Insurgency: Sandstorm
Mutators are optional rule sets that change how a match plays: limiting available weapons, adjusting starting supply points, tweaking player stats, or adding entirely new effects like Vampirism, which heals you for the damage you deal. The game ships with a full set of these built in, and some mods add their own on top.
Mutators are enabled as a startup argument. Add the following to the Additional Switches field on your Game Settings tab, listing as many as you want separated by commas, all in that same single field:
Use the exact names from the File Name column below, no spaces, and remember they're case-sensitive. If you'd rather test a mutator without restarting, you can also append it to a travel command in-game: ?mutators=Vampirism.
| File Name | Description |
|---|---|
AllYouCanEat | Start with 100 supply points. |
AntiMaterielRiflesOnly | Only anti-materiel rifles available, plus normal equipment and explosives. |
BoltActionsOnly | Only bolt-action rifles available, plus normal equipment and explosives. |
Broke | Start with 0 supply points. |
BulletSponge | Increased health. |
Competitive | More expensive equipment, shorter rounds, faster objective captures. |
CompetitiveLoadouts | Replaces player classes with the Competitive loadouts. |
FastMovement | Increased movement speed. |
Frenzy | Fight AI enemies that only use melee attacks, with occasional special enemies. |
Guerrillas | Start with 5 supply points. |
Hardcore | Slower movement speed and longer objective capture times. |
HeadshotOnly | Players only take damage from headshots. |
HotPotato | Drops a live grenade on death. |
LockedAim | Weapons stay pointed at the center of the screen. |
NoAim | Disables aiming down sights. |
PistolsOnly | Only pistols available, plus normal equipment and explosives. |
ShotgunsOnly | Only shotguns available, plus normal equipment and explosives. |
SlowCaptureTimes | Objectives take longer to capture. |
SlowMovement | Reduced movement speed. |
SoldierOfFortune | Gain supply points as your score increases. |
SpecialOperations | Start with 30 supply points. |
Strapped | Start with 1 supply point. |
Ultralethal | One shot is enough to kill. |
Vampirism | Heals you for the damage you deal to enemies. |
Warlords | Start with 10 supply points. |
This covers the game's original stock mutator set. Newer updates may have added a few more, so check the official mod.io Server Admin Guide if you don't see one you're looking for.
Fine-Tuning A Few Mutators
HeadshotOnly, HotPotato, and Vampirism can each be tweaked beyond their defaults by adding a section to your Game.ini. Paste in the relevant header, then the setting underneath it:
bCheckMeleeDamage lets melee kills count as headshots for that mutator. bIgnoreHeadshots and bBotsOnly control when Hot Potato drops a grenade. bCountFriendlyFire and MaxHealth control how much Vampirism can heal you and whether friendly fire counts toward it. Only add the lines for settings you're actually changing.
Common issues: a mutator doing nothing is almost always a spelling or capitalization mismatch, since Sandstorm silently ignores names it doesn't recognize rather than showing an error. If multiple mutators aren't applying, double-check they're comma-separated with no spaces around the commas. Game.ini tweaks need the server restarted (or the map changed) to take effect, same as any other Game.ini edit.
Once your mutators are set and the server's restarted, you should see the effects immediately in your next match. If something's not behaving as expected, no worries! Just open a support ticket and our team will gladly take a look.