Again: Don’t ask why this is the case. You just want to survive, right?
5. Copper is a team resource – use it that way
In Back 4 Blood, there is a primary currency: copper. You will find it repeatedly in the levels and receive it as a bonus when you are particularly quick or complete secondary objectives.
With copper, you buy weapons, ammunition, healing – pretty much everything available. Each player has their own copper supply, but you should always share it brotherly (or sisterly).
This is especially true for the particularly expensive team upgrades. They grant more equipment slots for the whole group or increase the effectiveness of equipment.
But even if a teammate has too little copper to fully equip themselves – help them out and give them coins so that every player starts optimally into the new match.
At the latest, when friendly Holly saves your butt with the Molotov she could only buy with your donation, you will understand this as a good investment.
In the end, the question remains: What good are the 3,000 copper you have accumulated if you can no longer spend it because your team has been wiped out and the last “Continue” has been used?
6. Always have a toolkit in the team
From the very first map on, you should adhere to this rule: Don’t leave the safe room until it’s ensured that at least one player has purchased a toolkit.
In (almost) every map, there is one or more locked rooms that can only be opened with a toolkit. These rooms are a true loot paradise, often containing powerful weapons, frequently cards for the whole team, and not rarely more copper per person than the toolkit costs.
Occasionally, there are even healing stations in the rooms, allowing players to refresh their health points.
Toolkits are worth every single copper coin as long as you use them for the bonus rooms.
7. Use different weapon types
Even though you can stock up on a lot of ammunition in the safe room, after the first 100 meters it becomes a rare resource.
So don’t hesitate to ask your team for ammunition. After all, all characters can carry all types of ammunition and lay them on the ground for another cleaner to use if necessary.
For this to work, however, it is important that you all use different weapons. If the entire team consists of 4 shotguns, you are guaranteed to run out of breath halfway through the map.
A well-mixed team, where no weapon type occurs more than 2 times, simply has much more and sustained firepower.
8. Leave the safe room quickly
Before you open the door from the safe room, you are completely safe inside. You can shop to your heart’s content and plan the strategy.
However, the seconds immediately after opening the door of the safe room are crucial. Typically, you attract a whole bunch of zombies shortly after leaving, along with some special infected.
If you retreat into the safe room, a single tallboy can quickly take your whole team down.
So only fall back into the safe room if there is really no other option – many matches end in the first seconds, and often there are much better positions nearby to set up against the zombies.
There are exceptions to this rule. Particularly large safe rooms can indeed be a nice retreat. The smaller the room, the more you should avoid posting up there for long.
9. Those who lead should crouch
On the lowest difficulty levels, “friendly fire” is not a big issue – but it is very much so at higher levels. To avoid as much crossfire as possible, you should adhere to a very simple rule:
Those who lead in tight areas should crouch.
That way, the other players can easily shoot over the frontman, while the crouched player clears out with a melee weapon, for example.
Generally, it is good if the team has relatively “fixed positions,” meaning who leads and who brings up the rear. Then it rarely happens that you walk through a teammate and blast 80 health points away with a shotgun.
10. Medi-kits have become more valuable
Between the beta and launch, not much has changed in Back 4 Blood – most are fine-tuning.
However, one particularly important change concerns the healing item “Medi-Kit” and bandages that survivors can carry. Both can now heal trauma damage if the items have been upgraded through a team upgrade. Thus, you should prefer a Medi-Kit in most cases over other healing items, like pills.
Especially at the highest difficulty, trauma damage is extremely annoying, and every way to regenerate these health points will bring you one step closer to victory.
With these tips, you should be well-equipped for higher difficulty levels and able to slowly but surely tackle the maps.
Do you have any additional tips that Back 4 Blood players should keep in mind? Share your tricks and tips with us in the comments!
Back 4 Blood has launched. Don’t want to be the noob of the team? Then we have 10 tips for you to become a better team member.
Back 4 Blood is a zombie shooter, but those who just shoot wildly will not find success on the higher – and more fun – difficulty levels. To ensure you are well-prepared for the start of the cooperative slaughter, we have 10 tips for you to automatically become better team members and earn more achievements.
The tips are generally suitable for all difficulty levels, but are especially useful for “Nightmare” and “Veteran”.
1. Communication is key
Back 4 Blood is a cooperative game, and only those who act as a team will find success on higher difficulty levels.
Therefore, continuous communication with your team members is essential. The best way to do this is through voice chat. Discuss your strategy before the round and assign rough roles. Who is buying a Molotov? Who wants to be the melee fighter? Is there enough money for a team upgrade?
But whether you use the voice chat or not, you should definitely make use of the ping system (PC standard: Q). This marks all kinds of things in the game. Do you see a special infected? Mark him with a ping. Did you find a cool weapon with an awesome upgrade that you don’t need? Just mark it.
As long as you don’t spam the button continuously, your character will also always say a little phrase about what you have discovered.
This way, you can quickly relay important information to the team, even without needing to use voice chat.
2. Build your own decks to increase your chances
The card system in Back 4 Blood is not well received by all veterans, but it is an integral part of the game. After you have completed your first matches and unlocked new cards, you should definitely spend a few minutes building your own decks.
The standard deck is enough for the first matches, but later you will want to further customize yourself. Do you want to focus on melee weapons? Or are you more of a supporter who heals efficiently and can carry more healing items? How well can you handle trauma damage and how much ammunition can your character carry?
All of this and more can be adjusted through cards. So if you have a few minutes to catch your breath between runs, prepare several decks for different play styles.
It takes a little while to get used to the system – but once you have embraced it, it enhances the fun of the game and your utility to the group.
Moreover: The cards are always drawn in a fixed order. How you arrange the cards in the deck completely decides which card you receive first and which card you get last in the match. There is no random factor here.
3. You can kill birds
Even in the first missions, you will encounter flocks of birds. These are more or less randomly scattered annoying points on the map. If birds are startled – for example, by a nearby shot or because a player walks through them, they will fly into the sky, screeching, and alert a horde.
You can simply bypass the flocks and avoid them, but you risk a stray shot going in the wrong direction causing an unpleasant surprise later.
However, it is better: You can kill the flock. If your group proceeds in a coordinated manner and opens fire simultaneously, you can catch all the birds before they fly high and alert the horde.
Alternatively, you can simply throw a grenade or a Molotov cocktail at the birds to eliminate them immediately.
Please don’t ask why a flock of birds can alert a horde but a grenade cannot – you won’t get far with logic in the next safe room.
4. You can trick alarm doors
Some doors in Back 4 Blood appear as special “alarm doors,” which are indicated by a red symbol. When opened or smashed by a player, a loud alarm sounds, attracting a horde.
However, you can trick the alarm doors. With a toolkit, you can bypass the security and open the door without triggering the alarm.
Even more efficiently, let the zombies do the work. If there are zombies behind the locked alarm door, you can simply attract them with noise – usually a few shots are enough.
The zombies will then break down the door and destroy it without activating the alarm.
Again: Don’t ask why this is the case. You just want to survive, right?
5. Copper is a team resource – use it that way
In Back 4 Blood, there is a primary currency: copper. You will find it repeatedly in the levels and receive it as a bonus when you are particularly quick or complete secondary objectives.
With copper, you buy weapons, ammunition, healing – pretty much everything available. Each player has their own copper supply, but you should always share it brotherly (or sisterly).
This is especially true for the particularly expensive team upgrades. They grant more equipment slots for the whole group or increase the effectiveness of equipment.
But even if a teammate has too little copper to fully equip themselves – help them out and give them coins so that every player starts optimally into the new match.
At the latest, when friendly Holly saves your butt with the Molotov she could only buy with your donation, you will understand this as a good investment.
In the end, the question remains: What good are the 3,000 copper you have accumulated if you can no longer spend it because your team has been wiped out and the last “Continue” has been used?
6. Always have a toolkit in the team
From the very first map on, you should adhere to this rule: Don’t leave the safe room until it’s ensured that at least one player has purchased a toolkit.
In (almost) every map, there is one or more locked rooms that can only be opened with a toolkit. These rooms are a true loot paradise, often containing powerful weapons, frequently cards for the whole team, and not rarely more copper per person than the toolkit costs.
Occasionally, there are even healing stations in the rooms, allowing players to refresh their health points.
Toolkits are worth every single copper coin as long as you use them for the bonus rooms.
7. Use different weapon types
Even though you can stock up on a lot of ammunition in the safe room, after the first 100 meters it becomes a rare resource.
So don’t hesitate to ask your team for ammunition. After all, all characters can carry all types of ammunition and lay them on the ground for another cleaner to use if necessary.
For this to work, however, it is important that you all use different weapons. If the entire team consists of 4 shotguns, you are guaranteed to run out of breath halfway through the map.
A well-mixed team, where no weapon type occurs more than 2 times, simply has much more and sustained firepower.
8. Leave the safe room quickly
Before you open the door from the safe room, you are completely safe inside. You can shop to your heart’s content and plan the strategy.
However, the seconds immediately after opening the door of the safe room are crucial. Typically, you attract a whole bunch of zombies shortly after leaving, along with some special infected.
If you retreat into the safe room, a single tallboy can quickly take your whole team down.
So only fall back into the safe room if there is really no other option – many matches end in the first seconds, and often there are much better positions nearby to set up against the zombies.
There are exceptions to this rule. Particularly large safe rooms can indeed be a nice retreat. The smaller the room, the more you should avoid posting up there for long.
9. Those who lead should crouch
On the lowest difficulty levels, “friendly fire” is not a big issue – but it is very much so at higher levels. To avoid as much crossfire as possible, you should adhere to a very simple rule:
Those who lead in tight areas should crouch.
That way, the other players can easily shoot over the frontman, while the crouched player clears out with a melee weapon, for example.
Generally, it is good if the team has relatively “fixed positions,” meaning who leads and who brings up the rear. Then it rarely happens that you walk through a teammate and blast 80 health points away with a shotgun.
10. Medi-kits have become more valuable
Between the beta and launch, not much has changed in Back 4 Blood – most are fine-tuning.
However, one particularly important change concerns the healing item “Medi-Kit” and bandages that survivors can carry. Both can now heal trauma damage if the items have been upgraded through a team upgrade. Thus, you should prefer a Medi-Kit in most cases over other healing items, like pills.
Especially at the highest difficulty, trauma damage is extremely annoying, and every way to regenerate these health points will bring you one step closer to victory.
With these tips, you should be well-equipped for higher difficulty levels and able to slowly but surely tackle the maps.
Do you have any additional tips that Back 4 Blood players should keep in mind? Share your tricks and tips with us in the comments!
