Overview
This guide is for your leisure and will contain a list of basic – advanced training suggestions aimed at making anyone a better player and more so to survive. If you have any suggestions, let us know in the comments.This guide will always be under construction.
Beginner
-Beginner is the easiest difficulty, but will keep your perks mostly stagnant. Choose Normal instead when leveling up from 0.
-Starting at level 5 and upgraded at 6, you will spawn with perk specific gear. Till you gain one of these, it’s best you start as sharpshooter. This allows you to receive a damage buff with your 9mm.
-You may start as Beserker if you would rather get a buff to your knife. This can save ammo for your 9mm.
-Lower difficulties have higher gear spawn rates. If you do not want to spawn as Sharpshooter, you can chose another perk and luck may provide you with perk specific gear. Example, spawn as Commando and find a Bullpup.
-Staying alive is more important than getting a kill. Proceed with caution.
-Want to run fast? Switch to your melee slot.
-Grenades will destroy doors if the door is welded closed. This is for all but Medic and Flamer grenades.
-Off-perk weaponry still gains perk progress.
-Your speed ties into your weight. Keep a light load to outrun the horde.
-Zeds will always spawn near you. Even if you have a horde in front of you, check your 6 so you aren’t ambushed.
-The vanilla zed spawn limit is 32. This means at any given time, no matter what the zed counter states, you will always be fighting a maximum of 32 zeds.
-Use your manners and leave the last couple zeds alive at the end of a wave, at least until everyone is close to the trader. Be frugal about time.
Intermediate
-Save some ammo and some dosh. Use your knife to take out those Clots, Gorfasts, Stalkers, etc. Whatever you feel safe and comfortable with. This plan works best on the first wave.
-Prioritize your shots. The default zed spawn limit is 32. If you leave clots be, you know what is alive, therefore what to expect. This also allows you to better control the spawn of monsters.
-Keep an eye on zeds spawn locations. Once you memorize these locations on each map, it will be much easier to control where zeds are. Especially when starting a wave, make them spawn in a location that gives you the advantage.
-Clots grab you if you get too close. You can make one flinch by doing damage to it. This flinch will last for a small moment. If you can get this moment to run its course twice concurrently, you can break away from grabby hands. Jump bunnyhop away for a higher success rate.
-When in doubt, kite it out. To perform a successful kite, strategically avoid killing zeds till you have the large majority behind you. Then perform small numbers of kills on your followers. Avoid dawdling as zeds will certainly cut you off in the way of your kite path.
-In physics, Time * Speed = Distance. This is the same in Killing Floor obviously. Take into consideration how much time you might have before the zeds reach you based on their speed and distance. You might not have as much time to reload as you thought.
-Semi auto is military standard. Don’t waste your shots, but do what you have to do to survive.
-Bloat bile can damage and/or distract other zeds. Use this to your advantage either by triggering a vomit or exploding the bloat onto another zed.
Advanced
-Off-perk machete alternate fire does enough damage to flinch a scrake on lower difficulties.
-If you bind a key to walk in your keybinds, you can gain the benefit of having tighter aim when holding the corresponding key. This walk has nothing to do with knife running and can be used whenever.
-If you find yourself unable to handle a Fleshpound at the moment, block his line of sight for even the tiniest moment to keep him from raging.
-If you find yourself unable to handle a Flashpound at the moment, shoot him a little every four to six seconds. As long as he doesn’t gain over 360 damage within two seconds, he will not rage. Unless of course you don’t shoot him at all.
-Similar to the Bloat, the Husk’s fireball can damage any zeds unlucky enough to get hit. They will try to nudge themselves out of the way, but if luck is on your side, the husk will score a direct hit or at least some splash damage.
-When using quickheal, you heal as soon as the animation starts. You can manually switch to another weapon at this point to speed up your control.
-If you find that you are being chased by Gorefasts and they are but inches away, do not heal until after you kill them. If you heal during this time, you will slow down, allowing them to do damage to you when you are supposed to be healing. This can kill you if you are on your last legs. Kill those zeds first.
Perk Specific
Medic
-Your grenades heal teammates and do damage to zeds. Toss one if your team needs one.
-See a raging Scrake or Fleshpound charging in to wipe your team? Jump in front of them, crouch, and toss a healing nade or two at your feet. Use your armor and nade bonuses to a convienient proficiency, while crouching to allow teammates a clear shot. You are still free to attack of course.
-You have a healing gun. That’s awesome. Don’t forget about your syringe. Seriously.
Support Specialist
-The Shotgun has a flashlight.
-The HSG Shotgun’s shell spread is toggleable from tight spread to wide spread. Press Alternate Fire to use.
-The AA12 can be toggled to fully automatic and semi Automatic.
-The Hunting Shotgun’s Alternate Fire will shoot any shells you have loaded. This makes the weapon very useful for specific panic situations. Be warned that even a Max level support specialist’s Hunting Shotgun reload will still take about two seconds, so use your two shots wisely.
-If you can’t keep up with the faltering integrity of a door, wait till it reaches about 10%, then unweld the door quickly. If done correctly, the door will not break but open instead. Then you are free to kill them and resecure if need be. Also because doors become harder to weld the more they have been destroyed, this trick slightly helps give you team the leg up. Just be careful and do not do this when a Fleshpound is nigh.
-Learn the inner workings of a shotgun and how to use it. Visit DarkFal’s Support Specialist guide for more information.
Sharpshooter
-Be aware that Hell on Earth Fleshpounds are somewhat immune to headshot damage. Do your best!
-Learn the 9mm. This goes the same for any class. It’s your most valuable weapon and one you will never be rid of. In the hands of someone capable, it can be more reliable than the m14 in most cases.
Commando
-Alternate Fire will change a rifle from fully automatic to semi automatic.
-Crawlers suck. You are the best equipped to take them out. Save a life.
-Commandos are able to see enemy health, even through darkness and smoke. Use this to your advantage and guide your team.
Please refer to DarkFal’s excellent Commando guide for an in-depth look.
Berserker
-Alternate Fire headshots can stun Scrakes but not Fleshpounds.
-Test your tool’s reach to understand your limits.
-Applicable for all perks but the most so for Berserker, you can dodge attacks and make zeds stop in place. This is possible by jumping right out of the zed attack reach as soon as you anticipate the animation. This is a good technique for dealing with Gorefasts. Walk close, wait for the attack, jump out of the way, Gorefasts will flinch, use the small moment to go in for the kill.
Firebug
-Headshots do more damage, but are harder with the flamethrower. Practice your recoil control to score extra damage.
-One flamenade has the power to kill an entire horde of 20+ zeds on Suicidal and down. As long as they are bunched together of course.
-Firebugs are a Husk’s worst nightmare. Level 6 Firebugs offer 100% resistance to fire, effectively nullifying a Husk’s fireball. A useful trick is to jump in front of fireballs to protect teammates from losing kevlar, as health is rechargable. This becomes dangerous the lower your level is.
-Be aware, fire will probably cause a framerate drop for some players. If you are close to a teammate, try to retain a burst trigger finger as to not overwhelm another players fps. Just be cautious.
Demolitions
-A common trick is to toss a grenade and then shoot an explosive device at it when it reaches the appropriate spot. This is useful for doing extra damage per second to a horde or one of the larger zeds.
-The Harpoon gun generates a lot of smoke, but can be used on walls and ceilings. Zed’s do not understand to avoid these like grenades, so it can be a useful horde killer if timed right.
-SPECIAL SECURITY- You can wear Pipebombs like a hat.
Top Secret Info For Badasses
-If you practice and have a solid pace, you can strafe enough to use slower zeds to deter faster zeds. The trick is to keep them walking or running right behind the Scrake, Siren, Bloat, etc. As long as they are guided well enough, they can have their movement nearly stopped in some cases. This is hardest with zeds that are charging, like the Gorefast or Fleshpound. Their charge is enough to bump themselves out of the way of other zeds.
-Count the shots you’ve made in your head. In plenty of instances, the need to clear a path will be very urgent. In these moments every millisecond counts and darting your eyes to the corner of your screen to check your mag will cost you precious time. Avoid this by counting your ammo left after each shot.
-A quick bind or two can make life easier. This combination allows to to heal and switch to your previous weapon very quick, saving you precious seconds.
Set input switchweapon 1 | quickheal
Set input getweapon syringe | onrelease SwitchToLastWeapon | onrelease quickheal
-You can actually damage zeds by jumping on their heads. I have estimated it does about 10 damage per bounce and as such, it is not an appropriate way to even kill clots. However, with the exception of the siren and husk, you will not be attacked while Italian plumber hopping, making this a decent way to escape a horde.