The Flare Gun is a survivor starting item in Halloween, the asymmetrical multiplayer game where civilians try to escape Michael Myers. A recent patch cut how much a single shot does, but changed the rules so the item now scales with the whole team instead of one person. Fired into the air, it builds the police response meter that eventually brings officers to the map and opens escape routes.
Quick answer: One Flare Gun shot now fills half a police badge instead of a full one. The trade-off is that multiple survivors can each fire a flare, and a single survivor can fire extra flares found on the map, so the progress stacks.
Flare Gun before and after the patch
Before the update, a flare shot was strong but strictly single-use for the team. Firing it straight up filled one full police badge right away, yet only one civilian’s flare counted per match. Any second flare, whether from another survivor or a spare the same player picked up, registered nothing.
The patch flipped that logic. Each shot is weaker on its own, but the game no longer caps the badge progress at a single flare. Several survivors firing together, or one survivor firing several flares, all add up.
| Behaviour | Before patch | After patch |
|---|---|---|
| Progress per shot | One full badge | Half a badge |
| Flares that count | One per match | Every flare fired |
| Extra flares found on map | Did not register | Add more progress |
The Flare Gun is the default starting item for civilian Rachel Calahan, selected in the pre-game loadout menu. Her in-game description reads “Fires into the air to bring police to the area.”
Why stacking flares is stronger than the old single badge
Because every flare now counts, a coordinated team gets far more out of the item than before. If all survivors equip a Flare Gun and fire at spawn, the shots fill two complete police badges almost instantly. That front-loads the police response to the very start of a match, well before Michael Myers can pressure anyone.
A solo player benefits too. Spare Flare Guns found inside houses, such as one tucked in a kitchen cabinet, can be fired on top of the starting flare to add further badge progress. The half-badge value per shot is the cost of that flexibility, but two or more shots quickly match or beat the old single-badge return.
Firing at spawn is the simplest way to see the change in action, since several survivors’ flares landing at once fills badges before any other objective is touched.
What filling police badges actually does
Police badges track how close survivors are to summoning law enforcement. Flares are one way to fill them; interacting with a landline phone inside houses and buildings triggers police response checks as well. As thresholds are reached, on-screen messages confirm the progress, moving from “A COP HAS ARRIVED TO INVESTIGATE” to “MORE COPS HAVE ARRIVED” and eventually “POLICE WAGON CALLED.”
Once police arrive, escape options open up. Across the sessions shown, survivors drove off in a repaired car, slipped out through an unlocked cellar, and left via an open cemetery exit gate, with a police wagon providing another route. Getting badges filled early through stacked flares pulls all of that forward in the match.
How to confirm the buff is working
You know the stacking is registering when each flare adds visible badge progress rather than being ignored. Before the patch, a second flare did nothing. Now, firing two flares from spawn should carry the meter to a full badge, and a team of four firing together should fill two badges near-immediately. The police arrival messages appearing early in the match are the clearest sign the shots counted.
For Rachel Calahan players, the Flare Gun remains the pick that leans into this, since it starts in her loadout by default. Paired with found flares and landline calls, the reworked item turns an early round of shots into a fast police response and an earlier shot at escaping Haddonfield.
