“	At each station, the available weapons will be displayed atop theequipper.CQ points are required to take each test. We'll grant you1,000 to start with. Thetest fee indicates the number of CQ points needed to take the test. Thereward is how many CQ points you will earn for passing the test. Now go ahead and press to select a weapon.	”
—C.Q. Cumber inFake Plastic Station

Equippers are a mechanic in theOcto Expansion andReturn of the Mammalians. They primarily appear at the starts of tests in theDeepsea Metro in the former and at the starts of missions inAlterna in the latter; however, one also appears inAbandoned Station, another appears in theDiaphragm Phase, and two appear inAlterna Space Center: Entrance.

Description

Equippers are metallic pads with shoe prints printed on top. Stepping into an equipper and activating it raises a glass cylinder with rotating metal plates around the player, while a menu is shown with one to three weapon loadouts. These loadouts can be either sets ofmain and/orsub weapons, permanently-usablespecial weapons, or an unarmed option. In Return of the Mammalians,Agent 3'sHero Gear can sometimes be one of the options, consisting of theHero Shot,Smallfry (as well as potentiallySplat Bombs,Curling Bombs, and/orBurst Bombs depending on the Hero Gear's upgrades), and the ability tocharge aSplashdown. Choosing a loadout selects it for the next mission or section. The loadouts are ordered based on difficulty level, with the furthest left as the easiest and right as the hardest; additionally, if there are multiple options, one of the loadouts will be marked with a recommendation. Equippers never provide variants of main weapons, since their sub weapons (or lack thereof) are determined separately. Uniquely, the equipper inAbandoned Station can take away the player's weapon loadout that it already gave them without requiring they select a new loadout.

When entering a level that starts with an equipper, the player automatically walks into and activates it. After selecting their weapon, they can reactivate the equipper to change their choice by stepping back onto it and pressing. There are three equippers that function differently to this: the equipper in theDiaphragm Phase and the second equipper inAlterna Space Center: Entrance can be manually activated by pressing while standing on them, and the equipper in Abandoned Station automatically activates whenever the player walks over it, such that they will always have a weapon within the storage room section and never outside of it.

The animation for completing a test in theOcto Expansion showsAgent 8 returning to the equipper at the start and being scanned inside it while receiving themem cake for that station.

Gallery

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  Using the equipper at the start ofFake Plastic Station

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  An equipper fromReturn of the Mammalians in use.

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  The same equipper seen from above.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Japanese	ドレッサー Doressā	Dresser
Dutch	Wapencabine	Weapon cabin
French	Sas d'armement	Arming airlock