The Apartments

The Apartments is the first chapter of the No Mercy campaign.

The Survivors start off on the roof of an apartment block under a tarp with a table of Tier 1 weapons, ammo and first-aid kits. As a helicopter flies past, the pilot shouts through a loudspeaker, telling any survivors to make their way to Mercy Hospital where they will be evacuated. One of the survivors then says that they can get there through the subway.

They must initially work their way down through the apartments using stairs and a hole in the floor. Once at the bottom, they exit into an alleyway, and from there make it to the main street. There are several cars that litter the street, one of which has an alarm that will be set off if it is shot, hit by melee, or jumped on, which will attract the horde.

The Survivors will eventually find their way to the safe room which is the entrance to the ruined subway.

Campaign
At the beginning, the AI Survivors will grab:
 * Bill will grab a pump shotgun.
 * Francis will grab a pump shotgun.
 * Louis will grab a submachine gun.
 * Zoey will grab a submachine gun.

Make sure everybody has a first aid kit before you leave the roof. They are vital to your survival. Since the vast majority of this chapter features close quarters combat, it is recommended that you take the shotgun, weather or not you are skilled in its use. Just be aware of where your teammates are to prevent friendly fire. After everybody is ready, there are a few different ways to begin:




 * 1) Go through the door to the apartments. Make sure you close it behind you.  If any infected try to reach you from this direction, the door will slow them down a little.
 * 2) Break the glass over the sky light and jump inside.  Shoot any infected you see before taking this route as they might attack as soon as you land.  If the other survivors take the first route through the door, they might be delayed in reaching your location.
 * 3) Although more dangerous (as you are guaranteed to take damage, or you may even miss altogether and die), there is a way to skip the apartments entirely. Look over the side of the roof that is directly behind you when you first start the level, and you'll see two generators which look a lot like air conditioning units. Try to jump on these, but be careful. If you look down, you should be able to see your own feet.  As you approach the ledge, jump just as your feet are about to go over the side. If you jump too late, you will fall over the side and grab onto the ledge. If you are the last one to jump, you will slip and fall before the other survivors can pull you back up.  If you jump too soon, you will miss the generator and fall to your death. If you jumped correctly, heal up. If you jump to the street before you do, the zombies waiting for you might be able to finish you off before you get a chance. Taking this route, you can skip part of this guide and go down to where you would normally exit the apartments. This generator has been removed for multiplayer.

Assuming you took the apartment route, be sure to check every corner and room that you can. Being ambushed is not fun. There also might be useful supplies (i.e. grenades or pills) hiding around. If you already have everything you can carry, it's still useful to find them. Even though the AI won't grab grenades, they will grab pills, and might even give them to you later if they think you need them! There are a lot of rooms with only one entrance, and these rooms are effective in use against fighting a horde. Just don't be caught in one if a tank should arrive.

Aside from this, the apartments are pretty straight forward. You'll eventually come to a hole in the floor. Don't jump down as soon as you see it. Look on the other side, as there tend to be supplies over there. Check the hole, as well. There might be zombies down there. When you're satisfied that it's all clear, go down. Much of the time, there is another hole in the wall (such destructive zombies!). You can either go through there, or you can take the slightly longer way which is always available, even if the hole isn't. They both lead to the same place: outside.

Once you're in the alley, watch out. Special Infected like to hang out around here, especially on the rooftops. However, if your teammates are still doing fine, you should be fine, too. Always be sure to watch each others' backs and keep moving. A second pistol usually spawns in this area, either on the car, or all the way out on a bench on the right of the street. If you find it, take it. If you are ever incapacitated, you go out on a last stand of sorts with your pistols. Dual-wielding them can save your life if you have a mob on top of you.

Now that you're out in the open, there are three different paths to take.
 * 1) The road. It's open, and things are generally easy to deal with, unless you're out there with a horde rushing at you.
 * 2) Next to the Give Blood sign, there's a door. Inside there is a small hallway with another door and a desk. There's a first aid box in there, and it will contain either a first aid kit or pain pills, depending on how well you're doing. The hallway itself is fairly easy to defend, especially if you get in or near the closet at the end.
 * 3) Behind a crashed truck, there's a storage place. Though it's dark, sometimes useful things spawn back there.

Again, all three lead you to the same place: a back entrance to the subways, and a few cars strewn about the road. One of said cars has an alarm that will go off if you shoot it, touch it, etc. Unless you are deliberately looking for trouble, avoid it at all costs. It triggers a Panic Event. If you accidentally set it off and are in no shape to face the horde, run. There's a safe house down the stairs, and they can't get you once you are inside with the door closed. Just make sure nobody was left behind!
 *  This is the only likely place for a Tank to appear (especially in versus mode). If you hear one coming, be sure to run into the building you probably came from where the Tank can't hit you with the car. 

Video Walkthrough
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The Survivors
Due to the fact that humans are now playing as the special Infected, things are going to be less predictable, and tougher. They can't spawn until you leave the roof top, however, so make sure that everybody is ready before opening the door into the apartments or dropping down through the sky light. The generators that were there during the campaign have been removed, so that path isn't available any more. Jumping off now will just kill you, no matter where you land.

You and your teammates should enter the apartments together, taking the same entrance. The infected players are going to be continuously coming at you, so stay together and keep moving. You cannot afford to stand still for too long.

Watch out for ambushes as you descend through the apartments. When you reach the hole in the floor, make sure everybody jumps down at the same time. If somebody lags behind when everybody else has jumped down, they can easily be taken out by a Hunter or Smoker since the other Survivors won't be able to reach them any more. You can try shooting through the ceiling at whatever is holding the Survivor, but the Tier 1 weapons don't have much penetration. It's still better than leaving the Survivor to die, so give it a chance.

Once you get out into the open, be extra careful. Smokers and Hunters hang out around the rooftops, ready to snatch or pin the very first Survivor they can. They usually target anybody who is alone, so don't give them that chance.

If a Tank spawns around the entrance to the subway, split up and try to make a run for it! It's very likely that they will try to incapacitate everybody with the cars. As long as somebody can make it to the safe house alive, there's still a chance that you can win the round. However, try not to simply abandon your teammates. If you can safely help a teammate and both reach the safe house, it will be worth it in the end. The more Survivors that make it inside, the more points you can get.

The Infected
Techniques:
 * Banzai - Smokers and Boomers are both loud and easy to kill from a distance. You can however use this to your advantage.  Standing in front of an alarmed car can be an excellent trick.  While there is a good chance one of the survivors will be too smart to fall for it, the chance that all four will be able to resist getting "an easy kill" is slim.  To add additional pressure to the situation, a smoker can drag one of the survivors to the car to attempt to lure gunfire.  This technique is extremely effective as the summoning of the horde does everything your team is trying to do.  The enemy will be panicked, separated, and taking a lot of damage from regulars which will help your Boomer and Hunters move in close with less risk of taking fire while additionally allowing the Smoker, if he's still alive, to ensnare one of the survivors without his team being able to reach him. This concept can be applied to the witch with slightly different results.


 * Bait and Switch - If the Smoker can ensnare a survivor just a few yards behind the group and pull them back you can have a Boomer waiting to spray their teammates when they come to the rescue. If all of the rescuers are blinded then you can have a hunter pin the stranded survivor while the smoker maneuvers to pull another survivor away from the main group. If some of the survivors were not close enough to the boomer to get bile or were lagging behind the first rescuer, you can have your hunters pin them down.


 * Chain Smoking - To maximize the amount of damage you do to the survivors wait for the smoker to drag a survivor backwards from the group and have two hunters ready to pounce on the rescuers that will follow. This technique buys your spawning teammates time to hide ahead of the survivors as well as slowing them down.


 * Drag and Drop - There aren't many opportunities on this level, but if you ever get the opportunity as a smoker to drag someone off of a high surface with no barrier, you can release the survivors before they hit the ground to ensure that they take falling damage. This is often immediately lethal.

Boomers: Though you are fragile, you can be a real nuisance if you do your job correctly. Try to hide around corners to slime people. Can't find a corner? Go kamikaze on them. Even if you miss, maybe they won't. Also this map has a good period of time in the alley. Hit them from the roofs, or a window.

Hunters: Ferocious and stealthy, you are a force to be reckoned with. Just make sure you see your prey before they see you, but don't try to attack large groups. Hide around in small spaces, and pounce people who wander off. Also remember you have a strong melee attack, if they are all covered in boomer vile come up behind them and just rip. It can do a lot of damage.

Smokers: Staying outside is optimal, but if you can get inside the apartments behind the survivors, you can try and snag the last person to jump down the hole in the floor and their teammates won't be able to help them. One survivor down! Wait for Survivors outside, preferably from the rooftops. You're harder to spot up there than you are standing right on the street. Try to grab as many Survivors as you can, usually if they're alone or low on health. If you're in a good spot, it doesn't matter if somebody breaks your tongue and frees the helpless Survivor: just get back, let your gauge refill, and grab somebody again. Second chances are wonderful, and third and fourth and fifth chances are incredible. Just keep trying; you'll kill somebody eventually. Additionally, as a Smoker, if standing behind the car with the alarm, you can pull a survivor over the car to set it off.

Tanks: Tanks are especially rare here, but they can do quite a lot of damage... if they're careful. Yes, you may think it's easy to slaughter the Survivors, since they only have Tier 1 weapons, but on the off chance you get hit by a Molotov or any other fiery substance, the flames of which will kill you very quickly, this strategy will take care of the Survivors quickly. You can use either the car with the alarm or the white car in the alleyway just before the main street. Simply punch either of them to send it flying at the Survivors. If a Survivor is so much as touched by the moving car, it's an instant incapacitation. If incapacitated and hit by another car, the Survivor will die instantly.

Trivia

 * There are some idle Common Infected ambling around the alleyways, and they can be seen and shot at from the roof you start on.
 * On one of the newspapers, there is an image of what appears to be Dr. Breen, who is from another of Valve's popular series, Half-Life.
 * Although The Apartments supposedly picks up right after the introduction cut scene, where the Survivors are seen with Tier 2 weapons (which never spawn in this chapter), everybody starts with only a pistol, and pick up Tier 1 weapons from the table. It's possible that they dropped their weapons as they scrambled up the emergency exit stairs, like how Zoey dropped her second sidearm when she nearly fell.
 * Using weapons on the alarmed car from a distance will not trigger the panic event, nor shut the alarm off.
 * When playing as the Infected, do not walk up against the hummer which has crashed into the apartment complex. For some reason, doing so will instantly kill the player.
 * When going down the first set of stairs down into the apartment, on the table to your right when going through the kitchen, you will find a cereal box advertising Team Fortress 2, also stating that you get a free figurine and to "collect all 10", even though there are only 9 classes in the game. Another box can be found in the starting safe room of the Runway Finale in the Dead Air Campaign.