The Japanese Army, noticing how grenades could only be used at short-ranges, began to think of ways that infantry could use these nades over greater distances. After studying employment of grenades and mortars on the battlefield, the Japanese Army developed hand grenades, rifle grenades, and grenade/mortar shell dischargers (small mortars) suited to warfare in typical short-range combat environments such as urban, trench, and jungle warfare.

In Rising Storm, Tripwire wanted to make sure advantages on the American side and Japanese side balanced out. So, to counter the flamer and automatic weapons, the ♥♥♥♥ have a light mortar. These versitile weapons can be used in many many different situations such as clearing the second or ground floor of a building, cutting off reinforcments behind a building, protecting the front of a cap zone, and many more.

When you join a match as a ♥♥♥, look for the class "light mortar". This class is equiped with the type 38 rifle, your grenades, your nambu pistol, and of course your knee mortar. This class is essentially a rifleman except you have been gifted with the opportunity to rain death on the enemy! So now lets get into the details of using the mortar.

If you have seen other guides on knee mortars, you will recall people clammering about the distance of a grid space on different maps. That used to be my approach, calculating all the numbers and comparing it to the grids, but just remember, im not that asain, so let's leave the math out of this ;)

First, the easiest and sometimes the best way to fire your mortar is direct fire. Direct fire is used when enemies are close to you, or you are trying to clear out an enclosed area, such as the inside of a house. To begin, press 4 to take out your mortar. Next, right click and you should now see your knee mortar planted on the ground.

It will look something like this

Just remember this: when using direct fire, aming further upwards will cause your mortar to travel further, and also, mortars have a large blast radius, so be sure there are no friendlies near you intend to land your HE shells.

The next way to fire the mortar is by using indirect fire. Let's first get into indirect fire mode. Just like before, press 4 to take out your mortar, right click to plant it on the ground, but now we will do one extra step. After the mortar is planted, use your scroll wheel to turn the mortar to indirect fire mode. Now you should see your mortar facing vertically, some number in the bottom right hand corner of your screen indicating the range your mortars will travel, and a line showing the path your mortar will take.


I have a general rule of thumb which helps me get kills, but not kill teamates. If you are attacking an objective, press T to see how far you are from that object, then go to indirect fire and put that 20m-40m behind your distance to the cap. This will garuantee kills almost every time, and this can also work while defending, simply do the opposite, so put it 20m-40m infront of your cap. This will stop the enemy from getting in, as well as getting you plenty of kills.

One last way to use the mortar is to simply zoom in while using indirect mode. If you see a group of enemies, dont be afraid to kinda estimate their distance by using the Mortar Travel Arc. While in indirect, how down shift and see wheter the line is matching up where they are standing. I personally love using the mortar this way and it has brought me much success.

Thanks for reading this guys, I really hoped this helped you out with the knee mortar. Stayed tuned as I will always be putting out more guys. Give me feedback about what you wanna know. I can write about almost anything, maybe even a RO2 guide if enough people desire it but anyway. Go be the best samurai you can! Good day and happy hunting gentlement!

I play on Merills Marauders Pacific server on the weekends and sometimes on weekdays. If you see me on there, tell me you read my guide and have learned because I'm really hoping i've helped alot of people out, we need more excellent troops on the Japanese side. For the glorious emperor Hirohito, BANZAI!!!