The Wireplay Guide To Not Being Left 4 Dead

[JamesBPK]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FAQ
Advice
Strategies
Scripts and the console
Miscellany


FAQ

IRC Information: Click here to join #WPL4D (irc://irc.quakenet.org/wpl4d) on the Quakenet network.

Opening the Server Browser
Enable the console [`] in options, and enter "openserverbrowser".
Feel free to assign a key to opening it by entering bind [key] "openserverbrowser" in the console.

Is the Demo gone for Good?
Yes

What's the "Outbreak" achievement, and how do I get it?
Initially, you could only get this from Valve developers. When a Boomer controlled by them vomited, they "infected" other players with this disease, said players also gained the ability to propagate the disease to other players. Eventually, you should end up getting the achievement. Just be patient.

Can I stop attacking a Survivor, once I've pounced them?
No.


I didn't get my Achievement (...)
Some Achievements can only be obtained in multiplayer. Additionally, dying at the end of a campaign prevents you from getting the respective achievement.

Furthermore, all players have to be present for the intro; otherwise they won't get the Achievement. Vote restart [esc] to make sure everyone's getting it.

I'm having another issue in the game (...)
Check this (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=751344) list to see if your problem is a known issue. Otherwise - report it! Save your fellow players from suffering from the same as you have.

Is there some way I can skip all the videos upon launch?
Add -novid in launch options, or:
Edit the files in ...\steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead\media\.... especially StartupVids.txt.

You can also delete all of the videos, but be aware that Steam will redownload the missing files.

I altered the config.cfg to bind some keys, but it's not working. Why?

Do not edit the file called "config.cfg". Ever. If you want custom configurations, make an autoexec.cfg file in the same location as config.cfg and add stuff there. Also, if you plan on using custom configs, I recommend you disable "Steam Cloud" for this game, as it likely will reset any changes you make to your .cfg files outside of the game (I'm not sure if it tracks an autoexec.cfg file, but I've seen a couple of people on the Steam forums insist that it does).

For basic scripting knowledge, check out http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Scripting.


ADVICE
Playing as the Survivors

Your health and your possession of a medkit counts towards your versus score.
With all the game's multipliers, it's a word of wisdom worth heeding. Pills, however, have no effect on this, as the health boost is temporary.

Every type of Infected has a sound (and music) cue, as they approach, or just before spawning:
The Horde: Music intensity increases.
The Tank: Prior to spawning: Grunting/Nostril flaring 2)Ground shaking - special noticable music ensues (at least when spotted).
The Witch: Sobbing - high pitch piano notes being hammered, and subtle wailing in the music.
The Boomer: Gurgling sound, burps, and shouts "BOOM!" - a few very low piano notes.
The Smoker: Coughing fits
The Hunter: Screaming/shrieking and growling - but only when it's crouched!


The Witch is, like any other woman inflicted by PMS, is aggravated by people.
Staring at her for too long
Pointing the flashlight at her
Getting too close to her
Shooting nearby or at her

NOT by people using the flashlight and not pointing it at her.
NOT by people talking (text/voice commands/voice chat)(?)

... she presumably builds up anger (imagine a rage-o-meter), and will at some point be startled.

Hiding in her nearby vicinity out of her line of sight doesn't seem to calm her down.

When the Witch is startled, it will go after the person who startled her, or, if that person is out of reach, whomsoever within it; if she manages to kill the person, she'll go back to her idle state, if no one else ticks her off. She's programmed to leave the map entirely after killing the startler.

Killing the Witch in one hit: The Witch can be killed with one shot of the shotgun, if all the pellets hit, earning you the Cr0wnd Achievement. However, some goons report that she has to get up from sitting down, before it works, so wait until she's started standing up. (Add by ssmmdd: Most people, including myself, run up to her, then as she starts standing up, just pump her full of as many shotgun blasts as possible. This generally works ... as long as you're fully aiming at her, and not her ear/your feet/the celing/a wall/a team-mate/a different Zombie/etc...)

Remember: Witches and Tanks don't take extra damage from headshots.

Playing as the Infected


Infected don't take fall damage

Landing on Survivors from high altitude damages them up to 25 points: Think about using this to your advantage.

Hunters can wall-jump: Keep crouching and use pounce aimed at your destination.

But, Hunters! Don't crouch all the time, as your character will make a growling sound, alerting Survivors to your presence.

Boomers can self-detonate: But you have to bind the command explode to a key (do so by "bind [key] "explode").

Also, you can use yourself as a bomb, if you jump from a building onto a group of unsuspecting Survivors.

Note for "Barf Bagged" Achievement: Exploding on all four survivors doesn't count, It has to be vomit.


STRATEGY
Survivors

Pills: Only use them during or right before battle, as their boost to your health is only temporary.

Melee!: It's very effective (some believe it to be too effective). It's great as a panic reaction (rather than shooting in 8 directions), if you meet a Boomer around the corner, or if you get swarmed by the Horde.

Need to reload at a bad time? Use melee to buy yourself the time to reload.

Pistols: Aside from melee, your pistols aren't to be underestimated. After all, infinite ammo.

Crouch: To avoid drawing friendly fire and to increase your accuracy.

Escaping the Smoker tongue: You have a few seconds to shoot the Smoker, allowing you to escape. Shooting the Smoker's tongue also works.

Crowd control against the Horde:
Close the doors - if you hear the Infected behind a door, you can create a hole in it and shoot or throw explosives through it.
Bottlenecks and chokepoints - it worked for Leonidas. When inside, see if you can make the Horde pass through a narrow passage, lessening the burden and speed of the buggers.
Make good use of your slimed teammates - so you're slimed; congratulations, you just became the group's bait. Use it to your advantage. See the other points about making obstacles and chokepoint bottlenecks, and remember that the Infected will usually if not always go after the bile-covered teammate, even though the other Survivors are nearby; therefore, place the slimed Survivor at the position most difficult to reach - such as behind the rest of the group. You might shoot the Infected passing, while the slimed Survivor melee punches those who manage to reach him. Time to put the long hours of TD to good use!
180>360 - having your back against the wall and facing one (180 - sorta) side of Infected is often better than being completely surrounded (360). This also makes it easier to use melee effectively.
Take cover - like with bottlenecks, any kind of obstacle makes it more ardous for the Horde to reach you, making it all the more easy to deal with them.
Duck! - Duh! Maximize your damage potential and minimize friendly fire and the number of things you and your teammates have to think about. If you're slimed, you can't shoot for poo poo anyway.
Run! - the Horde doesn't care if you have to take a leak at the house you're in; they'll keep pressing on. Avoid using too much of your precious time searching for pick-ups, when you could used the time to advance. Helping teammates in dire need is another thing, though.
Teamwork - the no-brainer that some people still seem to forget. The team that fights together lives together. Four people working together is way more than four times as effective as four people going Rambo.
On Expert you won't make it without teamwork.
Look around you - use your surroundings: Propane tanks, gas tanks, miniguns. Place the tanks to fit your every whim against the Horde.

Avoiding friendly fire:
If everybody's squeezed together, and a zombie is approaching, melee him. It'll knock the zombie back and set you up for a shot; and if it doesn't, just keep meleeing him until you can shoot him or until he's dead. Firing wildly in tight corridors and trying to nail a zombie near your teammates is just generally a bad idea. (Melee in general should be used frequently; I see people all the time trying to back up and shoot when they could easily just take a swing and give themselves some breathing room.)
Try not to shoot at stuff when there's a teammate behind it. Try to maneuver until you have a clean shot.
If you absolutely have to shoot at something with a teammate directly behind it, aim low. Let your bullets hit the ground in front of your teammate, and not the teammate himself.
As for maneuvering, don't jump around too much. This isn't Counter-Strike, and the zombies don't have their own guns. You'll be doing your teammates a favor by staying in one place and not dashing into their line of fire.
Crouching when you're in front is good to let teammates get a shot over your head, but don't suddenly get up or move around until you're sure they're not going to fire again for a few seconds.
When zombies are surrounding a teammate, shoot the zombies to his side. You won't get them all, but you won't be hitting your teammate either.
Likewise, once a teammate is downed, make sure you actually aim above their body. You can still do a lot of accidental damage even though they're on the ground.

[JamesBPK]

Infected

Take out the stray sheep: If a Survivor strays from the flock, be ready to grab him with a Smoker.

If the Survivor's down, move on to the next one: Tanks pounding away on a Survivor already on the ground (alive or not) is aggravating to experienced players, because it's a waste of precious clobberin' time.

Advice:
As a Tank, punching cars/trees around is the fastest way to kill the survivors. Even better that on the first map of No Mercy you can punch the red car in their direction and there's a good chance they're going to shoot it, set off the car alarm and alert the horde. #

Also always drag your victim away from the direction they're moving in, not towards it. I've seen a lot of pubbies not do this, and it's just frustrating. #

As a Smoker in No Mercy, consider pulling people OFF the roof by the gas station lift.

Most people spawn above them, where all the zombies come from, but by pulling one Survivor off the roof effectively, you either gently caress him over or slow down his buddies, when they try to cover their friend, as they run all the way back to the ladder.

The counter to this is the ground level door you can open up from the inside. Get someone to hold out in front of it, while moving towards open it, so you won't have to run all the way to the ladder.

Wait for it!: Especially as a smoker, you'll generally only make one final appearance before executing your plan against the survivor. Make sure you're mounting your attack from the correct location, that you'll inflict maximum damage, and if possible; let some other people know!
Ride the rush: In order for an attack to be successful, with all four survivors sticking together, you need a distraction. Whether it's the director or your team's boomer, attacking during a rush is much more effective.
Go for the kill(s): If the survivors have any chance of completing the mission, and you've got one of them down twice, finish them off. They've already proven one incap won't slow them down. (Exception should be made when playing as a tank, unless near a safe house).
Don't sit there, they're healing!: I've played in a lot of versus matches, and especially in higher difficulties, the team of survivors will go down without using a single health pack; they just didn't have the time. If you have a chance to disrupt a team's healing session, it's possible you could make a game-changing move.

SCRIPTS AND THE CONSOLE

To use the console, go to options and turn it on

.cfg scripts
A .cfg file is what you might call a local alteration; it doesn't really add anything external, but changes your game in various ways.

Installing a .cfg:
In singleplayer, moving the .cfg to your (default) directory C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead\cfg should cut it.

Want to see your actual ping when you show the scoreboard?

// Scoreboard and Net Graph
// ========================
alias +scores_netgraph "+showscores; net_graph 1"
alias -scores_netgraph "-showscores; net_graph 0"

bind [yourkey] +scores_netgraph

Misc:

High Res Medikit (http://www.fpsbanana.com/skins/screens/54831?img=http://image.hazardstrip.com/ss/skins/75034.jpg)

High Res Pills (http://www.fpsbanana.com/skins/54939)

Other L4D Stuff (http://www.fpsbanana.com/games/222)

[Tonster]

Some more tips for you, apologies if there's any overlap with what you've put already but it doesn;t hurt to read it twice :D


General tips - Campaign mode
Close doors: Normal infected can't open them and have to break them down, giving you time to reload and shoot them through the door. However Hunters can pounce through a sufficiently damaged door, smoker's can grab you through the holes, and tanks and witches can just plough right through.

Your movement is slowed when you drop below 40 health, and drastically slowed when you reach minimum health. At minimum health, you crouch-walk slightly faster than you run. Pills are the only way to quickly increase your speed.

Hitting the space bar when you are dead lets you scout ahead for your team (options/multiplayer/spectator free look enabled).

Deliberately killing a teammate dead (not just incapacitated) will make them respawn in the next chapter at 50% health. But it's less fun. Weapons, kits, and pills dropped on the safe-room floor remain to be picked up in the next chapter, but gas cans and propane tanks must be held by someone or they are lost. Some players asked to be team-killed near an exit safe room if their health is below 50%. They would prefer to die and be respawned with 50% health for the next section, as opposed to starting the next section with a low health and possibly needing to burn through a health pack.

Hint: at the beginning of Dead Air : the Crane, you leave the safe room and enter an area separated by a fence. If you balance on the top of the fence and climb over toward the brick wall, all 4 player can easily defend against any horde, because they cannot climb it to get you.

Close Rescue Closet doors after you rescue a survivor. If two people have died close together the second survivor will respawn after you close the door (or you may need to wait half a minute or so). This is much safer than fighting to another Hero closet.

You can only be revived twice before dieing, however this count is reset by med kit use.

You can shoot/melee the tongues of smokers to free other survivors, or melee the strangled survivor to release him from the tongue.

You can shoot through most walls, floors and doors for reduced damage, this can be used to get a Hunter off a prone surivor from range. You can't hit your teammates through the wall so don't worry about it. Shooting through walls is also a good way of killing boomers safely.


Weapons
In practice, dual-pistols are only about 75% as deadly as the uzi. Pump-shotguns are often chosen over Uzi's because for ranged attacks, wielders can switch to the nearly as effective, dual-pistols.

Turn On Closed or Full Captions - If you turn either of these on by going into options, the game will say things like "Tank growls" or "Incoming Attack".

Puke and Run: Bleeeech, what a lovely sound. But that boomers vomit attracts the infected like moth to a flame. If your the unfortunate recipient of this dark bile, RUN AWAY from your group. But not to far away. This serves two ends. The first is that the horde will go after you, and ignore your teammates, saving them a beating with you. The infected will run right past them if they are just off to the side in a room or behind an object. But more importantly, if you duck when being attacked you team mates can easily mow down the infected by aiming head high, and you will not be shot by mistake

When slimed, putting your back to a wall, crouching and meleeing without shooting is almost always the best practice. There is currently no melee-fatigue in campaign mode.

Once your reload is started, you can melee/push without slowing your reload.

Pistols, assault rifle, and submachine gun pierce infected ONCE. The bullet does the damage it should to the second infected. The hunting rifle and both shotguns actually pierce infinite infected and does the damage it should to all of them.

The guns will do less damage in range. The Hunting rifle is not affected by range, The assault rifle is slightly affected, the submachine gun and pistol are affected quite a bit, and both shotguns are severely affected by range.

If you empty the auto-shotty it will take you a disproportionately long time to reload, reload when there's still a cartridge left for a higher rate of fire in extended fights. Of course if your last shot will kill the last attacker, then do it and reload afterwards.


Witches
Melee a witch to make her stagger, then shoot her, then melee her again, this way she always staggering and not dishing out hurt.

Walking or crouching does not make the witch less likely to attack you.

If someone has a hunting rifle, you can have that person shoot her in the head she will flinch for a few seconds which should be enough time to spray her to death. Same thing can be achieved with an explosive.


Tanks
Tanks move slower when climbing or taking bullet damage. Explosives can knock him backwards. Burning tanks run faster than you, but have trouble with narrow openings and ladders. It takes 40 seconds for a tank to die from being on fire on Expert mode, 30 seconds on Normal.

Shooting a tank in the head makes no difference compared to shooting him in the body.

Also, if you are near a ladder, you can use that to kill the tank. If you stand at the top of the ladder while the tank is climbing and block his way, he will literally get stuck and just stay there. You can calmly shoot him with any gun until he dies. (Sounds like something they might have patched). Be careful not to be too far out of the edge or you might get pushed off the edge by the tank. Another thing to know is that the tank will sometimes just jump and climb an edge instead of using the ladder.

You can shoot the stone the tank throws to avoid the damage (risky!).

You can melee the tank to draw his aggro away from a prone team mate that's he's beating up.


Smokers
If your teammate is tongued by a smoker (fnar) or is pounced by a hunter, they are invincible to your bullets so don't worry about hurting them and focus on freeing them.


Hunters
Hunters can't pounce on you past an incapped playern from floor level, so it can be a viable tactic to use your downed team mate as a meat shield until you can revive him.

All special infected deal increased damage when on fire, so don't get hit by a burning tank in Expert mode! Hunters are particularly powerful when on fire and many players in versus mode set themselves alight deliberately.


Versus
In Versus mode the amount of permanent health you have (ie painkillers don't count) at the end of a level counts towards your score, so heal up before closing the safehouse door.

In Versus mode, as a special infected you CAN startle the witch, though she will attack you. However the survivors may also mistakenly shoot her so it can be a viable tactic. Have you ever had a witch spawn in a useless place that the survivors can just walk past? Then this technique is for you. Smacking the witch with your claws does not piss her off but if you pounce at her, she rages. The witch will chase your ass down so you better run to the place that you want her to be. After you have gotten to the location, sit there and let her kill you. Soon after you have died she will sit down and begin to cry again. Apparently there is a way to move her without startling her...

As a hunter when you are being shoved/stunned, you can use melee even if you are not in first-person.

Hunter pounce damage is determined by pounce distance and capped at 25. Over-pounce is better than under-pounce as you can limit the length of the pounce with your back button, but can't increase it once initiated. Wall jumping is performed by jumping at a wall, turning 180, then pouncing again by pressing mouse1. Hold control while you're airborne. As long as you still have it held, you'll be able to jump constantly. If you pounce someone on a ladder you will knock them off potentially delivering fall damage. Fall damage is capped at 75, pounce damage at 25, so if you get it right you can incap a fully healthy player with one well timed long distance pounce on someone climbing a ladder. Good luck with that!

[Tonster]

Part 2

Practice as Infected on Bots
Open notepad and put all this info in it
echo "SPVersus mode activated!"
sv_cheats 1
mp_gamemode versus
sb_all_bot_team 1
unbind "F1"
unbind "F2"
unbind "F3"
unbind "F4"
unbind "F5"
unbind "F6"
bind "F1" "z_spawn boomer"
bind "F2" "z_spawn smoker"
bind "F3" "z_spawn hunter"
bind "F4" "z_spawn tank"
bind "F5" "z_add
bind "F6" "z_spawn witch"
Save it to steam/steamapps/common/left4dead/left4dead/cfg as a new file called "spversus.cfg".
Close the file, the using Windows explorer navigate to it , right click on it, choose Properties and tick 'read only'.
Start up Left 4 Dead in single player (campaign), it doesn't matter what map
type "exec spversus.cfg" in console.
Then press your team switch key (m by default) and switch to infected
You can spawn as, or when you have already spawned, spawn a boomer with F1, a smoker with F2, a hunter with F3, a tank with F4, a common infected with F5 and a witch with F6.
You will notice the so-called "zombie ladders" are missing! To fix this, you have to change to the versus levels instead of the co-op levels. Type "changelevel l4d_vs(fill in the rest, the console will give you suggestions about existant maps from there on.
How to switch team even when you reached the limit: Simply type "vs_max_team_switches 10" in the console to join a team infected even when you have reached your limit.

further reading (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=770786)


Advanced Hunter jumping, best practiced offline using the above technique.

Wall jump:

A hunter's best *best* friend. The true virtue of the wall jump itself, is it's ability to get a hunter out of bad situations quickly. If you miss a jump, bounce off the floor, get out of there, and re-set. The wall jump can also be used as a wonderful distraction, if you can wall jump quickly and accurately, you can distract a group of survivors long enough for a boomer or smoker to make his move. The actual mechanics of the wall jump are generally known, but haven't been specifically discussed much. Left click to jump off wall when you hit it, right? Well, there's much more to it. First off, wall jumping has minimum angle requierments. These numbers aren't quite concrete, but they are very close to accurate for in game purposes. You must be looking roughly ten degrees away from the wall, and at least 10 degrees up or down, to initiate a wall jump. This creates a conical "jump zone" while you are touching or gliding on a surface you can leap off of. Also, you do *not* have to hold crouch the entire time, and it's actually better if you don't. I'll explain why next...

Jump curving:

Many people know you can slow or even stop your jump mid-air by using the "s" key, but for those of use who have "surfed" in CS or TF2, we know that "a" and "d" are even more useful. Using your mouse look, and "a" and "d" you can curve your jump to an extent. Obviously this has great utility for correcting your aim mid air, but it also has some more technical uses involving wall jumping. First, I'll explain how to curve specifically. To curve left, gradually look to the left and hold "a" mid air, it's the opposite for right. If you are holding crouch, stop it! You're losing a lot of air control if you do, so stand up mid air to better your curving. Now for wall jumping, knowing the minimum wall jump degree "cone" helps here, as you can curve yourself into a wall you would have otherwise missed, and jump off of it. Curving also helps you attack from places survivors can't see. Now, curving leads to an even more advanced tech...

Strafe Jumping, A.K.A, Kai Jumping

This tech comes in two versions, diagonal, and vertical. I'll explain diagonal first, since it's the easier of the two. To attempt this, it would bee a good idea to have wall jumping, and curve jumping mastered first.

Diagonal: To do this, first you must find a relevant place to practice it. No Mercy 1, off of the spawn to the right there is a really tall building with some stairs on it, that's where I suggest to practice both of these. Once there, remind yourself of the jump degree cone, because it's going to be really important. Jump and curve into the wall you want to do this on at a 45 degree angle upward (diagonal is focusing on both horizontal and vertical distance). When you curve into the wall to jump, look 10 degrees away, and jump again, holding your strafe button to curve the entire time, curve *back* into the wall, and do it again. Doing this, you can jump up a single wall diagonally. You can, of course, adjust your angle for what is appropriate, but much under 30 and you start to lost altitude. This is best suited for long flat walls close to areas the survivors pass by, and can easily get 25's in places you can't usually jump from. For vertical distance without much space to work with, try vertical...

Vertical: Much more difficult than diagonal vertical requiers that you have the following mastered: Wall jumping, curve jumping, diagonal jumping, jump cone.

To perform this, begin your jump just as you would for a diagonal, only instead of around a 45 degree angle up, you will need to use something much closer to 75/80. Do your first jump, but instead of holding your strafe key, and looking away from the wall again, turn all the way around towards the wall, going from your beginning strafe key, to "w", to the opposite strafe key.
The goal of this is to keep yourself sliding on the wall the entire time you're turning around, once turned around, proceed just you would with a diagonal jump with an angle of 75-80 still. If you can repeat this, congratulations, you've learned the hardest hunter tech I know of. This is useful for 25's in mostly unknown and unexpected places, much faster setups for jumps, awkward escape angles, and very high angled attacks.

*new* 100% vertical method of vertical oriented hunter jumping. You can climb straight up any mostly flat surface, no matter how thin it is. To do this, simply put your back to the surface you want to climb, hold "s", jump straight up, and wall jump by looking 10 degrees down. While holding "s" you will continually go back to the wall. While this tech gains no horizontal distance, and gains it's vertical the same speed as the strafing method, it is much easier, and just as applicable in many scenarios.

YouTube - LEAP 4 DEAD - A L4D Hunter Trickjumping Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2BBLhTcc3w)

Hunter Walljump single player training
sv_cheats 1;
director_force_versus_start;
mp_gamemode versus;
director_no_death_check 1;
jointeam 3;
wait 50;
nb_delete_all;
z_spawn hunter;


changelevel <level>; (console offers you level name hints, VS maps start with l4d_vs_)

Hunter training map - http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/76114

Hunter Training map discussion. - Steam Users' Forums (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=837785) - Hunter training map discussion, vids etc.



And finally a bit of fun;
Rambo mode v1.5
sv_cheats 1; nb_delete_all; director_force_panic_event; director_panic_forever 1; callvote ChangeDifficulty Hard; z_common_infected 50; z_gun_kick 1; hidehud 4; vocalize playerincoming;