New to the game

[deathcore6]

Rented this game from game fly and hopfully it will be here today. Anyways im new to this game, any tips for someone new to this game?

[Jawneh]

Dont solo. It just gets you killed
Listen to your surroundings. You can pinpoint any special infected that way.
Dont shoot Boomers when they're close to you or anyone else. Shove them or wait for someone else to do it.
If you do get covered in slime, crouch in a corner. Dont run around.
Stay close to your team. Work with them. No soloing.
Dont shoot witches until you know how to crown them. Or have your team know that you're shooting her so that they can gun it down.
Give pills to the needy
Francis hates everything


Okay. That's what I though of quickly. I think others will add some more things.

[deathcore6]

what do u mean by crown?

[Jawneh]

Oh, sorry. Of course you wouldn't know yet. xD

Get close enough to the witch before she freaks up and shoot her in the head with a shotgun. You only get one shot and it has to land. In rare cases you might mess it up and get another shot in with an autoshotgun, but basically it's that first one you need to get in.

[deathcore6]

thank you for the tips. and i figure the best thing to do is to let my team know im new.

[Ben]

thank you for the tips. and i figure the best thing to do is to let my team know im new.
Right. Acknowledging that you don't know everything yet and making people aware of that is a very good move, and should stop anyone getting mad at you if you do happen to make a mistake.

Cr0wning the witch is only suggested with an autoshotgun, as with the regular pump action shotgun you really need to get every single buckshot to land on her to deal enough damage. If you don't, by the time you've pumped another shell into the chamber she'll have gotten up and will put you down on the ground. With the autoshotgun even if you mess up the cr0wn, you'll have enough time to unload some more shells into her and put her down.

Anyway, I suggest you run through all of the levels on singleplayer first so you can get used to the layout and where items are likely to spawn. One of the worst things is when people have no idea which way to go, and you're having to constantly remind them to follow you or which way to go.

And communicate. I'm not someone who gets mad and kicks someone that doesn't talk, but it's certainly preferable. The time it takes to type "hunted", or just for your team to notice that you're being mauled, is time that they could have been saving you.

[Scruffy]

Survivor Side:
- Be ready to be kicked. You have to prove to be useful or you will be vote kicked from the game. It's just the facts of it. Team damaging or griefing before you go is a great way to set yourself back in terms of skill.
- Try and kill hunters rather than meleeing. You can easily one shot a hunter that's pounced a survivor with a shotgun and it's far better to kill them have them come back and pounce again.
- Don't use those stupid sound commands. Nothing screams I'm crap quite like someone who spams them but is only able to clear special infected
- Don't freak out when tank comes. People new to the game will start running away from the group or something else that is counterproductive. Stay with your team as it gives the best chance of taking out a tank.
- When you have a pipe bomb, use it. Case in point, I was in a game the other day where the whole team was boomed and the people on my team would not use their pipes and our health just got slowly dwindled.
- Don't run around witches. Let someone who knows what to do approach the witch first. It's near impossible to crown with her standing up.
- When boomed, try and stay grouped up rather than running for a corner. Nothing is worse than having someone run to a corner while the rest of the team is stuck out in the open. If you're not boomed but the rest of your team is, you have no excuse for hiding. It's your job to watch for special infected and help clear common.
- Healing in yellow is generally a bad idea. The most notable exception is healing for an upcoming tank fight.
- Don't throw nades at the end just because you have them. Just because you have the Molotov at the end doesn't mean you need to give possible fire damage or something else at the end. There is nothing wrong with having a nade at the end.
- Generally speaking, you want to kill boomers to avoid the horde. If you hear a boomer, try and kill it before you heal or pick up a downed survivor with more than half health.
- THE HUNTING RIFLE IS GARBAGE. MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS LIST, NOTHING SCREAMS ABSOLUTE NEWB/SUPER PUBSTAR LIKE USING THE HUNTING RIFLE. People that insist on using don't understand the purpose of it. It's to 1 shot specials and kill rocks. Running around shooting down common with it is great way to find yourself on the butt end of a votekick.
- Don't run away from the rest of the team to get into the safe room at the end. Here's how it usually goes... Player A is in the saferoom with the door closed yelling at the other time to get in. The remaining ones outside are fending off smoker pulls and pounces along with a horde that has surrounded them in all directions. Rather than coming out to help, Player A just continues to yell get in the safe room and the round eventually ends with the team getting 150 points rather than 1000.
- Listen. You'll have to deal with real jackass know-it-alls but to this point, there are some that are just trying to tell you what to do because it works best. One of the most noticeable spots is on DA2 where you'll tell them to stay in the room while one person goes and hits the switch.

Infected Side:
Hunter
- Learn to pounce. There are tons of videos on youtube as well as writeups on various forums on how to become an effective hunter. Pouncing for 1 damage by yourself is a great way to find yourself being booted from a game.
- Pounce with your teammates. Having one hunter go in and get meleed off then following that one with another pounce getting meleed is a great way to deal almost no damage and wait 25 seconds to respawn.
- You can claw people. Use that. If someone is gimping along with a little sliver of health, it's just as effective to swipe and run as it is to do some piddly pounce. If people are stacked in the corner, you can hit them all with one swipe. Use that to your advantage on things like crescendo events and finales.
- If you miss your pounce, don't hop around like an idiot. Go setup again or start moving backwards so you can despawn (done by hitting the use key when it shows up on the screen).
- Don't pounce players that have been pulled by the smoker. Accidents with the hit detection will happen but if you see a smoker someone, don't pounce them. As the smoker, I've had decent pulls and rather than the hunter attacking another survivor, they just pounce the pulled survivor because they're not moving.

Smoker
- Your main purpose is to cause separation. That means pulling a survivor who is lagging behind or extremely far ahead of the rest of them. Randomly spawning and grabbing someone from the middle of the group is a waste.
- Play in games so you can learn all the fancy pulls. There are too many to list, so just keep playing to learn where they're at.

Boomer
- The object is not to spawn far away and walk to the survivors. Try and find a spot close to the survivors to cut down on your walking time as boomer moves super slow and makes enough noise that it's impossible to not hear him.
- Don't stand near tanks. If you blow up, you stun them.
- If you find yourself stuck behind the survivors, just keep walking backwards in the map so you can despawn.
- Look up how to do rocket booms. It's a useful technique.

Tank
- DO NOT JUST CHARGE IN. If you have people on your team yelling at you to go and you're facing a group of survivors with green help and no other special infected up to help, ignore them. You'll be lucky to get in a punch in this scenario.
- You have the ability to throw rocks. Nothing is more annoying than having a tank follow a survivor around constantly missing his punches. If you can't hit them, stop, aim the rock and then run at them while they are down.
- Look for your hittable objects. They have a red outline and all of them other than the pallet jacks will automatically incap a survivor if you hit them with it. If you crouch before you hit them, the aim will be better.
- Along with this, if there's a survivor down and you can hit them with a car or another hittable object, do it. Incapping all of them is great, but killing off 1 or 2 is just as effective.
- Try and avoid getting lit. It's tough to do against good players, but try your hardest to avoid.
- If you do get lit on fire, that doesn't mean you have to just charge in like a retard. You can last a fairly long time while on fire if you're not taking fire from other guns.

General Stuff:
- Don't whine. I don't want to hear your opinions on l4d2 nor do I want to hear why you're completely inept with the special infected. Complaining about sympathy director when the other team gets 8 extra med packs and 20 nades while you get 1 and maybe a pipe bomb is perfectly acceptable though. Most of the people who say stuff like QQ when you whine about the director clearly don't understand how broken the director spawns can be.
- Mics != skill. Just because I can hear your voice does not mean you are a good player.
- Bragging and trash talk is best saved for games between friends and scrims/matches. Trash talking in a pub to distinguish yourself as someone with little talent. Example, often times I'll use pubs as a way to practice dead stops on hunters. Bragging because you hit some 16 damage pounce while I was trying to melee/shoot you out of the air says that you either don't hit damage pounces often or you have some bloated sense of how good you are in the game.
- To the above point, times arise when you'll do something crazy that merits some sort of self-congratulation. Landing some pounce where you went off of 10 walls and ceilings is an acceptable time to flex the e-muscle.
- Don't become a pubstar.
Pubstar(pub-star) noun.:
One who exhibits one or multiple of the follow traits while playing l4d
a. Using the hunting rifle. It's not used in high level competitive play for a reason.
b. Bragging about every single thing they do. Landing a damage pounce is nice. Act like you're going to get one again.
c. Using your mic to boss everyone around with common strategies that do not work. Example: "Hey guys, let's shoot the car alarm on the roof of DA2 rather and face a horde in a wide open area rather than going inside where common and special infected do less damage."
d. Telling everyone on the infected side what to do while you try for 2 damage pounces. Nothing's more annoying than having someone who can't hit pounces on the ground tell you to do something while you're setting up a pounce or boom that will damage the survivors.
e. Self-proclaiming yourself as the best player without being involved in the competitive scene. A large amount of people don't like competition gameplay and that's fine. However, don't think of yourself as the greatest thing to hit the game when all you do is play in pubs. I know a lot of people who are casual players that are very good at the game, but don't find it necessary to tell everyone how great they are.


Above all else though, be patient with the game. Don't start whining and quit or sulk when you get kicked from a game. The only way you'll get better is by playing so if you get booted, just go find another one. All of us were new at one point and it took time to get at the levels we're all at now.

[The_Game_Master]

If you happen to spawn as a boomer in versus, be sure to stay next to a good smoker. So that when he snatches someone, you can vomit on them and help kill em' easier.

[Cody.]

Cr0wning the witch is only suggested with an autoshotgun, as with the regular pump action shotgun you really need to get every single buckshot to land on her to deal enough damage. If you don't, by the time you've pumped another shell into the chamber she'll have gotten up and will put you down on the ground. With the autoshotgun even if you mess up the cr0wn, you'll have enough time to unload some more shells into her and put her downI've always known that you can just simply walk up to a witch (perferably on Easy, so I've been told) and shoot her with a shotgun to get the 'Cr0wnd' achevement, but is it possible any other way? I've tried numerous times to scope her out with the hunting rifle, but even if get her right between the eyes, the next thing I'll see is a pair of bright orange eyes right in my scope, then I'm down. If it's possible to crown the witch any other way, then I'm up to the challenge, but now I'm thinking that the auto-shotgun method is the only way.

[Ben]

I've always known that you can just simply walk up to a witch (perferably on Easy, so I've been told) and shoot her with a shotgun to get the 'Cr0wnd' achevement, but is it possible any other way? I've tried numerous times to scope her out with the hunting rifle, but even if get her right between the eyes, the next thing I'll see is a pair of bright orange eyes right in my scope, then I'm down. If it's possible to crown the witch any other way, then I'm up to the challenge, but now I'm thinking that the auto-shotgun method is the only way.
No, the shotguns are the only weapons that can deliver over 1000 damage in one shot.

[marasamune]

I've seen three people with m16's do it, but it takes a lot of coordination and it's not very reliable.

[Ben]

I've seen three people with m16's do it, but it takes a lot of coordination and it's not very reliable.
Right, but that's not crowning her. That's just putting her down before she completely stands up. To crown her you have to do it in one shot before you startle her.

[Scruffy]

I've always known that you can just simply walk up to a witch (perferably on Easy, so I've been told) and shoot her with a shotgun to get the 'Cr0wnd' achevement, but is it possible any other way? I've tried numerous times to scope her out with the hunting rifle, but even if get her right between the eyes, the next thing I'll see is a pair of bright orange eyes right in my scope, then I'm down. If it's possible to crown the witch any other way, then I'm up to the challenge, but now I'm thinking that the auto-shotgun method is the only way.


The easiest way to practice is to start a single player game and type the following console commands:

sv_cheats 1
director_stop
sb_stop 1
god 1
z_spawn witch; give health

This makes it so that it's just you and the witch you spawn in the last line. Don't worry about getting knocked down because the god command prevents that. Now to do the crown, you need to get as close to the witch as possible to the point where you are actually touching her and as she starts to stand up, put the barrel of the shotgun in the middle of her chest or back and shoot. Autoshotty is easier but it can be done with the regular shotgun too.

If you're on xbox... all you really can do is run through the levels and hope the director spawns one.

------------------

It should also be noted that the boomer does not have to be tied to the smoker. There are times where that is the best strategy, but sometimes a better use to get the survivors that aren't pulled and then going to help the smoker. Being boomed and having to deal with all the common while trying to save a pulled survivor will rack up the damage more than booming on a survivor who has already been pulled. That's not to say that staying with the smoker is a bad strat, but it varies by situation.

[Cody.]

Alright, I figured as much. Thanks for the tip.

*shivers*