Welcome to the complete guide to No More Room in Hell. If by chance you've stumbled across this guide and you are still a new player, then welcome to the game! Here you'll find an extensive amount of information about gameplay basics, combat mechanics, co-op strategies and much more. If you are an initiated player or a veteran instead, then you'll definitely know the basics already. However, you may be able to find a lot of advanced info on many areas you might not have known before, potentially allowing you to improve your abilities.

Let me introduce this guide with a disclaimer: There is no objectively correct way to play or have fun with this game. It can be enjoyed in both a casual or hardcore manner; that will depend entirely on you as an individual player and what you consider to be enjoyable. What I will show here are both the basic and advanced knowledge you need to have in order to consistently complete all maps in the game, both official and community-made, in cooperative and solo play, on both Classic and Nightmare difficulty.





The priority of this guide is to teach you what I consider to be the most effective ways to consistently win NMRiH matches. What is a "win" in my books? Basically that the highest possible amount of players should get extracted at the end of each map. This is the principle that I'll follow throughout this guide when explaining each topic. What you consider a success may differ from what I consider one, so you'll be the one to decide how cooperative or selfish you want to be.

Regardless of that, what you'll find in this guide will be based on the idea of a player who cares about the survival of their team, but who also won't disregard their own survival. On the flip side, if the clear path to victory is being selfish at times so that the highest amount of players manages to escape, then that player should behave selfishly. If you are playing solo, then you'll have a lot more freedom to do as you please, but when you're in a group of 8 players, negative team interactions will hurt progress and could possibly ruin an entire match.

There are many different strategies you can use to complete maps, but usually there are only a few of them which are truly the most effective and consistent, regardless of how boring they may be to you personally. If that means dodging a huge zombie horde, slowly killing Shamblers in a tight corridor, or even doing nothing while your teammates do all the work, then doing so will help the overall map progress and your team's success.

Having said this, I will mention alternative strategies when I feel that they are relevant, since knowing them together with the meta will let you forge your own personal playstyle after enough practice and dedication. It will also make you more versatile, improving your chances when nothing goes according to plan.





NMRiH rewards player adaptation and versatility. Restricting yourself to a single playstyle, not using all the techniques at your disposal, not knowing how to counter bad teammates or griefers, being unable to determine when to be cooperative (and with whom) or when to be selfish and care for your own survival, will get you killed constantly. You have to adapt to every situation that the game and random players will throw at you if you want to survive. Knowing, practicing and applying all of these techniques and strategies will give you the tools to do so.

You need to learn to be self-sufficient, but that doesn't mean that you should shrug off another player that's trying to help you. You should also help others in need if they prove to be good teammates that contribute to the overall map progress. Being independent is good, but engaging in positive cooperative behaviors will have benefits for you and the team. If you want to help griefers or uncooperative players as well, you are free to do so, but in most situations it's either inefficient or useless. Doing so only makes sense if you are trying to fulfill a personal goal of yours.





This guide compiles all basic and advanced mechanics because it's aimed at both players that want to enjoy the game casually, playing easier maps, and the hardcore players that may want to eventually play solo or coop on hard custom maps on the highest difficulty. Even veterans trying to further develop their skills may find some use out of this.

Having the knowledge this guide provides will allow you to improve much faster, avoid bad habits and concentrate your efforts in practicing effective strategies and techniques that will give you a noticeable advantage. This will help you and other players complete the most challenging maps in the game, on the highest difficulty.





As the author of this guide, I will try to remain as objective as I can. However, as you can obviously tell, I'm a human being, so my own personal biases and opinions may affect some parts of this guide. I will indeed do my best to minimize this and I will try to note every time something is more of an opinion than a fact.

Any constructive, well-mannered criticism and feedback is also appreciated. If you think I didn't mention an important mechanic, you disagree about the effectiveness of a weapon / strategy / technique, or you feel you know how to do something better than how I explained it, leave a comment below. I'll be happy to politely discuss it and potentially add or correct things in the guide. The objective is to help other players and compile as much useful information about the game as possible, not to brag about how much I know.



This is a long, thorough and detailed guide, but it's not designed to be a complete nerd fest that spits out confusing numbers, weapon stats and technical jargon indiscriminately. However, when such information is required to explain some point being made or is considered relevant in some way, stats and numbers will be brought up. Fortunately for you, there's no need for too much of that, most aspects of this game can be learned with a more intuitive approach.

The base gameplay mechanics are not numerically complex compared to other games that may contain RPG elements like PAYDAY 2 or Killing Floor 2 (classes, abilities, weapon perks, skill trees, etc.). However, learning and mastering them takes a long time, so be prepared to die dozens of times and fail miserably at first. We've all been there.


Now, without further ado, let's begin the journey. Prepare yourselves for the apocalypse...

Here we have a quick rundown of the controls:

(click on the image to expand it to full size)

NMRiH has a minimalist but very intuitive and comfortable HUD. It consists of:


This is your main inventory, you can open it by holding the 1 key. Free space is shown as grey coloring on the wheel, while items taking up space is shown as dark red coloring. Each item has a unique icon and occupies a specific percentage of your total inventory when picking them up, depending on their weight (more info in the "Inventory: Movement Speed / Priorities" section).

Left Clicking on an item will equip it, or you can also mouse over that item and release the 1 key to both equip it and close the inventory at the same time. Right Clicking on an item will drop it, which is faster than having to equip it and then pressing the G key. You'll only use the latter if you are already holding the item or if you want to throw it to another teammate that may need it by holding the G key.



This is your secondary inventory dedicated exclusively to managing your ammo. You can open it by holding the 2 key. Since NMRiH keeps a realistic approach to firearms, there are many types of calibers, each one corresponding to specific weapons. This is why a secondary inventory is necessary, as you can carry many different ammo types at the same time.

By mousing over each ammo type you'll be able to see exactly how many rounds you have. If you press Left Click on any of them you will drop a fixed amount of bullets depending on the ammo type. You can also drop a single ammo box quickly by mousing over it and then releasing the 2 key. Additionally, you can Right Click over an ammo type to drop all of it at once. This is useful if you have like 2 firearms with a lot of ammo and you wish to share one with a teammate.


This wheel contains the in-game voice commands used to communicate with other players. To open it, press and hold the 3 key, then mouse over a voice command and release the 3 key to use your selected voice command. Alternatively, you can press Left Click on it. These commands are rarely useful in most scenarios, though they are handy to communicate with players that don't speak your language.



The compass is one of NMRiH's fundamental tools. You can bring it up with the C key.

In the case of Objective mode, it tells you what your current task is and shows several arrows pointing towards the locations of necessary objective items and / or the objective itself.

In Survival mode, it shows you the location of each safe zone that you have to defend. The arrows are located on the bottom of your screen at the top of your compass.

There are a few key facts about the compass that you should take into account when using it:

• It only provides horizontal guidance:
  This means that it tells you the direction where your current objective is, but it doesn't tell you whether you should ascend or descend from your current height to get to it. In other words, most of the time there won't be a straight path to an objective, you have to go up or down ladders or find detours and weird entrances like vents. For example, in nmo_lakeside there's a lot of doors and converging paths, but usually only one of them works for each objective variation, so you have to explore.
  
  
• The color of each arrow can be inconsistent across maps:
  There never was a consensus on how to use compass marker colors in an intuitive or consistent way. Both official and custom maps suffer from this, though the latter are far more offensive. In the case of official maps, generally the formula is always the same: A white arrow points at the main objective (a door, a radio, a generator, etc.) while secondary red arrows point to objective items that you need in order to proceed (a battery, a propane tank, a key, etc.). The color purple is also used frequently to point at objective items, like the napalm canisters in nmo_fema.
  
  In the case of custom maps, it's all over the place. You'll see colors like green, orange, cyan and more. However, most of the maps that are well designed try to stick to the formula set by official maps (white arrow for main objective locations and red arrows for objective item locations).

All items that you can put inside your inventory have a glowing overlay over their models. When the overlay is green-colored, that means that you can pick up the item, when it's red-colored you can't due to a lack of free inventory space.

Objective items also have glowing outlines and their color corresponds with the arrows on your compass to help you identify them (check the image in the previous bullet point).


Every time you reload your weapon or hold the R key to check the ammo in the magazine, an ammo counter will appear temporarily on the bottom right of your screen.

It's a fast way to check your total ammo count, though it's possible to disable it through the character selection screen on the main menu.

Personally I disable it because I prefer a cleaner looking HUD. You can still check the ammo on both your inventory or your magazine by holding the R key and listening to the character's voice line, as well as opening your ammo wheel respectively.


When playing a Survival map, additional HUD information is added to the already mentioned elements. You'll see several counters on the top left of your screen, detailing information like the current wave number, total amount of zombies per wave, safe zone health and others.

There are also messages that broadcast map events like waves starting or ending. More info in the "Survival Mode: General Info" section.

For those of you who prefer reading some tips and learning the game by yourselves rather than reading a huge guide, I've compiled a few basic principles that you should learn if you want to play better during your first hours.

Note that these are only basic tips to give you a better chance of surviving, there's nothing related to proper cooperation, interactions with other players or advanced mechanics.

You'll miss a lot of important information this way, but I guess I don't need to tell you that already.


Please note that learning things like the melee combat system still takes a long time and a lot of practice, so you'll only avoid some heavy reading, not the actual effort it takes to master the game.


Here's the list of important tips for rookies:

Since the game is jam-packed with different mechanics, tricks, strategies and exploits, the use of technical jargon is unavoidable. Here's a list of acronyms, words and expressions that may be used frequently throughout this guide:

Aggro = The action of an enemy targeting a player

AOE = Area of Effect, it describes damage sources that affect an entire area, i.e. fire or explosions

Boosting = Using an item or zombie to jump over obstacles or to get access to elevated spots

Chokepoints = Tight spaces or cramped level geometry where zombies can block your way

Clip Brushes = Invisible walls that block players, zombies, or items depending on their type

DOT = Damage Over Time, may apply to fire, infected water or Molotovs

God Spots = Specific locations on maps where zombies cannot reach or attack you

Heavy Attack = Charged Attack = A charged melee swing, holding Left Click initiates the charge

Hitscan = Attacks that function akin to a laser, as opposed to a projectile with simulated physics

HP = Health Points, it refers to anything that can be killed or destroyed (players, doors, zombies)

Knockback = The chance a melee weapon has to stumble an enemy per hit

Light Attack = Quick Attack = Simple melee swing without any charge up (not holding Left Click)

LOS = Line of Sight, referred to zombies being able to see you directly

NAV Jumps = A map entity that allows zombies to climb objects, no matter the height

NG = National Guard, an uncommon zombie variant

NMO = Can be used to refer to either Objective mode or Objective maps

NMS = Can be used to refer to either Survival mode or Survival maps

Pathfinding = How zombies manage to move from point A to point B

Regen = Regeneration, referring to how quickly you regain your stamina back

RNG = Random Number Generator, it refers to programmed randomness, like getting infected

Runner Conga Line = Large amount of Runners actively chasing you, forming sort of a conga line

Stumble = The action of a zombie stumbling back due to melee knockback, explosions or shoves

Triggers = Invisible map entities that force events to occur, like the progression of objectives

ZC = Zombie Children, an uncommon zombie type which moves and attacks quickly

Zeds / Zeekes / Zombies = A general term that refers to any zombie type

Zombie Brushes = Invisible map entities that spawn and re-spawn zombies

The most common enemy type you'll find is the Shambler. They are the typical slow-moving zombie inspired by the classic George Romero films and others in the Living Dead category.

They generally spawn in considerable numbers, posing a threat only as a group as they are very exploitable. They create huge hordes that can turn into moving blockades and stop you in your tracks if the level geometry is cramped enough, and will slowly but surely give chase until they corner you.

They have 3 types of attacks:

Depending on what attack animation they use at random and by which you actually get hit, they can deal different amounts of damage. For example, the two-handed attack is always followed up by another two-handed attack, so if you get hit by both, you'll lose 30 HP. Another possibility is only a single one-handed attack, which deals 15 damage. This is more varied in the case of Runners as their two distinct attacks deal different damage values. We'll discuss this in the next section.


In Survival mode, all zeds spawn in a controlled manner outside the map boundaries, dictated by the programming of each zombie wave (more info in the "Survival: General Info" section). In Objective mode however, they spawn dynamically with spawn brushes. When players are far enough away from these entities and they're not looking in their direction, they will spawn groups of Shamblers to keep a constant zombie density around the map. How intense those spawns are is dictated by the individual programming of each spawn brush.

In some cases though, Runners are not spawned via brushes, they are spawned individually by the map's creator to maintain a consistent difficulty, as Runner spawns are dictated by a chance value within the spawn brush itself. This means that sometimes you may get a significant amount of Runners spawned together with Shamblers, but then if you replay that section, you could get a much lower number. In general, these manually spawned zombies do NOT respawn once killed, unless there's another entity that designed specifically to do that.

The second most common infected type is a Runner. They are relentless fast-moving zeds, very dangerous due to their extremely high damage output.

They are inspired by running maniac zombies from World War Z or 28 Days Later.

They behave exactly the same as Shamblers, but they can run extremely fast, which reveals certain behaviors that can be exploited by the player in order to take them out more effectively.

They also have 3 attacks but deal more damage:

This shows that if you are unlucky enough and certain attack animations combine together, you can get killed almost instantly if you get hit with all of them. For example, the two-handed attack will deal 40 damage and is then always followed up by another two-handed attack for another 40 damage. Then, they can attack you again in quick succession with 2 one-handed attacks for 20 damage each. That combo is enough to kill you at 100 HP in about 3 seconds.


We're gonna talk more about infection mechanics later on ("Player Afflictions: Infection / Bleeding" section), but basically, when a survivor becomes infected by the virus and then dies by any means (except for a headshot or an explosion), their body will revive as a Runner. These Revivers function identically to regular Runners, only that their skin and model corresponds to the survivor that died while infected. Same HP, damage and behavior. They don't have any special properties like more infection chance or anything else.


These AI behaviors are shared among all enemy types, but I'll explain them here because a Runner makes them more evident. Zombie targeting is based on LOS (line of sight) and proximity, meaning that for them to start targeting you, they must see you directly first and then you have to be the closest target to them. If another player is closer to them than you are, they'll all follow that player.

In terms of limitations, zeds cannot attack you while you are walking forwards as they lack the animations to attack while moving. If you are walking backwards however, they will be able to catch up to you and attack. Additionally, they cannot move with fluid sharp turns or curves, they always have to stop moving, reposition themselves and then start moving again. In other words, they: move ➜ stop ➜ turn to face you ➜ move ➜ repeat.

Finally, zombies can collide with each other, which causes them to fail their navigation attempt and will try to move in a different direction to avoid the obstacle. However, after 3 failed navigation attempts, they will lose their collision with other zeds to avoid getting stuck.

All of these behaviors can be exploited to a noticeable degree and perform several combat techniques that allow you to efficiently kill any enemy with the proper weapons and geometry. For example, if you want to deal with a Runner that's stuck inside a Shambler horde, you can move in circles around the horde itself to force the Runner to switch directions and collide with multiple other zombies. This will speed up the failure of those 3 navigation attempts and will lose its collision. When that happens, it will quickly sprint towards you for a safe kill.

You can also abuse their limited chasing capabilities to kite them at your back or in circles to kill them relatively safely if there's a large horde to deal with (check the "Combat: Zombie Manipulation" section).

Another detail is that zombies can open most regular doors in the game, which allows them to follow you inside building and such. You should always take this into account, as getting trapped in cramped interiors is very dangerous since you can't dodge hordes. This can be a death sentence if you don't have decent weapons to fight your way out. Some doors can only be used by players though which can be useful to avoid getting cornered (check the "Learning the Maps: Memorization" section).

Zombie Children are a somewhat uncommon infected type. They move as fast as Runners and generally spawn together with them, creating extremely dangerous hordes. Their main inspiration is the zombie girl from the first episode of The Walking Dead TV series and possibly also the character of Karen Cooper from Night of the Living Dead.

They behave similarly to Runners but with a few differences. The most important one is that all of their attack animations are VERY quick and hurt you almost instantly, which can then cause your camera to sway violently much more frequently than against other zeds, making you unable to hit them unless you move away and stop taking damage. Thus, not knowing how to kill them swiftly will cost you more HP than you think.

They have only one method of attack, which is one-handed attacks that deal 8 points of damage. There's no two-handed variation that deals double damage. Also, they can't grab and bite you, therefore they can't infect you.

By themselves they're not too much of a threat, unless they catch you in dangerous spots (they can bodyblock you while dodging Shambler hordes) or if they are numerous, like at the basketball court in nmo_broadway2 (because of their attack speed, getting close to one of them is tough as another one can quickly sneak up on you and smack you, slowly draining your HP every time it happens).

To learn how to deal with them, check the "Combat: Dealing with Zombie Children" section.

Crawlers are an uncommon infected type that you can run into occasionally in any map, as they have a 2% chance to spawn in place of a Shambler.

They are pretty harmless by themselves, as they have the lowest HP of any zed and can only bite you, therefore their damage is capped at 15 HP. They only become dangerous when you are distracted and surrounded by other zeds, as they can sneak up on you and grab you.

You can kill them with anything, even a single punch from your fists, which is the recommended way to do it. The reason is that the fists have a very long range and don't base their hit registration on trace arcs like the rest of the melee weapons (check the "Combat: Basic Melee Mechanics" to learn more about that), they are basically hitscan, so the attack registers exactly where you point at. Therefore, fist attacks will always register consistently and they use way less stamina than quick attacks from most melee weapons.

Their bite speed is much higher than the other zombies, so they can still inflict some considerable damage in this situation, as you can take a few seconds to react that you are being grabbed by them instead of a normal Shambler (they also have a chance to infect you as their only method of attack is biting). They are also dangerous in maps where there's shallow water, as they become barely visible.

Crawlers are of very little consequence to most matches, with the exception of a cool exploit called Crawler Boosting, which lets you jump on top of them and use them as a platform to get on top of other zombies and dodge entire hordes. You'll find more info in the "Movement: Advanced Techniques" section.

One word of caution: When Crawlers attempt to grab you, an animation will play where they move backwards slightly before the grab. If you happen to shove them right at that moment, your shove won't register consistently, leading to getting bitten and possibly infected. It's recommended to only kill the Crawler with the weapon that you have currently equipped (if you're getting grabbed obviously, if not just use your fists like I mentioned before).

Every zombie type in the game, except Zombie Children obviously, has a National Guard (NG) variant.

They are essentially the same as the original type, but they have a couple of additions:


Firstly, once killed, they can drop one of several items that they carry with them:

• An empty Beretta M9
  
• A box of 9mm ammo
  
• A 5.56 ammo magazine
  
• Bandages
  
• A grenade

Secondly, they feature randomized damage resistance on their kevlar vest and their helmet.
Since all your attacks should be directed at the zombie's head, the kevlar's resistance is irrelevant. However, the helmet resistance can increase their durability quite a bit. You can sometimes go from killing them in 2 light swings from a Machete, to 6 or 7. This is also true with firearms, so always be mindful of them, as they can back you into a corner easily due to their resistance if you're not careful.

Every zombie type can catch fire from various sources, such as environmental fire, explosive barrels, gas cans, or from a Molotov throwable. In this state, their HP will be instantly reduced to around 10% of it original value, so that they always die within 10 seconds (the default ignite duration).

For example, a freshly-spawned Shambler with 500 HP, once set on fire, will lose its HP down to 50 - 60, which will allow it to burn to death on its own, or allowing you to kill it with basically any melee weapon without effort.

Runners, Zombie Children and Crawlers retain their usual behavior, but Shamblers have a chance to start sprinting once they're set on fire. They don't actually turn into a Runner, they retain all their properties, they only switch to the same movement animations as Runners.

Contrary to popular belief, and to what the official NMRiH guide says, burning zombies DO NOT deal double damage, no matter their type. They retain the appropriate damage they dealt before entering that state. So, if a Shambler catches fire, even though they start moving like a Runner, they will still deal 15 and 30 damage depending on the animation combo, not 20 and 40 or 30 and 60.

Again, burning zombies are not too much of a threat in a match because of how easily they die. They can screw you up if one of them stars sprinting behind you and surprises you, or if you set many zeds on fire in a cramped area they may be able to corner you and kill you. But, these are extreme scenarios that don't present themselves often. Just be mindful of how you use your Molotovs or gas cans, let your teammates know that you're about to start a fire and everyone will be fine.

Melee weapons in NMRiH are the most important tool available to the player. I'll go into more detail later on, but basically, they allow you to continuously kill zombies without the loss of any resources except time, assuming you don't get hit and also lose HP.

This is extremely useful for both gamemodes, as zeds in Objective respawn non-stop and, in Survival, you are tasked with killing gigantic hordes of them.

Knowing which weapons are more useful for each scenario is crucial when trying to survive some of the hardest maps. It's also important to know which melees are subpar to be able to replace them as soon as possible and increase your chances of survival.

People usually come up with many different arguments as to what melee weapons are the best or worst. From what I've seen, most of these are not based on actual stats that help quantify how useful they really are.

In my case, I will try to keep it as straightforward, concise and objective as I can. I will classify all melee weapons in 3 categories of usefulness: Subpar, Average and High Tier. This will be based on specific weapon properties that make them more useful in the context of NMRiH's gameplay.

Here are the stats that I use to rank weapons in decreasing priority:



In this category, I will place all melee weapons that I deem too weak to be considered a reliable weapon for the vast majority of situations. Some may be better than others, but overall, none of these are worth keeping throughout a match unless you literally don't have any other choice. As soon as you see any other melee laying around that's outside of this category, you should INSTANTLY discard your current subpar weapon. It has to be automatic, don't even try to weigh in the pros and cons.

The minimum damage requirement to NOT be considered subpar is: killing Shamblers and Runners in 2 quick attacks or 1 charged attack (3 second charge approx.). You'll see that the FUBAR and Shovel both surpass this requirement, but they're still considered subpar because of several other factors.



Extremely low overall damage, charge time needed to reach the crucial Shambler breakpoint is exceedingly long, the effective range is minuscule and very high stamina use.


Very low overall damage, charge time needed to reach the crucial Shambler breakpoint is exceedingly long, the effective range is minuscule and it has a delayed quick attack animation.


Low overall damage, long charge time needed to reach the crucial Shambler breakpoint, shoving and attacking animations are very delayed, very high stamina use for such low damage, no Maglite equipping.


Low overall damage, long charge time needed to reach the crucial Shambler breakpoint, shoving animation has a delay, short effective range.


Highest melee damage in the game but at the cost of extreme stamina use for both quick and charged attacks, severely delayed animations for shoving, quick attacks and charged attacks.


In terms of damage breakpoints, it's the same as the weapons in the next category (Average), but unfortunately other stats lag behind too much. Its quick attack animation has a noticeable delay and it's way too heavy compared to the melees in the next category. Also, no Maglite equipping. It is the best weapon in this category though, so maybe try to pick it over the previous ones.

These weapons are strong and consistent enough to be used for longer periods of time without reducing your chances of survival significantly. They can ALL kill Shamblers in 2 quick attacks and 1 charged attack (3 second charge), same as Runners but with a slightly shorter charge.

It's possible to competently kill all infected types with any of them, but they unfortunately fall short compared to the most consistent melee weapons in the game. This can be caused by them lacking in one or more key areas that are very important for safely engaging in melee combat. Therefore, if you find any of the 4 most powerful melees in the next category (High Tier), definitely ditch these in favor of them.


The shovel configuration deals subpar damage, so switch to the pickaxe config by pressing Right Click. Attack animations are fast but it has a short effective range, making it extremely difficult to swing without zeds initiating attacks. Also, all swings are vertical, making it impossible to hit more than one zombie at a time unless they clip into each other. The Maglite can't be equipped at the same time.


Only marginally better than the E-Tool. Much longer effective range, increasing safety and consistency, but the shoving and quick attack animations are horribly delayed, decreasing the responsiveness of the weapon and its overall effectiveness. Quick attacks are horizontal, allowing you to hit multiple targets if desired and you can use a Maglite with it.


The first actually decent melee weapon. No delayed animations, long effective range and horizontal quick attacks for hitting multiple targets. However, it uses more stamina per hit than average, giving you less margin of error. It does feature a high knockback chance per hit, which acts as a safety net if your attack didn't actually kill the zed. The Maglite can also be equipped with it.


No delayed animations, horizontal quick attack for multiple targets, very low stamina use on both quick and charged attacks. The drawbacks are: a very small effective range and no knockback, so mastering it takes a lot of practice. If you are proficient with it, you can use a very handy combat technique shared with the Machete (Light Attack Chains, check the "Combat: Advanced Melee Techniques" section). In short, the Hatchet is better than the Lead Pipe in terms of effectiveness, but it's a lot harder to use due to the very restricted range. The Maglite can also be equipped with it.


The final category encompasses the only 4 weapons in the game that can kill Runners in just 1 quick attack. Therefore, the charge time needed to kill a Shambler in one attack will either be very short or the weapon will kill them in just 1 quick attack. The FUBAR also meets these requirements but all its other flaws still make it subpar.

All of them have specific uses and vary in effectiveness depending on the situation and the map you're playing. Even though one reigns supreme (Machete) over the others, all of them are great weapons. Therefore, deciding to switch from one to another will be dependent on your playstyle preference, which map you are playing and what kind of teammates you get.

Also, these 4 are the ONLY truly viable melee weapons for playing in Nightmare difficulty, as you'll see at the end of this guide ("Nightmare: Differences in Strategy" section) and their effectiveness ranking switches up drastically.


It can kill Runners with 1 quick attack and Shamblers with a 1.7-ish long charged attack. Unfortunately this weapon ranks the lowest here because of a somewhat delayed quick attack animation, which makes it harder to use proficiently. Additionally, all its other stats are completely surpassed by the Machete, such as weight and stamina use.


It can kill Runners and Shamblers with 1 quick attack. It can also kill them with 1 charged attack without any hold time and no net stamina loss (check the Sledgehammer / Pickaxe Charge Attack Abuse bullet point in the "Combat: Basic Melee Techniques" section).

The higher damage crosses a very important breakpoint that the Fire Axe can't reach, but the animations are slightly more delayed and if you are using anything other than charged attacks without hold time, the stamina use is significantly higher.

This Shambler 1 quick attack breakpoint allows you to instantly cross chokepoints blocked by 1 to 3 of them (check the Heavy Melee Shambler Quick Kill bullet point in the "Combat: Basic Melee Techniques" section). As a bonus, it has a high knockback chance like all blunt weapons, giving you an extra safety net.


Essentially the same as the Sledge with a slightly shorter effective range and less knockback chance. However, because its charged attack animation is much faster, it's possible to use a technique called Pickaxe Attack Cooldown Cancelling to increase the speed at which you can kill Shambler hordes noticeably ("Combat: Advanced Melee Techniques" section). Really useful for Nightmare difficulty or just maps with heavy Shambler density.


In Classic difficulty, the Machete is the best overall melee weapon in the game, simple as that. It's extremely light, meaning that you can carry all medical items, either a light or heavy firearm and a lot of ammo along with it. It's got basically the same damage as the Fire Axe (it's only marginally slower at killing Shamblers with charged attacks) but it has a much more responsive quick attack animation, so killing Runners with it is trivial.


It also has a much lower stamina use, allowing you to kill Runners without interruption for a considerable amount of time. Like the Hatchet, you can use the Light Attack Chains technique for dealing with small Shambler hordes in a quick fashion.

It may be slower at killing large masses of Shamblers than the Pickaxe or Sledge, but for the most part, it's a not a significant difference that makes or breaks your match (some maps in Nightmare difficulty really favor this though).

On the other hand, the ability to deal with large Runner hordes without resorting to forming conga lines is much more useful in general, especially in maps with cramped geometry. And, as a bonus, you can equip the Maglite with it.

As I’ve mentioned before, NMRiH tries to portray a zombie apocalypse with a realistic approach, and because of this you will find a wide variety of firearms and a multitude of different calibers that correspond to each of them. Considering them a rare and expendable resource is a good general practice, as ammo is very scarce compared to most other games out there.

In contrast to melee weapons, the difference in effectiveness between firearms is not as drastic, mainly because they are extremely powerful tools that enable you to survive even the most deadly encounters in the game (which are common in difficult maps), given that you have enough ammunition to push through them.

However, some are significantly more effective than others, which is based on factors that can be considered not that intuitive for players that are new to the game. I'm going to list them all in detail here so that you can understand why they fall in certain categories.

Again, please note that this is an objective attempt to show you why some weapons perform better than others, so any subjective factors like how the weapon feels, sounds or looks are out of the question. However, don't feel bad if you personally take any of these into account, as they are factors that can make gun more fun and engaging to use. This list however will show which ones are better purely in terms of effectiveness.

I will classify all firearms in 3 categories of usefulness: Subpar, Average and High Tier. This will be based on specific weapon properties that make them more useful in the context of NMRiH's gameplay. Weapons will be ranked in increasing effectiveness, starting with the worst one.


Here are the stats that I use to rank firearms in descending priority:

In this category, I will place the firearms that perform suboptimally according to the stats I listed above. By "suboptimally" I mean that the gun is inconsistent when dealing with Runners. Any weapon can kill Shamblers easily, thus the real test is Runners, the most dangerous enemy in the game.

Most of these weapons suffer from having pump / bolt / lever action animations. These are a hindrance because they significantly decrease the rate of fire. Plus, they introduce a 0.5 second delay that prevents you from shoving just after shooting, which can be lethal in extreme scenarios, like Runner spam sections. You can skip this delay on some of these weapons by using the Bolt / Lever / Pump Action Animation Cancel exploit (check the "Combat: Advanced Firearm Mechanics" section).

Additionally, they tend to have small magazine sizes, which is noticeable hindrance against Runner hordes, as you can't spam shots for sustained periods, giving you a very small margin of error to take out the ones that are about to kill you. They also suffer from very slow reloads, which decrease their ability to spam even further.

On top of that, shotguns deal inconsistent damage, thus their 1-headshot-kill on all enemies fails sometimes. I'm not sure what exactly the cause is, maybe the spread causes some pellets to miss the head, lowering the damage just enough to lose the breakpoint.

Just like with all subpar melee weapons, discard them as soon as you find a higher quality firearm with enough ammo to make its use worthwhile in the map you're playing,



It's undeniably the worst ranged weapon in the game (it's not a firearm obviously, but since it uses ammo, I will sort it as such).

It's the only ranged weapon with projectile mechanics instead of being hitscan, meaning that you have to lead shots to hit your target accurately, which is basically impossible at long ranges, limiting you to only close-medium range. Its rate of fire is extremely slow, charging up your attack leaves you open to Runner / Kid attacks because you can't shove or sprint in that state. It's essentially suicide to use it against them.

Because of all these factors, it can only be used effectively against Shamblers, which makes it basically useless in the vast majority of situations. It technically has infinite ammo because you can pick up used arrows, but a portion of them get irreversibly lost, as they have a chance to penetrate the zombie instead of falling at your feet. This will cause them to end up far away from you, unless you purposely kill zombies against a nearby wall. Avoid using it at all costs unless you have no other choice to quickly dispatch zeds (like literally any decent melee).



Not only it's the worst shotgun, it's also the second worst ranged weapon in the game after the PSE Bow. It has good rate of fire but unfortunately it's made useless by the horribly slow reload and the pitiful magazine size (only 2 shots).

Also, since it is a shotgun, it suffers from a couple of important limitations shared by all other weapons classified as such: damage inconsistency (sometimes shotguns won't instakill Runners or Shamblers with 1 headshot, like it was explained previously) and limited range (shotguns deal very low damage past anything that isn't close range).

The Perennia has penetration, allowing you to get collateral kills, but this only really works effectively against groups of Shamblers, as you are forced to use its ironsights to reduce the spread. Also, the penetration applies only to zeds, meaning that you can't unlock secret stashes or skip map sections by shooting boards through walls or doors. Avoid using this weapon at all costs.



It's only marginally better than the Perennia SV10. It has a much faster rate of fire if you take into account the Perennia's painfully slow reload and abysmal capacity, it has good ammo capacity (15+1) and it has penetration.

This means that you can get collateral Shambler kills and you can also destroy breakables like boards through walls, allowing you to skip map sections or to open up secret item stashes. However, it still has an overall very slow rate of fire compared to most other weapons on higher categories due to the lever action animation, which makes it perform very inconsistently against Runners even though it has a caliber with 1-headshot-kill damage.

Also, it's tube-fed, meaning that you load one bullet at a time like a shotgun, leading to an obscenely slow reload time from empty to full. Avoid using it at all costs, just like the PSE Bow and the Perennia SV10.






The first usable shotgun in this ranking. All shotguns are classified as subpar because of several factors: very slow rate of fire, low capacity, high weight which lowers inventory flexibility, slow reload and there's a shove delay applied after firing which can get you killed if you're not careful.

The Mossberg is a bit more effective than the Winchester in my experience, even though it has a much smaller capacity (5+1 vs 15+1). The reason for this is that as it's a shotgun, it has a much higher chance to stumble the zed back if your shot is not able to kill it due to some pellets missing the target randomly for example. This gives you a second chance to finish it off properly, whereas missing a shot with the Winchester (which is common as most firearms have bad accuracy when hipfiring) will leave you with your pants down against Runners.



Essentially the same as the Mossberg 500A, but it's better since it has a capacity of 8+1 instead of 5+1, giving you a bigger margin of error to kill Runners before having to reload, which takes a long time for both weapons due to them being tube-fed.

The first sniper to appear in the guide. It doesn't land higher on this list because in NMRiH, the vast majority of zed encounters are in close quarters, so the superior range you get with the sights is irrelevant.

Also the best way to engage with zombies is with hipfire to avoid tunnel vision that causes surprise Runner attacks. So, its advantages are useless and it has way too many drawbacks: slow rate of fire, shove delay after firing, slow reload, and it weights a lot. At least it has a decent magazine capacity (10+1 rounds) and it's magazine-fed, making it better than the Winchester due to the much faster reload. If you favor shotguns, you could consider it worse than the Mossberg and the Remington, which is understandable, but both classes of weapons are very ineffective.



The Sako 85 is slightly better than the JAE-700, even though it has almost half its magazine size. The reason for this, is that you can cancel the bolt action animation by holstering and quickly drawing the weapon (double tap the Q key), which allows you to fire noticeably faster than normal.

This trick doesn't work with the JAE-700 because it has a slow drawing animation. Also, both variants have the same effectiveness because having a telescopic sight is irrelevant, most zed encounters are at close range.



It's a better version of the Winchester 1892 because it has a decently fast reload speed and a tolerable rate of fire due to the lack of a lever action animation, even though it has less than half the mag size (it also reloads all 6 rounds at the same time).

It uses the same ammo, thus it retains the ability to get collaterals and destroy breakables and it's also relatively light, which gives you more total ammo and more inventory flexibility. Another advantage worth mentioning is that you can equip a Maglite with it, which comes in handy in some maps with limited lighting. This is still a subpar weapon though, so replace it with a better one as soon as possible.



The Super X3 fairs much better in the list compared to both sniper rifles and all other shotguns, mainly because it has infinite rate of fire, giving you superior spam against Runners.

It still retains all the drawbacks of its class (slow reload, small mag size, bad accuracy, inconsistent damage), but the rate of fire compensates all that to a tolerable degree.

It does have the worst accuracy values in the game though, and this leads to an even more inconsistent damage output, however the rate of fire still compensates that somewhat.



I find it difficult to determine where to place the Ruger 1022 in this category, because you can easily make the argument that the S&W Revolver is better because of the higher damage, collaterals and the lighter weight or that the Super X3 is better because of the 1-headshot-kill caliber. What I do know is that this weapon is definitely subpar.

It has a miserable 5 Shambler / Runner kill count per magazine (10+1 rounds) due to its low damage and it's also heavy for what it offers, limiting your inventory flexibility. However, I do think that it's slightly better than the S&W because it has infinite rate of fire, allowing you to spam shots when necessary, which significantly increases your survival chance against Runners (even if that spam cannot be sustained for very long at all). I also think it's better than the Super X3 because it's magazine-fed, therefore it has a significantly faster reload, reducing the chance to get caught empty by Runners.

In this category, I will place the firearms that give much more significant advantages to the player compared to the subpar category. However, they still suffer from a few shortcomings that reduce their effectiveness against Runners, placing them one tier below the best possible firearms the game has to offer.

This category will feature several handguns because of their inventory flexibility due to their small weight and the ability to equip a Maglite, but these use calibers that are 2-headshot-kills on Runners and Shamblers, reducing their effectiveness drastically compared to the next tier.



The Ruger could be considered a subpar weapon as it only has a maximum of 5 Shambler / Runner kills per magazine (10+1 rounds) since it's a 2-headshot-kill.

However, it lands on this tier because of its low weight, giving you a lot of inventory flexibility to comfortably use heavy melee weapons (Fireaxe, Pickaxe or Sledge). It also has infinite rate of fire.

Do keep in mind though that its ability to spam kill is very limited due to its low damage and very small magazine size. It's better than the Ruger 1022 as it is exactly the same weapon but much lighter and it gives you the ability to equip a Maglite with it, which is useful in map sections with limited lighting.



This weapon is as good as the Ruger Mk III, but it has different pros and cons. Both have the same damage and infinite rate of fire, but this one has double the magazine size, increasing its max kill count to 13 Shamblers / Runners per magazine (25+1 rounds).

So, in terms of pure effectiveness, this weapon is better, but since it's heavier, the Ruger Mk III still allows for a much better inventory flexibility, giving it its niche use as a heavy melee sidearm. Your choice of melee weapon will determine which one of the two you'll prioritize first, but if you do prefer the Machete instead of heavy melee, definitely pick this 1022 variant instead of the Ruger Mark III.



Essentially the same weapon as the Ruger 1022 with Extended Mag. It has a higher mag size of 30+1, giving it a slightly higher max kill count of 15 but it's also heavier, so the total amount of ammo you can carry is basically the same.



The SKS lands above the MP5A3 mainly because of the higher damage that gets you a one headshot kill, even though it's heavier (you should pair it with the Machete instead of heavy melee) and it has a smaller mag size of 10 vs 30+1.

Even though the max Shambler / Runner kill count per magazine is lower than the MP5A3 (10 vs 15), it has better consistency because of the one headshot kill damage. It doesn't land higher on the list because of the relatively small magazine size compared to the top tier weapons and it has a pretty slow reload animation.



Obviously it's the same weapon but with the addition of an integrated melee weapon of sorts. The bayonet has the potential to be extremely useful, but unfortunately, its hit detection is inconsistent, leading to missed shoves or missing the one hit kill that it originally had back in 2015 when it broke.

However, it can save you in some situations when you run out of ammo and you're surrounded by Shamblers without a decent melee weapon for example. Beware that since the bayonet is counted as a shove, it drains the same amount of stamina, which is higher than a Machete's quick attack for example and it also has a noticeably longer delay (which can be skipped via the Shove Cooldown Cancel exploit). So, it's up to you to decide whether you prefer this version or the one without the bayonet, as it significantly affects the shoving mechanic when using it.



In essence, it's the same as the Ruger Mk III, same damage and weight (great inventory flexibility to carry heavy melee), infinite rate of fire, but it's even better because of the max 8 Shambler / Runner kills per mag (15+1 rounds).

It also lands above both SKSs even though it has a two headshot kill caliber because of its small weight, giving you great inventory flexibility and making it a great sidearm for heavy melee. Also, Maglite equipping is a plus.

Leaving pure effectiveness aside, 9mm ammo is also more commonly found as it's randomly dropped by killed National Guard zombies, which can surprisingly save you sometimes when you're in a tight spot.



Essentially the same as the Beretta M92FS, but slightly better due to the bigger magazine size, giving it a max 9 Shambler / Runner kills per mag (17+1 rounds).

Both the Glock 17 and the Beretta are more effective than the MP5A3 because of their smaller weight (more inventory flexibility with heavy melee and you can carry more total ammo), a much faster reload and Maglite equipping. The bigger mag size on the MP5A3 doesn't compensate all of these factors.



The MAC-10 is the best weapon in the average tier, as it almost has it all: a 30 round mag with a 1-headshot-kill caliber (30 max Shambler / Runner kill count per mag which is significantly higher than previous weapons) and an infinite rate of fire (it's great at spam firing).

The glaring issue is that it's automatic fire ONLY, there's no semi auto switch. Therefore, it's very difficult to fire controlled bursts of single shots and not waste ammo. You have to barely graze the M1 button to fire 1 or 2 shots at a time, which eventually gets annoying at least for my preference. So, the effective max kill count will be lower than 30 because of this, but if you master tap firing it, you will get very close to that amount.

The weapons that land in this category have the best stats possible, making them the most effective at dealing with Runners. They all use one-headshot-kill calibers and have other very useful stats, such as infinte rate of fire, high magazine capacity or low weight for increased inventory flexibility.

These will increase your survival chance a lot more than any of the previous firearms listed here and you should totally prioritize picking them before any other alternatives, if your choice of melee weapon and ammo availability make them viable in your current situation obviously.



The Colt 1911 is a great weapon by itself. It has high damage for a pistol (one-headshot-kill), a relatively fast rate of fire (not infinite, but fast nonetheless), a decent reload speed and it's also very light, which means that you can carry a lot of ammo like the other pistols (which is exceptionally good for a weapon with one-headshot-kill damage) or combine it with a heavy melee (Fire Axe, Pickaxe or Sledge).

And as a bonus, you can equip the Maglite with it in case the map favors its use. The only disadvantage is that it has a small magazine size of 7+1, which gives you a total of 8 Shambler / Runner kills per mag. It doesn't land further down the list because even though you have the flexibility to use it with heavy melee, the Machete is still the best melee weapon in the game on Classic difficulty, therefore the next three firearms pair better with it due to them having better overall stats. If your playstyle does favor heavy melee over the Machete, then the Colt 1911 is the best firearm in the game without question.



The FN-FAL is next as it has better stats in the most important areas: a max 21 Shambler / Runner kills per mag (20+1 rounds) and infinite rate of fire (much better overall spam). The only big disadvantage is that it's much heavier, which limits your inventory flexibility and reduces your max total ammo. But, as mentioned previously, this is not a big issue because the Machete exists.

Also, since it uses .308 ammo which has penetration, you can get collateral kills and destroy breakables to open up secret stashes or shortcuts. As a side note, .308 ammo tends to be relatively rare in most maps. This doesn't affect the weapon's effectiveness, but it's something to keep in mind, because if you can't find enough ammo for it, the weapon will be useless as I explained in the beginning of the Weapons: Firearms section.



The CZ in essence it's the same weapon as the FN-FAL but it's slightly lighter in weight (meaning more total ammo), it has a faster reload and a noticeably bigger magazine capacity (30+1), which also leads to more total ammo and a better overall spam.

Also, 7.62x39 mm ammo spawns a bit more frequently than .308. It's almost the best weapon in the game, second only to the M16A4 by very small number differences. It loses the penetration that the .308 ammo grants the FN-FAL, but that is only a small advantage compared to the other improved stats.



The M16A4 is the best firearm in the game but it's only slightly better than the CZ, they are extremely similar. The only differences are that the M16A4 has a faster reload and that 5.56x45 mm ammo occasionally drops from National Guard zombies when killed, making it more common than the previous two calibers.

This is independent from pure weapon effectiveness like I explained previously, but in practice, it makes the M16A4 more viable in general. They are almost the same though, so there's no need to grow fond of one or the other, the map's RNG will determine which one will be the better choice during the round.

Throwables are neat little combat tools that can occasionally save your life. Their use is not strictly necessary, except in very few cases, but they do come in handy often.

They can be used in specific situations where there's a considerable amount of zombies all bunched up together. Taking out these massive groups can take a very long time via melee (or consume a lot of ammo if using firearms) and it can be potentially lethal if there's many Runners in them.

A single throwable can solve all of that with much less risk involved for all players if they know when and how to use them, and how to coordinate to avoid potential deaths.

There's 3 types of throwables:

• Grenade
  
• TNT
  
• Molotov

The weakest throwable of the three. It has a very small blast radius and poor damage overall, which is why its only proper use is clearing small groups of bunched up Shamblers. Their only advantage is that they are more abundant, as they are dropped randomly by National Guard zombies when killed.

All zed types will die to the explosion if they are close enough to the center. If they are even moderately far away from it, they will receive damage but won't die (they will be shoved away). As a player though, if you're standing inside the blast radius, you will almost always die to the explosion even at 100 HP. Only standing at the very edge of the radius can save you, which never happens naturally during regular gameplay unless you get lucky.

Because of the weak damage, small radius, and also your character's extreme throw force that can cause the grenade to bounce off unpredictably, the best way to maximize its effectiveness is to: Get close to the group of Shamblers you want to kill so they become even more compacted ➜ Stand still and throw the grenade at your feet ➜ Sprint away from the blast radius in a straight line holding W + Shift.

When doing this, you can control exactly where the grenade lands as it won't bounce off and you'll also gather as many zeds as possible inside the kill radius. Don't worry, you'll always have enough time to escape the radius as long as you have decent stamina levels.

Since they are dropped by NG zeds rather frequently, grenades can be considered free quick Shambler kills, so use them constantly if it poses no danger to you or your teammates (remember that infected players are always susceptible to friendly fire damage; also, standing still to bunch up zeds will leave you vulnerable against Runners, so make sure the area is clear of them first). They will allow you to save some time or ammo by clearing small Shambler hordes in problematic chokepoints and such.


It's mechanically identical to the grenade, but infinitely more effective, as it boasts an insanely large blast radius and excessive damage. It will kill basically any zombie standing inside the radius except at the very edges. In the case of players, anyone standing inside the radius will die no matter what, as the damage is high enough at the edges that it can kill you at 100 HP.

Compared to the grenade, the TNT has a much larger radius, thus you should NEVER throw it at your feet because you won't be able to escape the radius fast enough. Throw it at the horde you want to take out from afar. This will keep you safely outside the blast and the collision of the item itself prevents it from ricocheting or sliding off target too much, compared to a grenade.


The Molotov is also a very effective throwable. Instead of causing a high damage explosion, it can ignite zeds and deals DOT (Damage Over Time) inside its radius. Detonating it on flat ground will leave a flaming puddle behind which deals significant damage (both to zeds and friendly fire) and continues to ignite zombies for a long time after the detonation.

If it's thrown on a wall or similar surface instead, the puddle won't form and only the zombies inside the initial detonation radius will ignite, thus try to throw it at the ground whenever possible.

The DOT itself is not too relevant, as any burning zombie will eventually die, but it does help in killing zeds trapped inside the fire's radius much quicker, so there's less chances that one will suddenly start sprinting at you.




In nmo_cleopas, there's an alley that survivors have to go through to reach the mall at the end. The problem is that it's completely packed with Shamblers and Runners and it's necessary to take them all out to progress. Using melee takes a very long time and using firearms would require a lot of ammo. With a single throwable you can cut down the total number of zeds by a considerable amount.

You can first open the metal gate and close it again quickly, so that all zombies are able to see you and target you. This will force them to clump up next to the gate for a more effective kill if you wait a few seconds for them to move. You can then throw a Molotov next to the gate without having to open it and it will burn and kill all zombies inside the radius. Keeping the gate close ensures that you won't get randomly chased by Shamblers that started to sprint. If you instead have a TNT, you should first open the gate first as it can block the explosion.

So, as a general rule of thumb, this should always be on your mind when you're about to use a Molotov: Try to use it in areas where zombies can get stuck or where they can't follow you in case some start sprinting to prevent potential deaths (the alley fence gate in nmo_cleopas is a perfect example, as the Molotov deals damage through it, but zombies can't open it). If this is not the case but you still need to use a Molotov, coordinating with your teammates to position themselves correctly to avoid attacks from burning sprinting zeds is very important.

Another example is the supermarket next to the basketball court in nmo_broadway2. The side entrance it absolutely packed with Runners and Zombie Children, thus using a Molotov or TNT effectively in that scenario is almost mandatory to survive and continue progressing through the map. Wait for the gas can to blow the side door open, light the fuse on your throwable, sprint to get close to the doorway and throw it as close to the zed mass as possible. Note that Molotovs are the only throwable that have a 100% chance to spawn in that map, as there are fixed spawns in a few locations, like next to the bench to the right of the cinema's entrance.

Tools are select items in NMRiH that have niche gameplay mechanics and uses. Some of these include things like completing objectives and unlocking hidden resources.

They can be used as weapons but all of them are subpar at that (check the "Weapons: Melee" section for more info). In general, none of them are worth keeping in your inventory, unless you have some free space or the map you are playing heavily favors their use throughout, such as prominent dark areas.



The most generally useful tool in the game, as it can light up dark areas for you and your team. It's got a long range, allowing you to see threats from afar, especially Runners in dark cramped corridors. This prevents surprise attacks and lets you engage in melee combat comfortably in these areas. You can equip by itself and turn it on with Right Click, or you can equip it with most one-handed weapons by pressing the F key.

A small caveat is that using animation cancelling techniques such as Shove Cooldown Cancel (check the "Movement: Advanced Techniques" section) will force you to constantly switch the Maglite back on, as it turns off when holstered.

You can use it as a weapon, but it's subpar at that (extremely low overall damage, charge time needed to reach the crucial Shambler breakpoint is exceedingly long and the effective range is tiny). Check the "Weapons: Melee" section to see how I rate melee weapons based on specific factors.



It's essentially an inferior version of the Maglite in every way. It can't be used in tandem with weapons, you can't sprint without it extinguishing, lighting it up is inconsistent and it only lasts for 60 seconds. Even though players have it by default and it doesn't use inventory space, it's not worth using it. You should only do so when you desperately need to see in the dark and don't have a Maglite. This can happen in a few maps where Maglite spawns are limited or when lights suddenly go out (nmo_khafre).


Its most prominent use is calling an extra supply drop when playing in Survival maps (more info in the "Survival Mode: General Info" section). However, it does feature a couple of niche uses, such as igniting groups of zeds, as well as custom zombies with extreme health pools that function as final bosses to some custom maps (nmo_khafre, nmo_ravenholm, nmo_miner_detour and others).

You should treat it as a ranged but less effective Molotov instead of a firearm due to the generally very limited ammo spawns. Thus, you should be very careful when using it as you can get yourself and your teammates killed in some cases. Check the "Weapons: Throwables" section to learn the best ways to use Molotovs and apply them to the Flaregun if you have to use it in combat (which really shouldn't be common).

In general, try to ignite zeds that are trapped behind a wall or gate so that if some of them start sprinting, they won't be able to reach you (crowded alley in nmo_cleopas). Never shoot around teammates unless its absolutely necessary, as some might be infected and will end up dead. Also, if you shoot it too close to a zombie, the self damage is SO high that it will probably kill you if your HP is not at high levels (flares now phase through non-infected players at least).


Its most common use is completing objectives in NMO maps, such as welding locks, barricades, fixing equipment, starting fires, etc.). Pressing Right Click will start the welding, while also looking at the interactable object.

In general, you shouldn't keep a Welder in your inventory. Only do so when the map favors its use extensively, such as in nmo_broadway2, which features several objectives where you need to weld entrances to progress. It's also useful to keep it if the map has several hidden stashes only accessible via welding, such as nmo_suzhou or nmo_anxiety_classic.

Otherwise, once you're done with it, discard it immediately, as it eats up your inventory space and it's a subpar weapon (low damage, long charge time needed to reach the one-hit-kill Shambler breakpoint, short effective range). Check the "Weapons: Melee" section to see how I rate melee weapons based on specific factors.

The Welder also has a handy exploit that you can use: while welding you are very vulnerable, as you can't move or attack. However, you can still shove, thus if a zed comes close, you can angle your camera to point at it without turning so much that the welding stops and then continuously shove to keep the zombie at bay until the welding is done.



It has the same uses as a Welder, such as completing objectives (puts out fires instead) and unlocking secret stashes (like in nmo_suzhou, or nmo_vertigo), but it uses much more inventory space. Pressing Right Click will bring up the hose, then holding Left Click will start the spray. It's also a subpar weapon like the Welder, so discard it quickly unless you really need to unlock a weapon stash somewhere.


It's used mainly in NMS maps to barricade entrances that lead into safe zones (more info in the "Survival Mode: General Info" section). Some NMO maps do make use of the barricade system for defensive purposes, such as nmo_shelter's finale, or to access stashes like the hidden Chainsaw in nmo_suzhou. It uses wooden boards as "ammo" and you activate the barricading mode with Right Click. It's also a subpar weapon, so avoid using it as such.


This item simply enables Alltalk mode between the players that have one in their inventory, that's it. You'll find more info about this in the next section.

Here's a list of all the gamemodes and modifiers present in NMRiH. Note that I won't be including any info about custom difficulty modifications, modded gameplay or similar. Also, the unofficial PvP mode won't be covered in this guide.



You and the other survivors must escape your current hideout and progress through a multitude of zombie-infested environments in hopes of getting extracted out of the hellhole you are in. In order to do this, you must complete a series of objectives to eventually call for a rescue. The meat and potatoes of NMRiH, by far the most complex and demanding gamemode. I will explain in further detail in the following sections.

You and the other survivors are tasked with defending a zombie-infested area to help the National Guard in minimizing infection spread. As a reward, the military offers you a safe extraction to infection-free zones. A somewhat repetitive and basic gamemode in my opinion. It lacks complexity and diversity, but useful for learning and practicing your melee combat skills. I will explain in further detail in the following sections.




This difficulty completely lacks any form challenge. The reason for this is simple: infinite respawning, basically having no penalty for dying or doing stupid things. Here are the individual stats:

- Infinite respawning: Players can respawn infinitely during the course of a match
- Proximity-based Spawning: Every time you die, you respawn near your teammates
- Joining players can spawn regardless of map progress
- Players spawn with a random melee weapon
- Respawn tokens available in Objective mode: these are like "extra lives" (more info later)
- Afflictions like bleeding or infection are removed after a wave finishes in Survival mode



The default game difficulty. This mode will be the main focus of this guide, and it will be the base on which you will learn the game mechanics before moving on to Nightmare. Here are the changes compared to Casual:

- No Proximity Based Spawning
- No infinite respawns
- No starting melee weapon
- No respawning near your teammates, only in scripted respawn points in specific locations
- No respawn tokens in Objective mode, only available in Survival mode
- No affliction removal after a wave is finished in Survival mode
- Players earn a respawn token after 40 consecutive zed kills without dying in Survival mode
- Players only respawn if certain objectives are completed, which activate scripted respawns
- Late joiners cannot spawn until live players reach a scripted respawn point


The toughest challenge available in the game. To consistently survive on this difficulty, you need to master most of the techniques in the game, as well as being versatile enough to vary your playstyle and strategies in a moment's notice. It's a constant balance of slowly killing zombies, rushing through hordes suicidal-style, melee combat and proper firearm use. Combat mechanics change noticeably and mistakes are not tolerated. The changes compared to Classic are as follows:

- Overall zombie count increased by 50% in Objective mode
- Base zombie health increased from 500 HP to 1000 HP
- Bite infection chance increased to roughly 75% at full health
- Disabled token respawning in Survival mode
- Disabled player names
- Friendly fire increased by 50%
- Brain Stem functionality enabled


I will discuss effective strategies and gameplay changes on this difficulty in the "Nightmare: Differences in Strategy" section near the end of the guide.




This modifier makes several changes regardless of what difficulty is chosen. It can potentially make the gameplay harder or easier, depending on individual player skill, amount of players, map being played, gamemode and difficulty:

- Objective mode respawns disabled completely
- Survival wave start respawns disabled (scripted respawns on supply drops are unaffected)
- Any firearm will kill all zombie types with one headshot, regardless of what caliber it uses
- Bodyshots have no effect on zed HP, only headshots (Crawlers aren't affected by this)
- The brain stem hitbox on Nightmare is overriden, any shot to the head will kill instantly


This modifier only affects Survival mode. It removes all visual info and HUD elements typical of Survival maps: zone health, wave number, zombie counter, respawn token logos when obtained, wave start and wave end messages. Players are forced to interpret sound queues to know what is going on during the course of the match, like safe zones reaching 0% integrity, waves starting and ending, etc. More info on this shortly.


On default server settings, players can communicate via microphone or chat, but that communication only works when they are within a certain radius from each other. The closer you are to your teammate, the louder their voice will sound, similar to other popular games like DayZ.

The chat on the other hand, becomes invisible once you are sufficiently far away from a teammate.

You can use this screenshot as a reference for this maximum distance (expand it to see it properly). It's nmo_chinatown's spawn point. Additionally, dead players cannot communicate with others that are still alive at all, no chat, no microphone. They can only talk to other dead players.

Alltalk mode, like in any other Source game, removes all these restrictions. Players will be able to talk to each other through any means, all the time. This makes the gameplay easier since spectators can tell you how much health you have, tell you which way to go, or warn you about Runners chasing you, for example.

When you are alive and Alltalk is disabled, the only way to talk to teammates that are far away is to use a Walkie-Talkie, a tool you can find scattered around in most maps. When you both have one, Alltalk is enabled between you two. Any other player that finds a Walkie-Talkie will be able to communicate with you in the exact same way.

Objective maps place the survivors in urban, industrial or rural environments where they must complete certain scripted tasks in order to be rescued.

These tasks vary between maps, but they are generally actions like finding a key to unlock a door, destroying a padlock to open a fence gate, welding structures to create passages, finding fuel for electricity generators, using explosives to blow up doors, etc.

These all lead up to a final objective that unlocks the escape route and are generally accompanied by an in-game cinematic.

The survivors will escape in vehicles like helicopters, boats, vans, trucks, trains, subways, and more. These are available for a brief period of time, so you have to be quick but also careful and help others escape as well. Being reckless during finales can get you and other players killed if you only care for your own survival.



Some objectives are basically an in-game timer that forces you to wait while it's counting down. Examples of this are "Survive for 2 minutes." objective on nmo_broadway2 or the final evac center holdout on nmo_suzhou. They are usually found at the end of most maps as a way to hold out a certain area before evac arrives.


These are very simple. Simply walk up to the item and press the E key once. They are generally radios that are used to ask for evac, as well as buttons that activate doors or other mechanisms.


This kind of objectives revolves around a single player standing still and performing an action like activating a panel by holding the E key, welding a door or lock, extinguishing a fire. When you start one of these objectives, you'll see a red bar that shows the progress. While you are in this state you are very vulnerable due to the fact that you can't move, can't look very far away from the item you are interacting with and you can't attack. However, there's a small exploit that you can use to give you some form of defense against zombies while you are welding something. It will be discussed in the "Items: Tools" section.

Some objective progress bars reset after you stop your interaction, while others keep it intact, letting you resume from where you left off. Generally, putting out fires and normal use key interactions reset, while welder objectives tend to save your progress. This depends completely on the map you are playing, for example, nmo_fema has both a use key interaction that resets when you let go and another one that saves your progress.


Pretty straightforward: find a code somewhere in the level and enter it on the designated keypad. Code selection is generally determined by map randomness, you must either memorize all variations, or know where to find the random code. Sometimes, there are very few codes, so you can memorize them (nmo_broadway) or even a single code, while other times there's a huge list (nmo_fema), so it's way faster to just look for the code as intended. While you are interacting with the keypad, you are completely vulnerable, you cannot perform any actions at all. If you feel threatened, press the ENTER key to cancel the keypad interaction. You can also input codes faster if you have a numpad on your keyboard.


These are probably the most common type of objectives, they generally revolve around scavenging several props at the same time and taking them to the main objective trigger. Examples of this are: finding a fuel can for a generator (nmo_chinatown), finding 3 fuse boxes to repair an electric panel (nmo_subside) or scavenging the components of an improvised radio for you to call for a rescue (nmo_cleopas).

These are the objectives that reward player cooperation the most. The reason for this is that usually more than one item is required to complete a section, meaning that several players can carry them all at the same time while others cover them with firearms, killing zombies that block the path to the main objective. This category of objectives gives way to several advanced techniques that allow you to seamlessly move through zombie hordes while carrying items. These will be explained later on the "Movement: Carrying Objective Items" section.


These are objectives that don't fall into any of the previous categories and are generally present in custom maps, where community mappers wanted to experiment with unconventional ways to make objectives. For example, in nmo_genex, one objective consists of killing a Runner that's carrying an access keycard needed to progress.



Most official maps have objective variations, a.k.a. "anti-objectives". When a map starts, the game decides at random which objective chain will be played if there are at least two options available. Note that in every objective that's chosen by the game there can still be randomness involved, like the location of an objective item that you have to retrieve.

Depending on the map's programming, you can get things like nmo_suzhou with several different branching paths leading to a huge amount of possible outcomes, or like nmo_in_the_dark where you can get two alternative branching paths at the beginning (going through the streets or traversing through the underground tunnels). Some maps lack this randomness almost entirely, like nmo_chinatown or nmo_junction.

You can't force or manipulate RNG in this case. The map decides what you're going to get, therefore, you need to adapt and act accordingly. As a general rule, custom maps tend to have less RNG in them, since creating these variations takes a lot of effort and time. This is not always the case though, nmo_ravenholm for example, has a surprising amount of randomness built in. Additionally, most custom maps are difficult to complete, compensating that lack of variation.

A huge part of learning to play this game, is memorizing map layouts, tricks, strategies and objective randomness, because a huge chunk of the challenge are the levels themselves instead of the zombies. The focus of this section though is just the general principles of Objective mode, you'll have to memorize all the maps by playing them repeatedly, learning from your mistakes and trying different strategies on how to complete them consistently. I will detail many things that generally you should learn and memorize about any map you play, so that you increase your chances of survival. You can find this info in the "Learning the Maps: Memorization" section.


In Objective mode, players can only respawn in fixed locations specific to each map. Those spawns are scripted to happen once the survivors complete a specific objective or physically reach a certain location.

The amount of respawn points is variable, it depends entirely on the map being played. In general though, they range from 1 to 3, while some exceptions may have more than 3 or even no respawns at all. If Realism mode is enabled, then all scripted respawns will be disabled completely. Survival mode differs slightly from this, which I will explain shortly.

In NMRiH, maps are usually drastically different from each other. They do not necessarily share the same mechanics, the same zombie spawn systems, the same objective types, etc. However, these are important strategies that you should always have in mind when playing Objective mode, because most maps worth playing are built with the same principles in mind:


On the vast majority of objective maps, shamblers will respawn infinitely. They spawn from invisible "brushes" placed around the level. When players eliminate enough of them and walk far enough away (plus avoid looking in that direction), the brush will re-spawn more zombies to keep the density up. Generally, less zombies re-appear after the initial spawn is dealt with, but most hard custom maps are designed to keep a high density of Shamblers regardless of what people do.

What does this mean for the player? Simple: avoid killing zombies that you don't need to kill. No matter how hard you try, zombies will keep respawning, it's unavoidable. It's useless to stand around fragging, you waste ammo and you can potentially get infected or killed by simply engaging with a lot of zombies via melee. You need to focus on completing the objectives, there is no point to NMO matches other than escaping.

The best you can do, aside from actually progressing, is delay the spawns by standing on top of a spawner or brush and keeping an eye on the ones nearby, effectively blocking them. This is a useful technique on some maps like nmo_underground.


It will help you understand what you have to do to progress, as well as help you find your bearings and provide situational awareness, like the general direction you should move towards, which areas don't contain objective items so they can be avoided and what type of objective you're dealing with. For example, if you know that you have to weld something, you should preemptively look for a Welder before you reach the objective. Keep in mind the info explained in the "Heads Up Display (HUD)" section.


When going into a new area, always be on the lookout for Runners and Kids. While dealing with the zombies close to you, always keep your peripheral view centered on chokepoints and obstacles. Hidden Runners may come out and attack you while you are distracted, so you have to be able to multitask: learn the melee combat mechanics well enough so that you can automatically kill zombies while your attention is centered on spotting Runners and Kids at a distance, plus keeping an eye on chokepoints to determine when's the right time to run through them.

However, don't go rushing through chokepoints as fast as possible unless there's a clear window of opportunity or if you are confident enough that Runners won't block you and murder you. You also need to consider that if you want to rush through, there must be enough space to dodge Runners and kill them safely once you run past the chokepoint itself. If there's not enough room, you can get overwhelmed by groups of Runners and you'll die in seconds. Examples of this are the apartments and tunnels in nmo_in_the_dark or the warehouse area where you find a Welder in nmo_junction.


Apart from being able to spot them at a distance, you can also determine if if there are Runners or Zombie Children near you by listening to their sounds. You can hear distinctive growls and noises that are unique to each of them. Kids obviously have their unique voices, and in the case of Runners, you can determine their presence if you hear a loud growl. This means that the Runner has spotted you and has started chasing you.

Additionally, Runners sometimes stand around idling and you can't distinguish them from Shamblers visually, but if you listen carefully, you will be able to tell them apart by their idle sounds. Runners emit more aggressive noises and growls, while Shamblers usually sound like they're in a slumber.


After locating all Runners / Zombie Children like it was explained previously, you should try to force them to follow you. Zombies will target players by line of sight and proximity, which you can abuse to get them to move away from bigger hordes and attack them individually, avoiding massive Runner conga lines.

Alternatively, if the place from which you enter the new section is not secure enough to be drawing Runners into (like Shamblers re-spawning behind you in the narrow subway hallways of nmo_anxiety_classic or the tunnels in nmo_underground or even the tight alleyway in nmo_urbanhazard) you can rush through if you know the map layout. You can then gather most Runners in a conga line behind your back and kill them if you know how and have the necessary equipment, a.k.a. a firearm or a good enough melee weapon. However, doing this on Nightmare difficulty is much more risky, try to avoid it if you can. Check the "Nightmare: Differences in Strategy" section for more info.

Also, if you're NOT going to stay for long in a particular section, it's sometimes better to only kill the Runners that are directly chasing you, and then move on to the next section, even if you didn't kill all of them. This is valid only if you don't have to backtrack to that same section later.


The longer you take to complete objectives, the more zombies you'll have to kill or dodge, you'll have a higher chance to get cornered and you'll waste an excessive amount of ammunition, decreasing your chances of survival. Divide tasks within your team, look for multiple objective items at once in different groups, protect people carrying them, coordinate to kill the necessary zombies to move through a chokepoint, etc. Don't go overboard though, rushing maniacally without a plan or knowledge of what lies ahead just to speedrun the map will get you killed.


Unless you know the map very well and you are experienced enough, it's advisable to stick with your team at all times. This means not getting distracted while scavenging for weapons / ammo, which is probably the most common reason why players get lost. However, if you do need to scavenge for supplies, then pay attention to what direction the team is moving towards so you can catch up to them after looting.


Like it was mentioned earlier, the factor that affects NMRiH's difficulty the most, is the map you are playing in. As a general rule, official vanilla maps (the ones released before 2018) are trivial to complete once you've mastered the basics, while most custom maps are very difficult and demand a lot of skill, knowledge and practice from the player. Therefore, memorizing map layouts, objectives, items spawns, zombie spawns and more is fundamental if you want to survive consistently. You'll find more info on how to better learn any map in the game in the "Learning the Maps: Memorization" section.

Survival mode places the players in large non-linear environments where they must aid the National Guard in reducing the infected presence in areas designated as "safe zones" and protect them for other survivors to regroup and wait for evac in the future. As a reward, they will be extracted to infection-free areas. However these "safe zones" are actually being used as zombie baits to reduce their numbers in metropolitan areas. This is to give the National Guard some time to safely evacuate the remaining survivors in the cities.

What this means in terms of gameplay is: killing most of the zombies in each wave and defending the marked areas or zones from being overrun until rescue arrives. Several unique gameplay mechanics are introduced in this mode. Some of them are used as a defense against the horde, while others are used as a tool for survivors to re-supply:


These are scripted events that cause zombies to spawn and move towards all safe zones. They start off light, with zed numbers ranging from 20 to 50 and they gradually get higher, sometimes up to around 200 zombies while also adding Runner and Zombie Children spawns.

Once there's 5 zombies or less spawned during a wave, a 10 second timer will signal the start of the next wave. After that, you have around 30 seconds before more zombies start spawning. All official maps have between 9 and 10 waves in total (except nms_drugstore which has 7), while custom maps can have more.

The number of completed waves and the amount of zombies remaining will be shown via HUD elements on the top left of your screen. This is the same for safe zone integrity as well.


These are areas that need to be defended against zombies. Each one has an integrity meter visible on the top left of your screen (if you are playing with Hardcore Survival enabled, these meters are hidden). Official Survival maps have between 1 and 3 zones in total, while custom maps can have more.

When zombies enter a zone and no players are present, its integrity will start to decrease from 100%. The more zombies enter the zone, the faster the integrity will decrease. The initial rate is 0,15% integrity per second per zombie present up to a maximum of 1% per second (more than 7 zombies won't reduce the integrity faster).

To defend a zone, players need to stand inside the boundaries that define it (like inside a particular building for example). If there are less than 12 zombies inside, only 1 player is needed to stop the integrity from decreasing. If there's more zeds, a minimum of 2 players are needed. However, most of the time 2 players are more than enough.

If a safe zone reaches 0% integrity, zombies will no longer target it and they'll move directly to the remaining active zones. The only way to repair a zone in this situation is waiting for a supply drop, which will increase the integrity up to 50% and will allow you to repair it again using FEMA bags.


These are green duffel bags that can be found in wooden boxes marked with glowsticks. To take one out, simply hold the E key until the meter fills up.

These bags can restore 25% integrity of any safe zone in the map. To use them, simply grab them and walk inside the zone you want to repair. The bag will disappear and you'll see the safe zone integrity go up coupled with green numbers as a confirmation of the increase.

Do note that once a zone reaches 0% integrity, you can no longer increase it via FEMA bags until a scripted supply drop appears after a wave. This will revive the zone with 50% integrity, allowing you to heal it back up to 100% with the bags. Try not to waste them, wait until a particular zone is at least below 75% integrity.


You can block doorways and passages using wooden boards found in the levels. They need to be placed with the Barricade Hammer tool. First equip said tool (you need wooden boards which count as ammo for the hammer), press Right Click to enter the barricading mode, then press Left Click near the transparent board overlay to place a barricade.

These barricades prevent zombies from entering the zones before they are destroyed. Zombies that stand near them can either start an animation where they bang their fists against the boards, or they can also damage them by playing the same attack animations used against players. Note that the first one doesn't inflict any damage to the boards.


These are red wooden boxes that spawn in fixed locations in each map. They restore HP if you hold the E key on them until they run out.

They need to be taken to specific spots known as "Health Station Locations" which look exactly like the Health Station itself, only transparent.

These are generally found inside each zone and can only be used once.

After the Health Station's capacity is fully drained, it disappears and you cannon replace it with another one, you need to use another slot in a different zone.

There's more info in the "Health Items: Efficient Use" section.

These items look like a bundle of ammo and weapon boxes tied together with cords. They are dropped by the National Guard every few rounds in Survival and contain resources.

They can have almost every item in the game, except Welders, Flareguns and Extinguishers.

The amount of supply drops delivered depends entirely on the map played. When one is dropped, a 60 second timer will begin, which delays the proper start of the next wave so that players have time to loot its content. Once a new supply drop is delivered, the previous one will disappear if players haven't emptied it already.


If you shoot a flare into the sky, a chopper will arrive and deliver a supply drop, independently of the scripted ones that drop after the end of some waves. Only one supply drop per round can be called via this method, and you need to have emptied any old supply drop still present in the map before shooting the flare. As long as there is still a supply crate present in the level, flare signaling will not work.


Most Survival maps have traps set up in various locations. These range from electrified water puddles, explosive barrels, gas leaks used as flamethrowers, etc. They can generally be used only once, meaning that you have to manage them carefully. Some of them are re-usable, like the electric trap on nms_notld which can be re-used by re-fueling a generator.


Like in Objective mode, there are scripted player respawns that trigger after specific events. In this case, after each wave is completed and the next one starts, dead players will respawn in several locations around the map. If Realism mode is enabled, all of these scripted respawns will be disabled. However, there are also scripted respawns every time a supply drop is delivered, meaning that even though Realism is ON, players will still be able to respawn after each supply drop delivery.


These are essentially "extra lives" for players. Every 40 consecutive zombie kills (meaning not dying before you get 40 kills) you'll receive a respawn token. If you die while having one, you'll respawn automatically after 5 seconds at a random spawn point. You can check how many tokens you have in the scoreboard (hold the TAB key). When you get a token, a sound will play and a counter will appear briefly on the top right of your screen.


Almost every event in Survival maps has a specific sound effect once it happens. Examples are: a wave beginning or ending, reaching the endpoint of a wave (only 5 zombies remaining in the meter), placing a Health Station, earning a respawn token, a safe zone reaching 0% integrity, and others.

Sound queues are useful when playing with Hardcore Survival, which completely disables all HUD info that is normally displayed (0% zone integrity, zombie count, wave count, etc.). Learning each sound queue will let you know exactly what is happening and quickly make the correct decisions.


In Survival, infection chance is DOUBLED vs Objective (5,87% vs 2,93% base chance). This is why it's important to properly manage medical items so that they don't run out on a full team. The intention is for everyone to survive. There's more info about infection chances in the "Player Afflictions: Infection / Bleeding" section.

Survivial mode in itself is very straightforward, there's not too much complexity or depth involved when playing. Playing on Classic difficulty with a team is trivial, assuming the other players aren't completely useless. Playing them solo however, is much more difficult.

Some maps are challenging, like nms_camilla or nms_house_of_forester for example. These require proper coordination, but no new concepts need to be explained. If you are playing solo, then you do need to learn the map from top to bottom to know the location of all supplies, but that's pretty much it.

When playing on Nightmare, it's basically the same strategy, but you have to be overly conservative and careful with your resources and actions. You should check the section "Nightmare: Differences in Strategy" and that should be enough for most intent and purposes.

Here are a few general useful strategies to keep in mind when playing Survival:


After each wave is done, the game activates a player respawn. This means that you have around 8 or 9 respawns, allowing you to commit suicide if you are infected or at low HP, saving resources. Do keep in mind though that players won't respawn in this situation if Realism is ON. Also, some maps, like nms_campblood, won't respawn players when the last wave starts.


Since they each replenish 25% integrity, you should only use them when a zone is under 75%. If you don't, the bag will be used up and you lose the max amount of replenishable points. You can take all of them out of their respective boxes and place them near a zone for easy and quick access when you are in a pinch.


Traps are generally one-time-use resources, so you should definitely save them in case of an emergency (several players are killed mid-wave and you need to clutch) or to secure your escape if Runners start to spawn in heavy numbers after the last wave is complete, like nms_isolated. It can also be used to speed up the zombie-killing process in extreme cases where several players are infected and there's no more scripted respawns, tokens, Pills or Gene Therapy syringes.


This basically means that you should minimize the use medical items as long as there are scripted respawns remaining. If you can trust your teammates not to steal your items and leave you defenseless, you can use either your Respawn Tokens or scripted respawns to instantly go back up to full health and eliminate afflictions (infection and bleeding). If you can't, then start with Health Stations, save up your Medkits for later and try not to get killed.

You should use medical items freely if you need to kill large groups of zombies when your teammates fail to help you defend properly or if the entire team is getting overwhelmed. Start with Health Stations like I mentioned previously, since they're fixed in place. Use Medkits later because they can be carried in your inventory, making them more versatile. Same goes for Pills and Gene Therapy syringes, use them only in emergencies or during the last wave in case there's no more scripted respawns.


Barricades should be placed in crucial spots where zombies absolutely shouldn't get in. An example of this is the living room window in nms_isolated. If zombies get in through there, they can back survivors into a corner and cut off access to both zone B or C depending on where they are standing. If you are planning on using them on every possible entrance, then you should place only a couple of boards on the bottom to allow survivors to go in and out by jumping over them.

Barricades in general are not that useful if you know how to kill zombies efficiently, they become more of a safety net the majority of the time. Position yourself and your team in all critical entrances to the zones, use good melee weapons / firearms when necessary and that's it.


If you want to kill zombies behind a barricade, it's important to keep your distance because they can damage players through the boards. Therefore, you either have to use a firearm or you have to go to the other side of the barricade and kill them with a melee weapon. If you attack them directly through the boards via melee, there's a very high probability that you'll get severely wounded or killed.


Since your only goal is to kill zombies, of which there are many, using melee weapons is crucial to conserve ammo. Use what you saved up for Runners and Zombie Children, as well as for tricky escapes like in nms_silence, where you have Shamblers and Runners spawning very close to a tight chokepoint leading to the rescue truck. Check the Uninterrupted Shambler Killing technique in the "Combat: Basic Melee Mechanics" section. It can help you tremendously in Survival mode.


The amount of intact zones doesn't affect anything other than zombies moving directly to the remaining zones, resulting in a more aggressive siege. For this reason, you should decide which zones are strategically easier to defend. The ones that are inconvenient to defend should be left alone. All maps are different, so the strategy can vary.

On some maps however, there are scripted events that start once you lose a specific safe zone. For example, in the map nms_drugstore, there's an event that triggers if you lose zone C. The entire area will explode, catch fire and then collapse, closing off a very useful shortcut that connects 2 sections of the map. This will force the players to take a long detour to reach the same destination.


Like it was mentioned earlier, the factor that affects NMRiH's difficulty the most, is the map you are playing in. As a general rule, official vanilla maps (the ones released before 2018) are trivial to complete once you've mastered the basics, while most custom maps are very difficult and demand a lot of skill, knowledge and practice from the player.

Therefore, memorizing map layouts, objectives, items spawns, zombie spawns and more is fundamental if you want to survive consistently. You'll find more info on how to better learn any map in the game in the next section: "Learning the Maps: Memorization".

My original intention was to add a few sections where I discussed tricks and strategies related to each and every map in the game, both official and custom. However, I soon realized that such an endeavor would take forever to make and I would never bring myself to complete it.

Basically, I'm placing my trust in that this guide will give you all the tools you need to become a great player given enough time, to the point where you can easily learn all the maps by yourself without needing a specific tutorial on each one of them. Thus, I'll be explaining only a few general guidelines that you can follow to make that learning process more focused and less tedious:


This will let you have quick access to very useful items that might not be in plain sight, such as Machetes and other powerful melee, firearms, Pills, Medkits, ammo, etc. Also, by pre-emptively finding Welders or Extinguishers, you can skip the scavenge hunt needed to complete objectives that require their use, such as in nmo_suzhou which features several of them.


Since we've already agreed that Objective maps don't have any point to them other than getting extracted at the end, completing objectives quickly and consistently is key. Knowing what to do, where to go and what items to find in each level will increase your chances of success tenfold. Remember that most maps have objective variations that can vary drastically between them, so be sure to learn all of them.


On top of randomized objectives, one of them can have more randomness associated with it, like having to find a key that can spawn in 5 different locations or more. Learning all or at least most of the randomized spawns will improve your chances of success further.


Many maps feature keypads that unlock via specific codes found in the map. Several times, these codes are relatively well hidden or not properly marked, so finding them can be a frustrating chore. To avoid this, simply try to remember the codes if there's not too many of them per map.

For example, nmo_zephyr features a keypad at the start that uses three possible codes (7175, 2105, 9247), while other maps like nmo_fema have more than 10 random codes that you can access in a PC for a single keypad, making it inconvenient to learn all of them. In cases such as this one, just try to memorize where the codes actually are found. 9247 is a commonly used code in many custom maps, so try that one out first and you may get lucky.

If you are having serious trouble with a particular map, turn on cheats (input "sv_cheats 1" in your console) and input the "noclip" command to quickly look for them before you do a real attempt. In general when doing this, try to memorize code locations instead of the codes themselves, as that tends to ruin the challenge of these map sections. It also just becomes cumbersome to remember so many different codes. Memorizing unique map locations instead is much more intuitive.

However, if you do prefer a list of codes, there are several Steam guides that offer that. There is one that looked like it had extensive coverage of most commonly played maps, plus the author seems to update it frequently. Here's the link: https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2655035018
Again, to each their own but I personally dislike having to depend on an external guide as I'm actively completing a map. Therefore I prefer to rely on my own map knowledge or explore to find the codes if necessary.


In NMRiH, many escape sequences are very unforgiving to the player and vary wildly between maps. You can do everything right during the entire match to then fail because a helicopter could not wait for you for more than 40 seconds. This is why memorizing how each map deals with its extraction mechanics and points of no return is vital.

For example, nmo_broadway2 has 2 separate timers, one that tells you when a bomb will go off and kill all players, and then a regular extraction timer. The latter triggers first, so you have to complete the remaining objectives to unlock the extraction, before the bomb goes off. Then, after unlocking the extraction, you have 2 possible spots, a tram on top of the train tracks or a helicopter at the basketball court. The first one is trivial because it's very close to the location where the extraction timer is triggered, but the second one gives you a very tight time to reach it, plus you have to deal with respawning Shambler hordes that block your way. If you learn all of these different behaviors, you'll drastically improve your chances of survival.


Since Runners are the biggest threat when combined with a claustrophobic level geometry, learning where they spawn will help you a lot. All maps are made differently, but most of the ones that are considered well balanced, have heavy Runner spawns at fixed places but they won't respawn once they are killed. By learning these specific spots, you can plan out strategies on how to take them out efficiently and safely and also avoid getting bodyblocked when you are rushing through hordes.

In the case of Survival maps, it's useful to memorize the first wave in which Runners and Kids spawn. If you do, you can prepare accordingly by distributing high tier melee to most teammates, as well as firearms with enough ammo to deal with conga lines if they get to form.


Maps in NMRiH are pretty inconsistent with their environmental damage, which can occasionally screw you up with enough bad luck. Examples are: scripted explosions, fire, barbed wire and especially, infected water. If you memorize where they are and how to avoid them you'll be able to survive more consistently. Check the "Health and Damage", as well as the "Gameplay Inconsistencies" sections for more info.

Since zombies in this game are extremely stupid and exploitable, the difficulty comes from their pairing with tight level geometry, what I call "chokepoints". By memorizing these problematic areas (heavy zombie spawns next to tight doorways, alleyways, corridors, etc.), you'll progress much faster and much more efficiently, without wasting too much ammo. This is because you'll be able to run past it before zombies aggregate and block the way.

One of the most famous examples is the bar door that leads to the street in nmo_broadway. If you rush past it fast enough, the map is basically a cakewalk from there. If you take too long you can get stuck there for a long time if you don't have a firearm and enough ammo.


Sometimes, interior sections can be very challenging to navigate and progress through, especially in hard custom maps. Therefore, if you find an accessible back door out of a very claustrophobic area, it's a notable gameplay advantage. An example of this is the office building at the end of nmo_underground. You have to go in there to pick up a paint can to draw an S.O.S. sign to get rescued, but the geometry is extremely tight and Shamblers continuously respawn nearby, leading to you constantly getting stuck.

However, there's a broken window in an office on the first floor, after moving past the cubicles, which allows you to exit directly to the street without having to deal with an infinite Shambler horde. This is a godsend, because the alternative path is pretty rough, especially when playing solo.


Some maps, especially custom ones, can be very challenging and unforgiving but they can also become much easier to complete as well as consistent if you learn a few exploits and tricks here and there:

- God Spots:
These are spots where zombies cannot reach to attack you. They are generally useful as temporary safe zones that you use to wait out a timed objective, like waiting for the escape vehicle. You can also use them to attract zombies to your position in order to draw them out of the path you want to go through, like the fence gate at the beginning of nmo_quarantine. You generally need to jump on top of a zombie's head to get to them (more info in the "Movement: Advanced Techniques" section).

- Spots where you can throw objective items over obstacles:
These are useful because they allow you to place objective items near the spot where you have to take them to and then you can sprint there without having to carry them. In that state you are slow and vulnerable, so these are very useful. An example would be throwing all 3 jumpers over a blockade in nmo_subside to avoid having to walk all of them over a series of ramps filled to the brim with zombies. Also, on nmo_broadway, if you get the lever spawn inside the apartments, you can drop it out of the window so that you don't have to carry it indoors. This will let you sprint and get out faster to avoid getting trapped in a chokepoint.

- Specific geometry that allows you to jump over zombies:
There are certain spots on most maps that are not considered god spots because zombies can still kill you if you stand on them, but they allow you gain some height so that you can jump on top of incoming zombies and skate past them (for more info, check Zombie Surfing on the "Movement: Advanced Techniques" section). An example of this are the spherical stone decorations on nmo_suzhou's Old Quarter bridge.

- Specific geometry that allows you to bypass chokepoints:
Sometimes, generally due to oversights, maps have certain spots that you can jump on and completely skip some obstacles, either on your own, or by first jumping on top of a zombie. There's a useful skip on nmo_quarantine where you can jump on top of a burning barrel, then on top of a zombie and then on top of a fence to skip a very troublesome chokepoint right at the beginning. Also, you can skip part of the ramps inside the garage in nmo_subside to avoid several crowded corners that force you to use ammo to rush through.

- Doors locked by breakable boards behind them:
If you find such a door, like where the crowbar objective is in nmo_emergency_1101, you can use any weapon that fires .308 or .357 magnum ammo to break the board, since both ammo types have penetration (you can find more info on that in the "Combat: Basic Firearm Mechanics" section). This can potentially allow you to bypass several map sections, saving you time and resources.


Knowing these numbers lets you plan out your resource use across the match, including both ammunition and traps, knowing that later waves become much more challenging as they progress. This also allows you to prepare to reach the escape vehicle in time, because Survival maps tend to be relatively open making it difficult to determine where the extraction zone actually is and the time it remains active is generally very short.


Depending on map difficulty, secret stashes can completely turn the tide of an online match. Not only you can find enough items for all 8 players to stock up adequately, you can find overpowered weapons like the Chainsaw or Abrasive Saw, as well as Machetes in Runner-heavy maps.

They generally need you to find hidden or unmarked props, like the key with a green glowstick in nmo_subside or the propane tank in nmo_quarantine (they both unlock very large weapon stashes). Sometimes, they require the use of a Welder or an Extinguisher, like the scattered stashes in the last section of nmo_suzhou. This map also features a broken staircase that you can jump up on if you use a Barricade Hammer and place a board high enough.

Other maps like nms_campblood feature a series of stashes and easter eggs that interconnect and unlock a variety of areas. First, you have to find a ladder in zone C to get up to the roof of zone B where you'll find a Machete and a Welder. The Welder then lets you unlock several different stashes, one of which contains an improvised explosive that lets you access another hidden weapon stash.


Occasionally, some maps can have specific doors, fence gates and similar entrances that can only be interacted by players. Normally, zombies can open doors and follow you inside buildings and such after they start targeting you, but not all of them. Examples of these are: the glass door at the diner in nmo_broadway or the black fence gate at the alley that's filled with zombies in nmo_cleopas.

These doors are useful as they prevent zombies from flooding interior areas and similar chokepoints, where players are at a disadvantage since they are forced to kill zeds to move through tight spaces, where it's impossible to dodge hordes. There's no way to tell if a door has these properties, you have to experiment and observe which ones classify. More complex doors like roll-up gates and such will usually only allow players to open them, but even then, nothing is certain.

Once you've learned what you have to memorize, it's recommended that you follow a specific map order so that the learning curve won't be too steep for a new player. If you ignore this, you'll probably run into maps that will get you killed a few minutes in, which can be frustrating. Start at the beginning and stick to playing all maps in the same category before moving on to the next.

This section is relatively subjective, but I've tried to list these in an ascending order in terms of difficulty (the lower down the list, the harder the map is). I've taken into account many factors, such as:


Having all of this in mind, here's the list:


- Toxteth
- Broadway
- Cabin
- Chinatown
- Lakeside


- Zephyr
- Cleopas
- Boardwalk
- Asylum
- FEMA
- Brooklyn
- Junction


- Quarantine
- Anxiety
- Underground
- Suzhou
- Broadway 2
- Shelter
- Shoreline
- Rockpit


- Bad Gas
- Stone Creek
- Corpsington
- Miner Detour
- Panel
- Shreddingfield
- Night Forest
- Scream Woods
- Ravenholm
- Ghostbuster
- Sweden
- Emergency (Legacy)
- Mayday
- Urban Hazard | (v4 - Legacy)
- Disco Rumble
- Bluevelvet
- Vertigo
- Oil Rig
- Breakpoint
- Khafre
- Subside

(the order may change as I keep evaluating each map)


I'm skipping survival maps because they are all very similar in difficulty and gameplay. The only one that sticks out from the officials is nms_camilla, which is significantly harder than the others. Also, Objective mode demands more out of any player than Survival (except when soloing, as NMS maps are extremely unbalanced in that scenario).

Also, I'm selecting only a few hard custom objective maps because the quality of workshop maps is very inconsistent to say the least. I'm noting the ones that, in my opinion, are relatively well designed and balanced. You will notice that the quality does vary drastically between these, but I consider them acceptable / good / fantastic.

Finally, I've left out many custom objective maps that are averagely difficult, such as: nmo_condemned, nmo_genex, nmo_deviation, nmo_facility, nmo_frostbite, nmo_hospitality, etc. This is just because this tier list is intended as a roadmap for you to follow so that you don't run into really difficult maps early on. By all means do play these maps when you feel like it, as they are pretty accessible for most players.

During online matches you will meet a multitude of random players, some good, some bad, some useful and others that will try to ruin your life completely. You can aid, ignore or harm other players, either involuntarily or voluntarily, but generally you should consciously try to help others if they can help you survive. If that's not an option, at least try not to inconvenience anybody.

What you do with useless players, trolls or griefers is up to you, I will simply talk about how players can interact with each other, both positively and negatively. You can still win or lose even if all variables are skewed to one side of the spectrum (everyone properly cooperating) or the other (chaotic uncooperative madness). Therefore, these are more just random factors that may come into play, not the key to success (but they can certainly help achieve it or prevent it).

Depending on which map you play, what difficulty you choose and how many players there are, these positive and negative interactions will have a varying degree of impact on the match's progress. Generally, the more players there are, the easier it is to complete maps, assuming that most of them contribute to the game. However, some maps become much more difficult the more players there are, because of geometry, objective design, limited amount of resources, tight corridors, obstacles, etc.



Letting them die can make the match harder depending on the difficulty and map played, so you should be generous and cooperative with teammates in need. Gaining their trust is beneficial because they'll be more likely to help you in return. However, be mindful of those that contribute nothing to the overall progress or those who may be trolling. Gifting them medical items is a waste and it could allow them to keep engaging in questionable behaviors, making the match much harder than it needs to be.


Share different types of ammo you find with the players that are using the corresponding weapon. If every player is using 9mm ammo, that becomes an inefficient practice. You should use different types, .45 ACP, 9mm, .22, 12 Gauge, etc. Observe and identify the weapon each teammate is using, or ask around if anyone needs ammo. Also, ask them to give you the type of ammo required for your current weapon.

If you have some free inventory space, you can grab a few extra melee weapons to share with anyone who may need one. Obviously, get rid of these extra items if you have to pick up important stuff for yourself, this is just a cooperative optimization to take advantage of unused inventory space.


On maps where there are several objective items scattered about, or where several sub objectives need to be completed (nmo_khafre, nmo_cleopas, nmo_fema), try to divide tasks within your team. On Survival maps, try to protect different safe zones if it's worth it. Generally there is no need, but sometimes, like on nms_isolated, protecting multiple zones is a must since they are all connected to each other. Losing zone A for example, means restricting access to a huge portion of the house. Additionally, there will be a much higher number of zombies flooding into one zone if you let the other ones die, like on nms_campblood.


This has been mentioned before, but it's very important. Players are usually vulnerable when completing objectives, so watching their backs is fundamental to completing tasks quickly. This applies to both Progress Bar Objectives as well as carrying items manually.


If you hold the G key while holding any item you will throw it. This can be used to help teammates if they are in need of a melee weapon or medical item but you can't walk up to them safely. If someone wants to throw you something, look in their direction and spam the E key, it will help you grab it and not risk it falling into an inaccessible place. Note that heavy melee can't be thrown that far out and tools like the Extinguisher or the Welder cannot be thrown further than a few centimetres. This is intended to avoid map softlocks.

Since the 1.12 update, you can now also share medical items directly by holding the item and then pressing Right Click next to another player. More info in the "Medical Items: Efficient Use" section.


You can sometimes save players when they couldn't react fast enough to avoid zombies and they end up surrounded. To do so, use any one-hit-kill firearm preferably (as melee weapons are usually not fast enough) to kill all nearby zeds that are attacking or are about to attack them. If you can shove back or kill the zombie that is grabbing them, then do so to help them escape before they take lethal damage.

Additionally, it's better to focus on the zombies that may initiate hand attacks rather than bites if the survivor is completely surrounded. Bites are dangerous due to infection, but they deal relatively low damage overall, 15 for Shamblers / Runners / Crawlers, once every 3 seconds approximately. The damage from hand attacks can range from 15 to 30 for Shamblers, and 20 to 80 for Runners in every attack combo. Also, players don't have any invincibility frames, so they can continuously take large amounts of damage in a very short time frame, resulting in unavoidable death.


When equipping most one-handed weapons (both firearms and melee), you can light up your current path for you and your team by turning on a Maglite with the F key. If instead you don't have any one-handed weapons but you still need to light up the way to help your teammates, switch to your Maglite by opening your inventory with the 1 key and then press Right Click to turn it on. You'll find more info in the "Items: Tools" section.


If players take turns when fighting Shamblers in tight corridors or near a chokepoint, they'll be able to progress much faster. Decent melee weapons (Sledgehammer, Fire Axe, Pickaxe, Machete, etc.) are needed, as well as proper positioning and coordinated movement (standing in 2 rows as close as possible to both walls, attacking and then moving backwards so that the next player can move forward and attack). This tactic is very useful in tight maps like nmo_vertigo, nmo_anxiety_classic and it's generally a mandatory practice in Nightmare difficulty. This will be explained in further detail in the "Combat: Basic Melee Techniques" section (Coordinated Shambler Killing bullet point).


This will be explained in further detail in the "Combat: Zombie Manipulation" section (Zombie Aggro Manipulation bullet point). However, the gist of it is that, if you happen to see a fellow player getting chased by several Runners, you can help them by carefully approaching the line of zombies and grab their attention one by one. Zombies will start targeting the player that's closest to them. This will allow you to safely kill all the Runners one at a time, saving your teammate in the process as long as they keep walking forward to avoid attacks.

This is the list that showcases the player actions and interactions that may have a negative impact on overall progress. First, by actions I mean individual player behaviors that don't necessarily affect other players directly in a physical way (like bodyblocking), but may make the whole match harder.



Basically hoarding items that you don't end up using at all, or not sharing them with others that need them in order to make a bigger impact on the map's progress. An example of this, is hoarding 3 good melee weapons while other two players don't have a melee weapon at all, or holding on to shotgun shells and not having an actual shotgun while another player does.


I've made it clear before on previous sections, do not kill Shamblers unless they are a direct threat, like if you are getting cornered or you want to go through a blocked chokepoint. Shamblers constantly respawn, so killing them without a reason is a waste of resources.


Essentially, medical items can be used in many ways, though generally only a couple of them are the most efficient. For example, Medkits heal 30 HP, so if the player uses one when they took a single hit from a Zombie Child (8 points of damage), the extra HP is wasted. As it will be discussed later, you should only "waste" Medkits if you're playing solo and find an excess of them, or if all other players have one. This will be explained in further detail in the "Medical Items: Efficient Use" section.


As it will be explained in the "Player Afflictions: Infection / Bleeding" section, when a player is infected and they die from anything other than an explosion or a headshot, their corpse will reanimate as a Runner and will start attacking other players. If a player dies from the infection in dark areas, or rooms adjacent to the main objective path or in very tight spaces like the tunnels in nmo_anxiety_classic, the zombie reviver can wreak havoc and possibly kill other survivors if they can't deal with it fast enough. Also, the Runner can come sprinting out of nowhere and start attacking.

Getting infected like this is very common and it happens to both rookies and veterans alike. As a general tip, if you know you're not going to survive the infection, ask other players to kill you via headshot, or hand you a firearm so you can take yourself out. Alternatively, if these two options are not possible, notify your teammates via chat or mic. This will probably avoid any future problems (obviously, this isn't possible on servers with Alltalk disabled, unless most players are near you before you die).


The positions and roles each player has in a team is usually variable, they can change in a moment's notice depending on the circumstances. For example, players that have access to heavy melee weapons against Shamblers may take the lead if there's a chokepoint filled with them (like the start of nmo_urbanhazard), while players with access to firearms or Machetes may take the front line if there are a lot of incoming Runners.

However, new players often don't think about this, so they'll just stand around wherever, not realizing that their position will have an impact on the rest of the team. For example, an ill-equipped player who has a Monkey Wrench or any other subpar melee, standing at the front line where hordes of Runners will start rushing through, is going to be a problem.

Not only they'll probably get infected, killed and will then revive as a Runner, but they will also make killing those previous Runners a lot harder. The reason for this is that zombie AI will switch targets as soon as it detects that another player is closer to them than their current target, so the zombie aggro will be erratic and unpredictable if an ill-equipped player is standing in front of the players that are in charge of killing Runners. This can get the other players killed, which are the ones actually trying to do their respective jobs.


Traps should be used during late waves, where Shambler density is very high.

Using them when no zombies are around or when only a few of them spawn is a waste of resources.

Do note though that it's OK to use them as a panic button on early waves.

An example would be an 8 player team, the first Runner wave starts, all players get killed and a single survivor is left.

After killing all Runners, they still have to take out around 150 zombies or more, so using traps in this situation is more than justified.

You should conserve your assets if they are not needed, however they should be used liberally on extreme situations like this one.

Next, by interactions I mean player behaviors that can directly and physically handicap or harm others around them, decreasing the performance of the whole team and getting others killed.



Player collisions in NMRiH can feel wonky. They are programmed to work client-side, meaning that they are commands that start applying opposite movement to your player character when you get too close to another player. So, if you move forward and "collide" with another player, the game will automatically start moving you backwards. This is why the collisions feel "springy" and why you can phase through teammates.

As of version 1.12.3, collisions are now much less annoying as their mechanics have been changed drastically. Now, you can phase through players that are standing still as long as you keep moving and if you're standing completely still, other players cannot push you away. The only way to get bodyblocked or pushed away, is to collide while moving with another player that's also moving, or if you try to phase through and stand in the same spot as another teammate that is standing still.

Bodyblocking is still very common and most players do it unconsciously. They generally don't mean any harm, it just happens. But there's always a handful of idiotic players that will actively try to block you and consequently kill you, either because they find it fun or they want to steal your items. Fortunately you can avoid the collisions so as to not get killed. This is explained in the "Movement: Miscellaneous Techniques" section.



This is a controversial topic generally, but I've decided to label it as a detrimental action rather than a positive one. The reality is that infected players don't pose a considerable threat to a team. They can cause some damage in the form of infecting maybe one player because the reanimated Runner came out of nowhere. But, if you are good enough at the game, infected teammates will barely affect your decisions or performance. Therefore, if they are helping with the overall progress of the match, killing them would actually be a bad choice.

However, some players will do stupid things both on purpose due to egoism or lack of experience, in which case killing them will be beneficial. An example would be: using medical items like Medkits or Gene Therapy syringes at the brink of death while infected, and then proceeding to engage in idiotic behaviors like running around panicking and drawing Runners towards the rest of the team. They're actually making it harder for the rest, so killing them is more than justified in these cases.


Some players are just greedy and will try to kill every zombie they find, even those that are chasing other players who actually don't need any help. Generally these are experienced players that either don't trust their team to kill Zombie Children / Runners, or they're just competitive in a stupid way. Nobody cares about your kill count, players only care whether you are actually helping or not. This means not taking action sometimes.

Kill stealing leads to bodyblocking, missed attacks due to players displacing each other and it can also make Runner aggro harder to predict. All of this will result in getting others killed occasionally. Just do the best you can but don't go about stealing the job of others, especially if they can do it better than you. Unless they are absolutely incompetent, don't jump in when it's not necessary.


Some players will follow you so close behind that they will start bodyblocking you. This becomes a big problem when trying to dodge Shambler hordes or when trying to kill Runners in confined spaces. This can be fatal to both players sometimes. Generally, inexperienced players do this because they don't know how to dodge zombies yet, so they tend to follow the steps of veterans. To avoid this situation when you are following a teammate, wait half a second before starting to move behind them, keep a distance of at least a few steps between you and the other player and try to move at the same speed as them. If their path becomes inaccessible, then create your own path by shoving zombies back and creating openings.


A common behavior new players have is to try to attack every zombie they see out of panic, regardless of what weapons they have. This usually leads to a lot of time wasted in killing zombies near chokepoints and such. An example would be a player holding a Barricade Hammer, standing at the front line, trying to kill Runners or Shamblers while other players have Sledgehammers or Machetes.

In tight spaces like the tunnels in nmo_anxiety_classic where zombies re-spawn behind you or the sewers in nmo_in_the_dark, that wasted time becomes a death trap, because the players that could actually help counter the situation are being constantly bodyblocked by the useless teammate. If you don't kill zombies fast enough in those situations, you'll get trapped and you'll die.

Even though this seems to be only related to new players, I've seen a few veterans taking advantage of this. Some of them decide not to attack or do anything useful just to troll newbies, while others use them as bait so they can kill Runners in a safer way. Both situations are equally bad and they just show that they are horrible teammates as well as cowards.


When inexperienced players try to rush ahead dodging zombies, they always eventually bump into Runners that spawn in later sections. If they don't have the skill to take them out or the weapons needed for that, they'll end up with a Runner conga line. Next, when they realize their mistake, they generally try to return to their teammates who are lagging behind, without any sort of warning of the chaos they are bringing along with them.

This results in a surprise Runner horde attack that tends to wipe out entire teams. I've seen it happen many times. Try to avoid getting into this situation ever, you should kill most Runners if you are going to rush ahead. However, if you do en up like this, quickly notify your team about what's happening via chat or microphone, so they can help without you getting them killed.


A few players will be tempted to completely avoid Runners and not kill them. Since zombie AI is incredibly dumb, sometimes Runners have a hard time following players in tight corridors or doorways. Any player with basic skills can abuse this to quickly advance and not having to deal with any Runners.

This action however is extremely detrimental to other players, because this results in having to deal with a horde of 10+ Runners at the same time, possibly in cramped spaces. This situation, most of the time, means a guaranteed death for average players.

For the love of god, if you want to rush ahead at least have the decency to wipe out most if not all Runners that you come across. Anybody can dodge them, it's not a sign of skill. You're only showcasing that you are lazy and a miserable teammate as well.

Playing on your own is a very different experience compared to being part of a team. Generally, you have a lot more freedom to adapt your actions and gameplay style to tackle the map's obstacles, your deaths are entirely your own fault (except in extreme cases of bad RNG) and you can be a lot more reckless, since there's nobody you can hurt.

Some people may find soloing easier, some may find it harder, that is mostly subjective to each player. Some things do objectively change for better or worse; here's a list of them:


Since you don't have anyone to cover you while interacting with or carrying an item (when you are at your most vulnerable), objective completion is unavoidably harder. This is very noticeable on item-based objectives where multiple items need to be moved to a precise location or when you have to stand still interacting with an item for a very long time. Examples of this would be the scavenge hunts on nmo_cleopas or nmo_sweden1, as well as nmo_quarantine's time-consuming interaction with a valve needed to close a gate while Zombie Children spawn constantly.


All zombies target you, which means that you'll be constantly attracting a huge amount of Shamblers to your position, therefore, moving quickly and knowing where to go becomes a necessity.


Since you don't have a partner clearing your way up front, moving objective items through Shambler hordes is usually a pain.


Since some players may lag behind in co-op, they can prevent the despawning of several groups of Shamblers. This causes the max zombie cap to be reached (around 80 zombies on Classic, 50% more on Nightmare) by having a lot of small groups of Shamblers spawned throughout the level, instead of concentrating all of them in key areas where a full group of survivors has to complete an objective. nmo_suzhou and nmo_fema are vulnerable to such exploits.


This depends on map layout, available space and your current melee weapon, since the formation of Runner conga lines is more frequent (they all target you). Sometimes it can be easier solo, because other players can force Runners to switch aggro constantly or lure them straight in front of you without warning, making them unpredictable.


Not everything gets harder when you solo like it was mentioned before. Aggro re-routing will be explained in further detail in the "Movement: Basic Techniques" section of this guide, but I'll explain it briefly here. You can force Shamblers to follow you into precise spots so that you create a gap in the horde. After that, you have to determine if the gap is wide enough for you to move through it, then you can quickly dodge the entire horde. When there are a lot of players in the vicinity, zombies will target different players at the same time, so drawing them and forcing them to follow you where you want is very inconsistent, unless your teammates coordinate their positions with yours. Doing this solo is very easy.


Same concept used in the previous title. The more players there are, the more unpredictable zombies are, since playing with other people introduces a lot more variables into the mix, even though the AI is extremely exploitable. Things can happen so fast that you are unable to react accordingly, resulting in a group of Runners punching you to death. Playing solo eliminates this randomness, you can be certain that all of them are going to target you eventually.


All the items that would have spawned during a co-op match, will still spawn when you play solo. Item spawning doesn't change unless the map has player logic built in it, which only very few of them do. This means that you have the ammo, medical items and melee weapons designed to be used by 8 players at the same time, which is a lot. This allows you to carefully choose the melee that fits best for each map and situation, the most convenient and abundant ammunition, and you can use medical items haphazardly most of the time. Beware that even though there are a lot of resources, you can't carry even half of them, so be mindful of what lies ahead and choose the items that you should prioritize.

Since NMRiH has a minimalist HUD, there is no health or stamina meter. Therefore, you need to learn a few details in order to keep track of how much HP you have. Please note that it's pretty difficult to accurately track your HP unless you really concentrate on it or you've only been attacked a couple of times during a match. The idea is to only have an approximate number in your head, there's no need for complex math.


The only visual indication of your current HP numbers is color de-saturation, meaning that the lower your health is, the less colors you'll see on your screen (HUD elements are not affected). The effect only becomes noticeable at 41 HP and below, so if you see your colors starting to wash out, then you know that you have around 40 HP or less.

The de-saturation effect is not that useful by itself, so in order to keep track of your HP more accurately, you need to learn all the zombie damage values. You have to memorize how much damage each zombie type inflicts, which will depend on the animation. You can check all these values on the sections labeled "The Infected: ...", but the important info is:


After memorizing everything, you'll be able to quickly determine your current HP by subtracting the damage value that corresponds with the animation used by the zombie to attack you, from a total of 100 health points the first time you get hit.


Sometimes it can be difficult to determine your HP levels by yourself, like in cases such as receiving several attacks at once from different zombies. Keeping track of every attack animation can be either very tough or impossible in a situation like this. Fortunately, there's two ways that other players can help you track how much HP you currently have.


Above each player you will see their nickname written in different colors according to their current HP numbers. It starts with GREEN at 100%, gradually shifting to YELLOW at 66% and then to RED at 33%, staying the same down to 1%.

If you're not playing solo, then you can ask other players to tell you what color is your name at currently, which will give you a rough estimate of your HP level. For example, if the color is ORANGE, then you know that you're between 66 and 33 HP and, according to the color gradient, you'd know that you're around 50 HP. You can obviously also return the favor and tell someone what their current color is to let them guess their own HP number.


In default server configurations, spectators can see exactly what your HP number is. Therefore, if Alltalk is also enabled, you can ask any spectating player to tell you what that number is. For more info on Alltalk mode, check the "Gamemodes / Difficulties / Modifiers" section.



Now, before we tackle medical items, we should focus on what are the sources of damage a player can take. Apart from zombie damage, which was explained previously, there are several other ways you can get yourself killed. Here's the complete list:


Like in most games, NMRiH has fall damage. If you fall far enough you'll take damage or die, simple as that. Also, before the 1.10 update, falling or other environmental damage could cause you to start bleeding. This has since been removed.


Similar to other games, there's a maximum amount of time that you can remain underwater before you start taking damage (roughly 13 seconds). Peeking your head out will instantly replenish your breath and, if you took damage, your health will slowly regenerate back to the initial number.


Some items that spawn in maps are explosive, or they release a pool of fire that burns zombies that touch it. These include red gas cans, explosive barrels and red propane tanks. Note that these types of props do not include objective items that trigger scripted explosions (like in nmo_junction or nmo_lakeside).

Their main use is to kill zombies obviously, but you should be careful with them. They deal quite a bit of damage if you detonate them close enough to you or to an infected survivor. You can easily kill yourself or others, especially with friendly fire enabled. Additionally, Shamblers have a chance of becoming a burning Runner which can easily kill you if it catches you by surprise. Thanks to this, both explosive items and Molotovs should be used only if you can safely stop or control the possibility of burning Shamblers turning into Runners and attacking you. You'll find more info in the "Weapons: Throwables" section.


This category includes fire, barbed wire, electrified water, infected water, scripted map explosions (TNT on nmo_cleopas or nmo_toxteth, propane tank on nmo_junction, gas cans on nmo_broadway) or a few other miscellaneous damage sources like the helicopter machine gun on nmo_lakeside. Note that these sources may not deal damage on some maps. If they are not manually programmed to deal damage via hurt triggers, they won't do anything. This will be mentioned on the "Gameplay Inconsistencies" section.


Throwables like Molotovs, TNT and Grenades can deal damage to other players if they are infected, or if friendly fire is enabled. If you want to avoid this, try to let others know you're going to use a throwable, and make your actions look as obvious as possible. Grenades are pretty harmless in general because their range is incredibly small. Molotovs also have a short range, but since they deal DOT and the effects last a few seconds, you can still die if you stand too long on the fire. TNT is the most dangerous, because it deals massive damage, and its range is enormous. If you are infected, try to pay attention to other players, check if someone is about to use a TNT and run away from the blast zone as fast as you can. You can find more info in the "Weapons: Throwables" section.


Similarly to throwables, you can damage other players if they are infected or if friendly fire is enabled. This damage increases substantially when you play on Nightmare difficulty, and even more if you turn on Realism at the same time. A few stray bullets will kill you even if you are at max health.

This affliction is one of the greatest weaknesses that players have in NMRiH. It has a chance of happening every time you get bitten. Once the symptoms show up you have exactly 2 minutes before you succumb to the infection.


These symptoms consist of a blurry overlay that starts off as a few orange veins in the corners of your screen.

Eventually, your entire vision will become a dark void. After that, you'll die and then revive as a Runner shortly after.

Unless you are killed by a headshot from a teammate, by committing suicide via firearm or by an explosion, you'll always revive as a Runner.

All enemies, except Zombie Children, can infect you, therefore this is a pretty common occurrence, plus the occasionally inconsistent shove / attack registration makes it even worse.

This is especially true on Nightmare difficulty, where infection chance increases dramatically.



Here's the details on how the infection chance changes with gamemode and difficulty:

In NMRiH, infection chance increases the lower your health is. This is an RNG-based mechanic, meaning that you can get infected even on your first bite at 100 HP (2,93% chance), or you can also survive without infection after multiple bites at low HP values. At around 45 HP, the infection chance is set to around 50%, basically a coin toss.


On Nightmare difficulty, infection chance also scales up the lower your HP is, but now there's a base 77,6% chance of getting infected per bite, instead of 2,93%. This means that if your HP levels go down the infection chance will only increase slightly compared to Classic because it's extremely high at 100 HP form the get go.


Here, the infection chance also scales up the lower your HP is but, an additional hidden quirk is that when you play Survival mode on Classic difficulty, the base chance of infection at 100 HP is DOUBLED (5,87%) compared to Objective mode (2,93%), like I mentioned in a previous section. So, if you feel like you're getting infected far more often in NMS maps, it's because of this. At around 45 HP, the infection chance is set to 100%.


On Nightmare however, the same base infection chance as Objective mode is used instead (77,6%) and also scales up the lower your HP is. Previously, it was 100%, so it was tweaked.




When you are infected, let your teammates know in case you don't have any Pills or Gene Therapy syringes so they can give you some. If you don't trust them and you think they might kill you, simply don't tell them and keep on searching for either of those two items on your own.

Finally, when infected, never stand at the front line of a team, because you'll likely get killed by melee or firearm users as they kill zombies. Only step in if your team cannot kill zombies properly at all and you risk getting cornered.





This is also another RNG-based affliction. Every time you receive damage from any zombie type, there is a 5% chance that you'll start bleeding if you are over 45 HP or a 15% chance if you are below 45 HP. If you see a bloody overlay appearing on the sides of your screen, that means you are bleeding.

Once in this state, you can't sprint, you'll use TWICE more stamina (100% increase) when jumping and you'll lose 1 HP every 5 seconds. If you don't stop the bleeding, you'll eventually die.

This is why you need to patch yourself up as soon as possible if you are not in a sticky situation.

If you are in one, try to deal with the threat first (like Runners that you can't comfortably dodge or kite for example) and then stop the bleeding. You'll find more info on the "Medical Items: Efficient Use" section.

To quickly check if you are bleeding right after being attacked, look down at your feet. If you see blood spurting out, you're effectively bleeding. This will save you some time to quickly patch up and not wait until you see the bloody overlay in your screen.

To check if others are bleeding, you can look for the same blood spurt. However, that effect doesn't last very long. After it disappears, you can still know if players are bleeding by hearing the occasional pain sounds. Also, blood sprites will appear on the ground as they walk.

If you have a loaded firearm, you can commit suicide by pressing the K key to point it at your head and then Left Click to fire the weapon. This mechanic is intended to be used in a cooperative fashion, because committing suicide when you are infected will prevent you from reviving as a Runner that could potentially attack and kill your teammates.

After learning about all damage sources and player afflictions, we can discuss the most efficient ways to use medical items to avoid getting killed and to help other players.


First aid kits are equippable medical items that restore 30 HP and stop the bleeding affliction after being used. They take roughly 17 seconds to use after you start up the animation, during which you can't sprint or use any items in your inventory.

Switching to any item, picking up a prop or shoving will cancel the animation, forcing you to start again. This can get you killed if you are very low on HP.

- Use medkits only when necessary. This means not using them if you have more than 70 HP, since it will be a waste. Only use them that way if everyone has one and there are spares that you would be forced to leave behind. This is common when playing solo, because there are usually several medkit spawns designed for 8 players.

- Medkits should be used even when your HP is relatively high under some circumstances. The reason for this is that infection chance increases the lower your HP is. Additionally, zombies in general, especially Runners deal a lot of damage, so if you're around 40 HP or lower, you are extremely vulnerable. You can die in the blink of an eye since Runners deal between 20 and 80 points of damage per attack, depending on which animation is played at random. Also, getting hit while under 45 HP will have a higher chance to induce the bleeding affliction.

- The higher your HP is, the higher the chance you'll survive close encounters with zombies, like when you get stuck in the middle of a horde while rushing through. You might end up with 30 HP, but you'll be alive instead of dead. You can take advantage of the high HP you maintained by using medkits to do a risky maneuver through a horde if you don't have any other options. Think of your HP as an expendable resource.

- However, choosing not to heal up at high health is also a good practice. This becomes useful if you are trying to cooperate with a few other players to get through a tough section of a map, which could be certain death if done solo. Keeping each player at decent HP levels guarantees that none of them will die if a few Runners start attacking out of nowhere, for example.

- Additionally, if you are not bleeding, you should try to avoid using medkits if you don't have bandages available, as they also stop the bleed affliction. This prevents unfortunate situations like when you start bleeding after a zombie attack and then you end up dying because you couldn't find bandages fast enough (remember that you cannot sprint in this state). If you are certain that bandages will spawn in a certain location, then you might consider healing up anyway despite not having any. You can also save players that are at low HP and bleeding after getting hit several times if there are no bandages available.



Bandages are equippable items that can stop the bleeding affliction and restore 15 HP in the process.

They take roughly 6 seconds to use and you can only do so when you are bleeding. Interrupting the use animation will force you to start again, just like the medkit.
- There's not a lot of depth here since you can only use bandages while bleeding, which restricts your options and strategy. Like it was said before, try to always use them first, since they are much faster to use but less versatile than medkits.



Phallanx Pills are another equippable health item. They take 5 seconds to use, they reset the infection symptoms and delay them for 200 seconds. Once that timer reaches 0, the symptoms will start to appear again, so you have 120 more seconds to find and use another bottle of pills before you die.

You can only use them when you are infected and showing symptoms. When using them, you'll be blinded by 1 second with a white screen.
- The idea is to take the pills as late as possible, nearing the point where you can't see anything in your screen. This buys you more time to try to complete the map or find more pills. Don't get greedy though, waiting for too long will render you completely blind and since pills take a few seconds to actually use, you can easily die during the use animation.

- Sometimes using pills like this is not possible, because being nearly blind can become a death sentence in cases where Runners are coming at you from several directions. You need to see properly to deal with them, so taking pills early can save you in these cases. You can also do the same as with medkits: if you already have pills and you find another bottle laying about, you can use it (only when showing symptoms) if you know you won't return to that area again. Be mindful of other survivors though. You might not be the only one infected, so communicate first (if you can trust your teammates not to kill you) in case anyone needs that spare.



Gene Therapy syringes are the last equippable medical item. They take around 10 seconds to be used and they make you completely immune to the infection. Being previously infected or not doesn't make a difference.

On top of that, there is a 10% chance that you'll get a temporary partial blindness (your screen goes blurry and dark) that lasts for 60 seconds. Independently of this, you'll always become immune and any previous infection symptoms will instantly disappear.
- First, if you have a Gene Therapy syringe, you can skip part of the use animation and speed up the process considerably. As soon as your character stabs themselves and you hear a thump, switch items or shove to skip the animation, as the syringe has already applied its effect.

- If you find one of these syringes, don't be tempted to use it straight away unless you are actually infected. If you are not and you use it anyway, you may die at some point during the match, which will be a complete waste of the item. Even if you don't want to share it, don't use it until you are infected. There's absolutely no benefit to using it early unless you play solo.

- In some situations though, like playing with inexperienced or useless teammates, hoarding the Gene Therapy for yourself is a good idea. This way, you can completely forget about getting infected and properly concentrate on completing objectives and helping others progress. In other words, you can carry the round more consistently.

- Finally, even if you are immune or you have a Gene Therapy in your inventory, try to pick up any Phallanx pills that you find if you have enough inventory space for them. They could save the life of an infected teammate in a pinch.

Health stations are red boxes that you can find in the vast majority of Survival maps and in some Objective maps as well like nmo_suzhou.

You can place them in Health Station Locations, transparent images of the box found in fixed spots. Once you place the station, you cannot remove it and once it's used completely, it will disappear. Once it does, the location cannot be re-used, you need to find another one if you want to use a different Health Station.

They can heal a total of 200 HP for any player that uses it. To use it, press and hold the E key. You'll start to drain the meter until you are fully healed or you let go of the key.

Using the station can also stop your bleeding, just hold the E key until you reach full health. If you let go sooner, the bleeding won't stop and if the station is used up completely without you never reaching max HP, it won't stop either.


- Health stations should be the first medical item that players use in both Objective and Survival when possible. This is because its use is limited by it being stationary item, which can prevent players from healing if the safe zone it's in is getting overrun by many zombies, which is common in some survival maps like nms_favela (zombie spawners are very close to both zones).

Every time you lose HP you should use a health station as soon as possible to lower your chances of getting suddenly killed or infected due to low HP (remember that Survival mode has DOUBLE the base infection chance of Objective mode on Classic, 5,87% per bite at 100 HP). The idea is to stockpile the more versatile and useful medical items for the later waves, which can get hairy sometimes (medkits, pills and bandages. This is because you can use them anywhere, they are not tethered to the ground inside a zone which may get overrun by zombies, making it impossible to use it.

- If you are infected in this case, then it's much more efficient to just commit suicide with a firearm (to prevent your corpse from becoming a Runner) than waste part of a health station to then die due to lack of pills or a gene therapy syringe. On Classic, you can quickly respawn if you have Respawn Tokens (these are disabled in Nightmare difficulty, keep that in mind). If you are the one carrying the round though, then using a health station in this state might help you buy some time to find a gene therapy inside a supply drop. See what your team's current situation is and act accordingly.

Managing your stamina is a fundamental part of NMRiH's gameplay. If you don't do this, you won't be able to attack, rush through zombie hordes or use the level geometry to your advantage and you'll be completely vulnerable against attacks. All fundamental player actions require stamina, therefore it's paramount that you learn how to manage it. Before discussing combat techniques, you need to learn this.

Managing your stamina inherently minimizes the chances of you getting hurt or killed by unpredictable factors, like Runners behaving erratically or teammates that may accidentally bodyblock you. With enough stamina you can pretty much counter every single obstacle, if you are good enough.

There are numeric stats like total stamina and how much of it is drained by performing the following actions. However, these numbers will only be used in an informative manner to illustrate how many actions you can do before running out of stamina. None of them are actually visible in-game.


Since NMRiH has a minimalist and unobtrusive HUD, the only way to tell how much stamina you have is by listening to your character's heart rate and breathing. The lower your stamina, the louder your heartbeat will get and you'll start panting as well. Also, your viewmodel (your hands and weapons equipped) will start to move downwards on your screen once you reach 0 stamina.

You'll also start to move slower and slower if you are sprinting. When you reach 0 stamina, your walking speed will decrease by 15% and if you are still sprinting when you reach 0, your speed will be reduced by roughly 60%. Additionally, you won't be able to perform any actions that use stamina if you don't have enough of it. For example, shoving uses 20 points of stamina, so if you have less than that, the game will not allow you to shove.

You have a total of 130 stamina points, but there is no way to tell exactly how much you have left, so the number itself is irrelevant when playing. It will only be used here to illustrate how costly some player actions are in terms of stamina use.


Using melee weapons in all situations, except when swinging at the air, will drain your stamina in varying amounts. First, for every target you hit you will lose a fixed amount of stamina determined by the weapon used and the type of attack, light or heavy.

Walls and surfaces count as a target, meaning that, for example, if you hit 3 zombies plus an adjacent wall with a light attack with a machete, you'll use 4 times the amount of stamina required for a single zombie. Additionally, charging your melee weapon increases damage but also stamina consumption. This will be discussed in more detail in the "Combat: Basic Melee Mechanics" section.


Every time you shove a zombie, you'll use 20 points of stamina, which is a considerable amount (shoving the air, objects or surfaces will not drain your stamina). Depending on your playstyle, you will be shoving constantly or not too often, but it's something to keep in mind either way.


This action is also costly in terms of stamina (20 points), you can jump 6 consecutive times at max stamina before you'll pretty much empty the meter. Only use jumps sparingly, like when rushing through Shambler hordes, to get over obstacles or to boost up objects or zombies. All of this will be explained in further detail in the "Movement: Advanced Techniques" section.



When you press and hold W + Shift in order to sprint, the game will immediately take away 12 stamina points from your pool and the rest will slowly drain as you keep running. Also, while sprinting, your stamina stops regenerating completely. This means that if you want to regenerate it, you have to stop sprinting. Additionally, you should never press W + Shift repeatedly, because after around 10 presses you'll be completely out of stamina due to the initial penalty. If you want to sprint properly, just hold W + Shift and don't let go until you have to stop or you have to start walking to regenerate your stamina.

A general rule of thumb of when to stop sprinting is when you can start to faintly hear your heartbeat. This way you'd be stopping well before your movement speed gets dangerously slow, which is when Shamblers will have more chances to grab you as you weave through hordes, and when after doing something like 2 quick attacks plus a shove will render you defenseless due to lack of stamina.


If you don't perform any of the actions listed above and you simply walk by holding any of the movement keys you'll automatically regenerate your stamina slowly over time (6 stamina points per second). So, to go from 0 to 130 stamina, it takes roughly 22 seconds.


When you crouch AND move, but at the same time you stop doing any of the 4 actions that use stamina, your regeneration rate will be higher than when you walk (9 stamina points per second). However, it's lower than when you're standing still (12 stamina points per second). You can use this to your advantage to increase your zombie killing capacity. We'll discuss crouching again in the "Combat: Advanced Melee Techniques" section.


If you stand still while not performing any of the actions described in the previous section, your stamina will regenerate at a faster rate than if you were walking or crouching (12 stamina points per second). This can be useful when you need to regenerate a significant amount of stamina in a very short period of time. The disadvantage is that standing still generally leaves you vulnerable against surprise Runner attacks for example.

Movement in NMRiH is one of the primordial pillars of gameplay together with melee combat and efficient firearms use.

With good enough movement you can bypass a lot of map obstacles, avoid having to kill zombies unnecessarily and you can get yourself out of very dangerous situations.

Furthermore, these techniques are not only useful for your own benefit or survival, but can also be used to help others complete objectives, accelerate map progress and protect teammates from zombies.

After you manage to master most of these techniques as well as the melee combat system and firearm techniques, Classic difficulty ceases to be a challenge for the most part. Only the hardest and most unforgiving maps can still be hard to complete. On Nightmare however, most of these techniques are mandatory in order to complete hard maps consistently, and even then nothing is guaranteed.


As mentioned previously, killing zombies on Objective maps should only be a means to an end, which is to complete the objectives and escape (any extra killing is useless). To consistently achieve this, you also need to learn how to dodge zombies and rush through hordes.

The basic principle is finding "holes" in Shambler hordes where you can rush through, preferably without getting grabbed, taking damage and / or using ammunition. However, taking damage and using ammo to rush through is more than acceptable when you do it to progress further. If you do get hit, the idea is to make that HP sacrifice worth it by knowing how to complete the map from that point forward.

What I mean by "holes" is: spaces between zombies that are wide enough for your character to squeeze through. It's impossible to describe via text how wide these spaces are or how they look because you can only identify them with enough experience. The only way to learn this is trying to rush as many times as you can and gradually learn how wide the zombie hitboxes are, as well as their attack / grabbing range. You may die a lot of times, but you'll get the hang of it pretty fast. There really is no way around this, it just takes time. You need visual and muscle memory to learn this.

Once you do have a keen eye for recognizing which space is safe to rush through or not, you'll be able to do this automatically without thinking at all, enabling you to cruise through all easy maps. This also becomes a crucial tool when playing difficult maps.




When you are standing in front of a horde and all zombies are targeting you, there may be spaces to rush through that you can't see directly. If you quickly sprint to either side of the horde you can detect these spaces, allowing you to weave through a horde in a perpendicular fashion, constantly changing directions. This also comes in handy as you're dodging.


- Zombie AI:
Zombies only target players via line of sight and proximity. You can abuse this to manipulate their movement to allow yourself to rush through hordes or even protect other players that may be completing an objective that leaves them vulnerable, like turning a crank.

- Aggro Manipulation:
First, if you want to use this to help you dodge a horde, you have to hug one of the walls closer to you or maybe a solid object that's part of the chokepoint, like a car or a tank. This way, all zombies targeting you will move directly to your position creating a small path on the opposite side.

Shamblers don't move in perfect straight lines towards you because when they collide, they automatically change directions to avoid getting stuck and then they resume targeting you. So, by hugging a wall you minimize how much these Shamblers "branch out" from the main line giving you more space to go through. Obviously, you should always be vigilant and watch out for Runners or Zombie Children that may be hiding behind the horde before you dodge.


This technique is useful when the space to rush through is very tight and you are about to get surrounded (it's very useful in tight straight corridors). You have to commit to shoving a single zombie to create a path to move through. There mustn't be any zeds behind the one you chose or else it won't work. Once you choose, start shoving the zombie continuously in the same direction. This will slowly create an opening for you to rush through.

Don't shove too fast though. If you do it while the zombie is stumbling, the shove won't register unless it can trigger a different stumble animation (backwards or side stumble). Time your shoves correctly so that the zombie moves back as fast as possible without ignoring your inputs. Also, make sure that you are not shoving the zombie into a wall or solid surface. Doing that will still stumble it but it won't move backwards, causing you to get surrounded.


This technique is useful in the same scenario as the Bully Dodge. You have to again commit to shoving a single zombie to create a path to move through. There mustn't be any more zombies behind it or else it won't work.

Once you take your pick, bodyblock the chosen zombie, shove them and immediately start moving forwards trying to dodge through the right or left. Your movement may become choppy as you are scraping through. If another zombie tries to grab you while you are doing this, quickly flick your camera and shove in their direction before the other zombie recovers. You can also use the Shove Cooldown Cancel exploit to make it less risky, more on that shortly.


Shamblers have several movement animations chosen at random when they spawn. Most of them share a very similar movement speed but this variation is significantly faster than all the others. When you are dodging hordes, be mindful of them, as it's common to get grabbed by them due to their speed. You can also take advantage of this and manipulate their movement to open up spaces to rush through.


When you jump, zombies can't grab you, they can only use hand attacks against you. Therefore, if you are not sure that you're gonna be able to dodge a particular group of zombies by just sprinting, doing this will avoid the chance of you getting surrounded (you may only lose some HP instead of dying). There is a tiny chance that a zombie will grab you mid-air and stop all your movement, but it's extremely rare, so pretend this doesn't happen. If it does, try to save yourself by shoving.

This technique can also be useful when dodging while carrying an objective item which prevents you from sprinting, limiting your options. Additionally, it can be used to prevent getting grabbed by Runners in a conga line that's following you, as you try to attack via melee.


As long as you are facing a zombie, you can only force them to stumble backwards. Due to this, if you want to force a zombie to move in a particular direction, aim in said direction and wait for the zombie to face you before shoving. If you do this correctly, you can move zeds wherever you want them to go, unless they hit a wall, a solid object or another zombie. The reason why you should trigger the zombie's backwards stumble animation to achieve this, is that it's faster than the other 2 animations (sideways and forwards), thus you can move the zed to where you want it to go much quicker.

This exploit is one of the most valuable techniques in the entire game. It's extremely useful for both dodging zombies and combat alike. As you may know already, shoving has a brief cooldown of around 1.5 seconds. However, it's possible to cancel it, allowing you to shove multiple times per second if you time it correctly. For most intents and purposes, you'll only have to do 2 to 3 shoves in quick succession, because the idea is to NOT get into really dangerous situations that require you to shove that many times in a very short period. Besides, each shove takes away 20 stamina points, meaning that doing it 6 times will drain more than 90% of your max stamina.

To do it, first press the V key to shove while holding a weapon or item ➜ Press the H key to holster it ➜ Quickly press the V key again to shove a second time. Doing it too slowly is useless because the shove cooldown is not that long in the first place. Make sure your first shove registered before continuing with the trick.

An alternative way is to set your fists as your last weapon used (pressing the H key and then the Q key). First, shove with the V key ➜ Press the Q key to switch to your fists ➜ Quickly shove again with the V key. This is my preferred way to do it.

Using the H key is more uncomfortable but it doesn't require setting up your last weapon used, you can use it at any time to prevent a surprise Runner attack for example. Also, you can re-assign your holster action (the H key by default) to a key that you find comfortable to access.



You can jump on top of any zombie's head and use them as surfaces to jump onto unreachable spots. Simply position yourself so that you have enough elevation to perform a crouch jump (W + Space + Ctrl) and get on top of any zombie. Look for climbable objects or surfaces like trashcans, ledges, ladders, stairs, etc. Once you are on top of a zombie they will freeze and enter an idle state, they'll only turn to face you as you move. However, if another zombie walks over to the one you are standing on top of, both will start attacking and will easily kill you.


This is the same concept as Zombie Boosting but the intention this time is to skip past hordes by running over the zombies' heads. Since there is a very high possibility of getting attacked while doing this, you should sprint to cover as much distance as quickly as possible and minimize or avoid damage entirely. If you also jump, you'll avoid damage completely but it will drain your stamina very quickly.


You can jump on top of Crawlers without any help from elevated surfaces. Thanks to this, you can use them as a platform to jump on top of other zombies like Shamblers or Runners and skip past them via (Zombie Surfing) or even jump onto unreachable spots via (Zombie Boosting).

Since Crawlers have a low probability to spawn and their pathfinding is inconsistent, this opportunity doesn't present itself often. However, it has saved me many times in cases where you are absolutely surrounded and you have no other options. I had this happen in one of the tunnels in nmo_underground for example. There's also a chance that the Crawler will grab you if you stand on top of it for too long, so try to avoid that.


When you are on top of a zombie, shoving them will not move them backwards, similar to shoving them against a wall. However if you jump while the zombie is starting to stumble, it will move. This way, you can use a zombie as a moving platform to reach high places. This comes in handy when you don't have a surface as a stepping stone near the place you want to jump to or if you can't find a Crawler for the same purpose. You can get on top of a Shambler and then force them to move to the spot you want to jump on. This only works if no other zombie bothers you, cause they will immediately attack if they get close to the zombie you are standing on. Therefore, having a firearm to clear out incoming infected is crucial.

The most stamina-efficient way to do it is to ➜ First get on top of a Shambler ➜ Walk a couple of small steps in the direction where you want to move the zombie to (the zombie will turn to face you) ➜ Jump and don't touch any directional keys. While you are in the air, the zombie will walk towards your direction ➜ Repeat this process until the zombie is where you want it to be. Stand still as much as possible to constantly regenerate your stamina at the fastest rate.

There is a quicker alternative in case you need it: Get on top of a Shambler ➜ Position yourself so that the zombie is facing the opposite direction where you want to move to ➜ Shove the Shambler with the V key ➜ Jump and hold the W key to instantly move forwards and avoid falling down.

While you are in the air, the zombie will move backwards due to the stumble, which is faster than having them walk normally. This obviously uses more stamina, so try to do this while crouched because you can't really stand still while doing this.

The following techniques, on top of being useful on their own, can be combined with any of the advanced movement mechanics that were mentioned previously.



When trying to move an objective item through a crowded chokepoint, you can place said item near the opening and then move backwards to draw the zombies away or to kill them. This allows you to rush or kill zombies without having to worry about the objective item until you are already past the chokepoint.


Depending on the map played and the active objective, it may be necessary to move objective items through very tight and crowded chokepoints. However, with this simple trick, it's possible to reduce the tedium and challenge if you manage to move the objective item past the obstacle. It involves jamming the item through the corner of a doorway, sideways through a fence or over a wall for example. This puts the item past the chokepoint so you can concentrate on bypassing the zombies blocking the entrance. A couple of examples are: nmo_quarantine's graveyard and nmo_broadway2's basketball court.


If you remember what I explained in a previous section about the Zombie Bully Dodge technique, zombies will ignore shoves if they already stumbling. The only way they can be shoved while stumbling is to force them to play a different stumble animation. This is the principle of shove stacking. Shamblers and Runners have 4 different stumble animations depending on the angle from which you shove them, therefore, controlling your angle is what allows you to stack shoves. The sideways stumble animations take more time to complete, so the zombie remains incapacitated for longer. Crawlers and Zombie Children only have one stumbling animation, therefore this does not work on them.

This technique is useful in a cooperative manner. If you and another player are dodging a Shambler horde, and your teammate is carrying an objective item, you can help them dodge zombies if you shove stack. This allows your teammate to follow your own rush path safely, they won't need to shove zombies back while carrying an item, which can be dangerous if they don't know how to do it properly or if there's way too many zombies.

To do it, first shove the appropriate zombie with the V key ➜ Move forward in a diagonal fashion to get perpendicular to their face ➜ Shove them again with the V key before it recovers to force it into a sideways stumble animation. This will give your teammate enough time to walk through safely.


As it was previously mentioned, carrying an objective item, or any item manually for that matter, will leave you vulnerable due to being unable to attack, shove, or sprint, making rushing through hordes very risky. Fortunately, this technique lets you bypass most of the danger.

To do it, first move into a horde of Shamblers blocking your progress while carrying an item ➜ Let go of the item with the E key ➜ Press the V key to shove the incoming zombie ➜ Quickly flick your mouse to the ground ➜ Grab the item again with the E key.

This allows you to move through while the zombie is stumbling, unable to attack. If you combine this with the Shove Cooldown Cancel technique and, if you are skilled enough, you can shove back several Shamblers in a row, letting you squeeze through what previously seemed an impenetrable wall of zombies. Make sure you have enough stamina before you start.


Usually, Objective maps require multiple items to progress. Therefore, if you are playing solo, item scavenge hunts can become troublesome, like in nmo_cleopas. This technique allows you to carry 2 objective items at the same time, saving you a lot of time.

To do it, grab one of the items with the E key ➜ Walk forward a few steps ➜ Drop the item with the E key ➜ Flick your camera 180º ➜ Grab the second item with the E key ➜ Flick your camera back ➜ Repeat.

All these last three steps must be done in one fluid motion and you also need to learn how much you can walk forwards before the item behind you is no longer reachable. Learn that maximum distance, otherwise the technique won't save you any time.

Since this guide is designed to prepare you for any type of situation you can find in the game, parkour has to be brought up since it's part of several custom maps out there. It also provides a lot of utility in many instances even if its use is not a requirement. There isn't really that much to say here other than a few tips and tricks to keep in mind when you are doing parkour in a map like nmo_khafre:

You can avoid player collisions easily by crouch jumping over your teammates. You do need some speed for it to work consistently, therefore ➜ First hold W + Shift to start sprinting ➜ Press the Space Bar to jump and then the Ctrl key to crouch mid-air. Don't let go of the Shift key until you are mid-air, otherwise your momentum will be drastically reduced.


Falling down from an edge while crouching and then uncrouching in midair, will reduce or prevent fall damage altogether depending on the original height. This is because your hitbox extends when standing up, meaning that you take less time to fall to the ground, the game thinks you fell from a shorter height. Be careful though because if you do the opposite (crouching midair) you'll take more fall damage.


This enables you to backpedal faster away from zombies when attacking them and increase your stamina regeneration a bit. You can also take advantage of this and attack zombies while being crouched constantly. We'll discuss this in the "Combat: Advanced Melee Techniques" section (Melee Combat while Crouching bullet point).


While inside a vent or any similar geometry with low clearance, you can let go of the Ctrl key after you are under there. This allows you to hold W + Shift to sprint while still crouching, letting you move a lot faster. This obviously doesn't work if you are carrying an item in your hands because you can't sprint.


Like in many other Source games, you can climb ladders faster by holding W + D or A and looking upwards. To do this, first look straight onto the ladder and then up, start climbing with the W key, then turn your camera 90º to the left and keep climbing while now holding W + D (if you want to use the A key, turn your camera 90º to the opposite side).


You can speed up your swimming speed if you stay on the surface of the water and hold W + Shift which will initiate a sprint as if you were on land. This is very useful in some maps where you are forced to take damage to complete objectives or if you are trying to traverse through infected water in general. Examples of this are: the lake where you have to find the final gas can in nmo_bad_gas or the labyrinth where the Abrasive Saw is in nmo_subside. This is only possible if you stay on the surface of the water and it will also drain your stamina as if you were sprinting on land.


Occasionally, zombies can grab you after a a cutscene ends, especially Runners since it's very common to end up with a few of them chasing you in a conga line. To prevent this, simply hold W + Shift while the cutscene is playing and don't let go. This will allow you to sprint the instant the cinematic ends, completely preventing you from getting grabbed.


In many NMRiH maps there's doors and other entrances that are blocked with breakable boards, like the player spawn in nmo_junction. Your first instinct to open these would be quickly breaking the boards with a melee weapon, but unfortunately, this is generally extremely slow. Melee weapons don't have a lenient width to their trace arcs, so your camera needs to be in very specific angles to destroy boards. In practice, this is impossible to learn or memorize because it's also inconsistent.

Therefore, the quickest and most consistent way to break boards is with your fists, since they don't generate trace arcs, they just hit whatever you point at (hitscan basically). You'll never miss and you won't use more stamina than needed. This is also true for barricading boards used in Survival and some Objective maps.

You can technically break them faster with firearms but that would be extremely wasteful. Only do this if your survival depends on opening a boarded up door (which should never be the case in the first place).

Finally, we arrive at the most important part of this guide. Melee combat is the most complex pillar of NMRiH's gameplay and it's also the hardest to master. However, you'll see that it's the most rewarding as well.

With these techniques, you'll be able to basically tackle almost any situation the game can throw at you. You'll be able to effortlessly kill all the enemy types in the game and even deal with extreme situations like Runner conga lines, with a weapon that requires no ammunition.

No matter how slow or fast, how tedious or efficient the process may be, you'll be able to pull through and survive, even if you ignore proper movement or firearm use. The only exception to this is playing some of the hardest maps on Nightmare difficulty. Obviously it's not my intention to suggest you should ignore any of these other areas, they are still essential to the complete NMRiH experience. It's all about giving you the highest amount of tools possible to increase your chances of survival.


Now, let's get acquainted with the basics of melee combat:

Melee hit detection in NMRiH works similarly to games like Pirates, Vikings, and Knights II or Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. Basically, every time you swing your weapon, an invisible arc is created, which tries to mimic the movement of your weapon as you attack. Given that you're close enough, the arc will register a hit when it collides with the zombie's hitbox.

What this allows you to do is attack several enemies at the same time with a wide swing, as well as to control how fast your hits register by compensating your aim appropriately. This is extremely important to get the hang of if you want to master NMRiH's melee combat with maximum efficiency and consistency.

Picture yourself with a Machete and there's a Zombie Child running right at you. Everyone's first instinct would probably be to attack the kid with a light attack while aiming directly at their head. However, this will soon lead to them getting instantly whacked by the child unless their timing is perfect. This happens because kids have incredibly fast attack animations, they pretty much hit you right away as soon as they are in range.

The way to prevent this is to take advantage of the melee trace arcs. First, learn how your current melee weapon behaves when attacking. In the case of the Machete, light attacks will be shown starting on the middle right of your screen when you swing, which is the earliest possible point on which the hit detection arc is drawn. Therefore, instead of aiming directly at the kid's head, you should aim slightly to the left of it. This helps your attacks register sooner, thus preventing the previous situation since the kid can be killed before it hits you. For the sake of simplicity, I'll call this process "compensating your aim" or "aim compensation".

This concept can be used in several different ways, such as combating zombies on stairs or places with different elevations. If you don't compensate your aim in these situations, zombies will be able to attack you before you even land a single hit. I'll explain this in more detail in the "Combat: Basic Melee Techniques" section (Fighting zombies via melee on uneven surfaces bullet point).

Unfortunately, even though this system seems like it's straightforward enough, melee combat is still a bit inconsistent. This is because the arcs don't follow your weapon's movements exactly, plus zombie hitboxes tend to get desyncrhonized from their models. There's no way around this; by playing, practicing and improving you'll gradually get hit less and less.


There are two ways to use your melee weapon, quick / light attacks or charged / heavy attacks. Each one has its strengths, weaknesses and specific uses. Once you get the hang of them, there are plenty of techniques and strategies used to kill each zombie type efficiently.

• Quick / Light Attacks:
These are performed by simply tapping Left Click. The attack animations and cooldown associated with them are relatively short, allowing players to chain several swings in quick succession. As a drawback, they deal less damage and use more stamina than charged attacks, unless you overcharge.

• Charged / Heavy Attacks:
These are performed by holding Left Click to charge and then releasing. The longer you hold the charge the higher the damage and the stamina consumption will be. These attacks however are also slower to set up due to the lengthier animations and the charge up time. The trick to using these effectively is learning the minimum amount of damage required to kill Shamblers, using as little stamina as possible. We'll continue this crucial topic in the Uninterrupted Shambler Killing bullet point that's coming right up.


Another key thing you need to practice to get consistent melee kills without dying, is the correct positioning between your character and the zombie.

Every melee weapon has an effective range in which attacks actually register. If the zombie is outside of this range, all attacks will miss. Additionally, zombies have an attack range as well. If you enter inside it, the zombie will initiate an attack if it's currently targeting you, either hand attacks or a grab + bite.

For all melee weapons (excluding a few subpar melee weapons), the effective range is long enough for a player to position themselves at a specific distance from a zombie, and all their melee swings will register, but the zombie itself won't initiate any attacks.

This is what I define as the Critical Range. Basically, the zombie is INSIDE your melee's effective range, but you are OUTSIDE of the zombie's attack range.

This critical range varies between each melee weapon, so you have to gradually learn the effective ranges from all of the ones that you want to be proficient with. The shorter the melee's effective range is, the smaller the critical range will be, thus you'll have less margin of error to avoid getting hit by zombies.

The Hatchet is a perfect example of a small effective range, making melee combat very risky but also very rewarding as I will explain later (Light Attack Chains). There's no way around this, you have to practice a lot and get the feel for each weapon.

Zombies are not static creatures, they move at different speeds towards you, thus remaining inside the critical range is not as simple as standing still. You have to constantly move so that when you attack, you'll be inside this range.

Before attacking ➜ move closer with the W key until you are certain that the zombie is inside your effective melee range ➜ then attack via a Light or Heavy attack ➜ As soon as you confirm that the swing registered or missed, shove with the V key and start moving backwards with the S key ➜ Repeat until the zombie is dead. It's basically a constant balance of moving closer to and further from the zombie, holding W and S to create like a swing set effect.

A fundamental gameplay loop in NMRiH is learning how to kill endless numbers of Shamblers continuously, without having to stop and regain your stamina. Since these enemies re-spawn constantly in Objective maps, and since you are forced to kill all of them in Survival maps, knowing how to deal with large crowds of them as fast and as safe as possible becomes a very useful tool.

Since quick attacks have high stamina penalties and lower damage, we have to rely on charged attacks, and this means having to learn the minimum amount of charge time needed to kill Shamblers in one hit.

Charged attacks not only consume less stamina if the charge time is not excessive, they reduce the amount of swings needed to kill to only 1 in most cases on Classic difficulty (Nightmare doubles that number), minimizing hit detection randomness and the amount of shoves that you need to perform to prevent possible zombie bites or attacks. Also, since charging takes time, your stamina can regenerate just enough so that it can counteract your next attack's penalty.

There's no need for complex numbers here, the only important factor is to inflict enough damage to reach the one-hit-kill breakpoint. Charge time varies in each weapon due to different base damage values, but fortunately it's possible to group several of them in different categories to make it easier to remember.


Once you learn the exact optimal charge timing for your current weapon, you can then start to kill Shamblers continuously. This will let you deal with giant hordes if you have a good enough melee weapon (such as the Pickaxe or Sledge) and enough space to backpedal and not get cornered.

First, charge your weapon by holding Left Click ➜ Count to the appropriate number in seconds ➜ Let go of Left Click and direct the attack towards the nearest Shambler ➜ Shove with the V key as soon as the hit registers or fails to register to prevent attacks ➜ If you got the kill, repeat the process with the next Shambler in line. With the appropriate charge time, you can maintain this rhythm indefinitely with all decent melee weapons.


There are several ways to do this and none are superior to the rest, it's all personal preference. You are free to experiment and find a technique that you think is more intuitive, but this is what I personally use.

First, initiate the charge by holding Left Click ➜ Wait until your weapon stops moving completely ➜ As soon as your weapon is static, start the count by saying "one" in your head ➜ Keep counting in seconds until you reach the desired number ➜ Let go of your Left Click to attack.

The reasoning behind this technique is that by waiting for the weapon to stop moving, you have a consistent visual queue to count the first second, since most charge up animations take around a second to finish. Again, this is very subjective to each player, so don't do this if you find it confusing. Find what you think is the most intuitive way to achieve the same outcome: killing Shamblers in one hit with minimal stamina use.


As I mentioned in the "Weapons: Melee" section and "Uninterrupted Shambler Killing" bullet point, both the Sledge and Pickaxe don't require charged attacks to kill Shamblers, a quick attack is enough. However, they use too much stamina for sustained Shambler killing (after 2-3 quick attacks you'll completely run out).

So, to counter this, it's possible to initiate a charged attack but without any actual charge time outside of the animation itself. Since the game still counts it as a charged attack, the stamina penalty will be much lower, and by the time you perform another one, your stamina will be back at full capacity.

In layman's terms: you can continuously kill zombies by charging slightly and you'll NEVER run out of stamina. This technique is a game changer, because you basically can't screw it up like all other melee weapons. It also works with the FUBAR, but that's a subpar weapon, so I don't recommend it unless you don't have any other choice (check the "Weapons: Melee" section).

To do it, simply hold Left Click to initiate a charge ➜ As soon as you see that your character's arms start to move, release your Left Click ➜ Aim at the zombie's head while inside the Critical Range to get the kill ➜ Repeat.


Since you're probably already aware that NMRiH's hit detection is wonky at best, you need to minimize the chances of getting hit by zombies every time you engage with them. Therefore, you should always shove zombies back with the V key after every attack you perform, regardless of whether the zombie is already dead or not.

This protects you from the randomness of melee hit detection (and your own mistakes obviously). Once you are experienced enough you can skip this and use more advanced combat techniques, such as using quick attacks with a Hatchet or Machete to quickly dispatch hordes of Shamblers (Light Attack Chains technique, check the "Combat: Advanced Melee Techniques" section).

Like I mentioned before, zombie AI is very simplistic and exploitable. They target players based on line of sight and proximity, meaning that once they see you they will start their chase and will only switch targets if another player draws their attention by standing closer to them than you are. This allows you to manipulate aggro to get Runners off of a teammate's back for example and save them. Then, after drawing the aggro, you can easily kill them in various ways that will be discussed shortly.

This is also useful to rush through hordes by forcing zombies to move to a specific location, like it was explained in the "Movement: Basic Techniques" section. Keep in mind that if you have a Runner conga line on your back and you are relatively near a teammate, if you suddenly sprint and turn a corner, you can accidentally draw the Runner aggro towards the other player, which usually leads to their death. Be very mindful of your movements when you are in extreme situations like this one.


As it was stated before several times, both Runners and Zombie Children don't have attack animations when moving. Therefore, as long as you are moving fast enough they'll never be able to grab or punch you. This allows for an interesting combat technique, kiting Runners and Zombie Children indefinitely. This means that continuously walking forwards or sideways will prevent them from ever catching up to you, so you can then kill them with charged attacks with a good enough melee weapon. If your attack is too weak, possibly because the weapon needed more charge time, you run the risk of not killing the zombie that you are targeting, and then the others will punch you to death.

If enough of them pile up behind you, a so called "conga line" is created, making it much harder to deal with them. This is because Runners and ZC clip into each other when chasing you, so one of them can get killed when you swing, but there'll be several more Runners behind it that will punch you to death in less than a second. Try to keep the zombie numbers at a minimum (no more than 4-5 if you don't have a firearm or a high tier melee) when doing this and you'll be able to take all of them out safely.


Sometimes, you will inevitably amass a huge number of Runners / Zombie Children on your back because of how most custom maps are designed. In these cases, kiting and killing them in a straight line is extremely dangerous because they clip into one another and if a ZC manages to hit you, your camera will bumble around, leading to a missed swing which in turn will let the Runners grab you and punch you to death.

Circle Kiting is a way to weaken their numbers slowly by moving in circles around the conga line. Because zombies can't change directions while they are moving, they are forced to stop and turn to face you, and this is what you will take advantage of. While you move in circles, try to kill a Runner / ZC that lags slightly behind the others. Repeat this process until the total number of enemies is relatively low.

Keep in mind that this technique is still dangerous, only works in big enough areas where you can move without any issues and NOT using a melee weapon that kills Runners in one quick attack (Machete, Fire Axe, Sledgehammer, Pickaxe) will make this extremely slow and more dangerous. Using quick attacks is also recommended here, as the speed at which you swing is key to killing them safely enough. Use this technique with caution, but if you manage to master it, it will save your life constantly.


Zombies need to actually engage in direct line of sight of you at least once to start their chase. This means that if you manage to visually hide from them, they won't be able to target you. This is generally useful in tough map finales where there's very heavy Runner spam, like in nmo_shelter. If you crouch and hide inside the corridor where the leaver that starts the final sequence is located, none of the zombies that spawn will chase you because they can't see you. This exploit allows you to save a lot of fuel for the Chainsaw, since you are stuck in that area for a fixed time until the door to the escape room opens.


It's possible to exploit entire zombie hordes and block their movement on narrow doorways. First, position yourself next to the door frame, then let one zombie grab you through the thin wall, it can't deal damage to you in this state. Once you achieve this, the rest of the zombies won't be able to make it through the door if it's narrow enough because they will constantly try to reposition themselves to avoid collisions, missing the doorway itself.

You can then attack the other zombies that are trying to reach you once they are in range of your melee attacks, allowing you to slowly whittle down their numbers. However, this won't work if other teammates get closer to the horde as well, since they will draw their aggro away from you and help them make it through the door.

This technique is useful to deal with huge Runner hordes that may end up killing you if you try to kill them via melee, cause you can slowly kill them as they get close to the zombie that's grabbing you (this is really useful in Nightmare, since Runners are extremely dangerous there). It's also useful to block the movement of Shambler hordes in a very tight area when you are about to get cornered, or avoid combat altogether if you have to hold your position until a timed objective is completed, or another teammate completes it for you while you are holding the zombies at the doorway.

In NMRiH, zombies will constantly bunch up together as they target you or several players that are close to each other. This means that they will tend to clip into each other as you try to kill them via melee.

To get consistent kills in these situations without getting punched to death, you can first kill a zombie ➜ then quickly flick your camera to another zombie that is very close to the one you killed ➜ Shove them with the V key before they can initiate an attack.

You should do this constantly as you tackle Shambler hordes. Additionally, you can do this to more safely deal with small groups of Runners, around 2-3, without having to kite them at your back (as long as you have a high tier melee that can one-shot them without charging, like the Machete, Fire Axe, Pickaxe or Sledge).


There are many instances where players have to fight hordes of Shamblers in tight spaces such as corridors or tunnels, like in nmo_vertigo. In these cases, it's common for players to end up cornered due to bodyblocking or missed attacks if they don't cooperate properly.

To counter this, a maximum of 2 players can coordinate at the front line to kill Shamblers or Runners efficiently, without bodyblocking or missed attacks. It can technically be done with any melee weapon pair, but high tier weapons are recommended, especially Sledgehammers or Pickaxes due to how efficiently they can kill Shamblers. Charged attacks are recommended, but quick attacks can be used as well.

One survivor first charges up their melee by holding Left Click ➜ then attacks the zombie closest to the team ➜ As they start the attack, the second survivor starts charging their melee and gets ready to step in ➜ After killing the zombie, the first survivor proceeds to step back to make room ➜ The second survivor steps in and kills the next zombie ➜ Repeat until the horde is dealt with.

It's important to note that if you fail to kill the zombie, you should still step back and let your teammate land the killing blow. This way, the two of you can maintain a steady rhythm and flow of movement so that performing the technique is more straightforward with less thought involved, more automated if you wish.


In many maps you'll come across sections where you have fight zombies on stairs, ramps or other similar uneven surfaces, such as in nmo_vertigo, nms_flooded or nms_isolated for example. The issue here is that because of melee trace arcs, your vertical attacks (most charged attacks have vertical swinging animations) will register too late if the zombies are at a lower height than you are, leading to you getting hit.

To prevent this, you must again compensate your aim to take into account the melee trace arcs. In this case, if the zombie is lower in height, you have to compensate by aiming lower than its head, somewhere around the chest for most cases. This will help your vertical charged swings register sooner, avoiding attacks.

For horizontal swings, the same principles discussed earlier still apply (compensate to the left or right of the zombie's head depending on your current melee weapon's attack animation). Additionally, if the zombie is at a higher elevation than you are, you just have to aim directly at the head in most cases, but you also need to move in closer to attack (same as when the zed is below you), otherwise your swings will likely miss due to the head being further away than normal.


When fighting zombies in tight corridors, you will constantly bump into other players trying to fight via melee like you. If player collisions are turned on, they can displace you when you least expect, causing missed swings and such. These swings can end up not hitting the zombie's head, missing the kill or hitting walls as well, both which can have a significant stamina cost if you're using a heavy melee like the Sledge or Pickaxe and you've been holding a charge for a couple of seconds, waiting your turn to swing.

To prevent that useless loss of stamina, you can easily and quickly cancel your charged attacks by holstering with the H key ➜ then pressing the Q key to re-equip your weapon. You can also double tap the Q key.


Sometimes it's possible to get cornered by Shamblers without a firearm in cramped maps, or you sometimes need to quickly go through a tight chokepoint blocked by several zeds. So, if you have at least an average melee weapon like a Crowbar, Lead Pipe or Hatchet (check the "Weapons: Melee" section for more info) you can try to get out of this situation by quickly killing 1 to 4 Shamblers in quick succession. This is a technique for emergencies though, as it will drain almost all your stamina if you kill too many zeds with it.

First, get very close to a Shambler in the direction you wanna go to (preferably the direction where there's the least amount of zombies) ➜ Press Left Click to perform a quick attack ➜ Immediately shove the zombie back with the V key, regardless of whether they stumbled due to the melee knockback or not ➜ Move forward with the W key and follow that up with another quick attack (Left Click) as the Shambler is stumbling ➜ Press the V key on the next Shambler to stumble it forward ➜ Repeat the previous steps to kill as many zeds as you need to escape the horde. Do note that after around 4 kills you'll drain almost all your stamina.


If you instead have a heavy melee weapon (Sledge or Pickaxe), you can kill Shamblers in one quick attack from the get go. If there's just one zed blocking your escape, a simple quick attack will deal with it and let you through. However if there's more, after killing the first zed, you should shove the next one with the V key so that it stumbles as your attack cooldown finishes and then follow that up with another quick attack. You can do this to kill up to 3 Shamblers in a row. After that, your stamina will run out almost completely.

I've noticed over the years that Zombie Children in particular are notoriously infamous among rookies as well as regular players in general. Due to this, I decided to make a section dedicated to a couple of techniques and tips to help you deal with them consistently. Note that you still need to know how the basics of melee combat work, this is not a cheat sheet for Zombie Children.

First, their attack speed is extremely fast, meaning that as soon as you enter their attack range, they will pretty much smack you instantly. That smack will also push you back slightly, which in turn leads to them going outside your melee's effective range. To make matters worse, every single attack will cause your camera to start flailing, which almost completely prevents your swings from hitting their heads and your shoves from registering.




This is the basic method on how to deal with ZCs. It's much slower than the alternatives, but it's safe and consistent. It's VERY important to remember though that this only works for ONE Zombie Child at a time. If you have more than one on your tail, you have to resort to kiting techniques.

First, as soon as you see a kid chasing you, move backwards in a straight line with the S key ➜ Wait until the kid is within your attack range and shove with the V key ➜ As the kid stumbles back, move forwards with the W key ➜ As soon as the kid is inside your attack range again, kill them with a quick attack by pressing Left Click.


The preferred method to deal with ZCs is killing them as fast as possible. To do that you simply let the kid approach you and kill them via a quick attack with aim compensation, just like it was explained in the "Combat: Basic Melee Mechanics" section. You'll find detailed info there so that you understand what aim compensation is and how to apply it.


If the ZCs are coming one by one, you can use the aim compensation method in a small area without having to move. However, if they're all bunched up in a horde, you have to resort to the kiting methods that were explained in the "Combat: Zombie Manipulation" section and form a conga line to take them out (note that you should always use aim compensation in combination with every technique, as it drastically improves your effectiveness).

Circle kiting in particular is more consistent in my experience at least, because having several kids clipping into each other will very likely cause you to get hit due to their attack speed. Going in circles tends to spread them out, so that you get individual kids that you can gradually pick off one by one. This is all obviously related to melee weapons. If you have a firearm and bullets to spare, you can take care of huge hordes with ease.




If you have a Runner and a Zombie Kid chasing you at the same time, it can be tough to take them out because they will clip into each other. However, you can deal with them relatively consistently if you use the Circle Kiting technique ("Combat: Zombie Manipulation" section) to avoid their attacks and to separate them for short periods.

Simply use Circle Kiting continuously ➜ Wait until the ZC lags behind for a brief moment ➜ Move forwards a bit to get the ZC inside your melee range and kill it ➜ Keep circling until the Runner stands still and go for the kill.

If you can't reliably Circle Kite them because you're in a cramped hallway, or there's Shamblers close by which can grab you, then sprint in a straight line ➜ Quickly turn around and kill the Runner as it's sprinting towards you ➜ Finally kill the ZC.

In general, if you sprint, the ZC will lag behind slightly, giving you ample room to kill the Runner first. It's important to note that you should only kill the Runner if it's currently sprinting towards you. DON'T get close to kill it if it stops moving, as the ZC will catch up and smack you, which will cause your camera to flail around, thus you will probably miss your attack or shove against the Runner. Also, please note that these techniques are only useful for a single Runner + Zombie Child combo. If there's any more of both, you'll have to rely on regular Kiting or Circle Kiting and improvise to take them all out.

If you can't do any of these steps for whatever reason, then always prioritize avoiding the Runner's attack by shoving or by trying to kill it first, as it can insta-kill you under 80 HP, while the ZC will only deal 8 points of damage per attack. But you should indeed try to use these techniques constantly, as they are very consistent.

For a couple of melee weapons, namely the Machete and the Hatchet, it's possible to quickly and efficiently kill small-sized hordes of Shamblers by constantly chaining light attacks without shoving. This is useful for saving up precious ammo that you may need for a later section and not take too long to kill a small group of Shamblers that are blocking the way.

Going the safe route (charging every melee attack to reach the one-hit-kill breakpoint) can take too long with these two weapons due to their low damage compared to a Sledgehammer or Pickaxe. This is why this is a high risk-high reward technique, especially when using the Hatchet with its tiny effective range.

You need a lot of practice to do this because you have to carefully learn the Machete and Hatchet's effective range. If you don't, you'll be forced to shove zombies back constantly because you'll end up entering their attack range before your attacks can connect. This uses a lot more stamina, thus it becomes impossible to sustain the technique for long enough to kill any significant amount of zeds. Try to shove only if you messed up and you predict that the zombie is likely to start an attack.


Occasionally, Runner / Zombie Children conga lines can become too large to handle consistently without a firearm. This is because zombies clip into one another, causing missed attacks which will get you killed most of the time if you don't have enough HP.

To tackle these via melee only, you can find a nearby Shambler horde and dodge through it to force some of the Runners or ZC to get stuck inside of it. Once you exit through to the other side, it's very likely that you'll only have a couple of Runners left in the conga line, allowing you to safely deal with them via melee before the rest of them weave through.


Despite the fact that the Pickaxe and the Sledgehammer are very similar in stats, the first one has a small advantage. Since its drawing and charge up animations are very fast, you can cancel the Pickaxe's attack cooldown and begin a new charged attack sooner than intended.

First, charge up your attack by holding Left Click until the Pickaxe starts to move in your screen (no charge time needed to get the one-hit-kill) ➜ Let go of your Left Click to attack ➜ As soon as the zombie dies, double tap the Q key to cancel the attack cooldown ➜ Hold your Left Click as soon as the Pickaxe is re-equipped to charge another attack ➜ Let go of your Left Click to attack ➜ Repeat.

This increases your Shambler killing speed noticeably, which can really help out in tough situations or in Nightmare difficulty. Note that you can do the same thing with the Sledgehammer, but you won't save any time because of the slow drawing and charge up animations. So, the trick only works with the Pickaxe.


In NMRiH, crouching obviously reduces your movement speed drastically like in most games. However, moving backwards is significantly faster than moving forwards. You can abuse this and manage to combat zombies via melee while crouching, which grants you an increased constant stamina regeneration rate. The faster speed while moving backwards lets you get close to zombies to score a headshot and then quickly retreat without baiting their attacks.

This technique is occasionally a life saver when you are in tough situations, like cornered without a Pickaxe or Sledge in tight spaces by a considerable amount of Shamblers, or in Nightmare difficulty where zed spawns are significantly increased. However, it does make aiming for the head much more difficult, so it takes practice to learn the timing and where to position your reticule.


Cancelling the shove cooldown is not only useful for dodging hordes or for moving objective items, you can also use it for combat. It's especially handy against groups of Runners, for both firearm or melee combat.

Occasionally, you may miss an attack or hit registration will fail against them, in which case you'll be forced to shove your current zombie target. But, if you're fighting several of them at the same time, the shove cooldown will prevent you from shoving again quickly if one of them catches up to you and tries to attack. Therefore if you use the Shove Cooldown Cancel technique, you can effectively repel any zed that might run after you and try to catch you with your pants down.

This is a blessing in Nightmare difficulty, as it's usually difficult to one-shot Runners with both melee or firearms without some sort of preparation like charging up your melee weapon or using your precious ammo reserves. You'll find info on this technique in the "Movement: Advanced Techniques" section.

Firearms in NMRiH can be thought of as a luxury. They are a limited resource and not technically necessary to win in Classic difficulty, but they can be very helpful in many situations. Not only they'll save you time and effort, you'll also be less vulnerable to RNG.

Some hard custom maps can become near impossible to complete on Nightmare difficulty if you decide not to use firearms or if you waste all your ammo when it's not needed. Improper firearm use in these cases will leave you at the mercy of your teammates' decisions and the game's randomness.

Having said that, you should never forget that melee weapons will always be the reliable backbone during gameplay, because no matter how deep in the mud you are, proper melee use will very likely save your life in the vast majority of the scenarios.

Now we're going to discuss several useful mechanics, techniques and strategies that you can use to increase your effectiveness with all firearms, letting you tackle extreme situations that would otherwise require a lot of effort to survive only with melee weapons.



• Basic Operation:
The basics of firearm mechanics are simple. Press the R key to reload, press the U key to unload all ammo into your inventory, hold the R key to check how many bullets you have in your mag and in your ammo pool. Each weapon uses a specific ammunition type, so you must learn all the different firearm-ammo pairings. Press the X key to switch fire modes if available. Press the K key to enable the suicide animation then Left Click to fire.

Press Right Click to use your sights / ironsights. They increase your accuracy (lowers weapon spread) but severely hinders your movement speed, making you vulnerable to Runner or Zombie Children attacks. Note that standing still does NOT increase your accuracy, only sights do.


• Skillshot Mode:
Stand completely still while using the sights (no actions other than moving the camera) for around 4 seconds to enter Skillshot mode (indicated by an amber-colored overlay on your screen), which will allow you to get a one-hit-kill with weapons that use either 9mm or .22 ammo. All other ammo types grant you a one-hit-kill right out of the gate, so you can't enter Skillshot with weapons that use them.

This mechanic however is COMPLETELY useless because standing still for 4 seconds leaves you extremely vulnerable. While waiting for the effect, you can't move, shove, jump or defend yourself in any way without cancelling it altogether, in which case you'll never actually enter Skillshot mode in the vast majority of situations. Don't ever use it.


• Bullet Penetration:
There's two ammo types, .308 (used by snipers and the FN-FAL) and .357 Magnum (used by the S&W revolver and the Winchester) that are able to penetrate doors or props up to 3 times, allowing you to get several zombie kills with one shot as collaterals. You can also break planks behind doors to access secrets or skip part of the map layout to complete objectives.

There are not too many places where you can do the latter, but it does come in handy from time to time, like the room containing the crowbar in nmo_emergency_1101. If you bring a S&W revolver to a specific door near the elevator, you can access the crowbar early by destroying a plank behind the door, saving you from dealing with several zombie hordes and obstacles. Shotguns can get you collateral zombie kills when you line them up, but the shots themselves don't penetrate walls or doors.

Most of the following techniques involve either shoving, holstering or switching weapons. Cancelling animations involves similar mechanics to the Shove Cooldown Cancel technique which was explained previously. If you haven't seen how that works, check the "Movement: Advanced Techniques" section.

Here we'll make heavy use of the Q key, which switches back to the last weapon used by the player. By pressing the Q key twice quickly, you can cancel almost every animation in the game.


• Ammo Check Animation Cancel:
You can cancel the ammo checking animation by double tapping the Q key. This is useful because checking your ammo completely blocks your attacks until it finishes. This doesn't work if you just shove with the V key, since that will cancel the animation but your attacks will still be blocked.


• Reload Animation Cancel:
It's common to sometimes get caught with your pants down by a Runner when reloading. Fortunately, you can easily cancel the reload animation by shoving with the V key, or by double-tapping the Q key. You can also combine both ways to perform the Shove Cooldown Cancel technique to get two quick shoves in a row in case you get surprised by 2 Runners or more.

The vast majority of firearms in NMRiH only register a reload after the complete animation plays. You can tell when a reload has been correctly registered when your character shouts out how many rounds you have left and the ammo counter on the lower-right side of your screen will appear. However, there's one exception, the Ruger 10/22 w/ Exended Mag. In this case, the empty chamber reload actually registers before the animation is completed. Therefore, you can cancel it by shoving with the V key, allowing you to start shooting sooner.

In the case of shotguns, they all have partial reloads (except for the SV10 Perennia) which can be easily interrupted at any time by pressing Right Click or shoving with the V key.


• Bolt / Lever / Pump Action Animation Cancel:
When pumping a shotgun, pulling the bolt of a sniper rifle, or pulling the leaver of a Winchester rifle, you cannot attack or sprint, and you can only shove zeds back after a 0.5 second delay when shooting. This makes you vulnerable to Runner attacks, as you can't easily get away by sprinting and that 0.5 second delay is sometimes enough for a Runner to sneak in a hit.

Luckily, it's possible to cancel those animations by holstering with the H key or tapping the Q key if your last used item is your fists. Then, this allows you to quickly shove back the incoming zombie if you miss your shot with the V key.

In the case of the Sako 85 sniper rifles (normal and the ironsight variant), cancelling the bolt action animation via double-tapping the Q key will quickly re-equip the weapon, letting you fire considerably faster than just waiting for the bolt action animation to complete. These are the only weapons with this property, as pump-action shotguns, the Winchester 1892 and the JAE-700 all have slow weapon drawing animations, which don't save any time. Skipping those animations via shoving also doesn't save any time.


• Unloading Animation Cancel:
It's possible to cancel the weapon unloading animation to quickly pick up ammo from other firearms. First, press the U key to unload your weapon ➜ Quickly hold the 1 key to open your inventory wheel ➜ Press Right Click over the empty firearm to drop it. This will also cancel the unloading animation, allowing you to quickly pick up another gun and repeat the process. This will come up again in the "Inventory: Techniques and Tricks" section.


• Sprint Firing:
When shooting or attacking via melee, the game forces you to stop sprinting. However, with most firearms, you can fire a single shot while sprinting which only halts your momentum for a brief moment and then you'll start sprinting again. Simply sprint by holding W + Shift and then fire your weapon with Left Click.

This is very useful because it allows you basically keep most of your momentum while rushing through hordes and firing at the same time. It also bypasses the initial 12 points of stamina penalty cost for when you start sprinting, so there's much less stamina used overall. This trick works with all firearms with the exception of shotguns (not including the SV10 Perennia and the Super X3), the Winchester, sniper rifles due to pumping and bolt action animations making the return to sprinting way too slow, and the S&W Revolver.


• Sprint Reloading:
It's possible to skip the sprint restriction allowing you to reload and sprint at the same time. First, start sprinting by holding the W + Shift keys ➜ Press the R key at any time ➜ You'll stop for a brief moment and then you'll resume your sprint while reloading at the same time. This trick works with all firearms with the exception of shotguns (not including the SV10 Perennia), the Winchester 1892, the FN-FAL and the MAC-10.


• SKS Rifle Quick Kill:
You can perform an a very fast Shambler kill if you have a Hatchet or Machete + SKS Rifle with Bayonet. First, perform a light attack with your chosen melee weapon by pressing Left Click ➜ As soon as you see blood spurting out of the zombie's head (meaning that the hit registered correctly) press the Q key ➜ Immediately after that, press the V key in quick succession while aiming for the head. This will force the shove animation with the Bayonet to play before the drawing animation of the rifle itself, effectively delaying it.

This technique is useful for emergencies, like trying to go through a chokepoint to avoid being cornered. It's faster than two light attacks with either the Machete or the Hatchet, but it uses more stamina as well. As a secondary use, it can help you unlock the Stabbity Style achievement, which will be discussed in the "Problematic Achievements" section. It's important to note that this technique only works on Classic difficulty, because Nightmare doubles zombie HP.

Inventory management is crucial to NMRiH's gameplay. Failing to properly manage your inventory will likely cause situations like:


By learning a few facts and tricks, you'll be able to quickly and efficiently pick all the items you need to complete a match. That can vary between maps due to geometry, Runner spawns, etc., but all these ideas can be applied to any situation. First, let's talk about how weight affects your movement:


Your inventory has a maximum capacity of 1000 weight units. Every item has a specific weight number, like a Sledgehammer (400 units). Depending on how much of your inventory is occupied by items you've picked up, your movement speed will change:

• From 0% to 49%, your movement speed is kept at its default maximum value
  
• From 50% to 99%, your movement speed is reduced by 10% of the max value
  
• At 100% inventory capacity, your movement speed is reduced by 25% of the max value

Note that your speed is only reduced once you cross each breakpoint, meaning that there is absolutely no difference between having 50% or 99% of your inventory taken up by items for example. Also, Runners and Zombie Children still can't attack or grab you when you are at 100% full inventory.


The most efficient items that you can use to win will depend on which map you play. Some have a lot of melee weapons and very few firearms or vice versa, others may have plenty low-tier melee weapons to reduce your overall effectiveness against Runners. You'll have to adapt to what the map gives you. Having said this, there is a general principle you can follow. Here's what you have to find in descending priority:

• 1️⃣ A competent melee weapon (Machete, Fire Axe, Hatchet, Pickaxe, etc.)
  
• 2️⃣ Medical items (try to carry all of them at the same time if possible)
  
• 3️⃣ A firearm (which one you pick depends on ammo availability and your current melee)
  
• 4️⃣ As much ammo as you can fit in your remaining inventory space (pick it up last)

- Melee Weapons:
You should always prioritize finding a melee weapon that is as efficient as possible given the situation. For example, in tight maps like nmo_vertigo where killing Shamblers is basically mandatory for success, then focus on finding a Pickaxe / Sledgehammer if you can (Fire Axe is an acceptable alternative).

If you are playing a map with a high number of Runners like nmo_rockpit, then try to find something that can kill them consistently and without too much stamina cost, like a Machete or Fire Axe. Obviously you must scale this down to whatever you can find if a map gives you limited options, like using a Hatchet to quickly kill Shambler hordes, even if it's risky. Check the "Weapons: Melee" section for detailed info on each melee weapon. This can help you decide, in your current situation, which one to keep or toss


- Medical items:
No matter how good you are at the game, it's almost certain that you'll eventually take some form of damage. This could be due to a small screw up from your part, bad hit / shove registration, or due to uncooperative players. Regardless of what may happen, medical items will save your life and the life of your teammates. Never, ever leave any of them behind, use them as efficiently as possible, like I explained in the "Medical Items: Efficient Use" section.


- Firearms:
A melee weapon grants you a way kill zombies indefinitely, which is something that firearms can't do. Having said that, finding a firearm is sometimes highly recommended since they can kill zombies quickly and safely, allowing you to outright prevent dangerous scenarios.

An example of this is getting stuck in the alleyway next to the basketball court in nmo_broadway2. If you don't go through the fence fast enough, you'll get constantly assaulted by infinite Shambler and Zombie Children spawns. A simple Glock 17 with enough ammo will allow you to quickly cross the chokepoint and avoid that mess altogether.

As a general rule, if you are carrying a heavy melee weapon (Pickaxe, Sledge, Fire Axe or FUBAR), you should prioritize smaller firearms (Glock 17, Colt 1911, Beretta M9 or Ruger Mark III) because otherwise you won't be able to carry enough medical items or a meaningful amount of ammo.


- Ammunition:
The most abundant or easily accessible type of ammo you may find in a map, as well as what melee weapon you are carrying, will determine which weapon you should pick up. Since you never know exactly how much ammo you're going to end up using, you shouldn't worry too much if you can't find enough. In most cases you don't need that many bullets to go past chokepoints or to kill all Runners. Just concentrate in finding a powerful melee that is ideal for the map you are playing.

Even if you run out of ammo, don't discard your weapon if it's not an inconvenience, you may find more as you progress. This is especially true for 9mm or .22 as they are generally pretty common in most maps and National Guard zombies have a chance to drop a few 9mm bullets. Even a handful of shots can save you a lot of trouble if you focus on completing objectives, clearing obstacles and not panicking.


If you have some spare inventory space after gearing up with a heavy melee weapon like a Pickaxe, you can decide to carry a smaller melee like a Hatchet or Machete in case Zombie Children or Runners are an issue later on. Using a light melee weapon against kids lets you kill more of them in quick succession without running out of stamina, and a Machete is the most effective weapon in the game against Runners. This is very handy in maps like nmo_broadway2, nmo_suzhou and nmo_khafre for example. Carrying two melees also has the benefit of having a backup that you can share with another survivor that couldn't find any weapons. This was explained in more detail in the "Teamplay: Positive Interactions" section.

Like I mentioned before, ammo should be the last thing you pick up once you find most if not all other items with a higher priority. This coupled with the fact that there is no movement speed difference between having 50% and 99% of a full inventory, you can take advantage of that to get a 15% speed boost.

Simply pick up up as much ammo as possible to max out your inventory after picking up all other important items ➜ Fire a single shot with your weapon with Left Click ➜ Press the R key to reload.

Any ammunition that you load into a firearm will no longer use part of your inventory space. Therefore, removing that single bullet from your inventory will reduce your weight from 100% to around 99%, increasing your movement speed by 15% (you were moving with a 25% speed reduction penalty at that moment, which in turn gets reduced to only a 10% penalty). You can't manually drop a single bullet, so that's the reason why you have to shoot.


You can quickly pick up ammo from loaded weapons if you cancel the animation that plays when you unload your currently equipped weapon:

Press the U key to unload the weapon ➜ Press and hold the 1 key to open your inventory wheel ➜ Press Right Click on the empty weapon to drop it ➜ Release the 1 key to close your inventory ➜ Pick up a loaded weapon and repeat the process.


If your inventory is full of useful items that you will need later on but you still need to carry an additional one, you can do so by using the E key to pick it up and carry it like a prop. This is useful when you want to carry heavier stuff like a Sledgehammer or a Chainsaw which need a lot of inventory space. The obvious disadvantage here is that you can't sprint when doing this, you need to drop the item first, but at least you can still shove which can save you if unexpectedly get grabbed by a zombie.

You can also do this with up to 2 items if you use the Flick Item Carrying trick as explained in the "Movement: Carrying Objective Items" section. However, this is clunky and annoying to do, so try to avoid it if possible, there's no need to depend on so many different items and weapons.



If you are carrying an item manually in your hands, you can still open your inventory and ammo wheels by holding the 1 and 2 keys respectively. You can then Right Click on an item to drop it or press Left Click on any type of ammo to drop a few bullets.

If you drop an item to reduce your inventory usage enough, you can then quickly release the 1 key to close your inventory and then press the E key to pick up the item that you were carrying manually. This is a small optimization that allows you to manage your inventory without being forced to stand still, which is useful if you're about to get cornered by Shamblers or if you're actively being chased by Runners.


If you want to quickly switch to an item in your inventory that's not currently in your "last weapon used" slot (meaning that it can't be accessed via the Q key), you have to memorize the visual layout of your inventory so you can quickly hold the 1 key and flick your mouse in the correct direction and select it. Therefore, you have to memorize the layout constantly as it changes every time you pick up or throw away an item.


If you want to quickly get rid of several items or ammo in your inventory to make room for a heavy item like a Sledgehammer or Chainsaw, open your inventory by holding the 1 key ➜ Press Right Click on all the items you want to drop (you can do the same thing with your ammo inventory by holding the 2 key, or you can also hold Right Click over the ammo that you want to discard and you'll drop all of it at once).

However, before doing this, you should holster with the H key. This is because if you want to throw away the item that you're currently holding as well, the game will autoswitch to another item in your inventory, locking up your inputs and preventing you to quickly unload everything that you have. Holstering guarantees that you'll never autoswitch.

Because NMRiH was worked on by a multitude of different devs across a very long period of time, inconsistencies in gameplay will occur. Several of these are map-related problems, especially with community-made ones, while others are problems with the game's code.

Additionally, some custom maps don't behave like the officials at all. There are often marked differences in gameplay which can lead to confusion and frustration. There is really no way around this, you just have learn the maps by playing them regularly.

Here's a list of gameplay inconsistencies:

I initially didn't want to include a section on achievements because they are not important to the core of your knowledge of the game. However, a lot of players struggle with a few of them, so I'll give some quick tips on how to unlock them with relatively straightforward strategies.

Note that I won't describe ways of cheesing any achievement via community maps, such as nmo_achievement or nmo_hellgate because there is no strategy there, simply kill zombies.

What I will describe is the least frustrating ways to unlock these in any official or community map that's between the boundaries of "intended" gameplay. Note that all of these strategies are meant to be used on Classic difficulty.


Flaregun kills are difficult to achieve consistently. The reason is that the weapon is found in very few maps and its ammo is pretty scarce. They also cannot appear inside supply drops.

Thanks to these factors, you have to play any map that has a guaranteed Flaregun spawn, like nmo_rockpit, nms_favela or nms_midwest for example.

After that, you have to find a Fire Axe. With it, you can attack a Shambler with one light attack, leaving it down near 0 HP, allowing you to finish it off with 5 shoves with the Flaregun to the head. Also, you could do 1 Fire Axe light attack ➜ 1 uncharged punch (minimum charge time as possible) ➜ 3 Flaregun shoves and you'll get the kill faster but juggling 3 different weapons requires more coordination.

If you repeat this process in several Survival matches, you'll eventually unlock the achievement. It's frustrating and time-consuming, but at least it's consistent without having to resort to achievement cheesing.


Same concept as the previous achievement. Use the Fire Axe to weaken a Shambler with one light attack, and finish it off with 2 Maglite light attacks to the head, or you can charge a heavy attack for a couple of seconds to get a one-hit-kill. This is way faster and easier.


Exactly the same as Blinded by the Light, but a lot more time-consuming and tedious. Shamblers will die in their weakened state with 2 punches to the head or 1 if you charge for a couple of seconds.

A small trick to speed this up a bit is killing Crawlers and Zombie Children with your fists only, as they die in 1 and 3 hits respectively. It's much easier to do this with your fists than with a Maglite or Flaregun. The fists have a longer range and a faster animation compared to the Maglite. Also, shooting the Flaregun at close range is extremely dangerous due to the self-inflicted damage.


This achievement used to be relatively easy and straightforward to unlock. However, after a game update circa 2015, the bayonet can no longer kill zombies reliably. It sometimes one-shots and sometimes it doesn't, meaning that you no longer can get to the 10 zombie mark in 30 seconds unless you get extremely lucky.

The key to unlocking this in the current version of the game is using a Machete or a Hatchet, preferably the first one. You have to play in any map where you can find an SKS with Bayonet and either of the two melee weapons mentioned before. nmo_subside is an example (get the bayonet SKS from the spawn point, continue the map and open the secret stash to the left of the meth shack with a green key. There's no glowing outline for it, you have to search around and find it or memorize all the possible spawns.

When you have both items, rally up a bunch of zombies in a group in any open area and perform the SKS Quick Kill technique on all of them. This technique was explained in detail in the "Combat: Advanced Firearm Mechanics" section. Be careful not to hit more than one zombie when you use your melee weapon, and make sure that you have at least 10 so that you don't accidentally miss unlocking the achievement.


This one can be tough to unlock because early versions of nmo_broadway used to be shorter. There was a helicopter escape on the street before the train sequence was added, but the achievement was never updated to accommodate this change. It's possible to do it solo, but it takes a lot of trial and error thanks to the objective RNG.

If you can find a decent team to help you, go for that, however if you are stuck playing solo, then you can try a few things. It will still take many tries, but these will up your chances:


This achievement is pretty much the definition of trial and error. There's no easy way around it, you just gotta keep shooting arrows at Shambler hordes from far enough away until one dies. For this, you should maybe try NMS maps since they tend to be pretty open most of the time and thanks to the supply drops, you'll very likely find plenty of arrows.

Some maps may have optimization in the form of fog, preventing you from seeing where you are shooting. I can recommend playing on nms_gun_store_b7.[gamebanana.com] There you'll find plenty of arrows inside the gun store and in supply drops, plus you have enough distance to shoot at Shamblers that are far enough away. Stand on one of the corners next to the street and fire at the Shamblers that spawn on the opposite corner, aiming down the street.


One easy way to unlock this achievement is playing the map nmo_shelter. There's a watermelon inside the spawn room. Take it and place it next to the piano on the second floor. Then, open the secret armory (keypad code is 1998) and grab the PSE Bow that's inside. Next, stand as far away as possible from the melon in a straight line and shoot at it to unlock the achievement. Obviously you should kill all zeds in the area so that they don't bother you.

So, after this humongous piece of a guide, you've reached the end. First, I want to say thanks for taking the time to read my work and I hope this was helpful to you in more ways than one. It has taken me almost 4 years to release this and it's a relief to finally show it to the community so that it can be of use.

NMRiH is a fantastic game that is sadly becoming forgotten as the years go by, so I hope this guide will at least help people get into the game faster and easier, with less frustration involved. It's also a way for me to pass the torch in a way, after I inevitably stop playing the game as well.

Like I previously said in the intro, if you have anything to discuss or add to the contents of the guide, feel free to comment below so we can talk about it, as long as you provide well mannered constructive criticism. The idea is to improve this and in turn make the player experience as enjoyable as possible. Any questions are more than welcome also, no matter how dumb you think they might be.

Finally, I'd really appreciate it if you could leave me a thumbs up 👍 at the top of the page and share the guide with anyone who's learning to play NMRiH, or even a veteran who may find it useful. You can also add it to your favorites to have it ready when you need it.
It would mean a lot to me, as likes make the guide more visible in the browser, thus you are helping more people to get into the game.

I wish you a fantastic day and some great NMRiH matches.

Sincerely

Graffiti by Acrilyk

17/02/2022 ➜ Added appropriate screenshots and missing images to the Survival: General Info and Medical Items: Efficient Use sections.

18/02/2022 ➜ Added a new bullet point (Critical Range) in the Combat: Basic Melee Mechanics section with an appropriate image. Added a bullet point in Movement: Miscellaneous Techniques and a note in Heads Up Display (HUD).

22/02/2022 ➜ Added a new bullet point in Learning the Maps: Memorization (Memorize dangerous environmental hazards).

23/02/2022 ➜ Added a first draft of the Combat: Advanced Melee Techniques section and re-arranged the entire melee combat section for a more intuitive reading order. There are still basic and advanced techniques being written.

02/03/2022 ➜ Corrected inconsistencies and unintuitive nomenclature in the Uninterrupted Shambler Killing bullet point to match the info in the upcoming Weapons: Melee section.

03/03/2022 ➜ Added the Weapons: Melee section. All weapon icons contributed by Dysphie. Also, thank you Sebython for the useful info (stamina use numbers of some melee weapons). Finally, added a screenshot in the Combat: Melee Basic Mechanics section to better illustrate what melee trace arcs actually look like.

07/03/2022 ➜ Added all The Infected:... sections. Gifs pending as Steam won't let me embed imgur gifs.

09/03/2022 ➜ Added a new section called Combat: Dealing with Zombie Children, which contains tips and techniques on how to take them out efficiently. Also, added gifs for all zombie types in The Infected:... sections contributed by Infinite.

13/03/2022 ➜ Added two new techniques in Combat: Basic Melee Techniques (cont.). These are Light / Heavy Melee Shambler Quick Kill. Added the Weapons: Throwables section.

17/04/2022 ➜ Update: It's been a while since I added new content to the guide, but don't worry, as the Weapons: Firearms section is in the works, as well as the Items: Tools section. I'm going to wait until the next NMRiH update is released (which should be pretty soon), as there will be some noticeable gameplay changes that affect those two sections.

19/04/2022 ➜ Added a missing .gif image in the Movement: Basic Techniques section. Once again contributed by Infinite.

24/04/2022 ➜ Removed the "Crouch Swimming" mechanic bullet point as it doesn't seem to work anymore (or never actually did, probably a placebo of mine).

13/05/2022 ➜ Modified the Katniss achievement method so that it doesn't require a manual download of a custom map. Thanks to brekiy for sharing this method.

17/05/2022 ➜ Removed the technique to skip the E-Tool animation that switches the weapon from shovel mode to pickaxe mode, as it has been patched in the upcoming 1.12.3 update. Also changed the trace arc screenshot in Combat: Basic Melee Mechanics as hit detection has been improved in 1.12.3. Finally, added a new bullet point, Revivers (Zombie Survivors), in the Runners section to clarify that they have the exact same properties as a regular Runner.

05/06/2022 ➜ Added a new bullet point (Memorize doors or gates that cannot be opened by zeds) in the Learning the Maps: Memorization section. Also added info on zombies opening doors in The Infected: Runners section.

10/06/2022 ➜ Removed the "Fast reaction to zeds that may grab or have already grabbed you" bullet point in Movement: Basic Techniques as it's not necessary to list it as a "technique", it should rather be learned naturally while playing the game and improving. Used the remaining available text to add a few more examples of real usage of some of the other techniques in the section.

11/06/2022 ➜ Added a new bullet point: Dealing with a Runner + Zombie Child Combo, in the Combat: Dealing with Zombie Children section.

16/06/2022 ➜ Added the Items: Tools section to the guide. Also, removed the Barricade Hammer, Maglite, Welder and Extinguisher from the Weapons: Melee section as they are now detailed in Items: Tools. Thanks again to Dysphie for contributing all the item icons.

17/06/2022 ➜ Removed references to the issue where the Maglite cannot point forward when used in tandem with a one-handed melee weapon, as it has been fixed in the 1.12.3 update. Also, added a bit more info about the Crawler's grab animation, which can cause you to miss your shove (The Infected: Crawlers).

27/06/2022 ➜ Removed a redundant note in the Stamina Management section regarding subpar melee weapons and their stamina use, as that's now detailed in the Weapons: Melee section.

06/07/2022 ➜ The guide has been added to the "Survival Guide" button in the game's main menu! Thank you Felis for the opportunity and thank you all for supporting my work! 1.12.3 edits are almost done and the Weapons: Firearms section is in the works. Also, corrected lines that mention that bleeding doubles your stamina usage globally, it only affects the stamina consumed when jumping. Thank you Dysphie for pointing that out. Finally, I'm also working on a video which is meant to be used as an intro for the guide, as well as to promote it on YouTube, so that more people can find it. It's almost done, thus it should be out very soon.

02/08/2022 ➜ Added a new niche exploit in the Medical Items: Efficient Use section.

07/10/2022 ➜ Fixed erroneous zombie damage values for both Shamblers and Runners. Thank you Marksman Max for sharing the correct info!

25/10/2022 ➜ Removed the Sight-Lowering Animation skip exploit due to it no longer being necessary (you can now always shove while raising or lowering your sights). Finished up all the 1.12.3 corrections and fixed several mistakes in the Stamina Management and Combat: Advanced Firearm Mechanics sections.

31/10/2022 ➜ Small modifications to accommodate a few minor gameplay changes introduced in the 1,13 update.

21/01/2023 ➜ Added a new bullet point: "Determining your current HP with the help of other players" in the Health and Damage section.

25/05/2024 ➜ Added the Weapons: Firearm sections to the guide, as well as the new video introduction. You can check it out at the beginning of the guide or here. Thanks to Dysphie for contributing with all weapon and ammo icons. Finally! Sorry for the long hiatus, 2023 was a rough year for me but now everything's back on track! Thank you all for the continued support.

13/07/2024 ➜ Fixed many mistakes in the Weapons: Firearms sections regarding the ammo capacity of most weapons. Also, I've improved the grammar to clearly note the exact capacity of each firearm.

21/10/2024 ➜ Changed the name and description of the Zombie Jitter Dodge technique to Zombie Scrape Dodge, as the visual bug that occurred while performing it (your camera would become jittery) has been fixed in the 1.14 update, which was the visual indication that you were doing the technique correctly. Now the only indication is that your forward movement may become choppy. I've also improved a few explanations on weapon comparisons in the Weapons: Firearm sections, as some were nonsensical.