Overview
Theories, Tests, Inconsistencies, Consistencies and helpful tips and tricks.
Explaining the Guide
This guide is written completely off tests and theories performed by players and myself, and tested multiple times. Everything in this guide is subject to change due to new results, new tests, updates and changes, or more. The guide itself is not 100% and probably never will be, do not rely heavily on everything said in this guide, and do not think that everything in said guide, is 100% accurate or true.
This guide will go into explaining the game, and game mechanics down to everything thing the player-base knows, all contributions are welcome. This guide is ever-changing and expanding so be sure to check back once in awhile, and maybe even add your own contributions.
The Sleepers
This section will cover the “Diseased Humans” or “Alien-like” creatures in GTFO. Commonly referred to as a whole, Sleepers.
Note: There are somewhat confirmed, and unconfirmed names for each sleeper, and the player-base has many different names for each type, I will be using my own names, and be providing descriptions of each.
Each sleeper has their own attacks, appearance and AI. You can see all the Sleeper types found by the player-base below, as well as their attacks, descriptions, and weak points.
The information provided in the sections below is not 100% accurate and will be updated as new information is found.
Strikers
Strikers are the most common sleepers in GTFO. They are human-like creatures with a large mouth, as their head. Their bodies are somewhat translucent and are covered in veins, with a very bloated stomach.
Attacks
Strikers have one attack, a lunge attack using their stomach that can curve and bend in unnatural way, to reach you in the “unreachable” spots, and attack you from range. The attack itself isn’t very long and only has a certain distance that the stomach can travel, usually about 5-6m away is enough for them to hit you with their stomach. Strikers will glow a deep red when they’re about to attack.
Weak Point
Note: This section of Strikers is not 100% accurate and may be subject to change in future updates or upon further testing and results.
The weak points on Strikers is their bloated stomach. Upon shooting and “popping” or “exploding” their stomach, they are usually dead, if not a few more shots or hit will do the trick.
Shooters
Shooters are the second most common sleepers in GTFO. They are also human-like creatures with a head covered in small black pouches. As well upon closer look their body is somewhat translucent and covered in veins.
Attacks
Shooters have one attack, and will stay away from you as best as possible. Shooters will shoot a homing projectile, that can be easily avoided by moving around a corner, or side-stepping.
Weak Point
Note: This section of shooters is not 100% accurate and may be subject to change in future updates or upon further testing and results.
The weak point on a shooter is their head. Popping off their head, will almost always kill a shooter, if not a few more shots or hit will do the trick.
Scouts
Scouts are fairly rare in GTFO. They use long tentacles called “Feelers” to feel a player, if touched the feeler will turn red, and the Scout will scream. Before the Scout screams it will start glowing green, once it does this the scout is invincible. After the scout screams, the scout “turns” into a big shooter, and will attack from there on.
Scouts have the same appearance as a big shooter, with the added touch, of “Feelers.”
Attacks
Scouts do not have any attacks. reference Big Shooter for attacks once Scouts scream.
Weak Point
Note: This section of Big Shooters is not 100% accurate and may be subject to change in future updates or upon further testing and results.
A headshot with a Sniper will instantly kill the scout, and prevent it from screaming.
Rhinos
Description
Rhinos are pitch black sleepers, covered in spines/spikes from the shoulders up.
Attacks
Rhinos have two attacks, a long stomach attack, and a charge with their spiked heads. Hence the name Rhino
Weak Point
Weak point is the Spine, full charge melee will 1 shot a Rhino.
Sometimes inconsistent, and shooting Rhinos is somewhat difficult because of their dark appearance, however they are weak in health.
Variants
Big variants are random in when and where they spawn in GTFO.
Big Strikers
Big strikers look exactly like their basic counter part with the slight changes in their neck and head being longer. They have a much larger Bloated stomach.
Attacks
Big strikers have two attacks, a swing of their arms, and a stomach attack.
Weak Point
Note: This section of Big Strikers is not 100% accurate and may be subject to change in future updates or upon further testing and results.
Big Strikers the same weak point as their basic counterpart, but as well their head is a weak point. Popping both their Head and Stomach will usually lead to a kill, if not a few more shots will do the trick again.
Big Shooter
Look exactly like their basic counterpart, just larger.
Attacks
Big shooters shoot 3 golden homing projectiles in quick succession.
Weak Point
Note: This section of Big Shooters is not 100% accurate and may be subject to change in future updates or upon further testing and results.
There is no confirmed weak spot, and damage values are fairly buggy with Big Shooters. Headshots and body shots do not matter, and simply shooting this one at the moment is the best you can do.
Black Smoke, almost un-seeable, unless a flashlight is directly on them. They are the same as their Basic and Big counterparts, just “cloaked” or “Shadowed”
Attacks
Reference the basic and big sleepers for attacks.
Weak Point
Reference the basic and big sleepers for weak points.
Sleeper AI
Sleeper AI finds the path of least resistance.
Example:
Given two options:
a door that is closer, closed and a door that is slightly further away and left open. The AI will always choose the door that is open, the path of least resistance. Hint: Close your doors.
Note: This “Echolocation” is actually a theory by the player-base and not accurate or proven in any way. It is purely speculation and has been tested quite a few times with mostly positive results.
“Croaking” or the heartbeat is a way for the Sleepers to start detecting you. Once the sleepers start to glow, and make a “Croaking” noise, they’ll start to detect sounds and lights. When they start moving frantically, you’ll hear their heartbeat, and too much noise, or too much light will set them off, and if not dealt with quickly, will wake the entire room. The closer you are to a sleeper, the more often the sleeper will “Croak” or light up.
Where sleepers spawn is entirely random in each zone. They can spawn next to each other, far away, in small groups, or there will be none at all. Sleeper spawns are based on the zone, and not specifically the room, and what sleepers spawn specifically, is random every time. Sometimes you’ll find Scouts or Big Variants, sometimes you’ll find nothing, and sometimes you’ll find only basic variants.
Each variant of sleeper, Striker, Shooter, Scout, Rhino, etc. has it’s own pathing, and AI for attacking players and detecting them.
Note: This section is currently consistent and inconsistent tests, and will more than likely change a lot, so keep an eye out.
Strikers & Big Strikers
Strikers AI once to get as close to you as possible, making it harder for you to run out of reach of their stomach attack, and making it easier for their stomach attack to hit you. In simple terms, they will charge you.
Shooters & Big Shooters
Shooters AI want to stay at a distance from you, dealing damage and while you try to avoid their homing projectiles, shoot strikers, and all together survive. Hint: Dealing with these first can sometimes save your life.
Rhinos
Rhinos AI is somewhat random, being one of the only Sleepers to have two attacks, It will choose to lunge with it’s stomach, or directly charge you. Both are extremely dangerous, dealing damage with it’s charge, and being in close proximity, to use a stomach attack.
Scouts
Fun fact, scouts do not react to light or sound. At least in the way you think they probably would. Scouts are rendered almost entirely useless as long as you know where their feelers are and where they are. They will send their feelers out if you make too much noise next to them, or if you shine a light directly on them. They will however, not do anything but use their feelers, and the feelers themselves, do not react to light or sound, only touch.
Gameplay Mechanics
There are tons of gameplay mechanics in the game, and every single one of them, can be very useful to know and change the fate of your playthrough. This section will explain a few different mechanics in the game, and give you tips and tricks that you can use in the game.
Primary, Special and Tools all have friendly-fire enabled in this game, so watch where you’re shooting and make sure not to run in-front of turrets.
GTFO uses percentages to explain almost everything in the game. I’ll briefly cover the percentages to make sense of them. Every Medipack, ammopack, and tool pack will give you 20% or 1 full charge, 1 full magazine, or 20% more health so keep that in mind when dishing out supplies.
0% means you are out of ammo, or out of uses. Self-explanatory.
20% Means you have 1 full magazine, or 1 full charge, or 1 use.
40% Means you have 2 full magazines, or 2 full charges, or 2 uses.
60% Means you have 3 full magazines, or 3 full charges, or 3 uses.
80% Means you have 4 full magazines, or 4 full charges, or 4 uses.
100% Means you have 5 full magazines, or 5 full charges, or 5 uses.
Synchronized Killing
A fairly self-explanatory name, synchronized killing is a useful trick to know when clearing large rooms of sleepers, especially when multiple sleepers are spawned tightly packed together. Killing sleepers that are near each other at the same time reduces the chances of the other waking up without the player noticing, and can increase your survival time while doing a stealthy playthrough.
The Flash
A lot of times you’ll notice that Sleepers will sometimes alternate when they start “Croaking” or glowing and this can be rather annoying trying to set up Synchronized kills or just trying to sneak past, however there is a trick to help you. You can quickly flash your light on a sleeper and turn it back off, to force them into the “Croak” or glow effectively making your own timing to easily sneak past.
The Choke
Choke points are amazing in this game, to conserve ammo and remove hordes quickly. There are a few ways to find or make choke points and I’ll explain a few here.
Cross Choke:
Creating a cross choke can effectively be achieved by having two sentries, placed at an angle forming a cross, in either a small hallway, or even a tightly packed room. Having one or two players stand a few meters behind the turrets towards the center, will force the AI to move towards the players and then stop, in the line of fire of both sentries, due to the way certain AI attack.
Door Choke:
C-Foaming a small or large door and place either one or two turrets on the opposite side can create a large choke point to kill tons of sleepers trying to break down the door, making your life just a little bit easier once that door breaks down.
Note: You do not need to C-Foam a door to use this trick.
The Shove
Your melee weapon actually has two attacks, Normal attacks and Charged attacks or a shove. Shoving is very effective, you can cancel a charge attack at any time with a shove, and shoving does not effect dormant sleepers. You can also quickly switch to your melee weapon from your primary or special, by pressing the Melee keybind, default: C shoving the enemy back and allowing you to start wailing on them.
Glowsticks
These are going to come in handy. Glowsticks can light up small dim-lit or dark areas and will not alert sleepers. This can be used to mark big groups of sleepers, big variants, or make it easier to see sleepers to move around or get close enough to kill them.
Terminal Usage
The terminal is going to be the most useful thing you will encounter on all of your expeditions into the facility. The Terminal itself has many uses and its basic functionalities that can be increased to do even a little more advanced things, and this parts going to get hard to explain.
Commands
Terminals are run exactly like a computers command prompt or command line. As such you’ll need to treat it as so. A few things to note, you can’t “arrow” key back to a mistake you made, and you can’t click in the terminal.
There are a total of 7 commands in a terminal that are universal.
- Help
- Commands
- CLS
- Exit
- Ping
- List
- Query
We’ll be covering each command in-depth.
Ping
Ping is one of the most useful commands you’ll learn in the terminal. Not only does it make a small *ping* in the world of the location of the ping, it tells you the exact location of the resource or item. Ping will only work in the same zone as the security terminal you are currently accessing, i.e. Zone_49 and all sub zones, (A, B, C, D) with resources in that area can be pinged, however resources in zone_50 and all of it’s sub zones can not be pinged.
Example command:
PING MEDIPACK_228
Query
Query is the next most useful command in the terminal, as you can learn tons of information about your entire floor, without ever leaving the terminal. Query will gather all the information about whatever you put into the Query, Resources (Medipacks, Ammopacks, Tool refills), items (Personal IDs, Hydrostasis units) or give you information on a Security door, or door and what zones/sub zones it leads too. Query will also tell you the amount of uses a certain resource has left and what zone it’s in. Meaning you can Query any resource at any time, but you won’t get it’s specific location in said zone.
Example:
QUERY MEDIPACK_228
List
Third and finally the last most useful command in terminals. List just typing it, will give you a list of every door, resrouce, item, locker, and box on the floor. This list can be pretty extensive so you’ll want to use filters. Filters are a way for you to shorten the list and find exactly what you’re looking for. You can filter by, Zone_xxx, resource (Medipack, Ammopack, Tool refill), Keys, Personal IDs, HSU, Door, etc. i.e. Listing a specific resource, will give you all the resources of that type on the floor, and their address.
Example:
LIST MEDIPACK
- EXIT command exits the terminal
- CLS command clears the terminal screen
- COMMANDS will show all the commands listed above
- HELP will show useful and easy to use information.
Advanced Terminal Usage
This section will go into more advanced things you can do in the terminal and go a bit more in depth about certain queries.
Querying a door can give you some fairly basic information, the navigational information going forward, or through the door into that zone, or navigational information going backward, or away from the zone. Passage tells you that somewhere in that zone, are doors to the next security zones, locked behind security doors.
Querying a resource can give you specific information on how many uses or “Capacity” the said resource has, being from 20% to 100%
List filters can be used extensively and are very handy for pin-pointing certain items or resources.
You can list a specific zone in the terminal, i.e. LIST ZONE_49 and it will list everything in that zone. You can also add a secondary filter to condense it even further, i.e. LIST ZONE_49 MEDIPACK and you’ll find every medipack in that zone, and only medipacks will be listed.
Weapons
Pistol (SHELLING 549)
Semi-automatic, 2 shots to the head on Strikers and Shooters. Effective when dealing with small groups- can be spammed to supress (Must aim for head). Spawns with 100 rounds, 15 in the magazine, 85 in reserve.
Fully-automatic, high rate of fire rifle. Has high ammo capacity but short range- best to lead enemies in to close to medium. Spawns with 230, 40 in the mag, 190 in reserves. Due to high RoF, tap firing for most is effective at dealing with enemies and maintaining ammo.
DMR (TR22 HANAWAY)
Semi-automatic rifle, has long-range with high damage. However, has limited ammo capacity compared to other weapons. Takes the head off Strikers and Shooters however requires a second shot to take down. Spawns with 37 rounds, 10 in the magazine, 27 in reserve.
ASSAULT RIFLE (MALATACK LX)
Has moderate recoil, with a moderate RoF- Semi-automatic. Highly effective when tap-fired, aiming for head on both Strikers and Shooters. Spawn’s with 150 rounds, 30 in the magazine and 120 in reserve.
SPECIAL WEAPONS
SHOTGUN (BUCKLAND 5870)
Has solid damage, slightly more than the Combat Shotgun. Effective against targets approaching in groups. Has short-range. Aim for chest for most devastating results. Spawn’s with 11 rounds, 6 in the magazine and 5 in reserve.
COMBAT SHOTGUN (BUCKLAND AF6)
Similar to Shotgun, has slightly less damage but is fully automatic if held down. Very good against groups and dealing with Big Variants. Has short-range. Aim for head-neck area on Shooters and Strikers. Spawns with 30 rounds, 10 in the magazine, 20 in reserve.
SNIPER (KÖNING PR 11)
Has very high damage- highest in the game. Long range, semi-automatic but extremely limited ammo capacity. Can 1 shot Scouts (headshots), Strikers and Shooters. Effective at dealing with Big variants, shooting in the weak spots. Spawns with 5 rounds, 3 in the magazine, 2 in reserve.
REVOLVER (MASTABA R66)
Very high damage weapon, capable of 1 tapping Strikers and Shooters in the head. Relatively clear ADS when compared to other weapons. Has medium range. Spawns with 25 rounds, 6 in the magazine, 19 in the reserves.
MACHINEGUN (TECHMAN ARBALIST V)
Has a charge-up function which takes a second and allows the player to fire. Has medium range. Very effective at dealing with large amounts of enemies, given you aim for the head. Spawns with 53 rounds, 25 in the mag, 28 in reserves.
Stealth
Stealth in GTFO is your biggest friend, allowing you to preserve your ammunition, and save your health for scarier things later.
Moving around quietly is simple in the game, Crouch and move slowly. Sleepers react to both Light and Sound, crouching makes less noise than standing or running. When a sleeper starts to “Croak” or Glow, you’ll want to stop all movement. Movement counts as, Standing up or crouching, Turning your head too quickly, and moving. If you start to hear a heartbeat, completely stop, don’t move. The heartbeat is the last warning and indication you have before a sleeper wakes up and potentially screams alerting the rest of the room.
Killing sleepers is vital for making movement around the floor easy, and you can do so quietly without even using your gun. Melee attacks can be charged to deal even more damage, and in the right places, can instantly kill a sleeper. Holding left click while your melee weapon is out will charge or windup your attack, and the small cursor circle will flash when you’re fully charged. This Cursor will also get slightly smaller when you are in range to hit a Sleeper. 1 Fully charged melee attack to their upper chest, head, upper back, will almost always instantly kill a sleeper.
Note: There are some inconsistencies with this so aiming for the head has proven to work almost 98% of the time.
The Music?
This. Will. Kill. You.
A lot of players especially starting out are quick to pull their gun once the combat music starts playing, and can effectively ruin an entire run, or severely hurt it. Having a friend with the Bio-Tracker in this situation is key. You can effectively diffuse the situation quietly without alerting everything else in the room, if you’re quick enough. Your melee weapon actually has two attacks, a shove and it’s normal melee attack. The Shove can be used by default keybind: C or right mouse click while holding the melee weapon. Shoving an awoken sleeper just before it screams or while you’re attacking it can give you a bit more time to quietly deal with the problem, as shoving them staggers them and stops their scream. Do not be so quick to pull a gun on an awoken sleeper, unless they start screaming, and the entire room is woke up, keep an eye on your tracker.
Tools
Let’s talk tools.
Bio-Tracker
Commonly referred to as the scanner or tracker, this tool will help you “scope” out the next room before ever opening the door, giving you an advantage to work with knowing what you’ll be up against. The bio-tracker can sense any biological entity, on the same frequency, and will show a white dot when an entity is found. The tracker can also sense the entities up to 20m in range, the smaller circle being 10m and larger being 20m. There is also a side graph with 0 5 10 15 and 20m marks to help give accurate readings on where sleepers are in the next room. The bio-tracker can also scan and ping enemies if they appear red on the tracker. Dormant sleepers are White, and Moving or Awoken sleepers will appear red on the tracker.
C-Foam Launcher
C-Foam launcher is a very handy tool when dealing will hordes of enemies, or keeping yourself safe, by blocking up doors. 1 Full charge from a C-Foam launcher will freeze a Big Variant of any kind, rendering them useless for a brief period of time. 1 Full charge and Half of a charge will lock up a big door. 1 Full charge will lock up a small door. C-Foam can also be sprayed on the ground and when Sleepers run over it they will slow down, or be completely covered and be frozen in the foam. Similar to the Big Variant, 1 Full charge from a C-Foam launcher will freeze a scout, making them immobile for a short, 1 Full-charged hammer to head allows for a kill.
Sentries
Sentries are your save and grace. Setting up sentries correctly can conserve your ammo, and make dealing with hordes that much easier, so preparing for alarms or multiple enemies coming to you, will usually end with you going to the next room. There are two variants of sentries Shotgun and Burst.
Shotgun sentry has the highest damage of the two but has a much shorter range and fires 1 buck shot.
Burst sentry has the lowest damage but much further engagement range and fires in 3 round bursts.
Mine Deployer
The mine deployer can be a very effective way to kill large groups of Sleepers if done correctly and combined with the right tools. The mine detector will place a small incendiary mine on almost any surface. Placing a mine in the path of a scout is alternative way to kill them without alerting the room.