Newbie tips from the school of hard knocks

[Calico-Jack]

Just got the game earlier in the week and I’m having a blast.

As a newbie I thought I’d post some tips for others.

1. Slowdown
Rushing was the single biggest thing that got me killed. Running blindly into clumps of enemies and/or enemy kill boxes just makes another notch on the respawn pool tally.

2 Play the objectives
Related to the above - the game imparts a sense of urgency with your comrades-at-arms shouting about pushing on, but the real progress indicators you should be watching are the objectives.

3. Play your role.
Also related to slowing down. The game gives you points for playing your class well, which doesn't mean "get a high (K/DR)" (I'd go as far as to say the Challenges are actually the game tutorial):
bandaging your teamies, giving them ammo on the fly or dropping ammo/grenade crates at spawn points, spotting enemies etc.

4. Play the game
The starter kit for each class is as good as the kit you unlock through challenges - with the exception of grenade/ammo crates. I think this is a trap a lot of people fall into thanks to other games giving out the worst gear to encourage you to play more. As with all the other 2 games by the same devs - you will level effortlessly and the non-cosmetic unlocks are essentially there to spice up the game when you get bored with playing a Class in a particular way.

For example a the starter mountaineer with binocs is less of a sniper/enemy magnet than one with a periscope which is counter-intuitive to the afore mentioned fps-game-conditioning.

5. Don’t play the officer until you’ve figured out the maps or see point 6.

6. Play Class challenges/ cheev hunt / learn classes offline
This is slightly more abstract so bear with me while I give a few examples:

In one match I was in our team was defending and struggling.
There were a few issues but one of them was having an Officer drawing hopelessly aggressive attack orders into the enemy spawn areas rather than draw a defend markers to stop bots from running forward and keeping them around the defence objectives.

It’s a small thing but what an officer does, carries a lot of weight - not targeting choke points to slow enemies, not using smoke to cover pushes all weigh against the team. So mentally rename “Offline” to “Officer training”.

This extends to other classes as well there are nuances to the gameplay that isn’t directly attributable to killing stuff. For brevity’s sake I’ll talk about the Rifleman as despite being a bread-and-butter role, there is also meat (see what I did there?).

As a Rifleman you can run with a group with your initial ammo box secondary out while holding down the mouse button and looking about to toss extra ammo to them instead of you just running about with your rifle and nothing to shoot at, or do the same around spawn exits to the people running past. It's a small thing. But teams are made of lots of those piling up into one big thing.

You can also rearm heavy weapons. Mortars in particular are amazing at slowing enemy response, you can rearm then when they are in use and when the ammo is depleted you can re-up them after a 60 second countdown. Look about the map and if you see a red mortar icon, refill it then use it. Even without spotters the map shows objectives, trenches and chokepoints.

Target those, though I suggest aiming slightly behind an objective being contested to avoid hitting your teammates, note the initial reticle is a generous suggestion and the travel time isn’t instant - if you’re spam firing your first shot will land sometime around your second or third shot leaving the muzzle. So keep an eye on the map.

One final tip - if snap aim is your weak point, as it was with me, play a round or two of either Verdun or Tannenberg to warm up, with the bots on Tannenberg being closer to Isonzo bots in terms of how long a window you have to shoot before they one-shot own you.

[qake]

some nice tips!

[The Lizard Wizard]

I love the emphasis you put on the officer, it really is a big responsibility to play that role properly. I'd even suggest that if you have an officer on your squad to protect them. They can't blow the whistle if their dead!