Quick and dirty tips for newbies:
- Always clear rooms of corpses. Always. Go up to a corpse and swing your bat to decapitate. Corpses have a random animation variable and are strategically placed to screw over less cautious players.
- When you can, bat, don't shoot. Save ammunition for when you actually need it, and try not to waste it on lone stragglers that can easily have their brains batted.
- No matter the enemy, bat swings faster than their recovery period. It might seem like you swing slow, but if you can keep hitting infected there's no way they can attack back. Missing is what will screw you.
- Don't waste ammo on armoured infected unless it's a rifle or high powered weapon. Those will knock the helmet off with one shot, leaving one more to clean the head. Pistol takes too many rounds just to knock a helmet off. Even so, same rules apply: if you can bat instead, bat away.
- Infected take time to open doors. I found boarding up doors relatively useless. An easier tactic when pursued by a group is to keep a molotov/grenade/mine on hand, rush through a door, close it, and wait. If you have a mine, lay it in front of the door and back away. Grenade/molotov, wait until they burst open the door and throw it directly at the group. The bottleneck should destroy them all.
- Crossbow is easily one of the most effective weapons in the game if you use it intelligently, as bolts can be recovered. As soon as you spot an infected, if you're safe, scope up and aim for the head. One shot to the head will kill most, and you can recover the bolt from their corpse. Essentially gives you an unlimited super weapon. Don't waste rounds on armoured infected.
- For the love of all unholy do not swing your bat at explosive infected.
- Pistol is very effective at headshots, usually taking ~2 headshots to kill an average infected. For this reason it's a good weapon to upgrade first, especially if you tend to die. Skills are survivor specific, but weapon upgrades are universal. And since every survivor spawns with a pistol...
- Scanning a room the moment you enter is an excellent way to locate all corpses on the ground, and thus identify potential infected. Corpses yet to animate will not be pinged by your radar.
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