Click on multiplayer > internet games tab > difficulty: beginner or normal > refresh. Then you click on one of the servers available. This game has a brutal learning curve, and you must understand the basics before moving on; this includes getting used to the unusual hitboxes. I don't care about what type of gamer you are, it is impossible to get better by jumping on the highest difficulty and trying to get better that way. If you do try, you will most likely get kicked because the zeds get stronger and more numerous when there are more players; if you don't get kicked, you will die in a matter of seconds and rage quit from the game.

Start as a berserker, and use your pistol to land headshots. Now why would you pick the melee perk, but not use melee? Simple: berserkers cannot be grabbed by clots, and the other perks at low levels provide bonuses so small that they might as well not be there; so the berserker is the best level 0 perk to use when you spawn since it actually does something. Some people suggest to start with sharpshooter instead, and for good reason; but when you are learning to play the game, you should be playing at the lower difficulties. Against trash at low difficulty, a sharp's damage boost won't make enough of a difference to justify giving up clot grab immunity.

Feel free to switch to a firebug and purchase a mac 10 when you acquire 450 dosh. Keep in mind that the mac 10 will only set targets on fire if you are a firebug. Sirens and anything weaker will burn to death with one bullet, husks do not resist fire damage from the mac 10, and the dots do not stack or refresh upon landing more hits; so set that thing to semi-auto. Don't set chainsaw guys (scrakes) or spiky arm dudes (fleshpounds) on fire. Leave those to the professionals.

When you start feeling comfortable with the game, switch back to a berserker when you have 900 dosh and armor (costs 300), then buy the fire axe. The first perk I would recommend you level up first is the berserker because the stat bonuses it provides are very useful when leveling up other perks as well, i.e. damage resistance, immunity to clot grabs, able to kill every type of zed in the game with a claymore, bonus movement speed, and bloat bile resistance. Overall, the berserker is such a forgiving perk, especially when you use it to level up other perks instead of switching to a level 0 perk.

One more thing: crawlers are a berserker's worst nightmare. Get a lever action rifle for 200 dosh under the sharpshooter tab to kill them in one hit.

How to drop weapons

The only reason why this tip is first is because I found a lv 6 berserker the other day that didn't know how to drop a katana that I gave him money for.

Medic weapon discount

Perk bonus description is wrong. The medic weapons have a 10% + 10% per level discount just like all the other perks.

Head health vs body health

Something to keep in mind about zeds is that they have head health separate from their body health. When you damage the head, the body takes just as much damage, but not vice versa. When a zed runs out of head health, it will lose its head and abilities, then walk around like a headless chicken for a little bit until it dies. Damaging it further will not make it die faster.

If you don't know what a headshot sounds like, it sounds satisfyingly crunchy.

Handling Scrakes (the chainsaw guys)

Scrakes have a rage mechanic where if they take enough damage, their rage will trigger, and will run super fast. If a scrake catches up to you, DON'T CONTINUE BACKPEDALING!!! If you do, the scrake will use much more powerful attacks and kill you much faster if you run compared to the damage it will deal with its gutbuster on stationary targets.

Now for actually killing them: leave it to a sharpshooter, support specialist, berserker, or firebug in that order of preference. If you are not one of these perks, then don't bother trying to kill it. All you will do is pi$$ it off and cause someone to die.

Sharpshooter: Kills it with a crossbow, lever action rifle, or M14.

Support specialist: Kills it with AA12 or some hunting shotgun combo.

Berserker: Stun locks it with a claymore, axe, or katana (must deal damage to the back with alt fire to stun for katana).

Firebug: Stun locks it with charged husk cannon, or fire grenade + point-blank dual fare revolver spam.

Anyone else:

set input minus say Scrake! | speech auto 14

Handling Fleshpounds (the yellow/red light guys)

Fleshpounds have a rage mechanic where it will rage after having line of sight of a player without attacking for a little over 10 seconds, or takes too much damage in a short period of time (180 dps). When it rages, its light will turn red and will quickly charge a player to deal massively amplified damage. After it lands a hit on ANYTHING, it will lose its rage.

To reset its rage timer, you can prompt it to attack (the attack can miss) or you can break its line of sight by closing a door or getting behind a wall.

If it does rage for whatever reason, hang your head in shame for being a $hit player, and close then weld a door a tiny bit. If it attacks the door, its rage will end.

For actually killing them, the perks in order of preference are to deal with fleshpounds: demo, support specialist, sharpshooter, berserker. The fleshpound takes a lot of extra damage from explosives.

Demolitionist: LAW spam, M32 + grenades or pipe bomb

Support specialist: Throw 2-3 grenades, then attack it with AA12 or hunting shotgun to trigger its rage. It will stand on top of the grenades while it undergoes its rage animation.

Sharpshooter: M14 or crossbow.

Berserker: Axe or claymore. Alt fire its face, then dodge its attack to reset its rage timer.

Anyone else:

set input equals say @$$pounder! | speech auto 12

Medic meat shield

If $hit goes south, and there is a raging large zed attacking someone, then the medic must jump in and pull the aggro to take the damage instead due to his insane armor. Remember, as the medic, your armor is super cheap AND you lose a lot less instead of someone losing all of it after one or two hits. So if nothing else, tank large zeds for the sake of saving your team a TON of money.

Melee speed with guns

While you are running with a melee weapon, switch weapons and JUMP before you put away your melee weapon. By the time you pull out the gun, you should still be able to cover a bit of distance at melee speed while holding the weapon and, in some cases, shoot a bunch of zeds before you hit the ground. This habit quickly becomes second nature and I would highly recommend practicing this simple trick.

To put it short: switch weapons, jump before pulling out gun, ???, profit.

This is very useful as a support specialist to easily line up targets.

Insta-heal

When combining this with "melee speed with guns," a self-heal will not impair your movement speed.

Enter chat ("t" by default), press "backspace" until the chat box no longer displays "say," and enter the following:

set input q getweapon syringe | onrelease SwitchToLastWeapon | onrelease quickheal

You can also enter this command in the console command box by pressing ~
It is located below esc, above tab, and to the left of 1. You can copy-paste the command above on the command box.

Note: This will remap q and can easily be undone by going to the keybindings in "settings" and binding "q" for "quickheal."

After doing this, you hold "q" and release it as soon as you see your syringe. The result is that you heal in a split second and switch to your last gun. You can never hold down the key for too long; but if you release it too quickly, you will do a regular heal.

Youtuber Wusigi Dr demonstrates a significantly more difficult version of the insta-heal. Please note that he uses a slightly different macro, which makes it MUCH more difficult than it needs to be, but the result is the same. Skip to 1:18

When to buy armor

When you buy your first gun, get armor next to protect your investment. If you die after buying a vest and losing something as simple as an axe, mac10, HSG, or any other weapon that didn't break the bank, then it's not a big deal; however, dying after dropping 1.2K on an AA12 instead of a measly 300 pounds on a vest is a huge blow to morale.

Note: If you lost 50 armor in one fight, then you most likely would have died without it.

9mm is beast

The starting pistol can kill the clot, stalker, gorefast, crawler, and bloat with 1 headshot. Aim for the mouth. Remember, if is took more than one shot, then you were either missing, playing on a difficulty higher than hard, or you weren't using a Jakobs.

Adding crosshairs

By toggling the scoreboard (F1 by default), look slightly below the fourth player's kills. That is generally where your shots will land.

As you can see, the red dot in the M4's sights was just barely below the fourth player's kill count. I was able to decapitate the clot using the scoreboard without aiming down the sights.

Funneling

This tactic is used to ease the pressure on the team by not killing zeds to reduce the frequency at which they engage teamates.

Weld a door and only weld it if you have energy in your welder. Zeds attacking a door is GOOD because if they are attacking a door, they are not spawning in a position that allows them to attack your team. If the door is about to come down, have a support, firebug, or demo clear them all out.

In an open area, you can kite clots and scrakes in a circle using the berserker's insane mobility while killing other zeds. The clots and scrakes are ideal for kiting since they are slow and must be at melee range to damage you. You can also easily chain zed times when you herd enough clots. The 9mm is also useful for attracting distant clots.

Handling dosh

If you are a high level, buy weapons for your lower level teamates because you get a discount, and they're probably too low level to benefit for their on-perk weapons anyway.

If you are a low level, ask for weapons rather than dosh. You will still level up your perks by using them, and the penalty of death won't be as steep.

For the discount of weapons, you get a 10% for all weapons of your perk, and an additional 10% per level, up to a maximum of 70%.

discount = 0.1 + (0.1 * level)

Medic grenades

If you somehow didn't know this, healing grenades release a green gas that will heal you. If you are a medic, here is a command that will notify your teamates of the cloud:

set input numpad1 say A HEALING CLOUD is present.

Replace numpad1 with any key you want to bind this command to. If you didn't already guess, numpad1 is 1 on the number pad.

Dealing double damage

The following weapons that deal double damage when use point-blank are:

• Flamethrower
  
• Flare revolver
  
• Husk gun (uncharged, as strong as flare)
  
• Bloat thrower

It is worth noting that the zed eradication device mkII's alt fire has a doubled effect when used point blank.
ex) fleshpound requires 2 stun balls or 1 point-blank stun ball to put it into stasis.

You can also deal double damage with melee weapons if you hit the back.

Healing other people

Healing other teamates will only cost 50 medicine instead of 100, yet still heal 20hp. Additionally, you will gain experience for your medic and earn money for doing so. Heal other people d@mnit!

Spawning with any starting loadout

Want to be a sharpshooter that spawns with the medic's gear? Before you begin the game, pick the perk whose gear you want. When the team spawns, you will have 10 seconds to switch to the perk that you want to use.

ex) Sharpshooter with medic gear: spawn as medic, then switch to the sharpshooter as soon as the team spawns.

Keeping weapons after death

This is very simple: drop all of your stuff before you die. Good rule of thumb: if you find yourself spamming grenades in an attempt to go out in a blaze of glory, then you know that you are going to die no matter what. Bear in mind that if there is a siren present, she will destroy your grenades.

Canceling reload on dual wield weapons

Very simple: switch to the 9mm. This will only work if you are reloading dual weapons (dual flares, duals hand cannons, dual Mk's, dual 44's).
The following command remaps x to switch to the 9mm.

set input x getweapon single

This one will switch to 9mm, then back to the last weapon if you hold the key like an insta-heal, or you can press it once to just switch to 9mm.

set input e getweapon single | onrelease switchtolastweapon

AFK Welding

By holding down primary fire and opening the steam overlay, the game will think that you are still holding down the left click after you release the button. You can easily see this with melee weapons when you keep attacking without pressing anything. Equip the welder, go to a door, hold LMB, shift+tab, chill. Unfortunately, this will not work with unwelding.

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Press ~

Using M14 M203 like a boss

If you are reloading the mag and fire a grenade, the grenade reload will be tied to the mag reload. Ex) If you are just about to finish reloading the mag, and you fire a grenade, then the grenade will be insta loaded. Basically, you want to fire a grenade while you are reloading.

Door about to break?

Call up a support, demo, or firebug if a door is about to break since they are the best at killing zeds by the masses.

Test Map

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=288451842
This map will allow you to do all sorts of cool stuff, and will not level up your perks or achievements. You can try out weapons, perks at any level, spawn zeds either in an invisible box or able to hit you, practice on patriarch, etc. Go nuts.

Reduce Burn Damage

Healing while you are on fire will cut the fire damage and duration in half, but only once.

Avoid Healing When Taking Damage

Every time you take damage, you lose 5 points of healing. So try to kill the zed attacking you first before burning up that syringe.

Originally posted by ROTN StimpyPi:

...it does pay to shoot a decapitated body because it takes extra damage after losing his head and get addes to your kill count a little sooner.

You can get away with letting the body fall on its own while playing solo but in multiplayer if you want to get the kill and the bounty, you will need to finish the job you started

That would be a low priority, and probably not something to do in the higher difficulties since dosh/ammo is scarce. It's also important to kill the other zeds that are alive rather than emptying your mag on headless chickens. You do get dosh for assists, so it's not like you gain nothing for decapitating it. I would also let the commando or berserker steal kills for the purpose of extending zed time. Other than that, depending on the situation, there are some enemies like the bloat that make effective shields for the other zeds behind it that are worth finishing off, even if they're decapitated.

Originally posted by Blauwejakhals Loftypaw:

Commando can be good at killing scrakes too if you can land all headshots

Yes and no. On lower difficulties, absolutely. On higher difficulties or in general, you are better off killing the trash so they don't get in the way of your teamates that are better suited for killing scrakes, or fleshpounds for that matter. To sum up the commando's job: create an optimal environment for your large zed killers to kill large zeds, and kill zeds that your teamates match poorly against. This job is not hindered very much by vision-obscuring entities such as fire, smoke, or even darkness because the commando an see zed health despite those variables. If you do plan to kill a scrake, do it with a scar or FNFAL, and make sure they are weak enough before you take them on. Just keep in mind that on hard and below, scrakes rage with 50% health remaining. On suicidal and HoE, they rage at 70% health remaining.

If there is something that you know that I don't, please put it in the comments below. I will copy it in a format like this:

Originally posted by Immortal Nub:

Hello World!

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=115098371

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=853983538