Vending Machines
From BioShock Wiki
Vending Machines are all around Rapture.
Contents |
[edit] BioShock Vending Machine Links
- Bot Shutdown Panel
- Circus of Values
- El Ammo Bandito
- Gatherer's Garden
- Gene Bank
- Health Station
- Power to the People
- U-Invent
- Swami Epstein
[edit] Regular Vending Machines (Circus of Value and El Ammo Bandito)
[edit] Overview
There are 53 "regular" Vending Machines (VMs) in Rapture (43 CoV and 10 Ammo), carrying a total of 21 different items. Hacking always reduces prices to 75% of their normal price, except for the last two ammos sold by a given Ammo Bandito (see below). A few VMs on the Medical level sell hacked items for slightly more than 75% (not shown in Listings), but all other VMs are right at 75% when hacked.
VMs never have ammo from "above" the level they are in: Medical has the pistol, shotgun, and machine gun, and its VMs have ammo for these, but not the grenade launcher, chemical thrower, or crossbow. Neptune introduces the grenade launcher and its ammo (as well as the research camera and film), Arcadia the chemical thrower, and Fort Frolic the crossbow.
Regular VMs never contain ammo that can be made at a U-Invent VM (invented ammo is the third row of ammo when you hit the Shift key). This row of ammo can never be bought anywhere in Rapture, but it can be invented or found.
All Ammo Bandito VMs contain standard (1st Shift row) ammo appropriate to their level. They will also always have two additional types of ammo at the end of their list of ammo. This type is always from the 2nd row of ammo types, when you hit the Shift key. We'll call this "premium" ammo (as opposed to standard or invented). Unlike CoV machines, these last two lines of Bandito ammo are always 50% of normal price after hacking. Importantly, there is always only 1 of each of these 2 premium ammo items available for sale at any given Ammo Bandito. Unfortunately, this makes them somewhat lame for anything but standard ammo - and standard ammo can often be found at general CoV merchandise machines.
[edit] Shift Row Weapons
"Shift Row" may not make sense for the Xbox. So here's a listing of Shift Rows for the PC. Some have further suggested that it makes perfect sense for the PC but all in all, it doesn't hurt to have them listed somewhere, regardless. The numbers shown for each point are how 1) how many rounds are in a usual refill, and 2) the maximum capacity of the weapon. "Premium" is simply a word I made up for ammo types that are not standard and not invented; it doesn't mean it's the best ammo type.
Weapon
Pistol
Row 1 Standard 6/48 Pistol Rounds
Row 2 Premium 6/24 Armor-Piercing Pistol Rounds
Row 3 Invented 6/24 Antipersonell Pistol Rounds
[edit] Listings
A listing of all VMs and their stock in the order they are encountered in the game is here: BioShock_VMs.pdf (55 kb; 11 pages).
A listing of all items in VMs, and where they can be found, is here. This helps you locate, e.g., Incendiary Bolts: BioShock_VM_Items_by_Level.pdf (80 kb; 13 pages).
A one-page cheat sheet of how often the 21 items appear on each level is here: BioShock_Stock_Counts.pdf (14 kb; 1 page).
- Note: Two of the six games I've played so far had Frag Grenades in VMs, but the other four did not have a single Frag in any VM, despite re-installing twice. (But if I reload the games with Frags, they do still appear.) All other VM stock was entirely the same across all six games (1 Easy, 4 Medium, 1 Hard). Apparently I've got some weird bug that completely drops an item from all VMs for some games, and maybe you will too, perhaps for some other item(s). - MikeTheRed
[edit] Exceptions
There is a broken vending machine in Arcadia's Waterfall Grotto, with several Frags and First Aid kits around it. There's also one on the blink in Hephaestus Core. It will dispense a slow-burning grenade if you try to use it. You can step away before it explodes, or use the Telekinesis plasmid to grab the grenade and toss it at an enemy.
In the grand tradition of System Shock, there is a food vending machine in the Fleet Hall theater of Fort Frolic. The food items are marked up 40 times the usual price.
