Vending Machines (Rapture)

Vending Machines are permanent fixtures in Rapture which sell various items or dispense various service. Most vending machines require payment to use (either dollars or ADAM,) and many can be hacked to reduce prices.

List of Vending Machines

 * Bot Shutdown Panel
 * Circus of Values
 * El Ammo Bandito
 * Epstein the Swami
 * EVE Dispenser (BioShock 2 only)
 * Fuel Station (BioShock 2 only)
 * Gatherer's Garden
 * Gene Bank
 * Health Station
 * Power to the People
 * Slot Machine
 * Tool Dispenser (BioShock 2 only)
 * U-Invent (BioShock only)
 * News Vendor (Unuseable)
 * Phone (No Effect)
 * Big Daddy Voice Box Machine (Bioshock only) (only one)

Common Vending Machines in BioShock


There are 53 common vending machines in BioShock (43 Circuses of Values and ten El Ammo Banditos), carrying a total of 21 different items. Prices for different items vary by location. For example,in the Fleet Hall theater of Fort Frolic, there is a vending machine whose food items are marked up forty times the usual price.

Vending machines do not sell ammuniton for weapons that are not yet available for the player to find (i.e. Medical Pavilion has the Pistol, Machine Gun, and Shotgun; its vending machines have ammo for these weapons, but not the Grenade Launcher, Chemical Thrower, or Crossbow.) They never contain inventable ammunition types, which can only be made at U-Invent machines. All El Ammo Bandito machines sell base ammunition types, and will also have two additional types of advanced ammo available at the end of their list. However, only very limited amounts of the advanced ammo types can be bought.

Hacking
Hacking these vending machines will often cause other types of items that were not previously available to appear for purchase, as well as reduce prices to 75% of their normal value (except for the advanced ammunition types, which are reduced to 50%). A few vending machines in the Medical Pavilion sell hacked items for slightly less than 75% (not shown in references below). In addition to this, the tonics Thrifty Hacker and the Vending Expert line of tonics reduce costs in vending machines.

Exceptions
There is a broken vending machine in Arcadia's Waterfall Grotto, with several Frag Grenades and First Aid Kits around it, and another in the Footlight Theater, that serves little purpose. There is also one in Hephaestus Core that will dispense a slow-burning grenade if the player tries to use it. One can step away before it explodes, or use the Telekinesis Plasmid to grab the grenade and toss it at an enemy. Gatherer's Gardens, Gene Banks, Power to the People machines and Bot Shutdown Panels cannot be hacked at all.

Locations and Available Items

 * A listing of all vending machines and their stock in the order they are encountered in BioShock is here: BioShock VMs v1.pdf
 * A listing of all items in vending machines, and where they can be found, is here. This helps the player to locate certain items: BioShock VM Items by Level.pdf
 * A one-page cheat sheet of how often the twenty-one items appear on each level is here: BioShock Stock Counts.pdf

Vending Machines in BioShock 2
Like in the previous game, Vending Machines aid the player by dispensing items such as First Aid Kits and ammunition for a price. Exceptions include the Power to the People, EVE Dispenser, Tool Dispenser, and Fuel Station, which can be used for free, and Gatherer's Garden machines, which uses ADAM as currency. Slot and fortune telling machines also return but are only found in one instance in Siren Alley and Ryan Amusements respectively.

Hacking
Like in the first game, most vending machines can be hacked to lower prices and gain access to certain items. For both Circus of Values and Ammo Bandito machines, landing on a blue square during the hacking sequence will also cause one or more free items to drop out of the machine. Achieving a blue bonus on a Health Station will automatically cause a First-Aid Kit to fall out of it apart from its usual benefits. While not exactly machines, Hack Panels are required to be hacked in order for the player to progress through a certain part of the level. Often times they are inaccessible, requiring the player to use Hack Darts to hack them.

Exceptions
As in the first game, Gatherer's Gardens, Power to the People, Bot Shutdown Panels, and Gene Banks cannot be hacked, as with any of the free vending machines (Tool Dispenser, EVE Dispenser, etc.).

Bugs/Glitches

 * The "Epstein the Swami" will still work even if the player has no money.
 * Slot Machines will still work even if the player has less than ten dollars.
 * Due to a bug, most of the vending machines in BioShock 2 no longer produce any sounds or jingles, but the jingles do appear in the single-player DLCs.

Trivia

 * Both the Circus of Values and El Ammo Bandito have the same indistinguishable yellow print under their top images. However, with enlarging the image for El Ammo Bandito, the fine print is revealed to say:

* All Sales Final * Select With Care *

Verkaufsautomaten
 * The Circus of Values and El Ammo Bandito vending machines use the same model, with the only physical alteration is their top and bottom images.