The Ultimate Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Dragon Sniper Guide

The speed the scope moves is too slow and there’s no over the shoulder aim. Okay, so the Uncharted 3 Dragon Sniper sucks. Or does it? After it’s somewhat dissapointing transition from Uncharted 2, the June Beta to the Subway Demo and finally retail, I have come to appreciate it as a sleeper candidate for best weapon and an excellent tool in team games. I have written this short guide to share some tips, technology, and builds on overcoming the Dragon Sniper’s weaknesses and unlocking it’s true potential.

Note: This guide applies to Uncharted 3 Retail Patch 1.09.

Latest Update

V1.05 – Updated for patch 1.09 Added info on Tau Sniper, scope in behaviour

Why should I use the Dragon Sniper?

A few reasons:

• You want to challenge yourself by using the hardest weapon in the game
• Dragon Sniper the only gun in the game which takes finesse to use
• Nothing beats that warm fuzzy feeling as you pop someone in the head
• You want to be a skilled sniper who will make your enemies afraid to step out into the open!
• The Dragon Sniper has the most over the top kill animations!

I thought you said the Dragon Sniper sucks?!

Out of the box, it does. It has horrible recoil after shooting, an extremely slow scope, and the changes made to sprint make it even harder to use in the retail version. It’s definately much easier and more tempting to be using an AK-47 or M9.

However, at level 45 you unlock the Weapons Expert booster which magically turns this underrated weapon into something absolutely amazing.

What’s my role as a sniper?

• Destroying campers
• Distract enemies and draw aggro. A mere missed sniper shot can attract enemy attention from your other teammates.
• Pop enemies shooting who are from cover. This can be easier than you think, as the head is usually the only exposed part.
• Pop enemies who are in cover behind a low wall. Zoomed in, you should sometimes be able to still target part of the exposed head for an easy headshot.
• Pick off enemies going for the treasure in Plunder or defend your own team carrying the treasure.

What are the stats of the Dragon Sniper?

The Dragon Sniper is standard loadout long gun/semi-automatic rifle. It’s the only loadout weapon where you can score a 1-hit kill with a headshot, otherwise it takes 2 body or leg hits.

It is unlocked at level 6 and by default, the gun comes with 20 bullets. Each clip contains 5 bullets.

How does the Sniper recoil work?

Here’s a brief explaination:

The first shot you take will always hit exactly in the center of the crosshairs. The only exception to this rule if that if you are moving the scope, in which case the shot is actually slightly lagging behind the crosshair.

After each shot, the recoil will cause the scope to kick up then return to it’s original position. This takes about half a second.

The most important thing to know is that until the recoil animation has completely finished, shooting again will cause the shot to be inaccurate!

What mods are available for the Dragon Sniper? Which are the best ones?

There are 4 mods available for the Dragon Sniper.

Max Ammo – Increases the starting ammo by 5 bullets, to 25.

Call Out – Adds a laser sight which allows your team to see where your target is momentarily after hiting them.

Reload Speed – Cuts reload time by approximately 1/2.

Clip Size – Increases the clip size from 5 bullets to 8.

The best 2 mods are Max Ammo and Reload Speed.

While Call Out is good for team games, the high damage on the sniper rilfe kind of renders it useless because if you do your job properly, your target will be dead well before anyone can take advantage of the mark.

What’s a good sidearm to go with the Dragon Sniper?

As the Sniper is weak at mid to close ranges, you’ll want something that can cover these. Para-9 and the Raffica are great because they can be blindfired pretty well and are decent at mid range as well.

The Micro is a decent choice as well, but you are sacrificing mid-range for arguably better blindfire and an automatic weapon.

What are the best boosters to use when I’m sniping?

Slot 1 – I highly recommend Weapons Expert (upgraded to Level 2 at the very least) if you have it. The perks it offers are needed to unlock the full potential of the Dragon Sniper. If you don’t have Weapons Expert yet,  Fleet Foot is good for surviving 1v1 gunfights, but doesn’t help sniping much.  If you want to focus exclusively on sniping, use Endurance , Cloaked or Scoped In.

Slot 2 – Ammo Award is handy for getting back Sniper ammo, or if you don’t have it, then Daredevil. Obviously Ammo Award is better, because most kills will be out of range for you to taunt. Otherwise, down to personal preference, I personally prefer Monkey Man as any mobility increase will help your chances of survival.

Paid Booster – Although you won’t always be getting a Paid Booster, Untraceable is really good for helping you survive, since people can’t track where you are when you fire shots.

Best Kickback?

It does not really matter which Kickback you are using, so it’s down to personal preference. If you want to vanish in a puff of smoke when spotted, Smoke Bomb, if you want to make your enemies vanish, use Quick Boom 😛 .  Otherwise T-Bolt is also a pretty good choice and fits with the sniping theme.

Why does the sniper scope feel so weird?

The Dragon Sniper has a fair amount of aim assist, which means as you move your crosshairs over an enemy, the speed at which it moves will actually slow down in order to help you as to not overshoot your target.

One thing to note is that when trying to aim at multiple enemies at close vicinity will cause the aim assist to get confused and you may find your scope gravitating to the wrong target or move extremely slowly. In this case I recommend that you just un-scope and retry aiming, or just run away if you are being shot at.

Many people complain about this, but it does not seem that ND are going to change it anytime soon, so best try to get used to it.

The scope moves too slow! By the time I have my sights set I’m dead!

The slow scope puts you at a massive disadvantage when trying to correct your aim. To overcome this, I recommend turning on the “White Dot” in Options->Camera. This will put a white marker in the center of the screen which is where the reticule will be pointed when you press R1.

You can use this dot to prepare your aim when not scoped in, then press R1 to make last second adjustments. Obviously this can be quite hard, since the sensitivity when not aiming is quite high.

The other method is using your pistol to aim first, and then pressing Triangle or using the Dpad to switch to your rifle once you have lined up the shot, but if you are not using Weapons Expert, there will be a large delay before you can shoot as the switching animation plays out.

I keep hitting people one time but they don’t die/keep getting away!

Sniping is about keeping calm and understanding the rhythm of the recoil. You might notice that the Dragon Sniper has massive recoil after taking a shot (especially at level 2 zoom), but if you wait for the recoil to finish, the scope will end up where it was when you took the shot. Just wait longer before shooting again. Spamming R1 will only make your aim go to shit. It’s also important to note that until the recoil animation finishes completely (which is longer than it looks), the sniper rifle will not shoot straight.

You’re also going to have to accept the fact that some people are just going to get away. Due to the extremely slow rate at which the scope moves and how fast sprint is, shooting at moving targets is nigh impossible. If you land one hit but they get away, at least the enemy is 1/2 dead and not shooting at your teammates.

You mentioned Weapons Expert booster before. What’s so good about it?

Weapons Expert level 2 unlocks a very useful ability that allows you to overcome almost all of the limitations of the U3 Dragon Sniper as well as unlock its true potential. This booster lets you change between your rifle and sidearm instantly and lets you do what I call ‘Pistol Scoping’.

Pistol Scoping?

Pistol scoping involves taking advantage of the instant weapon switch to pre-aim your sniper rifle in over the shoulder view. This has massive advantages because the camera turns much faster over the shoulder compared to when scoped in.

Here’s how it works.

• Switch to your sidearm.
• Once you see an enemy, you aim at them with your sidearm.
• As you are holding L1, press triangle. Notice how it scopes in instantly on your target?
• R1 R1
• Ka-ching!

Using this method you can easily lock onto your enemies before scoping in, therefore emulating the behaviour of the U2 Dragon Sniper. This allows you to do some really crazy shit which I will discuss as part of the Ultimate sniper loadout.

So what is this ‘ultimate’ sniper loadout you speak of?

Boosters

Slot 1 – Weapons Expert (Level 2 at the very least) is a MUST. The perks it offers are needed to unlock the full potential of the Dragon Sniper.

Slot 2 – Down to personal preference. Monkey Man for survival, Bargain to abuse kickbacks, or Ammo Award/Daredevil if you want to keep killing with the Dragon.

Paid Booster – As with the standard build, Untraceable is a good choice because it buys you some extra time when standing in one spot after you start shooting.

Weapons

Dragon Sniper – If you only have one mod, I recommend Reload Speed.  If you have Weapons Expert level 3, the other mod is up to you, but I prefer Max Ammo.

Raffica Pistol – The Raffica offers a balance for blindfire encounters at close range while also being effective at mid range. The Raffica itself is quite accurate at blindfiring and it takes 2 bursts and melee to kill someone. As for mods, you’ll want the Accuracy mod, and either Reload Speed, Blindfire Accuracy.

The reason for reload speed is that you’ll need to be reloading both guns right after each other very often and you want to minimize your downtime.

Kickback

It does not really matter which Kickback you are using, so it’s down to personal preference. If you want to vanish in a puff of smoke when spotted, Smoke Bomb, if you want to make your enemies vanish, use Quick Boom 😛 .  Otherwise T-Bolt is also a pretty good choice and fits with the sniping theme.

What makes this loadout so ultimate?

The Weapons Expert booster, the Dragon Sniper and the Raffica all synergize to create something so great, it’s terrifying. Here are just some of the benefits:

With quick weapon switching, the close range disadvantage is now gone as you can instantly switch to your Raffica for blindfiring.

Pistol scoping overcomes the slow scope, because you can now pre-aim with your pistol then hit Triangle to have your target lined up.

And finally, the best one. Instant Kills.

Instant kills?

It only takes 1 full Raffica burst and 1 Dragon Sniper hit to kill someone. This means whenever you hit someone with your Raffica, you can actually press Triangle and L1 almost immediately to fire the Dragon and get an “instant kill” (which I shall refer to in the rest of this article).  Add another Triangle in and you will be back in pistol mode, ready to try for another instant kill. Nothing in the game except for power weapons, Quick Boom or a Dragon Sniper headshot will kill this fast. In fact, to the untrained eye, it’s so fast it looks like you are getting 1-hit kills with the Dragon Sniper.

This changes the Dragon Sniper from just a meh long range weapon to something that is really lethal at mid ranges. Add in the accuracy mod for the Raffica and you can even try instant kills from afar! Having this build means you don’t have to camp with the Dragom Sniper, but be super mobile and effective, regardless of where you are on the map.

Here is a video tutorial on how to perform Instant Kills:

Holy crap that is so cheap.

Well no, not really. It’s quite hard to pull off, considering you need a very specific set up, only consistently works on still opponents and you need good execution to do. There are plenty of other cheap tactics in the game which will net you kills with less effort *cough* KAL-7, FAL-SS *cough*. Doing this actually requires you to have some kind of coordination.

What are the best uses of Instant Kill?

Instant kills work best on opponents who are standing still. Sounds stupid, but let’s look at a list of where this happens:

Enemies who go for a melee attack and are stuck in the recovery animation (also not necessarily melee’ing you). This is probably the most common one with all the blindfirers in the game.

Enemies who are aiming down sight and NOT shooting at you, but at your teammates.

Enemies who are trying to blindfire you but are stupid enough to charge STRAIGHT at you.

Enemies who are camping, you sneak up on and you could’ve stealth killed but are too far away.

Enemies who are in the ‘picking up the treasure’ or idol animation.

Enemies who are taunting.

Enemies who are stunned by grenades.

Enemies you are trying to melee you, but you rolled and avoided their attack.

In any of these situations, you can easily have enough time to pull an instant kill off.

What are the weaknesses of this build?

While this build has most bases covered, there are a few weaknesses.

You need to be level 45 in order to use Weapons Expert.

You don’t have Fleet Foot or a fully automatic weapon, so winning 1v1 gunfights is all about how well you can perform Instant Kill.

In order to pistol scope, you need to briefly take your thumb off the right stick to hit Triangle. This means that you might have to make last second adjustments with the crappy sniper scope before taking the shot. Due to this, it means it’s still quite hard to snipe or instant kill a moving target. It also means Level 3 Fleet Foot users will give you trouble, because the strafing speed will make them quite hard to instant kill.  When performing an instant kill, you will either lose the ability to strafe, or the abilty to adjust your aim.

Instant kill can be easily countered at close range by people zig-zagging and blindfiring.

If you miss an Instant Kill attempt at a guy shooting at you, you will most likely die as it can be quite hard to recover from the sniper recoil/scope. If this happens you should switch back to your Raffica and hope for the best.

Even with reload speed mods on both the Dragon Sniper and Raffica, you will be spending some time reloading both weapons after each encounter.

Without Ammo Award or Daredevil, you will be running out of ammo a lot.

I’m having trouble getting the instant kill to work.

Getting the instant kill timing down can be tricky. You need to be fast, but also need to have the timing down. Press Triangle too fast and the Raffica won’t get enough hits in for the Dragon to instant kill or the Raffica recoil will affect your Sniper shot and make it miss. Press too slow and your target might have moved enough for the Dragon Sniper shot to miss. I highly recommend going into a split screen custom game and practicing this on a stationary target.

If you’re trying to do the instant kill, you must hit all 3 bullets on the chest  in order for the Dragon Sniper to kill in 1 hit. At times you’ll find that sometimes you’ll miss the Sniper shot, or even if you hit, they will still live. Usually when this happens it’s hard to recover, because of the sniper scope,  but in these cases you should quickly hit Triangle again to switch back to the Raffica and try finish them off (or even try the Instant Kill again).

Edit: As of late January, ND removed leg hitboxes from the game, so hitting the Raffica in the chest is no longer necessary for an Instant Kill. Legs work fine too.

I keep missing when I scope in!

If you notice when you hit triangle to pistol scope, the sniper scope aims slightly to the right of where the pistol crosshairs is. It’s a slightly weird behaviour that you should be aware of. This doesn’t make much difference at close ranges, but can be the difference between a missed shot and a kill at longer ranges. Try to aim to the left of your target.

I can’t instant kill moving targets!

This was originally a problem in V1.01 of this guide using the Triangle method, but now with some experimentation I have found that you can also use the D-pad to switch from pistol to sniper. Using this method, it means you can use your right thumb to continue tracking the target while you use your left thumb to do the weapon switch, thus now giving you the ability to hit moving targets.

The major tradeoff is that when using the D-pad, there is a possibility that you may accidentally activate your kickback while switching weapons, which obviously can be a major hassle.

Can you do this with a T-Bolt as well?

You most certainly can, although since the T-Bolt kills in one hit anyway, there’s no point shooting your pistol first. Just aim your pistol, line up your target and use the D-Pad or Triangle switch, R1 to get the kill.

Can you do Instant Kills with the Para-9 instead of the Raffica?

Yes you can. It takes 2 Para-9 bullets and 1 Sniper shot to kill. But there are reasons why the Raffica is superior to the Para for Instant Kills.

The Para has much more recoil. Each shot causes the reticule to bounce up slightly, and if you happen to do a Pistol Scope during this time, the scope will be momentarily or even completely out of line.

The Raffica burst also gives you much more time to do Triangle, R1, and the timing is less strict than the Para as well.

Is this tactic viable with a Tau Sniper?

As of patch 1.09, the Tau Sniper now has 18 bullets, meaning it has become a semi-viable weapon.

After some in game testing, Instant kills do work with the Tau, it takes one Tau and 1 Dragon bullet for the kill. Unfortunately the Tau has a pretty large recoil compared to the Raffica, and it seems you can’t switch during the recoil animation, so I’d still recommend the Raffica over the Tau for doing instant kills.

Also, the Tau sucks at blindfire, essentially gimping you at very close ranges.

I’m having trouble levelling Weapon Expert to level 2/3. What’s the best way to do it?

The answer to this lies in Plunder.  Plunder games last quite long and you can get alot of kills, making it perfect to level up Weapon Expert.

For level 2, you’ll need 8 Gunslinger medals, which you can get by getting 3 pistol kills for each medal.  Just switch to your sidearm of choice and use it to get kills. Blindfire counts, just remember to NOT melee.

Getting to level 3 is much harder. You need 15 Triple Threat medals, which needs 3 Long gun, 3 Sidearm and 3 Explosive kills in order to get just 1 Triple Threat.  Here are some tips on how to get Triple Threat:

• Pick the Long gun which you are most comfortable getting kills with
• Pick the sidearm which you are most comfortable with. If you don’t like using a sidearm, you can equip an Arm-Micro and use it to get blindfire kills.
• Use the Quick Boom/RPG/Hammer kickback, Slot 2 Bargain booster, and Paid Bargain to give you easy access to a 1-hit kill explosive.
• Try to keep a mental note of which type of kills you need to get in order to complete the cycle.

I’m getting called a cheater/hacker and getting hate mail online for doing Instant Kills.

Congratulations! You are getting closer to mastering this technique.

To the untrained eye it will look like you are cheating and many people will call you out for it. In fact what you are doing is just using Weapon Expert to it’s full effect which is “Quickly switch between your long gun and pistol”. Although you shouldn’t have to explain yourself, feel free to direct non-believers to this guide or send me screenshots of the hate mail you’ve received so I can add them to my testimonials section.

I’m not getting many headshots.

Sniping is not all about getting headshots, but it helps. Sometimes headshots happen because that’s the only part of the enemy you can see, or because your scope just happens to be at that sweet spot/level. Just keep using the Dragon Sniper and you’ll get a feel for things eventually.

Headshots are extremely effective against campers though.

What are some situations I should avoid?

• You don’t want to be caught running around with your Sniper Rifle. You’ll always want your sidearm equipped.
• You don’t want to fight a Fleet Foot user who’s shooting at you.
• You don’t want to be camping in the same place too long. 5-10 seconds maximum. If people start shooting at you, it’s time to move on. With this build, you shouldn’t need to be camping anyway.

Where can I best practice sniping?

Play plunder. You have the luxury of not having all the enemy team shoot at you all the time and there are many excellent opportunities for sniping when defending your teammates. Airstrip, Facility, Museum, Syria and Yemen are good long distance sniping maps. Chateau, Desert Village are  a bit too close quarters, but you can practice instant kills there.

As a sniper, you’ll never want to be in the middle of the action, but always either well behind your teammates or in a flanking position. I’ll use Syria as an example, if you’re Villains trying to score, a great place to stand would be on the opposite side of the map where the heroes chest is. Not only do you get a clear shot, but the other team will have to commit at least 1 or 2 people to come take you down, giving your team less people to deal with.

I swear I hit that guy twice but he didn’t die.

This happens all the time. What probably happened was that you shot too fast and the recoil animation hadn’t finished yet. The recoil can be misleading because even though the scope looks like it has returned to it’s original position, it’s actually still moving very slightly. You just have to wait a bit longer before each shot.

I keep getting ganked from behind when sniping!

Here’s a question for you. If you were getting shot at by a camping sniper, what would be your reaction after you reached safety?

“I’m gonna kill that mother$&@#!”, of course. It doesn’t help that Sniper bullets leave the longest tracers in the game, which is pretty much a giant sign saying “I’m over here!’.

Snipers can generate alot of aggro from the opposing team, obviously if you are good at sniping then the other team will usually commit 1 or 2 people to come deal with you. You don’t want to be there when they arrive.  Uncharted maps are set up to deter camping. Most locations have at least 2 or 3 access points, so it’s important to keep moving and never stay in the same spot too long.

After each kill or every clip I also like to change position slightly. It’s not uncommon to have at least 2-3 guns shooting at you once you start shooting, and you can be amazed at how fast you can get vapourized when this happens.

I keep getting killed at close to mid range!

As a sniper, you just going to learn that there will be fights where the odds are tipped against you. This includes 1v1 against Fleet Footer at mid range, unless you get lucky with a headshot or instant kill off the bat, you’ll most likely lose. In cases like these the best thing to do is run like hell.

It also helps to keep your sidearm equipped at all times so you can at least Steel Fist if you run into someone at close range. This also allows you to Pistol Scope if you do see someone at long range.

I keep running out of Sniper ammo!

Story of my life. Either use Ammo Award/Daredevil or just pick up another gun until you can find another sniper rifle or respawn with a new one.

I can’t throw a grenade properly when scoped in!

This has been fixed as of Patch 1.02 and you can now do long distance throws while scoped in.

It seems like an oversight or bug from NaughtyDog’s part that this is happening. For now, you’ll need to switch to your pistol if you want to do a long distance throw.

Videos

Here are a few videos of me running the Ultimate sniper loadout and demonstrates Pistol Scoping as well as Instant Kills. I’ll continue to add more videos as time goes on. Click through to play them in HD. Also please subscribe to my YouTube channel as I put up replays from time to time.

Final Words

If you try any of the techniques in this article, please leave a comment on how they worked out for you. I also appreciate feedback and anything you think I might’ve missed. There is also a discussion thread on the Naughty Dog forums if you want to share something with the greater community. Thanks for reading! Follow the way of the Dragon!

Change Log

V1.05 – Updated for patch 1.09 Added info on Tau Sniper, scope in behaviour

V1.04 – Added question about levelling Weapon Expert.

V1.03 – Minor revision, added comment about aim assist

V1.02 – Added d-pad method for Instant Kill weapon switching

V1.01 – Added Instant Kill tutorial and Para-9 Questions

V1.0 – Retail version