Tactics

Though there are many ways to play Left 4 Dead, some tactics and rules have to be established to avoid friendly fire, stragglers, and untimely death.


 * Shotgunners go first. No one likes getting shot in the back of head with a shotgun.
 * If you are ahead of the other Survivors, crouch. No one likes getting shot PERIOD.
 * No one is worthless. Save your allies when fallen after the threat is dead.
 * There's a time to be helpful. It's not when the Horde is rushing. Save allies after everything is dead or there will be two bodies.
 * Watch your teammate's backs. If someone is helping another up, cover 'em!
 * Grenades: When and where. Molotov's don't mix well with the Survivors. Pipe bombs too.
 * Don't shoot at something when someone else can. Infected get past the defense line? Don't turn around unless you're last in line.
 * Don't shoot at something attacking an ally when s/he can handle it. Friendly fire...

If these rules seem like common sense, you're in good shape.

= Expert guide = Denkkar 00:50, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I posted this in the wrong wiki before, please give me a day to integrate my info properly to this wiki.

Surviving a horde
Infected run fast, come in large numbers, and are often backed up by bosses. This section describes tactics you can use regardless of what you're teammates are doing.

Doors
Always close doors when you find them, then blast a peep-hole through it. You can then safely kill infected through the door. If the whole in the door is big enough, go ahead and use melee through the door. This will knock the infected back, saving the door from immediate destruction, and keep you nice and safe.

NOTE: hunters can knock down doors surprisingly fast and pounce on you, smokers can send their tongue through the tiniest whole in the door, and boomers can blow up the door (and slime you if you are too close to it).

Corners and walls
When the crapola hits the fan, the best cover in this game can be found in a corner, or failing that a wall to your back. You can then use a melee to knock back infected and shoot when you have breathing room.

On top of things
Sadly, being on top of a car, subway, etc. is of negligible value (as cover) in this game due to the climbing abilities of the infected. In fact, you'll often find yourself in a situation where you are being attacked along 360 degrees, which is fatal.

Hunter
Before pounce:
 * 1) Wait for him to get close then throw a melee attack. This will stun him. Use weapon fire or two more melee hits to finish him off.
 * 2) Unload your weapon...

After pounce (helping the downed teammate):
 * 1) Melee! Always prefer melee as it will stop the damage immediately, reliably, and without causing team-damage.
 * 2) If too far way for melee, head-shots on the hunter are effective.

Smoker
Before strangulation:
 * 1) Unload your weapon

During strangulation (1 sec):
 * 1) Try to head-shot the smoker or just unload on him
 * 2) If he's out of sight, try shooting the tongue itself

After strangulation (helping the downed teammate):
 * 1) Melee. You can melee three things to immediately frees them:
 * 2) Your teammate
 * 3) The tongue
 * 4) The smoker himself
 * 5) Shoot
 * 6) Target the smoker
 * 7) Target his tongue (especially useful when you have no line of sight on the smoker himself)

Boomer
Before bile spit or boomer death explosion:
 * 1) If boomer is too close, you need to melee him then run away to a safe distance before shooting or you'll get slimed and become bait.
 * 2) * CAUTION: you can only melee a boomer twice, a third time will cause him to blow up on you
 * 3) If boomer is sufficiently far away, shoot!

After slimed:
 * Hold your fire! Since you can't see you'll likely shoot your teammates. You need to:
 * Run to a corner
 * Use melee continuously to survive the incoming zombie horde
 * Once your sight clears, mop up with your weapon

After slimed (helping the slimed teammate):
 * Move to the same corner as your unfortunate teammate and help melee back the zombies and shoot if you have a clear line of sight

Witch
What startles the witch?
 * Medium proximity with flashlight
 * Relatively close proximity and running
 * Very close proximity and walking softly

Under what situations is startling the witch survivable?
 * Teammate gets between you and her
 * You are sufficiently far away that she loses interest in you before killing you
 * You shut the safe-room door on her
 * You run around like mad through a subway car which seems to slow her down sufficiently

Tank

 * 1) Throw ONE molotov cocktail in its path to set it on fire (slowly eats away its 8000 hitpoints)
 * 2) Run and shoot (hey! Just like the intro movie)
 * 3) * ONLY shoot if it is far away, otherwise focus on the running bit
 * 4) * Use subways and other obstacles to trick the tank into performing maneuvers that slow it down

If the tank is throwing concrete at you:
 * 1) Get behind cover
 * 2) Try to dodge (difficult... those are heat-seeking homing rocks, not your regular garden variety pet rocks)

If a teammate goes down:
 * 1) Melee the tank once to get its attention (it will re-target on you)
 * 2) Immediately pull a "Forest Gump" maneuver

NOTE: it is possible to take down a tank on expert difficulty without any casualties.

Team tactics
This game hates lone wolfs like no other. You need a teammates to cover your six and pull you out of the dung hole. Voice communication is so useful it aught to be a minimum requirement.

Zombie buddies
An effective tactic, especially in tight quarters, is to split your team into a point squad and a rearguard. The squad on point is responsible for eliminating all threats from the front while the rearguard puts the hurt on infected flanking maneuvers. This tactic is especially effective because your zombie buddy is close enough to you that they can knock bosses off of you before they can deal damage to you.

Cornered
Surprisingly, four survivors crammed into one corner works very well. Deploy two of them in a crouched position doing melee while two more stand behind them and unload their weapons.

Lines of fire (and the not so friendly fire)
Important rule of thumb: when in doubt hold your fire and use a melee attack

Consider some real-life situations:
 * An infected slips past you and you give in to the temptation to whip around 180 degrees to gun them down but instead destroy your teammate
 * A teammate is man-handling an infected but you decide to "help" them out, only to miss and reduce the survivor count
 * A boomer slimes you so you shoot blind in a panic, thus killing the two teammates who were trying to cover for you

Also, whenever a survivor is between you and a target rich environment, you should either:
 * Hold fire and ask them to crouch (good players will do this automatically)
 * If they are crouched, inform them you are behind them, then open fire (otherwise they might stand up again when you do not expect it)

Dangerous weapons
The following weapons have relatively large areas of effect and thus cause friendly fire havoc on a regular basis.

Shotguns: do not open fire unless you are in front of your teammates. Generally, do not even try to "help" your teammates by picking off targets that are attacking them. If you must shoot, deliberately "miss" the target to place your shot as far away from your teammate as possible.

Molotovs: this is the single most dangerous weapon to your teammates in the game. Always warn your teammates before deployment and throw it as far as possible.

Pipe bombs: this weapon is dangerous for a different reason than the Molotov. The blast radius is small enough that it's trivial to avoid. What is downright impossible is to avoid the horde of zombies a badly thrown pipe bomb will attract without destroying. Imagine the following scenario: the survivor team is facing a standing army of infected in front of them and suddenly a horde flanks them from the rear. The player named "Genius" throws a pipe-bomb at the infected hitting the flank. This attracts both groups of infected, detonates to kill the flanking group, and leaves the survivors in the midst of an angry mob of infected that were formerly peaceful in the front. Not good.

Dropping down the rabbit hole
This is a source of much agony since infected are often waiting for you at the bottom. You should inform teammates before you jump down and if you are already down there, be aware that teammates will "unexpectedly" drop down from above to intercept your fire.

Medical attention
Once you sustain damage you can regain your health in one of three ways:
 * 1) Health kit: stabilizes your health and puts you into the green (80 or better hitpoints)
 * 2) Pain pills: temporary health boost, nothing more, but this makes a big difference by letting you run instead of limp and survive potential knock-out blows
 * 3) Dying then getting "rescued", you get 50 hitpoints on rescue

Knock-out recovery (i.e. when you get layed low to the ground by losing all your hitpoints):
 * Restores you to 20 hitpoints that decrement over time
 * Only works up to 3 times unless you use a medkit (resets count)

Mini-games and challenges
Since only the demo is out, gotta have fun somehow...

Witch hunt
Startle the witch, avoid death, and frag her (in that order).

Ultimate zombie
Designate two end-zones, divide into two teams, drag a zombie into the playing field, use melee to knock the zombie into the opposing teams end-zone.

Tank wars
Sure you can survive one tank, but can you survive two? Use the console then type "sv_cheats 1; z_spawn tank;" to drop a tank at your location.

No contact
Beat an entire level with no survivor taking any damage on expert difficulty.