be careful here.

Here's an example of some awkward deringer buffering, where I buffer right-left-right-left. You can see that the first two shots happen as expected, but there's a delay between the third and fourth. That's because since I buffer the right deringer after I've already ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the right deringer and fired the left one, that shot happens before the left deringer gets ♥♥♥♥♥♥. So instead of shoot-shoot-cocq-cocq-shoot-shoot-cocq-cocq, I'm now doing shoot-shoot-cocq-shoot-cocq-shoot-cocq-cocq.


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There's three ways around this problem:

• Get used to it and track with the uneven rhythm
  
• Begin buffering the 3rd shot only after the 2nd cocking animation begins
  
• Fire RLLR instead of RLRL (LRRL works too but is situationally worse for reasons I'll explain later)

If you're already used to options 1 or 2 then just go ahead with what you're doing since there's no use in breaking a habit for something that works to the same effect. If you're not already used to buffering the deringers from 2 full to 2 empty, then you should get into the habit of firing RLLR instead to make it easier for yourself.


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I can't think of a situation where the 1st option would be useful, and I should point out that it's not always best to fire alternately if you know that you won't need the extra upfront damage from the two-shot combos, and can get the frag and find the time and safety to reload using just one deringer. In that case it's obviously better to fire RR first and then L if you happen to need it. It might sound like a very specific circumstance but as you get comfortable with the deringers you should try to learn to read situations and think ahead to optimise your time management.

Finally before I get into doublecocking (the real meat of this guide), I lastly want to point out that you only need to start the cocking animation for it to count. Normally, letting it run its course is the best option because putting the deringer away and pulling it out again takes more time than the animation itself. Here's proof

Nevertheless, switching off the deringer as soon as the cocking animation starts can be useful if you don't need the second shot right away. For example, if you frag someone with the first bullet, and don't need the second shot immediately but want to move somewhere ASAP without making yourself vulnerable if you get attacked, you can use this animation cancel and then run around with your melee out until you want to draw your already-♥♥♥♥♥♥ deringer.


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So there's a feature/bug/exploit in the game where you can actually cocq both deringers at the same time. It's pretty simple - you just need to have two holstered uncocked deringers, and then kick just after you draw them again. Then, when the kick cooldown is over, both of them will cocq at the same time and you'll be good to go!


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As for how this could be useful, let's imagine you killed someone with your first two deringer shots where you fired one from each and then holstered them to move somewhere else. Then you can use the other two in a combo with your kick to get out over 100 damage and kill someone. There's no point doing this in ordinary fighting, because just like with one deringer, it's not as fast to quickswitch them as it is to just let them cocq on their own.

Here's a clip of me pretending to fight two enemies using the doublecock:


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The simultaneous cocq is an even stranger oddity in the game that is almost definitely a bug since it only works in the right hand. I mentioned earlier than RLLR buffering is better than LRRL buffering, and that if you're only starting with one deringer then you should start with it in your right hand. The reason for this is that you can save a holstered and uncocked deringer in your right hand (well, right pocket anyway) and remove the cocking animation on it in a situation where you use this simultaneous cocq combo.

The gist of simultaneous cocq is that you have a weapon in your left hand already drawn, and when you draw the deringer in your right hand and cocq it the animation will freely overlap with things happening in the left hand. This is different to usual because in any other situation when you draw a deringer, it would delay the cocq animation until you had finished whatever else was going on, such as a kick or shot from another gun.

Here's an example of this happening, with a kick and a sawedoff shot. By firing the deringer afterwards this becomes a powerful combo that's faster than it should be.


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And as for proof that it's not just kick-related this time and will work with other actions too, here's me drawing and cocking the deringer in the middle of some Navy fire:


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Which as you can see in this clip, doesn't work with the deringer in the left hand:


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The deringer waits for the navy's shot to finish before it starts cocking, thus it takes longer to be ready to fire. The same applies for the kicking method shown above with the sawedoff.

Finally, since all of this has to be put into context, here's me pretending to make good use of the simultaneous cocq. I kill the "enemy" (the barrel) with my first bullet, and I don't have time to wait around to cocq or animation-cancel the deringer right now because someone is shooting at me. I run over and someone is standing in the way of the whiskey bottles so I use the kick combo with the simultaneous cocq to guarantee that I'll finish him off as soon as possible.


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And that wraps up all I have to say in this guide! Just as a clarification before I go, picking right-handed or left-handed doesn't make a difference to all this because those only change accuracy values and where guns are assigned to, not what happens with your deringer cocq animations. The right deringer is almost always the best one to fire first with, the exception being if you have backup weapons under the deringer in your left hand that you want to use as a backup, for example like this:

(starting with 2 deringers drawn)
left shot - right shot - left cocq - right cocq - left shot - draw sawedoff in left hand - left shot - right shot - drop right deringer - left shot

And the best option is always down to the situation, so like I said before, learn to read the fight and plan ahead so that you always have the best idea of what to do. These cocq tricks just might save your life!

The map in the screenshots is my own map Masdm, ported from Sauerbraten.

Thanks for reading!