Hello, and welcome to this Nation Red guide.
It's actually my first attempt to writing a guide on Steam, and I felt the urge more than I chose to make one for Nation Red. Nation Red is a game that has a special place in my heart. I bought it on impulse, and it's that game I can spend a lot of time without playing, but which sees me returning to it regularly and enjoying it exactly the same way. New content gets added from time to time, and it's always nice to see I "still got it".

Also, and I hope you allow me a little bragging moment, it was a game where I managed to reach rank 20 on the leaderboard in coop barricade mode. It was a long time ago, when the game was still young, but somehow, this accomplishment pushed me to try to beat my score, get better, and push forward. Since then a lot of better players pushed my scores a lot further back, and it's a good thing, it means people plays and enjoy the game, and try to excel at it too. Because it's certainly a game deserving some praise as a top view shooter.

Some may call it mindless shooter, but you will see with me it's anything but mindless.
So, if you don't mind, let's proceed with the guide proper, shall we? After all, that's why you're here!

Menu options:

All right, first, let's insist on three very important things that people may overlook, but which are very important.

The first one is your perk mode.
You have 3 perk modes, and I would say each with their pros and cons, but let's face it, of the 3, only one is the one you should use.

First you've Strategic Mode. Strategic Mode allows you to choose the perks you like among a list, and gain them as you level up in the order you chose. This sounds pretty good, until you realise you can only choose 25 that way, meaning you limit your max level to 25...
In theory, it's good for short games(such as solo missions), or if you plan to die relatively fast, but I consider this mode as the small wheels on a bike. It's good to get to know the perks if you want to, but I think to get actually good at the game, you need to choose something else.

Then you have Auto-perk mode. This will allow the game to just give you one of the perks you chose in a list of your favorites when you level up at the press of the level up key. This sounds great too, right? You get one of your favorite perks each time!
Well, truth is, it's not... See, there is a major difference between getting say, the auto-experience perk(which gives you xp over time), or the perks which make your reload speed faster(quick finger and dexterity), early in the game, and getting them at level 30+... Chances are this system will hamper you more than it will helps you, because let's face it, you can't trust a computer for making sound strategic choices for you.

Then you have Random Perk mode. In this mode, you get a list of 7 perks each time you level, and you can choose one among them. Now, you can get very good choices like you can get very bad ones, but it allows you to choose things you may actually need when you feel you will need them. In a way, it's the best way to control your progression that is offered to you. And of course, you can take almost every single perk if you last long enough, making your character quite a beast. It's also worth noting you're cloaked when choosing a perk in the list in multiplayer, which can be used to great effect strategically.

One of the things I see the most in coop when people are kinda new to the game, or when people wonder why they aren't performing as well as others players is people playing in strategic perk mode... It just limits power so much passing one point, your character won't be able to pull his weight, and you will get swarmed and die, forcing the team to go into an endless cycle of reviving you until it finally get mauled. It's even worse in solo because you don't have the safety net of your teamates, once you die, it's over.

Second point, in your options, is the autofire mode. Basically you have two settings. One will make your characer continuously fire as long as the fire button is pressed. The second will require a button imput for each shot, assuming you don't have an auto weapon.

Now, this is an interesting thing that deserves to be talked about despite how mundane it sounds. While the autofire is well and good, the firing speed it can achieve is vastly inferior to what an human can do by mashing. Meaning disabling the auto-fire is in theory better.
Problem is, you're human. I know I know, no need to call me Captain Obvious for stating such a thing, but let me extrapolate.
Games of Nation Red can last a long time, especially when you're performing well. If you've read some others guides, you know a good team can have games lasting as long as 3 or 4 HOURS when they are attempting to break a record. Now, it may already sounds like a long gameplay time, now imagin the strain on your arm, hand and trigger finger. For having played long games(not as long, mind you, but 2 hours did happen), let me tell you, it's really really hard on your body, and that strain is only made worse by the tension you may experiment playing the game trying to survive. When you use such a setup, and no automatic weapon, you will realise you can do 2 maybe 3 games in a row, but not more if you're like me.
It will simply leave your body sore.

So, when you do play, consider the option which is best for you. Using manual fire is basically like blood magic. You're trading life essence at the cost of efficiency. Ok, it may not be the best comparaison, but you get what I mean. If you feel like you will play for a long time, and you're not trying to be a beast, by all means, switch to auto-fire. Your body will thank you.

Third point is an option that is quite recent which allows you to choose your default melee weapon. As you probably already know each character starts with a glock and a melee weapon. I think the dev team noticed people were complaining about how it was hard to make the medic worthwhile if you didn't get an axe, so they made you able to actually get the melee weapon of your choice. Do yourself a favor, choose the axe and never look back. The axe is, simply put, the best melee weapon and even for a non-melee focused character(everyone but the medic basically), it can serve you well at the beginning of the game when trying to kill machine gun or minigun bosses. The axe is the second best weapon in terms of damage. Just behind the M79 grenade launcher, which is single shot. It swings pretty fast too.

Moving around:

Now, let's talk a little bit about movement. Your movement speed depends mostly on which weapon you're using. Perks can make you move faster. Improved Loadout allows you to move at full speed no matter what you're carrying. Reflex Boost allows you to move faster.
Now, you have to also consider you're moving more slowly when you move BACKWARD. It's a very important thing to remember. If you want to shoot the zombies hot on your heels while you're getting away, know you will do so at the cost of your speed. If you want to just get away fast, keep looking FORWARD. It's an habit to take, because you tend to want to shoot things behind you as you're leaving the zone. That's exactly what you should try to avoid doing if you're not sure you won't get caught. A much better way of moving around is blasting a path through a wall of zombies to reach a relatively safe spot where you will be able to reload. As such, you also need to keep track of your ammo count. How many bullets/explosives/nails/fire/other you have left in your clip determines how you approach a situation. Less Clumsy is a perk which allows you to move faster when walking backward.

All thoses things are elements you must learn to the point they become natural. You just don't have the time to think when you're in the middle of the horde. You have to be able to act by pure instinct, using your reflexes. For some people, it's harder to do than for others.

Now, you have the dive roll.
The dive roll is something most people configure as a key, then forget about. This just won't do. The dive roll is an option you must always remember you have. While most of the time you will be able to just move away running and shooting, dodging things on your way, at some point you may end up being boxed, and in need of a fast evade move so you don't get cut by that big zombie's axe, or punched to death by that brawler. Dive rolling should be considered as a last resort move. You can't shoot while you're rolling, and you can't change direction once you start rolling. What this means is, the spot where you will end up is fixed. So, you have to think carefully about when and where using it. It's very easy to evade a boss and end up right on an explosive zombie which will, of course, detonate and kill you. Or in the middle of a swarm.

Thankfully, you can actually use your grenades while rolling, so you can bomb away as you roll to clear groups and ensure a safe landing. Trail Blazer is a perk allowing you to knock back zombies on the way when you roll. Not a very useful perk to me, but it's good to have.

Weapon locking:

One feature most new comers tend to ignore is the ability to lock weapons. You can assign a key to that, which allows you to "lock" your actual weapon. You will see a little lock near it on your HUD when you do so. What it means is, if you walk on an other weapon, it won't replace that weapon, but will replace your secondary if it's not locked too.

I often see people new to the game complain they got very bad weapons, or they got a good one but lost it for a bad one and it was all the game's fault...

Well it's not. You have the option to choose what you keep and throw away, they are just not using it.

The amount of weapons you can carry is limited to two. So when you get a weapon which is a keeper, always lock it. As a general rule, once you have a correct loadout, always lock it and only unlock it if a better weapon appear before taking it. It's always better to not lose what you have, rather than getting something you really don't want. Weapons you should avoid include all melee weapons(you should always start with the best one anyway), the flamethrower, the steam gun, the sniper rifle if you're not a sniper(and some people may say even if you ARE a sniper), and arguably the minigun, due to the huge reloading speed.

Now, let's talk about an important ressource. Grenades. Grenades are often overlooked. It's a tendency we have in modern games to forget they are there while we blast thing, and only remember they exist when they are really "needed". In Nation Red, you can carry a maximum of 15 grenades. Grenades can be gained by two ways, grenades crates which give you 3, and the Anarchist perk, which will grant you 1 grenade every 30 seconds. You will also gain 2 grenades upon choosing the Remote Detonator perk.

Your regular grenades are, to be honest, not so good. They explode centered on you and hurt things around you, but are fairly weak. They are a good way to save your bacon when crowded by regular zombies, but that's more or less it.

Remote Detonator is what actually make grenades good. Remote Detonator is one of thoses perks which, no matter what you do, will always be good to take. With remote detonator, the radius of the explosion is pretty decent, AND you can now choose where the explosion occurs by putting your cursor on the spot you want. Needless to say, with that perk your grenades now hold a real strategic value. You can take out entire groups and catch a few exploding zombies in the detonation causing a chain reaction. Grenades become essential for crowd control, and will ensure your team have less targets to shoot, and therefore less pressure on their shoulders.

But grenades also have a big thing for them. You can use them while you reload. And let me tell you, Nation Red is a game where you will feel every single reload your character will have to do, and he will do a lot of them. When things aren't dying and the zombies are moving dangerously close, it must be beause someone is reloading. Or dead. But in the second case, it's probably because he was reloading. As such, use grenades to clear paths to escape when you're reloading, or to finish a pesky group that is just out of reach because you need to reload, or make sure you don't get disturbed while you're killing a very resilient boss.

Now, you can't go and throw grenades without any care in the world. Managing your grenade number is an important aspect. Mainly because of one other perk called Hoarder. With hoarder, you get one armor point for every grenade you have on you. So with 15 grenades, it's 15 armor points, which is a nice damage reduction. As such, and that's my personnal choice, I tend to always use one grenade when I'm at 15, so the Anarchist perk won't skip giving me a grenade every 30 seconds. That way, you ensure you can fire one grenade every 30 seconds or so.

Now, that would be easy enough, but you also need to be aware of grenades crates. As I told you, if you take one, you gain 3 grenades. If you have more than 12 grenades, therefore, you will WASTE precious grenades. So, if you spot a grenades crate and have more than 12 grenades on you, you have two choices:
-Letting a teamate take the crate. Not always possible in the middle of the melee with everyone focused on what they are doing, but always nice.
-Bombing groups until you fall to 12 grenades, taking the crate, then immediatly bomb one more time to fall back to 14.

With the Bomb Fanatic perk, grenades zombies will always drop a crate. So you can plan ahead and bomb to 12 grenades before killing the boss and taking the crate. Of course, someone may take it before you do, but it's not a big loss if that happens. Especially if the person is low on grenades.

Still, you have to remember to try to leave the grenades to people playing as the gunner. The gunner having a nice +50% damage bonus to all explosives, he's the best to handle grenades. Just keep a few around, just in case, when you're using an other class. If you're playing as the gunner, of course, by all means take them.

Strangely enough, grenades aren't that good when used on bosses. Bosses won't feel very hurt by grenades. They do hurt them, but not enough in my opinion to justify using grenades on them. The only moment where you should be using a grenade on a boss is when he only has a sliver of life left, and you just shot your last bullet and must reload. It's especially true when the boss is about to hit someone or start firing.

Of course, despite the hoarding perk, grenades should be used when things get hairy. At some point you will feel you need to clear the board a bit or more likely, a lot. In barricade there will be times where a single zombie will threaten to end your game by running to the bottom of the map which, by the way, is an instant game over on some barricade maps. A grenade will stop him in his track if you can't shoot it. When you need breathing room for a revive, using some grenades can be wise. When bosses are taking over the battlefield, you don't need the horde to make things even worse, some grenades should be used there too. Knowing when you should throw a grenade and when you can deal with things using only weapons is something you will have to learn.

One important thing is, don't spam them. Use them one by one in different spots, where they will deal the most damage. Once you start spamming grenades, you're admitting you're going to die. It's understandable in solo, but in coop, someone may be able to revive you, and your grenades will be able to help later.

Still, the only bad grenades are the grenades you don't use.

Let's talk about the classes now, shall we?

The Gunner. My favorite class, and in my book, the most powerful. On paper, he's mister average. All his stats are at 100%, the base. So, what makes the Gunner so poweful?

Well, first, there is his innate bonus. +50% damage to all explosives. All of them. Grenades, grenade launchers, pickup explosives such as dynamite, perks with explosive effects, if it explodes, it does it better when the Gunner is concerned.

So, with that said, the best weapon for the Gunner would be a grenade launcher. Weeeell, it's a bit more complex than that.

The two "favorite" weapons of the Gunner according to his character sheet are the AA12 automatic shotgun, which deals +10% damage and the M240B machine gun which deals an extra 5%.

While the AA12 is a solid choice, dealing good damage, being auto, and being able to fire a decent amount of time before reloading, the reloading is still a little too long in my taste. It's tolerable, but barely.
The M240B can fire for a long amount of time, but the reloading is painfully slow, and damage while good, leave a bit to be desired.

So, what loadout to use?
Well, you will be of course, very dependent of drops luck. But what you should try to have is a good damaging yet fast reloading weapon. The Jackhammer tends to be everyone's favorite. It's fast firing, fast reloading and good damage shotgun. The super shotty is nice, but has a very wide spread and very little ammo. The AK47 is always a solid choice. The regular shotgun is good. Failing that, a nailgun can be acceptable. That weapon will be your slot 1 weapon.

Slot 2 should be a grenade launcher, if possible the MGL.

Now, grenade launchers will probably look weak to the ones among you with little game experience. It's because they are so damn slow. The M79 fire, then reload, fire, then reload. The MGL can fire 6-8 grenades pretty fast, but then you have to reload each grenade one by one, which takes ages. Needless to say, not the weapons you want to use as a main weapon.

No, the grenade launcher main use is to shoot on a strong and/or dangerous boss before he approaches, then switching to your other weapon. But, you will ask me, why keeping such a weapon around then?

Well, you have two pickups making it worthwhile.
The first one is no reload. When you take one, you will be able to saturate the battlefield with grenades for a limited amount of time, so you switch to your nade launcher, and just fire away like a cyborg, murdering everying and doing a real number on the bosses.
The second one is rage. Rage especially when coupled with Rage Unlimited as a perk, make your weapon do more damage. Rage Unlimited supersize that by giving you the effect of no reload when you take rage power up...
Not good enough for you? Well, what about a +100% experience bonus when you kill ennemies under the effect of rage? And a +50% damage bonus to boot?

Because that's what you will get. This, my friends, is the true power of the Gunner. Grab a rage with rage unlimited, pull out your nade launcher, saturate the field with grenades, focusing on bosses especially, and it's a real life saver and game changer.
This is what I christened: "Unleashing the Dragon". When a Gunner with a nade launcher take a rage pickup, you can be sure nothing will be left alive by the time it expires.

As such, when you're playing in a team with a gunner and you're not a gunner yourself, please try to leave the grenade launchers to him. Also, leave the rage, and no reload pickup to him. He is the one who can do the most of them. If you have a Power Up Hook or better, Snare perk try to drag such power up to him. Grenades should also go mostly to him, but it's fine if you keep some.

The Gunner, in general, has a role of horde thinner. Some others classes are better at dealing with bosses, but when he's raging, the Gunner can and will take out bosses, and soften them with a grenade launcher.

As such, out of the perks every character should try to pick as soon as they can, the Gunner should try to get Remote Detonator and Rage Unlimited pretty fast. Anarchist will come close second. Bomb Threat, which boost the radius of all explosions by 25% is really good(plus it will make exploding zombies even more damaging when coupled with Friendly Fire, which make them kill others zombies). Avoid Defuser, because it will make explosions actually smaller. Shrapnel will increase your explosive damage even more. Once you have remote detonator, you can also take molotov. Molotov will make all your normal grenades cause burning effect too. Molotov coupled with Spark, which transfer fire from one zombie to the next, and even Fire Starter, which burns every zombies near you, will turns the field into a disco inferno. Also, try to get all the passive explosive perks, such as Fuse Bolt, Seekers(then Heavy Seekers), Aftershock, Hand of God(then Wrath of God then Apocalypse), Venom(Headlock and then Payload which makes Venom fire exploding darts) and Saw Blades, which despite not being explosive will complete the set. Then you can get Proficiency(then Expertise then Mastery) to be able to use thoses more often.

One oddball perk is Midair Trigger, which allow you to detonate your fired grenades before they reach the target by pressing fire again. Honestly, I would recommend to stay clear of it. Chances are when you're mashing, you will make your grenades only explose close to you, which is totally counter productive, better to let your grenades explode on impact, there will be plenty of targets to kill anyway.

From the get go, the sniper manages to accomplish two impressive features, having absolutely nothing to do with the TF2 one, and being a woman decently clothed. Both are pretty impressive in our days and age.

Jokes apart, it's a class with an interesting history as far as the game is concerned. Back in the days when the game was young, there weren't any classes. Only two skins, one male, and one female. The gunner was the male one, and the sniper, obviously, the female one. With the addition of the classes in further versions of the game, the female model became the sniper.

The sniper, few versions ago, used to be pretty beasty. The sniper rifle coupled with her bonus made her an absolute boss killer with an incredible range to boot. So much, in fact, she went under the nerf hammer, or more precisely, the sniper rifle did. It was made consirably less powerful, and worst offender, the reload speed is now attrocious.

So, what's the sniper worth now as a class?
Well... Honestly, it may very well be the worst class now. Compared to the others, and seeing her main weapon is now so bad it's a pain to use, it's simply not worth it to play as her, except for achievements and for variety sake.

Now, what are the sniper main pros and cons?
She's pretty speedy, and has a better accuracy. On the other hand, she's less resilient than other classes.
She's also a lot better at causing damage with bullet firing weapons, having a +25% innate bonus to damage with thoses weapons.
Also, she benefits of a bonus of +50% range and damage when cloaked.

So, to play as a sniper, the loadout is pretty obvious.
One weapon should be the sniper rifle. Used mainly to kill the bosses, or long lines of ennemies.
Your second weapon should be an auto weapon with good damage and reload speed. The AK47 is always a sure value, the Jackhammer too, barring that a M16, a nailgun or an uzi. The MP5 is actually not that good, despite the bonus the sniper gets with it. It's just a little too weak. You're better using something else.

If a sniper is in the team, she should always get the cloak bonus. She will get the better out of it. As for the perks she should use, she has two main ways to branch. The first one is, once she gets all the basic perks she needs, to branch toward the Ghost perks. Basically everything which makes the Ghost power up better(Mirror Image, Wild Bunch, Apparition, Fire Team, Strike Team and Heavy Sentries). From then, once you have Heavy Sentries, you can also take sentry guns related perks(Turet Defense, Weapon Station, Engineer).
The second is to take the same perks a Gunner would take, namely the ones related to passive effects.
It depends of what the others take. Seeing the Gunner will usually go for the passives, it's better to take the ghost ones to share the load. If there is no Gunner, and you're playing with a Scout, it's better to go for the passives, the Scout beeing traditionnally affected to ghost duty.

The sniper role is to clean the horde with her fast firing weapon, then switch to the sniper rifle to hit the bosses hard. It's actually a little more complex, because in some situations, it's better to switch to your fast weapon to finish a boss rather than waiting for the sniper rifle to reload. Remember you're mostly on boss killing duty. If possible, focus on that. The sweeping is better left to the Gunner and Scout. Make sure you stay out of harm, because while the others classes can afford to take damage and heal seeing they have a decent armor and healing speed, the sniper can't.

The Scout, weirdly, doesn't involve any recon at all. After all, after the first shot is fired, everyone knows where the zombies are. Everywhere.

The Scout, sadly, is the second worst class, just behind the Sniper. He is fast and mobile, which is nice, but the innate +25% faster jump regeneration isn't something you really need, seeing the dive roll is more of an emergency move than something you should do all the time. He shares the Sniper problem of being weak and healing slowly. On the other hand, he can reload faster.

I think the real force of the Scout is his two favorite weapons the AK47 and the super shotty are both very good at what they do. The AK47 is in the eyes of most players the number two go to weapon for doing most things(just behind the Jackhammer). Fast firing, damaging, with a fast reload speed. The super shotty used to be my favorite weapon. It's pretty damaging despite the small magazine. It does requires Accuracy and Laser Guided to reduce the amazing amount of spread it has, but it's a really nice boss killer, and reloads fast. Its only problem is, it's manual, and not auto, meaning if you're not using the auto-fire function, you will destroy your trigger finger if you play a long game.

So, the Scout is a mobile multi-role shooter, able to fight the horde and the bosses with the same efficiency. And it's part of the problem. It lacks the focus in his build to take a particular role and do it well.

In a group, the Flashout power up should always go to him. When he uses a Flashout, every stunned ennemy takes +50% damage and gives double xp.
Traditionnally, the Scout is assigned the Ghost branch of perks, so he should focus on them early enough, and take every Ghost powerup to help.

The problem the Scout shares with the Sniper is both Flashout and Cloak have absolutely no synergy perks working with them. While the Gunner have synergy with his innate explosion bonus and his innate rage bonus. Maybe one day the Scout will get better, but in the meantime, he's sub-par, and should only be played for fun and achievements.

Something always bothered me in the Medic. When you think Medic, you may assume he's able to heal other people. Well, he can't. The Medic in Nation Red is only a medic in name. He's more like a tank, and that's how he's supposed to be played, which makes him pretty unique.

He is, however, able to revive players and leave them at 50 HP instead of 30. But let's face it, when in a team people start dying, usually it means the end is near. It's best to have a team able to avoid dying in the first place.

The Medic is slow, his accuracy is bad, but on the other side of the spectrum, he has a better armor and a better healing.

Because of how he works, he must fight in a very specific way with a specific loadout.
His first weapon should be your usual automatic weapon with good damage and good reload speed, so what I said about the others classes is still valid here. AK47, Jackhammer or M16, which is the favorite weapon of the Medic. A Nailgun, AA12 or uzi are tolerable alternatives.

His second weapon should be an axe. Because that's what makes the Medic shines. When starting the game with the medic ALWAYS remember to lock your secondary weapon. This is to make sure you don't lose your axe accidentally.

So, you may already have a general idea of the whole process behind the Medic.
The Medic must take perks to ensure his survivability, such as Armor and Heavy Armor, as well as Regeneration(but not Triage, which is actually less efficient is you stay above 50 health, at least not until you reach a point when getting over 50 HP will seldom happen). Mano a Mano is a must, as it will reduce the amount of damage you take from bosses, at the price of making you more vulnerable to normal zombies.

The Medic plays as a tank, once a boss gets close, he musts go toes to toes with him and start hacking. This is the reason of the silly pun in the title, the Medic must first cut the arms of any boss using his axe. There is more subtelty to the whole melee fighting process. You must know the bosses and know their melee attack to know how to avoid them while still keeping close to the boss. Meanwhile the others members of the group must make sure you're not bothered by normal zombies(especially the explosive ones) and pump the boss full of lead and explosives. It's a little tricky to do, but a good medic can tank some bosses without losing any health. And if you do lose some, you will regenerate some relatively fast.

If 2 medics are in the team, it's actually possible to trade spots while fighting a boss to limit the amount of health each player lose.

The melee bosses are pretty self explanatory, it's a matter of knowing how to avoid their attack, seeing you're very close to them, their speed is less relevant. I noticed the best way to deal with melee bosses is, as crazy as it sound, to move toward them when you're sticking to them while swinging. For some weird and unknown reason, if done well you won't get hit at all. The only exception to that rule is the circular saw boss, who not only have quite a wide and damaging swing but seems to also hit you when you're doing that. He's also very resilient, and relatively fast, making it one of the most dangerous bosses to fight. If possible try to lure it away, close to turrets if you're playing in barricade, and try to kill it there. At least if you die, you will be in a safe spot to be revived, and your team will be able to hold the fort while you're dealing with it, ensuring you don't get too swarmed.

The minigun boss can be fooled into firing as you move in his back, where he won't hit you seeing he fire in a continuous arc. The machine gun zombie deserves his own mention, because he can be pretty dangerous for the whole team. He fires as he moves. So it's very important for a Medic to block him while stayting relatively immobile. He will fire a lot less and has less risk of hitting people. Failing that, the best way to fight him is to circle around him. But that forces the whole team to do so too, or they will take damage. So stopping a machine gun boss by putting a medic right on him is the best bet.

But that's not all. Shields bonus give a double damage bonus to the medic. Combined with the axe, it does insane amount of damage. As such, Medics should have all the Shields bonus. In doing so, you not only make your tank invulnerable, but you also make him do twice the damage he would normally do. If a member of the team has Power up Hook or Snare, while the medic doesn't, it becomes very important to pull the Shields toward him. Also, seeing he's the most likely to lose health, leaving the health pickups to him is always a good idea. Remember if he goes down, it means a boss will be on the loose.

Medic isn't an easy class to play, but it's probably one of if not the most important class to have in a team. It takes skill to do well, and lag can really murder you if you're unlucky. It's something that you need to learn by knowing how the bosses react, how you can trust your weapons, movement and ability to endure damage.

Playing with a Medic also means you must keep an eye on him. Seeing his importance to the game, you just can't afford to let zombies interfere with his boss hacking process. Tossing a few grenades to keep him safe will always be appreciated. As will making sure he doesn't get more than one boss on his face at the same time.

A Medic should always prioritize on the machine gun boss first, then on the minigun one, assuming they have around the same health left. Because thoses two are just the worst. Melee bosses can be avoided and kept running around. Shooting bosses will be a pain no matter what. Grenade bosses are pretty weak and probably the lesser threat. They can be relatively safely ignored, as long as you watch for stray grenades.

Shooting the horde is simply something you do while waiting for the next boss. Don't bother about it once a boss is there. Your sole existence rests on killing them, or at least allowing your team to kill them.

As a medic, you're also the most likely to die in a crew. As such, you should try to choose where you die when it happens. In barricade, try to die in the back of the base near a turret, to ease the reviving process. Dying in the middle of a horde is just the worst, because you force your team to take insane risks to try to revive you. Or to weather the storm until they have an opportunity, which can sometimes take a while.

Now, I'm not going to actually introduce gameplay modes, because that's not really needed in my opinion, but more talking about how they differ, and how they should be played in order to maximize your score. As such, there are 2 real cooperative gameplay modes, and a PVP one, which won't be covered.

The first is Barricade, where the objective actually can vary. On some of thoses maps you have a central objective with an health bar you must protect at all cost because zombies will attack it. On an other, you must prevent normal zombies from reaching the bottom of the map. On some others, you're simply surrounded and must survive.

Now, the leaderboards aren't counted by map type, sadly, but by MODE type. So when you want to score, and play seriously for that, you must choose the map which is the most favorable. And that map is Factory.

Barricade maps tend to have automated sentry guns. Thoses sentries have three bars on them. The first one represents how much ammo they have left. To refill it over time, just stand on the sentry. The second is heat. It augments every time the turret fire, and lower over time to represent the turret cooling down. If it gets full, the turret stop firing until the bar is completly depleted.
The third bar is experience. Turrets actually get xp over time or when they kill things.They also get more when someone is standing on them. When a turret reaches max XP, it becomes a weapon station, which is a more powerful version.

On Factory, you also have a fence. That fence will get progressively broken by regular zombies. Bosses can't actually damage the fence, so at first, don't focus on them. They are completly harmless. They don't even fire or throw grenades until they get behind the fence. That fence when protected well can hold a long time. The problem will be the powerups and weapons won't drop if zombies die on the other side of the fence. The only exception to that rule is if someone has at least the Power Up Hook perk. At that point they will start to fall no matter where.

One thing I seem to have noticed is weapons drop a lot more during the first waves. Once you reach a certain point, you will see a lot less of them. So it can work against you and make it difficult to make weapon drops if you protect the fence too well and have Power Up Hook. I think if you actually don't have it, weapons will actually start to drop normally once you kill things on your side of the fence. The whole mechanic around all that is pretty obscure, and a lot of rumors and speculations were made about the whole process. As such some people say you should let the zombies break the fence to be able to get weapons. I don't agree with that because using the fence can actually allow you to really get the score and level up before things get out of hand.

If you're working as a team, you should always keep fixed positions as much as possible to ensure a good cover of the zone. There is nothing worse than people running around and not guarding their side, because that's when you can be swarmed. I can understand trying to get some power ups or weapons if it's justified, but just running around to get more kills or worse, hogging the power ups is BAD. A good cover of the entirety of the fenced area makes a lot of difference in the first phase of the game.

During that phase, it's important to focus on everything actually hitting the fence. The rest can be ignored. Explosive zombies should always be shot first, especially if someone in the team got Friendly Fire as a perk. If someone has Power Up Hook, or better, Snare, that person should always be trying to feed the proper power ups to the rest of the team, because getting them from behind the fence is hard.
The first phase is mostly a building phase. You should focus on perks such as Auto Experience, Quick Fingers, Dexterity, Accuracy, Laser Guider, Messy, Mercenary, Friendly Fire, Power Up Hook, Snare, Heavy Ammo, Intensity, Remote Detonator and Anarchist. As well as preparing for the next phase of the game by getting Armor, Heavy Armor, Mano a Mano, Regeneration.

The second phase begins when the fence is breached. At that point some bosses may be able to cross it and pose a threat. I often see people focus on the breach once it happens. You should always remember the fence has multiple places where it can be breached, while one hole is bothersome, it doesn't mean you have to forget all the others spots. If you can keep just one hole in the fence and prevent the zombies from causing others, it can go a long way toward allowing you to gain time. That's when you should start to work on your power up linked perks, such as all the Ghost path and all the passive perks, as well as more exotic things such as the fire related perks.

When the whole fence is breached, you should still try to make sure you occupy as much of the field as you can and try to limit the need to move backward to the maximum. Retreating to the relative safety of the turrets may be tempting, but it's a bad thing to do. You simply won't have enough room to manoeuver.

Make sure during that phase to thin the horde to allow your medics/snipers to unload on the bosses. Know your role. Don't take power ups that would be more beneficial to other people. If you see some you can't "feed" to others players, you can use voice commands to tell them about them. Power up hogging is probably one of the biggest plagues of multiplayer. Some people don't realise it is a team effort, and when they take all the shields from the medic, or take the ghost while having no perk related to Ghost, or take a no reload or rage while not being a gunner and having a MP5, it can really really screw up the team. Keep your cool, and work as a team.

When minelayers power up are taken, try to place the mines in the two mandatories routes the zombies must take to get inside the base proper. Also avoid leading the brawler boss on the mines, because he doesn't get hurt by them and actually remove them. Baring emergencies, avoid leading the bosses on the turrets, and when you do make sure to refill them before moving on.

The last phase of the game is when the situation becomes so bad you are standing near or behind the turrets desperately trying to kill bosses while also repelling the endless horde. At that point you have to keep in your mind what the real objective of the game is. It's to not let a single zombie reach the bottom of the screen. Bosses can't make you lose the game, except if they kill every player. Normal zombies can simply by moving. As such, make sure you bomb every lone zombie runner if it gets too close to the exit point. I've seen countless games lost due to lack of attention and a zombie sneaking behind the lines. This should be avoided at all cost. As such, killing the regular zombies by bombing them to gain some breathing room even when bosses are on the loose is a valuable strategy. Not only that, but zombies may drop power ups which will allow you to completly reverse the situation, such as a no reload, rage, ghost, sentry gun or shield.

If one of your comrades fall, don't take insane risks to revive him. Wait for an opportunity or create one. Waiting for an opportunity means getting a cloak or shield power up. With thoses you have just enough time to revive a teamate without getting hit, and bring him back into the game. Creating an opportunity means getting the attention of the boss while others players will revive the fallen teamate, or bombing the horde to gain time to do so. Trying to be a hero to save a fallen player will often lead to your death, which in turn will make it harder for everyone else remaining, because they will have to revive two people now, and will lose half if not two third of their fire power...

This is at that stade of the game you can actually get perks such as triage, or if things go really wrong, replenish. Because at that point, you're on your last leg. So make the most of it.

Freeplay is a more lot simple to understand than Barricade. You're surrounded by zombies coming from the borders of the map, and just have to survive.

Some people tends to consider Freeplay as the real deal, because you can't hide behind turrets like in Barricade. I don't suscribe to this point of view, seeing I tend to note there are a lot less zombies on freeplay than in Barricade but it may be an impression. Bottom line while Barricade is a lot more about positioning, Freeplay is a lot about mobility. As such, it's not an aspect you can allow yourself to ignore. Perks such as Improved Loadout, Reflex Boost or Less Clumsy take their true value here.

You also have a kind of power up only appearing there, the turbine, which create a small safe zone around it for a limited amount of time, and two perks which will change it's function to suck zombies in instead, then do the same but with the turbine becoming a meat grinder. Thoses perks and the turbine itself aren't very good or important, but it's nice to know they're here.

Now, I've to say I'm more a barricade player than a freeplay one, both play quite differently. One important aspect of Freeplay is to try to rack up combos to get more xp and more score. As such, you have to take out a bunch of zombies together, meaning maps where they spawn very far from each other are bad. As such, everyone should avoid getting in the others player killzone because it will be detrimental to each player's chain of kills. The only exception to that is with bosses, where you should always make sure your medics/snipers aren't bothered by normal/explosive zombies while they are killing the boss. You should also be really wary of the borders of the map because minigun bosses love to just stand there without being noticed until they fire a wide arc and hit everyone. It can be a real pain because you can get blindsided by zombies freshly spawned from the border of the map who will attack you while you deal with the boss.

The good point is at least you will see plenty of weapons and power ups from the get go and be able to take them. The bad point is you have to worry a lot more about your survability even when you take perks at the start of the game.
The same rules still apply: Playing as a team, sharing the power ups cleverly and not hogging them, and helping each other up are all important.

It also makes one of the particularities of Nation Red a lot more appearent. The importance of reloading speed. In most zombie survival games, you tend to try to boost the power of your shots. Because you think if I deal more damage, I save ammo, and if I kill the thing, I don't need to reload in an emergency. It's true in most zombie games such as the recent Resident Evil games. In Nation Red though? Well there are just so many zombies it changes the rules completly. You don't need power that much because let's face it, you WILL empty your clip, and you WILL need to reload with zombies on screen. Your firepower won't save you. The amount of bullets you have will only bring you so far. Accuracy doesn't even matter that much because you could fire a bullet in any direction and hit a zombie. Battles are won and lost because of one thing: Reloading speed. Reloading speed is the time during which you aren't firing, and when you aren't firing, zombies are getting closer to you.

It's why there are some weapons which are better than others. A good weapon must ally good power to good reloading speed, otherwise, you will be useless most of the time. It's also why perks such as Quick Fingers and Dexterity are probably the most important of all perks. You just can't afford to not spend as much time firing as you can.

Freeplay as such, is kind of the pure essence of the game. You need to balance where you move and when with how you fire, the power of your attacks and how much bullets it will cost you to make a breach and allow yourself to reload to keep killing. As such, Freeplay is a good training ground. There isn't much to say about strategy in Freeplay, because what holds true at the beginning of a Freeplay game will still hold true at the end of it. There is no use of the environnement, no real evolution through the game, only a bunch of angry guys with guns, and and endless flow of zombies. It all comes down to how well you play, your teamplay, and sometimes more than a fair share of luck when it comes to drops.

When setting up a new multiplayer games, you will see a few options.
The map choice is self explanatory, so let's talk about difficulty.

I see most people play on easy. While easy starts slow, and is forgiving in terms of damage received, you must accept by playing on easy or normal, you forfeit immediatly any pretention to score. The zombies on easy or normal, as well as the bosses are worth very little points or xp, and basically you end up in 40 minutes playing in easy in the situation you would be in 10 or so on hard.

So basically, playing on easy while reassuring, is just a waste of time when it comes to pure scoring. It's good if you want to have fun, but don't expect to break any record. If you want to score you really have to play on hard.

Don't think I'm berating people on easy or normal, playing the game for fun is great. I just have to state playing for fun and to pass time and playing to expect results are just two different beasts. You can't do both.

An other option is shared xp. Now, this is a weird one because a lot of people are divided about it. Shared xp makes the host the one who set the pace of the game. At any time, he can press the level up key when a level is avaible, and it will pause the game, allowing everyone to choose a perk(assuming you're not in strategic or auto perk mode). Not only that, but xp is pooled, so everyone contribute to the team effort, making globally a faster progression.

The main problem is, some people really doesn't like how the host stopping the game breaks the flow of the game. It doesn't bother me, but I understand how it bothers some people. Especially when you're in a tricky situation where a wrong move can make you end up dead or badly injured. Also, the game continues when the host actually chooses his own perk.

It also cause a problem regarding late joiners, who are basically forced to stay with a lot less levels than the people who started the game.

If you're the host of such a game, the proper etiquette is to wait for everyone to pick their perk before picking your, ensuring everyone is ready. Failing to do that may cause one or few players to be surprised by the brutality of the game continuing while they were pondering which perk to take, and can really mess them up.

On the other end, if one player really takes too long to pick a perk, take one anyway. You can't wait forever, and sometimes, they aren't picking a perk either by choice or because they can't(bugs can happen, especially if the person just joined).

Also you have to know DEAD PLAYERS CAN'T PICK PERKS. So if posible never pick perks as the host if your teamates are dead. Wait for them to be alive, otherwise you screw them over of one level up, and it's bad for the team.

When the xp isn't shared, there is no pause. Meaning you have to pick perks on the fly if you aren't in strategic or auto perk mode. So be sure to be relatively safe when you press the level up key. Also, seeing xp isn't shared, you may have to play less cooperative if you want to actually get your perks. It can create big disparities between players, and it's especially bad for medics who just don't have the same killing capacity on regular zombies than a gunner would have. On the other hand, each player is responsible of what he gets, and it makes a more convenient system for random games.

I would advise against shared xp off if you want to score. Shared xp works far better.

Friendly fire is self explanatory, and I don't get for the life of me why anyone would want it on. But by all means, if you want to see a gunner rage with a grenade launcher go horribly wrong, put friendly fire on. By the way don't confuse friendly fire here with the PERK friendly fire. The perk is actually good, the option is bad.

Now you know the basics and how the game is played, let's talk about what it takes to break a record.

The following lines are the fruit of a nice chat I had with Bier808. For thoses who don't know Bier808, he's one of the world record holders, a very active and helpful pillar of the community forum, and globally a nice guy.

If you may allow me to go on a tangent, our meeting was actually a pretty fun story. I had decided to work on this very guide, and I was doing so alone on my side. I didn't frequent the Steam forum much, so I didn't know him, and I hadn't checked the world records in ages. I started a game in multi and him and one of his pals joined. And seeing them play, I soon understood they knew what they were doing, just as they saw I knew what I was doing too. A fourth guy joined the team too but he was a random player, and nowhere near as good as thoses two gentlemen. We played and we played... And the game showed no sign of stopping. My personnal record got broken. Then it got literally exploded. When all was said and done, it was the very best score I had ever done, and by far...

And that's when the game finished, before it could upload the leaderboard, Steam decided to go down in flames. That beautiful score was never recorded, except in a screenshot I took, leaving me very frustrated indeed. Had Steam not exploded, I would have been rank 32.

When Steam finally went up, I decided to check the records, and I laughed to realise the guys I had just played with were in the top of the leaderboard, Bier808 being at that time second ex-equo with the first guy(it's a team effort after all). I decided to track Bier and have a long conversation with him. After a game like that, it seemed only normal to thank him.

When I finally managed to talk to him, he revealed me he was actually looking for players with good potential when he found me and we had a long chat about the depth of the game, our opinion on different things, and he even shared some of the strategies he used with his team to get where he is. Also, he told me he got an ever better score but it also was never recorded due a Steam explosion.

Bottom line, this section is more a result of this discussion than it is my work. So you should all thank him for being nice enough to actually share his tricks.

So, first things first, the winning formula is getting a team of 4 people of high caliber together. I'm the kind of person who tend to like more playing with random people and see where that get me, but if you really want to perform, there is no secret: You need a team.

Then you need at least 4 or 5 hours of free time. Let's face it, a good game will take that long.

Now, the team composition must be either 2 gunners 2 medics, or 1 gunner and 3 medics, which I think may be what they used.

Gunner must always be the host. The gunner will set the pace of the game, and will also be the only one to take Power Up Hook and Snare. None of the others will be allowed to take snare for one good reason. When you take Snare, you create a field that will slow the moving speed of the power up. Your snare is conflicting with the others snare so no one hog the power ups. It was an addition to a recent version. By being the only one with Snare, the Gunner host can pull the power up to the others. The Gunner as such, is also a feeder. He has the responsability to give health, shields and cloak to the rest of the team.
He's also the one who determine when a break must be taken after a few hours of play so everyone can relax a bit, go to the bathroom and such.
The Gunner, interestingly enough, is in autoperk mode. It's to take advantage of an other mechanic.

The Medics being the guests isn't just due to what is written about the Gunner. It's also due to the fact playing a Medic as the host will make the lack of lag work against you. When you fight bosses, a great amount of why you aren't hit as a medic is due to lag. Being Medic when you're a host will screw you over big time. So the host simply can't be Medic.
The Medics are in random perk mode. This is for one good reason: When you are picking a perk, you get cloaked so you aren't disturbed when you're picking. This allow you to revive others players while you pick your perk and can really save the team's bacon if things get hairy. The medics reviving people with 50 health, it can create a very nice effect to keep everyone combat effective through the whole game.

The Medics are there to murder bosses. 3 medics with axes on one boss with the good perks can fall a boss at an insane speed. The Gunner is doing most of the horde killing and xp making.

After that it all comes down to skill and proper team playing with everyone knowing what they are doing. They obviously play in shared xp and hard for mamximum efficiency. Playing without shared xp would leave the medics far too weak and unable to do their job correctly and prevent the Gunner from actually feeding them xp and levels.

I want to insist on that point. The winning strategy is a strategy where instead of hogging the power ups, three quarters of the team actually let the host take most of them and feed them the rest. It may be one of the most important points I already talked about: You really need to accept to let others take power ups when you know they will get a better effect from it. Behind the mindless shooter appearence, this game is a lot more teamplay oriented than it seems.

Something Bier and I agreed on, when we talked about our love for Nation Red.

-To my friend Kotton for supporting me through the creation of this guide, and for being a good test subject, seeing he started not knowing much about the game.

-To Bier808 for being an awesome player, and for encouraging me to actually make this guide when I talked to him about my project. Also for being such a pillar of this game's community and all his efforts to help new players on the forum.
I heard you went to fight dinosaurs because zombies were just too mainstream. Keep on fighting the good fight.
Thanks to him also for correcting some informations on the winning formula section, and also for mentionning you were actually cloaked when you took a random perk as a guest in multiplayer. I still don't know how I never noticed that before in two years(Note: It's because I'm hosting most of the time)...

-To all the terrible terrible players I saw while playing. Seriously, you convinced me a guide was needed and I was right to actually try to tackle that task. You gave me the drive to go forward and keep up doing that. You could say this guide wouldn't exist without you. Most of your mistakes were due to a lot of things you didn't know. I hope at least now, I will have made something good enough to prevent you from doing the classic mistakes all new players do.
"It wasn't your fault for being terrible, it was mine for not having produced a way to help you"

-To the Nation Red dev team for being overall very active on the forum and having a great contact with the gamers, always trying to push the game foward and add new things. Seriously, you guys are great. If you could please make the sniper and scout actually playable, that would be awesome. I've some ideas. Call me.

-To Steam guide making tools for being simple of use. I would probably have never tried to attempts such a daunting task without them. Anyone who have seen GameFAQ tools know what I mean...

-To the probably around 5 millions zombies(at least) I must have killed in my life. Thank you for providing such a great entertainment. Sorry I lost count at some point. There are too many of you to mention in that section, but you know who you are.