PvP Survivor Beginner's Guide

Hello and welcome to this guide. I will be covering Survivor tips in this and hopefully teaching you enough that you can get into the mode easier than I did.

Before you read this, know that I am by no means a pro at this mode. I am around mid skill level and routinely get demolished by good players. This guide will NOT give you the skill to beat top level players or even intermediate players. That can only come from extensive gameplay and learning and self-improvement. It WILL explain fundamental concepts and gameplay and will teach you how to not play like a total noob (e.g.: Survivors who don't understand how to interrupt pounces or dodge tackles).

For the sake of simplicity, all damage values and cooldowns given in this guide assumes a 1v1 scenario. Weapon damage values and Night Hunter resource cooldowns change depending on how many Survivors are in the lobby.

Note: due to the peer-to-peer nature of multiplayer in Dying Light, delay plays a massive role in PvP. This is quite obnoxious, and you'll need to learn to play around it.

So you've decided to play Survivor. After waiting for two hours for a hunter to invade, you're super excited to play. The countdown begins.

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Destroy the Nests.

Nests? What are they?
Both sides in this mode have opposing goals. Survivors must destroy five nests (if you've played the Following, the nests are like tankier versions of Volatile hives) while Night Hunters must kill the Survivors ten times. Whoever completes their objective first wins.

In a 1v1, most nests have two Volatiles growing from them (some nests have three, but they usually have a way to take them out quickly). Destroying all of these Volatiles will destroy the nest. Guarding the nest are multiple standard zombies who can be taken out with a single power slice (sometimes they'll tank more, but usually a single 1h power slice will take them out). When you begin attacking the nest, these zombies will begin a short transition into virals, at which point they're an obnoxious pain in the ass. If you can, get rid of them as fast as you can so they don't mess you up during a fight.

Nest spawns are not completely random. Instead, the game looks at where each Survivor in the lobby currently is and calculates the most appropriate nest spawn from that information (in 1v1, it tries to spawn nests about 100 meters away, with an additional 100 meters added for each extra Survivor). Therefore, if you start each invasion standing in the same general spot, and destroy each nest while standing in the same general spot, you'll get the same nests each time. Good players use this to get the best nest spawns possible.

Important: your objective is to kill all five nests, NOT to kill the Night Hunter. You can win any match without killing the Hunter. Sure, it's not recommended because they'll just be a thorn in your side the whole time, but it's possible. Standing in one spot waiting for the Hunter to come to you accomplishes nothing but giving the Hunter time to regenerate resources.

Suggested weapons: One 1-handed weapon (1h weapon for short), one 2-handed weapon (2h weapon for short), at least one ranged weapon (most people use two crossbows; avoid using guns because they suck).
Not suggested weapons: Knives (they only really shine at killing nests, and there's faster ways to do that anyway), heavy 1h weapons (these are weapons that Crane holds with both hands but the game treats them as 1h weapons, such as katanas), guns (they suck compared to bows/crossbows in return for being hitscan weapons).

Mandatory utility: UV light (this is the most important item in the game for PvP), UV flares (just dupe some Zaid flares).
Basically mandatory: Grappling hook (you don't want to play without this).
Final slot: this is a flexible slot. Most people use it for a booster and a utility of their choice. How to use it for both? Place a booster in the slot and your other utility item in the first slot of your backpack inventory (let's say a molotov). When you've drank your booster and it's on cooldown, open your inventory (while not in a fight, obviously), and hit Spacebar or Enter twice while you have your other utility item highlighted. This will quickly swap the items.
Example video

So what weapons would I suggest? Khopeshes provide a reliable 1h weapon but if you're looking for the longest 1h, that is the Flesh Ripper from the Dieselpunk bundle. The longest non-DLC 1h is the Premium Oriental Khopesh.
The longest 2h weapon is the Oar, but you want the gold rarity version since the normal grey rarity oar deals less damage (the gold one does too on occasion, as it is bugged). The heavy tribal axe is a popular pick as well as the Hellsplitter from the Hellraid DLC.
The Valentine's Crossbow boasts the highest bolt speed amongst the crossbows (yes, each crossbow shoots their projectile at a different speed... thank you, Techland). You cannot get it through normal means, however (unless someone who has it drops it for you). The standard issue upgraded crossbow from the Following is more than passable, however. Most people use two crossbows to perform crossbow combos (which we'll get into later).
Some people use a bow, but it's even harder to master than crossbows. Its main use is to cancel certain attack animations.

So you're kitted out and understand your basic objective. That's cool, but you still don't have the knowledge of what you need to do to actually survive for any amount of time. This section will go over how Survivors... well, survive.

The Night Hunter has a few different ways to interact with you. The most lethal of these is the pounce, which is a one-shot kill. You can tell the Night Hunter is attempting a pounce when you're stuck in place and see tendrils wrapping around you (it also plays a sound cue). The Night Hunter may only attempt a pounce when at full energy (the red bar under their HP bar, which turns white when their energy is lowered). Night Hunter energy is depleted while the Night Hunter is exposed to UV light. The only ranged option for this is the UV flashlight. If you fail to keep them from being full energy and they attempt to pounce, you still have about 0.5 second to aim the light at the Night Hunter during the pounce animation to save yourself (this time is affected by the Night Hunter's distance from you and their velocity at the time of initiating the pounce). You don't always have to fully drain the Night Hunter, nor even lower them from full energy (since trying to pounce isn't always the correct play, so Hunters won't always do it even if they have the opportunity). But if you feel that they want to pounce you, just shine the UV light on them for a bit to keep their energy low.
That said, don't shine for too long! The UV flashlight has a limited battery that is consumed while it is being used. After you stop using it, there is a slight delay before the battery begins recharging. If you fully deplete the battery, the cooldown is longer and you'll have to camp in the safety of UV flares if the Hunter has high energy.

Another method of attack the Hunter has is the tackle, which is probably the most versatile tool in their kit. The Night Hunter can attempt a tackle if they are running (this is quite lenient, since the game sucks at detecting if you're running, walking, landing on a ledge, or standing still, and there's exploits to abuse this). You can dodge this by either pressing Spacebar at the correct moment, using the Agility skill Dodge (this is literally the first skill in the Agility tree... use it), or using your grappling hook and cancelling it (this is used to dodge tackles while you're in the air). To dodge, you must also have the Hunter within a certain distance of the center of your screen (for example, you can't dodge a tackle if the Hunter is behind you). Tackles get harder to dodge if the Hunter is at a hard angle above you (for example, standing right above you) or below you (for example, standing right below you). Watch how good Hunters use tackle and learn to counter these techniques.

The ground pound is a relatively-soft-hitting attack that is mainly used by good Hunters to lock you in a stagger that will allow them to get an easy spit stick. This isn't used for its damage so much as for being relatively easy to hit and opening up to a spit stick. You can dodge this by backsliding or grappling away with the grappling hook. Good/laggy Hunters will still hit you (or, if you grappled away, they might cancel the ground pound and attempt a tackle, which can be dodged by cancelling the grappling hook and facing the Hunter).

Claw is like a ground pound without the AoE. It's mainly used in the tendril claw exploit which allows Hunters to claw multiple times very fast or in a combo such as claw + pounce.

The Night Hunter has four spits: horde spit (yellow), UV spit (purple), concussive spit (orange), and toxic spit (green). Each of these spits, apart from the toxic spit, can be stuck to objects in the environment, including NPCs and Survivors. Good Hunters will spit stick you while you're stuck in an animation (such as when you've been hit by a tackle or a ground pound). They can also use an animation to keep you in the spit radius (such as pouncing you while you're near a spit so that you can't escape the radius).
Horde spit summons a horde of bomber zombies if it hits a Survivor. These bomber zombies will spawn from doorways and sewer grates and other places and charge at the affected Survivor. The intended counterplay is to escape to elevation, since these bombers have limited climbing abilities (they can climb some stuff, just not buildings). This counterplay is occasionally useless, because a bug causes bombers to occasionally teleport directly on top of a Survivor, supposedly due to them being basically reskinned virals. Bomber zombies are intended to one-shot any Survivor they get near, but sometimes they just feel like jumpscaring you and dealing like 10 hp of damage. This is the most inconsistent spit. (This spit can also be countered by firecrackers, which also is consistently inconsistent).
UV spit breaks your UV flashlight. The intended counterplay is to throw down a flare (or multiple flares) and play around in their radius. The Hunter will attempt to ground pound both the Survivor and the flare. If they hit both, then they instantly recover from the ground pound. If they perform a ground pound without hitting a Survivor, then they have about four seconds of recovery in which their only option to survive is to use a UV shield to UV heal.
Concussive spit knocks you over. This is mostly used for the obnoxious concuss tlock combo. Falling in water that covers your face will make you instantly get back up. Other than that, I don't know how to counter this. Good luck.
Toxic spit covers an area and deals damage to any Survivor that enters the AoE. It's mainly used in concuss tlock combo and locking down a nest to stall for time.

If you watch good players, you may notice that many of them play at 100 HP or 103 HP (some play at 275 HP as well, but this is off-meta). Why is this? Well, since PvP damage values are based in percentages, we’ll always lose 1/3 of our health from a tackle, or 1/5 from a ground pound, etc. So at 100 HP, a ground pound would deal 20 damage, while at 200 HP, it would deal 40 damage. This is fine and all until we factor in the passive healing skill from the Legend skill tree. When all points are dumped into this stat (and all passive healing has been unlocked from the Agility tree), we can heal up to 95 HP without having to apply a medkit (with the caveat of a delay between the last damage instance and the passive healing kicking in)! Now, 95 HP isn’t much when you have a max 275 HP, but when you have a max 100 HP, that’s most of your max health. Therefore, these two values (100 HP and 103 HP) are considered meta because they allow you to make the most out of passive healing. The only downside is that the nest guardian virals hit like a truck and can combo you to death (use a Night Hunter or Resistance booster if you’re worried about this). I’ve heard there is some reason to use 103 HP over 100 HP, but I’m not sure why.

PvP is mostly played on Hard or Nightmare to access the healing-over-time effect provided by medkits on these difficulties. While you may at first think, “Why? Instantly healing surely must be better”, you’d be… both wrong and right. While instant healing DOES have its benefits, healing over time allows you to apply a medkit just before a fight and have healing throughout the fight without having to find an opening to apply a medkit. This healing will allow you to tank three tackles in quick succession (and die on the fourth tackle), when usually three tackles would kill you. It also affects other damages, of course. Trying to ground pound to death someone who has an active medkit feels like it takes forever, and gives the Survivor time to perform a play when they would have otherwise died.
Now, we can’t apply a medkit while at full health, so sometimes a Survivor will intentionally damage themselves (most commonly by shooting an impact bolt at their feet, but there’s other methods as well) so they can apply a medkit.

Pressing Q will display the Night Hunter’s icon on the minimap if the Night Hunter is within a certain range (and if your Survivor Sense is not disabled). You can use this to track the Night Hunter. Useful for when the Night Hunter is at a distance, and also useful during close-range engagements if you lose track of the Hunter.

Dodge: the first skill in the Agility skill tree. This is mainly used to dodge tackles and to combo into a slide (dodge slide) for fast repositioning.

Dodge slide: an exploit in which you initiate a slide while performing a dodge (not dodging an attack, just performing a dodge with Spacebar + A/S/D). To perform: perform the dodge, then during the short animation, hold W + Shift, press C, then press the correct directional key that corresponds with the direction you dodged in (so if I dodged backwards, it would be… Spacebar + Shift + S, then W + Shift + C, then quickly going back to holding S). You should perform a long sideways or backwards slide. This is quite useful to dodge ground pounds or reposition.

Dropkick: an Agility skill. Dropkick is mainly used to make distance between a Survivor and the Hunter by kicking the Hunter away. It also gives short invincibility in which, if you take enough damage to reach 0 HP, you will not die (all animations, such as Dropkick, DFA, Hunter tackle, Hunter pounce, etc. give this invincibility). This is not good to use if the Hunter will land close up against a wall, since now you’re stuck in the dropkick recovery animation, and they can get an easy spit stick on you. You cannot dropkick a Hunter while they are in an animation.

Tackle: an Agility skill. While running, press/hold E to ram into an enemy. This deals ~20% damage to the Night Hunter in a 1v1 and is mainly a combo opener. It also pushes the Night Hunter back a little bit and can mess up their tendril sprints.

Slide: an Agility skill. Pretty much only used for dodge sliding. You can also slide kick virals in the leg to instantly kill them, I guess.

Tic-tac: an Agility skill. Honestly, I suggest you don’t get this.

Vault: an Agility skill. Don’t get it.

DFA: a Power skill. Drop onto the Hunter with enough velocity to gain the ability to one-shot them by either holding M1 or pressing it at the correct moment. DFA minimum height is affected by Crane’s speed (so items such as the Kuai dagger or Speed boosters can let you DFA from slightly lower). You cannot DFA a Hunter while they are in an animation.

Ground pound: a Power skill. Hold C while falling from pretty much any height and holding a 2h weapon to slam the weapon into the ground. If the weapon hits the Night Hunter, it’ll deal ~80% of their HP in a 1v1. Used in a certain combo to one-tap the Night Hunter, and to punish certain tackles.

Windmill: a Power skill. Hold and release M1 while holding a 2h weapon to do a 360* attack. Mainly used to clear certain nests.

Bow cancel: an exploit used to cancel certain animations. Any melee weapon animation can be cancelled by swapping to a bow. Try it out: perform a 2h attack, then while Crane is recovering from the attack, swap to a bow. Then swap back to your 2h and attack again. This allows you to bypass the built-in weapon swing recovery. Mainly an alternative to grapple animation cancel.
Fast bow shooting: an exploit used to make your bow into a full-auto weapon. Basic inputs are: shoot, release M1, kick, hold M1, crouch, shoot, etc.

Grapple animation cancel: an exploit used to cancel certain animations. Useful in more situations than bow cancel (grapple allows you to cancel failed dropkicks as well as do very quick 1h slices), but poor usage will result in losing grapple charges and being forced to wait for a cooldown. To avoid this, aim the grapple at a surface that can’t be grappled (examples: water, some fences, player characters including the Night Hunter’s main body) and quickly alternate between slicing and grappling. Don’t do it too quick, though, or the attack won’t register.

Dodge dropkick: an exploit that’s mainly used to instantly dropkick a Hunter from standing still. Same basic inputs as dodge slide, except you’re dropkicking instead of sliding. Dodge + W + Shift + E.

Combos: possibly an exploit that uses the way weapon swapping works to perform multiple attacks in quick succession. Custom quickswap keybinds are highly recommended for this. The easiest combo to learn is tackle slice (Shift + W + E + M1 after the tackle hits an enemy).
Grapple cancel: an exploit used to dodge tackles while the Survivor is in the air. Use the grappling hook on a surface that it can be used on, then cancel the hook just before the Hunter begins a tackle to make the game give you temporary dodge frames (lasts about as long as an actual dodge would). Obviously, you also need to face the Hunter for the dodge to register.
Car traps/fence traps: Survivor skills. Don’t buy these, because the inputs mess with swapping ammo types.

Boosters: utility items that require a Survivor skill. These grant temporary buffs before going on a decent cooldown. Cooldown is automatically ended if the Survivor dies. Event boosters (Eggnog, etc.) are meant to grant the same effects as a Night Hunter booster would. Effects gained from the effect-specific booster are greater than those gained from generalist boosters (meaning: the speed boost gained from a Speed booster is greater than that gained from a Night Hunter booster). You can stack multiple boosters and their effects before a match starts, or if you die a bunch in a short time.

Crossbow swap: an exploit used to quickly reload your crossbows if you have multiple. Enter your inventory and swap their positions. This is only useful if you can do it decently fast, so don’t worry too much about using it if you’re just starting. Leaves you quite vulnerable to getting attacked if you spend too long in your inventory.

Weapon charge: a Power skill used to deal double damage with a 1h weapon.
Weapon throw: a Power skill used to deal massive damage (in 1v1: thrown 1h deals ~90% damage; thrown 2h one-shots).

Backlash: an Agility skill used to almost-instantly throw utility items (mainly used for flares) by looking behind while running. Used to backflare (also called instaflare). You can use this even after a successful pounce interrupt or tackle evade.

You can combo some attacks together to deal massive damage. Here are a few combos.
Tackle slice:
A beginner combo that is useful in most situations. It basically doubles the damage you’d get from a slice. To perform: initiate a tackle while holding a 1h weapon then M1 or spam M1 the moment the tackle collides with the Hunter (or an NPC, combos work on NPCs too).

Tackle bolt slice:
An extension of the previous combo. This one’s mainly used after a pounce interrupt. Perform a tackle while holding a crossbow, then shoot the crossbow as you’re swapping to your 1h, then slice. If you swap correctly, you can pretty much just spam M1 to do the bolt slice (practice bolt slice in PvE to get a feel for it).

Double crossbow:
Shoot two crossbows in extremely quick succession. Hold one crossbow, then swap to your other crossbow and spam M1 during the swap to shoot both crossbows. This swapping and M1 usage is pretty much how all the combos work.

Tackle heavy:
Tackle slice but instead of a 1h attack, you combo the tackle into a 2h swing.

Tackle throw:
Tackle slice but instead of a 1h swing, you combo the tackle into a 1h throw (turn aim toggle on, or else you can’t do it fast enough).

Crossbow GP (& double xbow GP):
While falling from pretty much any height, shoot a crossbow and then swap to your 2h and hold C. You can also perform a double crossbow and then combo that into a GP (that one’s rather difficult though). Mainly used after a tackle evade.

The Hunter is at a slight disadvantage when they have no spits, but gain something of an advantage when the Survivor is under the effect of a spit. Dealing with the effects is a big part of the skill to Survivor. In this section, we’ll look at each spit, how to counter it, and how the Hunter will play the scenario (assuming they’re decent).

Horde spit:
Horde spit is a yellow spit that summons a horde of bomber zombies (they’re the yellow HAZMAT zombies from PvE, but they run at you like virals and usually one-shot you). Bombers spawn from building doors, windows, and sewer grates usually. There is no minimum and seemingly no maximum distance that bombers can spawn from you (meaning: they can spawn right under you, so watch where you’re standing!). These zombies have limited ability to deal with elevation (they CAN climb some things, so beware), so the main counter is to get high enough up that they can’t get you. This usually means grappling up onto a building rooftop. Other counters include: firecrackers, standing in a place you know bombers don’t usually go to, toxic/impact bolts shot at the feet of the bombers (stun bolts don’t work), shooting the bombers directly to blow them up, or running around on the ground while keeping your distance from the bombers. It’s worth noting that pretty much nothing about the horde is consistent, and this is probably the buggiest spit. That aside, let’s look at the main counterplay: elevation.

As soon as the horde is summoned, you should have a general idea of where you want to escape to. What roof looks to be the safest? Which one would be the best option for you (meaning: which roof is Survivor-sided?)? Sometimes you’ll have plenty of time to escape. Sometimes you’ll have to act fast. Horde is only consistent in being inconsistent. Whatever you do, don’t panic.
Meanwhile, the Hunter knows that you’re going to try to escape to a roof. They’re going to stall for time and probably play at a medium distance from you so you can’t hit them, but they can rush in when they see you grapple away and then attempt to tackle you to buy time for the horde. You can, of course, counter this tackle with a grapple cancel, but that’s easier said than done. If you can kill the Hunter before making your escape, that’s preferable. If not, you may have to play for an attack dodge to buy time to escape (even then, there’s no guarantee the Hunter won’t be fast enough to get a ledge tackle and eliminate all your progress towards the roof). The Hunter may also use a Horde spit + Concussive spit combo to force you to stay on the ground. This is rather dangerous, provided the bombers spawn nearby.
Warning: even roofs are not completely safe. Due to bugs, bombers occasionally gain the ability to teleport directly on top of you (this is known as a telebomber, or tele for short), or spawn on top of a roof (this is sometimes referred to as a telebomber). This seems to happen more commonly in some places, but it’s a possibility seemingly anywhere. I do not know of any way to mitigate this risk.

UV spit:
UV spit is a purple spit that deactivates your UV light (once your light is reactivated, it will not be at full battery, instead it will have the same amount of battery life that it had when it was deactivated) and destroys any active UV flares in the spit explosion radius. The counterplay is to use UV flares. There are several combos that make this spit extremely dangerous. Let’s take a look at them.

GP UV spit + UV heal:
The Hunter will initiate with a GP spit (ground pound spit), spit stick you with UV spit, then immediately enter a UV heal. Three main options: kill the Hunter with a high-damage combo (tackle throw or something similar), jump flare (jump then time your flare throw correctly) at the right time to avoid the spit explosion animation and throw down the flare without it being destroyed, or backflare at the right time (this will cause the flare to be destroyed, but the Hunter will hopefully pounce just a bit too early, and you’ll backflare again while they’re in the pounce recovery animation).

UV block + GP UV spit:
The Hunter will approach with high energy and apply a UV shield for a UV block. They will attempt to perform a GP UV spit. A few options: play to avoid the GP using dodgeslides or grappling away, manage to lower their energy a lot before they apply the UV block, kill them before the UV spit explodes, or use one of the flare combos mentioned in the previous UV spit combo and hope the Hunter mistimes their pounce.

Warning: there is an exploit that allows Hunters to pounce you inside of a flare. To perform the exploit, the Hunter must submerge their face in water (this can be done even in shallow water using clipping exploits). This can be countered by shining the UV flashlight at them or hiding behind cover or outside of pounce range.

Concussive spit:
Concussive spit is an orange spit that knocks you over for a second or two when it explodes. This is, in my opinion, the most annoying spit because most Hunters combo it with toxins for a rather obnoxious combo. It’s worth noting that having your face covered in water when you are knocked over will cause you to instantly get up. I don’t know any other counters to suggest so, uh, good luck.
Note: this is the only spit to get a special effect when spitsmashed. If the Hunter spitsmashes with concussive spit, it doesn’t knock you over but instead disables your Survivor Sense. You will not be able to locate the Hunter on your minimap.

Toxic spit:
Toxic spit is a green spit that covers an area with a cloud of… well, toxins. Standing in these toxins deals damage. This is mainly used in the various toxin lock (tlock) combos and to keep you from being able to melee a nest (at which point you pretty much just have to shoot the nest to death or wait for the toxins to dissipate).

General rule of thumb: Survivor benefits from open areas while Hunter benefits from tight, cramped spaces.
In open areas, you can dodge around and move freely, while tighter areas give you less room to dodge the Hunter’s attacks and spits.

Roofs are normally Hunter-sided due to the possibility of dying from a single tackle and being inherently small and cramped. I’d suggest avoiding them unless you have Horde spit or there is a nest on the roof.

Water is… I’m not sure. I feel that it’s just BS-sided.

Weird geometry such as hills and elevation can cause a Hunter to mess up a GP spit (though it won’t usually affect really good Hunters).

All damage dealt by Survivors and Night Hunters is based off percentages rather than the normal flat damage values you deal with in PvE. This means that a cheated 95k damage pipe will deal the same damage as a vanilla 8k damage khopesh (there are cheats that allow for one-shot weapons, but that’s a different discussion to be honest). Weapon damages are decided based on the weapon class, of which there are quite a few. Some classes include: 1h weapons, 2h weapons, heavy 1h weapons (weapons Crane holds with both hands but are not counted as 2h weapons for some reason), knives, shotguns, crossbows, bows, etc.

This Steam guide by Fantazilite provides tables showcasing various weapon damages depending on the number of survivors in the lobby (as well as other useful stats): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3514561233

For reference, the Night Hunter has 150 HP.

Beginner Night Hunters will often just tendril around in the sky aimlessly and shoot spits at random. Just push nests and be aware these creatures are likely to pounce you without any thought to their survival. Maybe throw down a flare if you’re standing in one spot (such as to kill a nest). They can’t capitalize on landing spits and will rarely land spits anyway.
Sometimes a beginner will walk up to you and try to claw you to death. Just slice them. It takes more claws to kill a full health Survivor than it takes slices to kill a full health Night Hunter.

Night Hunters who have played just a bit more may graduate to GP spam. I’ve seen some Survivors bemoan this playstyle, but it’s rather easy to counter. Just punish their GPs with a tackle slice, or a power slice, or a 2h swing, or even just a normal slice. You should be able to kill them first.

After a while, the Night Hunter will have enough knowledge to understand movement is the name of the game and will be learning to tendril sprint. If they suck, this is going to be fun for you to watch. If they don’t, it’s going to teach you proper tracking. Use both Crane’s POV and the minimap to track the Hunter and punish them with attacks and combos when they close in (after all, they have to close in eventually).

If the Night Hunter is fast, you’ll need to study their movement and use your knowledge to predict their future movement to prepare a punish attack. They may fake out their movement to bait out the punish and then close in while you’re in weapon swing recovery to attack, though. Use your gamesense and study your opponent.

This section is non-exhaustive and will mainly look at the most common exploits on both sides.

Survivor exploits:
Backslide - positioning and dodging ground pounds.

Dodge dropkick - perform a dropkick from standing still using just a single dodge.

Grapple slice - while aiming at a surface that can't be grappled, quickly alternate between M1 and using your grappling hook (start practicing with ~0.5 second buffer between these inputs) to slice extremely fast.

Grapple cancel - use a grappling hook charge to skip an attack recovery period or dodge a tackle while you're in the air. Also used in a non-exploit manner to descend large distances without taking damage (by grappling a few times during the fall to reset your fall speed).

Combos - deal extra damage in the amount of time it would normally take for a single attack.

Crossbow swap - reload your crossbows extremely fast by swapping their positions in your inventory.

Booster stacking - grant yourself as many buffs as possible at the beginning of a match or if you die multiple times in quick succession.

Corner swimming - while underwater, push your face into a corner and hold C and push into the corner to hopefully keep the Night Hunter from getting the prompt to pounce after successfully ground pounding or tackling you.

Bow cancel - use the bow to cancel attacks/skip attack recovery periods.

Bow exploit - shoot, kick, crouch, shoot to make your bow into a full-auto weapon.

Hunter exploits:
Tendril sprint - grant yourself a massive speed boost to attempt to overwhelm Survivors with your speed and become less predictable.

Animation holding - during an animation, let go of all inputs (you can still hold Shift as far as I know). This will prolong the animation for its maximum length. While in animation: take massively reduced damage and become unable to be killed (if you are brought down to 0 HP, you'll live unless they hit you after the animation finishes). Gain immunity to dropkicks and DFAs.

Instatackle - under the correct conditions, perform a tackle immediately after failing or succeeding a tackle.

Water pounce - use water to pounce Survivors inside of flares.

Tendril claw - pretty much grapple slice but for the Hunter. Alternate between using claw and tendril to rapidly claw.

Howl GP - howl and charge a ground pound inside of the howl animation to avoid clawing the air (this can also be done using a UV shield or spits).

Animation charging - during an animation, charge a GP to instantly have it ready once the animation is done (this prevents holding animation, however).

Tendril GP - tendril while holding a GP.

GP spit - get easy spit sticks on Survivors.

Tackle spit - get spit sticks on Survivors.

Howl tackle - howl before tackling to sometimes teleport on the Survivor's screen and become harder to dodge (this may not exist, I'm not 100% sure).

Water GP - ground pound humans who are near the bottom of water.

Water tackle - perform a tackle while in the water (multiple versions).

Water pounce - pounce while in the water.

Clip pounce - pounce through solid objects.

Clip tackle - tackle through solid objects.

Ledge tackle - tackle immediately upon touching a small ledge.

Ramp tackle - using ramps to tackle mid-air.

Vault tackle - vault a waist-high object to tackle mid-air.

Tendril tackle - Tendril the ground to immediately get the option to tackle the moment you touch the ground.

Due to the delay in this game, it can be hard to tell if someone's cheating or not. In general, if you are getting pulled back to an area that you were previously, it's delay. If you're getting teleported somewhere you haven't been, it's a cheat.

Common cheats:
Infinite HP
Infinite stamina
Night Hunters with melee weapons
Crash items
Night Hunters that can dropkick/DFA you
Slightly adjusted values (for example, some people modify Night Hunter speed or change a value that allows you to get perfect GP spits every time)
Playing with banned items in PvP
One-shotting all nests from a distance
Flares that kill nests
Teleporting to nests
Infinite range dropkicks/DFAs
Mod menus
Etc.

Well, that’s it for now at least. Maybe I’ll edit this later and add more information if I can think of any. Hopefully this can help someone get started better than I did. I might make a Hunter section and change this to be a general guide, but I’m even worse at Hunter than I am at Survivor so it’s probably not my place to give advice on that.