Hi Alicia, welcome to the Turok forums. I agree the weapon selection is hard and confusing. So too ADragon

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The best thing that I found is create custom weapon keys. If your playing with a controller, I'm sorry.
For the weapon binds, I use Q-E-R-F-G-3-V and keys 1-2 for scope zoomin/ zoomout
So go to the options menu and select 'Bindings' from the left side menu. Then change the weapon slot to the key you want to use for that weapon. Here's the list of weapon slots;
Weapon slot 1 = Talon and War Blade
Weapon Slot 2 = Bow and Tek Bow
Weapon Slot 3 = Pistol and Mag 60
Weapon Slot 4 = Charge Dart Rifle and Tranquilizer Gun
Weapon Slot 5 = Shotgun and Shredder
Weapon Slot 6 = Plasma Rifle and Firestorm Cannon
Weapon Slot 7 = Flamethrower and PFM Layer (landmines)
Weapon Slot 8 = Grenade Launcher and Rocket Launcher
Weapon Slot 9 = Cerebral Bore and Razor Wind (sawblade boomerang)
Weapon Slot 10 = Nuke Weapon ? (I don't have it yet)
Weapon Slot 11 = Sunfire Pod
Weapon Slot 12 = Flare
So if you push the key one time you get the primary weapon and then press the key again and you get the second weapon. Both weapons use the same ammo. If you are out of ammo for any weapon type, you will be unable to equip that weapon until you get ammo.
So I learned this by trial and error. But it's much better than using the mouse wheel. You can also open your .cfg file and make the changes there if you know how to edit the file with a text editor (notepad or wordpad or other text editor).
gl - hf - Gazer
Edit: Right on Duke64

Edit Again: That is her first post, congratulations!