Playing through the single player campaigns, you’d never know the depth and complexity of the multiplayer experience which is Left 4 Dead. Due to wonderful game mechanics and design, the pack of survivors is FORCED to work together just to make it through to the end, and the infected benefit heavily from teamwork in separating and ultimately defeating survivor teams. Against a tight-knit team, the lone hunter will get not much more than pounce damage.
With this guide, you should be equipped to handle most matches you’ll find online.
Survivor Commandments
Commandment I: Stick Together
There is NOTHING more important to surviving any given level than sticking together. Nobody breaks off from the formation. Lone players are EASY pickings; not even the BEST player will be able to shoot off EVERY smoker, punt EVERY hunter, and most DEFINITELY won’t be able to solo every VS tank. Sticking close has many benefits: Hunters will be removed from pounces very quickly minimizing damage, Smokers won’t be able to separate you as easily, and boomers will have low effect as a close group will swat around normal infected reducing their attacks. The only situation where you break this rule is for Witch cr0wning. In this case, everyone moves to cover the cr0wner in case they fail so that the witch won’t kill them, and to cover from opportunistic infected players.
Commandment II: Move Fast
Infected respawn on a timer. Usually this is about 30 seconds. If you stay in one location for more than that, you’ve effectively given them a pass on their previous death and a free attempt to kill you. Do not let this happen. You hunker down while you’re boomed to handle the normals that swarm you, then you get moving immediately. The fewer respawns you give your infected opponents, the more life you will retain at the end increasing your score. Fewer attacks also mean fewer chances for group splits, and even better: fewer team wipes. Keep moving.
Commandment III: Kill the Special Infected
When an ally has a hunter on them, KILL THEM. Don’t punch them off unless they’re about to be incapped. If the pounced person has plenty of health, take the extra second and kill the hunter. By punching him, you make him mobile and give yourself a more difficult shot to land so take advantage of the enemy being stationary. Likewise, unless a smoker is about to pull your ally off a ledge/cliff/out a window, kill the smoker. He has to reveal himself to attack, so he should be an easy target. Only exception: be careful where you kill the boomer as to avoid unnecessary bile-ings. The reason for making sure the enemy is dead is that they have 30 seconds before they can even SPAWN to plan to attack you again. If you let them live, you give them a free attack. In the case of smokers, their tongue takes 15 seconds to recharge: two free attacks. The Hunter can just pounce around and then nail a big 25 damage pounce if you let them escape. Boomers take about as long to recharge their vomit as they do to respawn, but they can position themselves far in advance, giving them an advantage you shouldn’t allow the enemy.
Commandment IV: Protect Weakend Players
Low health players move slower than players in the green. They won’t be able to keep up. So stick with them until you can get them healed. Incapped survivors can only use their pistols, and have a very large scatter pattern and slowed fire rate. They need protection more than anyone. When a survivor is healing themselves, healing an ally, or reviving a teammate, EVERYONE should fall in to protect them until the situation improves and the march can resume. Never leave a survivor alone that is currently incapable of defending themselves. The whole team must protect each other to make it to the goal with maximum score. If a player is covered in vomit, but the others are ok, surround him and deal with the infected. Do your best to not allow any damage through.
Commandment V: Communicate
Call out important things. You see a boomer? Say where he is. Hunter pounce you? Announce it. Not everyone will know about every event in a round of Left 4 Dead, and a hunter pounce that has gone unnoticed will result in an incap. Hunters do heavy damage so they need to be removed as fast as possible. Smokers can be a huge pain if not dealt with, dragging you down to an area you were at previously while doing light damage. If left alone, they are just as capable of killing you as anything else in the game. If you get incapped, call it out. Not everyone has their eyes on the whole screen. Make sure everyone knows what is going on, and you’ll have a much better chance at succeeding.
Commandment VI: Know the Map
If you don’t know where to go or where important items are likely to spawn, then you are going to be a major drag on your team. Make a couple of runs through a single player easy campaign: You’ll be familiar with the levels in no time. You might not memorize health/weapon/grenade locations, but you’ll have the necessary knowledge of the level’s layout to not be a hinderance to your team. This rolls into Commandment V: Communicate. Teammates can let you know where helpful items are likely to be.
Commandment VII: Skip Unneeded Healthkits
This might seem like it should go into the “Move Fast” commandment, but I felt it necessary to be its own commandment. In a given round of Left 4 Dead, you’re bound to run across several health kits at all parts of the level (Unless you’ve just been DOMINATING and the director feels to cut your opponents a lot of slack.) If everyone is above 80 health, skip the health-packs if everyone has them. Why? The Health bonus at the end is negligible if that health kit you just HAD to use ends with a team-wipe. If you can put pressure on the infected they will make mistakes. Stopping for unnecessary health kits can, and often does, result in much LESS health than when you stopped for it. If you don’t need it, don’t stop for it.
Advanced Techniques and Tips
Section I: Blinded
When a boomer hits you with its puke attack (or gets killed in close proximity to you) you’ll be covered in bile and your ability to see will be greatly hindered temporarily. During this time, you’re especially vulnerable. There are some useful strategies for dealing with this predicament. First: If possible, back into a corner. This will alow your melees to push away the majority of infected coming your way. Also, when your allies need help (Hunter pounce, other infected) try to get close while continually meleeing. Infected can’t attack when they’re reeling from a survivor melee. If they have a hunter on them, trying to obey Commandment III: Kill the Special Infected can be rather difficult. You will see your ally’s name: Aim below it and start firing in between melees. This should at least remove the hunter from your ally and in the process stop the rapid damage they deal.
Section II: Smokers
Smokers can be a real pain in the ass. They attack from rooftops where it is difficult to get a good shot. Obeying Commandment III can be difficult at times. If the smoker will have to do a lot of running to attack again, and will be forced to attack from a predictable area (The train tunnel in Blood Harvest is a good example) then you can get away with just freeing your ally and moving forward.
Section III: Witches
Witches are extremely dangerous if startled, otherwise they will not actively attack you. They are somewhat difficult to kill, but can be one-shotted by “cr0wning” her with a shotgun. You close to point blank and shoot her in her face, about where her head meets her neck. This should result in a one shot kill, removing the danger. The enemy is known for attempting to force you next to her, which wakes her up and sets her off, by either dragging you over with the Smoker, or attempting to blind you so that you stumble upon her. They sometimes sit behind her trying to force you to fire at them, which could accidentally hit the witch sending her into an auto-incap frenzy. In the event a witch downs someone, KILL HER IMMEDIATELY. She will let out a scream and immediately shred your downed teammate until they are dead, or she is. This is a very fast attack. If possible, the witch should be avoided. If she is very far off the beaten path, you can cruise right on by with almost no risk. First, make sure the enemy smoker has been killed in the past 10 seconds, then have everyone rush by. If she is in the way, then you’ll need to send your most reliable person ahead to try and cr0wn her. In the event nobody is particularly skilled at cr0wning, send the person with the least amount of health.
Remember: The enemy will really push their attack (if they’re smart) while there is a live witch just waiting to be alerted to you. Be very very wary of ALL infected around a witch while your person moves forward to cr0wn. Do your best to not fire upon the witch or get too close, as this can disrupt the crowning process. Use a range weapon (your pistol if lacking) to pick off common infected.
Alternately, if one of your team is equipped with a Hunting Rifle, landing a headshot on the with will stun her for a few seconds. Hit her from range, then have the entire team unload their weapons into her. This is effective in open areas where the witch is blocking the route and you can mitigate threat from infected players.
Section IV: Tanks
Tanks are very tough, and can easily incapacitate two survivors in the BEST scenario. Your best bet is to attempt to catch them on fire, which steadily depletes their health and makes killing them take much less time. Keep your distance and fill it with as much lead as possible. If it corners a survivor, put as much fire in his back as you can. Most likely he’ll pound the individual until that person is incapped, and then move on. When their health goes red, start backing away while keeping the fire going. You’re likely to suffer at least one casualty. Level 1 weapons (Shotgun and Uzi, single pistol) make it very very tough to take down a tank. Keeping a molotov handy will drain its health, but you need to overall keep together as a group to put the maximum hurt on the tank. If it is still alive, it will find and kill you. A tank is all it takes to end most survivor runs. Focus fire and kill it!
Section V: Random hints and tips
Subtitles: If you play with subtitles on, you will get cues that you might not normally catch. If you play with a high-quality sound system or headset, you can probably get away with not turning them on. They will alert you to a wide variety of events in game. When a special infected is around, explosions, special infected pain, witch/tank noise, and the like. Its a personal preference, but if you need to keep the sound way down, consider flipping this option on for the same ques the audio normally gives.
Playing the Infected: General Rules
The Infected don’t run by the same rigid rules the survivors do. They have infinite lives (at least until the survivors finish the level) so living through an attack is not as important as it is to a survivor. As such, general guidelines and specific tactics are outlined below.
Rule 1: Never attack head on
This one is important. If a survivor sees you coming from a mile away, they’re going to alert their teammates and then that can lead to several fewer hits, and that much less damage. They might also be able to kill you before you even attack. This is USUALLY the case. This is why, as a boomer, its important to get them from around a corner as they run by, or to get them from above. If you attack, try to get in between several of them so that in their rush to kill you, your explosion covers several in bile. Vision impaired survivors have a much more difficult time fighting off common infected, and CAN’T see if an ally is being attacked by a hunter (No red outline) or dragged off by a smoker (no yellow outline.) Which leads us to the next rule:
Rule 2: Never attack alone
If you pounce one of 4 healthy survivors in a tight cluster by yourself, you’re going to die after only having dealt 5 paltry damage, and now you’re going to be waiting 25+ seconds to respawn. Attacking with at LEAST 2 people at once vastly improves the damage you’re going to put out. Always try to cut off survivors going to rescue a friend: It slows them down from doing so increasing the overall damage output of an attack. If you see a boomer ally attack, grab survivors WITHOUT the purple outline: Their allies will have a much tougher time noticing their friend has been dragged off by a smoker, or has a hunter on them. Not to mention the horde of common infected slowing them down twofold: Being in the way and actually slow-down from their hits. If your smoker friend drags off a survivor, pounce the ally returning for him. Cover the dragged survivor in bile. Team up on the survivors. You ARE on the infected “team.” If four special infected attack at about the same time, chances are 3 survivors are going to be unable to protect themselves/each other AND the several will be covered in Bile. This is a heavily damaging assault, and if you land an incap, your attack can be considered a success. Incaps SEVERELY slow down the survivor advance, meaning more chances to attack. And, at the very least, they’re going to need to heal. This still means they’re not moving. So 5 seconds to revive, 5 seconds to heal, or they plod off with low health and speed. Incap=opportunity.
Rule 3: Attack the weakest survivor
The sooner you incapacitate a survivor, the better your chance at killing ALL of them by means of “more spawns, more damage” as infected. Incapped survivors can’t move, and have VERY poor damage output with slow-firing, wildly inaccurate dual pistols. They have to be revived, which means only 2 survivors are capable of fighting unless the third drops their downed ally, which restarts the revive timer. So, do your best as a pack to try and down one survivor. The less progress survivors make, the longer it takes, the more spawns, and better chance at a wipeout attack. Also, hitting the downed survivor resets the revive timer, so “shanking” the downed survivor lands bonus points for style.
Rule 4: Abuse Tank/Witch
To abuse a witch, get a smoker and grab a passing survivor and drag them to her. She’ll wake up and provide you a free incap. Otherwise, boom the enemy and try to draw them to her. They’ll have a very tough time seeing her while blinded, so waking her up while trying to shoot you is a possibility. In odd situations, you can run up and smack her and the survivor if they’re trying to cr0wn, meaning the witch wakes up. Also, the boomer can melee the witch and “wake her up” meaning that the slightest provocation will set her off. Careful when you do this, as survivors that can see the witch can see you.
To abuse the tank, when you roll one, evaluate your situation: Are you outside in an open area, or inside close quarters where survivors cannot maneuver effectively? If you’re outside, keep your distance and throw as much concrete at them as you can. Wait for them to corner themselves and move in. Let your allies whittle them down while you can. If you’re inside, rush them. They’re bound to get caught on a corner while backing up, and you can incap them easily once they do. As a tank, AVOID CATCHING FIRE. This will drain your health rapidly, and kill you long before your time. If there is deep water (Death Toll Finale) jump in: It will douse the flames. Don’t be afraid to use concrete at a long distance. Just aim up like you would with a hunter pounce, and have at it. You might get lucky and knock one down and do heavy damage. Better opportunites for your allies!
Tactics
1. Sharking
What this entails is the dedicated assault of, at minimum, 3 of the 4 infected in attacking a single survivor with the objective of incapacitation. The term “Sharking” comes from the feeding frenzy that sharks are driven into upon smelling blood… well imagine seeing the red survivor outline meaning they’re weak as a magnet for your attacks. Follow the above rules, and attempt to do as much damage as possible to one survivor. Even if they’re not incapped, they’re going to slow the rest down quite a bit.
2. Frog Slash from the TOP ROPE
Smoker grabs victim. Hunter is in place well above the smoker and the victim. Hunter has an easy, immobile target to nail for a high-damage pounce. Max is 25. See if you can break 20! Not only that, but the smoker will be dealing damage while you are pretending to be a WWII bomber.
3. Boomerkazi
This one is simple. Get above the survivors as the boomer (Easiest to execute on NM1, in the alleyway, but there are other places this is possible.) Simply drop down and attack with your bile, and cover as many as you can. If you’re lucky, a survivor will panic and shoot you, causing you to explode and definitely cover several of them. You can also do this after vomiting on a survivor or two, then running past them and attacking them, trying to get them to kill you and further coat their allies.
4. The Tankstraction
Tanks are powerhouses. They can incap in 4 hits or so, and can take a ton of damage. However, this is not their only purpose. Good survivor teams will be huddled together to protect them from you. The tank can EASILY divide a pack of survivors making them easy pickings for your allies. Simply maneuver to try and separate them, and let your friends attack. If you can land a hit, focus on downing that person. Stay close to them while your allies work the enemy. This way, they can’t sneak around and revive their ally and get away.
5. Tankwalling
This is an alternative to the above. A hunter or smoker is attacking a survivor, so the tank positions himself in between the trapped survivor and his would-be rescuers. They will not get close enough to free him, so chuck concrete when an opportunity presents itself. Once that survivor is incapped, rush to help the next infected get a down.
6. Multipounce
Occasionally you’ll have 3 hunters spawned. You’re limited to 1 smoker and 1 boomer, but I suppose Hunters can two or 3. Multipouncing is gathering a group of hunters to lay in ambush, then when the survivors come through jumping them at once. If your fourth can distract the only one not getting pounced (Blinded by boomer) then you will do heavy damage.
7. Overhang Pulls
Grabbing people with the Smoker and pulling them over a ledge, and sometimes you get a “Fall down” which they’re hanging on to the edge of a fall. A good spot is right before the rope bridge in Blood Harvest 1. Grab them from across the gorge (You’ll have to jump the wire-fence to get in position) and grab them if they wander too close. You’ll pull them down and they’ll effectively be incapped. Have hunters jump whoever goes to help, and you’ll have a high-damage assault and huge delay.
8. Save the boom
This involves having used your bile attack, covered some survivors, and you didn’t get killed in the process. Take your first opportunity to run ahead in the level, where the survivors need to go next. This way, your bile attack recharges, and you can use it again. Of course, if the survivors haven’t progressed at all since your previous attack, feel free to move back and set up another ambush. Chances are you won’t get to do this more than once, but generally being annoying as possible as the boomer is highly beneficial. Dragging an infected mob in to attack as well as all the pre-spawned infected means they keep getting slowed, are blinded for a good deal of time, and most of all: bait for your allies.
9. Concrete Rain
Some stay dry while others… wait, not what we’re talking about. This, of course, will involve the Tank. Should you get him a fair distance away on an open level (Huge disadvantage for a tank) you should take this opportunity to rain concrete on survivors. Aim high, in their general direction, and hope you score a few hits so your frustration meter doesn’t empty. For enhanced teamwork, an ally that has yet to spawn can stand near where survivors are and tell you whether your shots are short or far, so you can adjust and hopefully deal some good damage while being relatively immune to return fire. In an open level, attacking survivors is suicide. They can run circles around you and can fill you with fire from all angles. Closing to melee range is only an option indoors. Of course, if you see several purple outlines, your boomer friend took advantage of the distraction you provided, now you must do the same. It takes about 6 seconds for the bile to start clearing from their vision, and during that time are not very likely to see you in their face until its too late. They’ll feel their controller rumbling, see their screen shaking, but won’t know you’re nailing them until its too late. Also, as a rule: If a survivor has a hunter on them, DO NOT ATTACK. Hit the others. The survivor with the hunter will be dying shortly.
With this groundwork in place, you’ll be well on your way to destroying the opposition. Alter things so they fit for you, but don’t ever forget the big rules: Never separate as the survivors, and take advantage of the heightened mobility of the special infected to attack from unexpected angles.
Cross Posted at Cheesecake’s Rage