New Player here !

[Calandir]

I wanted to ask how to git gud. Since I tried few stages with my friend, on normal difficulty and we simply can't beat the bosses. It's hard enough avoiding zeds without any ''dodge'' mechanic and just sprint away. I wanted to ask for some basic tips how to improve !

[JimmyIowa]

You may not be using the right weapons for the boss. I would suggest googling whatever perk you are playing and look up a weapons or build guide for it. Also, since you just started, once you get some levels and can choose skills, it gets easier.

[An Ordinary Noob]

Random tip, regardless the class you play, I suggest you to get the medic hand gun, it only weights 1kg (if they haven't changed it, I haven't played this on months) and you get free heals, cash by healing and still a weapon to defend you.

[Bleydoka]

There are actually 5 bosses. Hans and Matriarch being the hardest ones.

Often you can run around small ~5meter objects and the bosses will miss their attacks. one should kite with the boss while the other clears the trash zeds.

Try to play fast moving classes like medic,gunslinger,berserker. Demo is decent too because he deals great damage.

[Bathtub Shitter]

a level 25 gunslinger or demo can make very short work of any boss on any difficulty in my experience. Bosses like hans and king fleshpound have a weakness to explosives and gunslinger can just melt any boss if you can consistently headshot and back pedal while fighting them. If survival is the problem tho a dedicated medic can fix that.

[๖ۣۜMk137]

Honestly your best option for getting good at this game is to find a veteran player who is willing to play a few games with you and give you tips along the way. There are plenty of friendly players who wouldn't mind doing this I'm sure. It would save you a lot of time that you would otherwise spend grinding and learning the more advanced mechanics on your own/through research online.

[Serious]

• The game is most difficult with 2 and 3 players. Getting easier with 4 to 6. And singleplayer it's the easiest way to play.
• Bosses often require more movement as other enemies. Your health is much more important as the boss health. It doesn't matter if you miss a few shots, but 2-3 hits from the boss to you could be enough.
• Unlike other waves an open spot isn't where you should hold out. It's often necessary to use edges/walls or stuff like cars/trucks or trees to block a boss attack.
• When a boss spawn minions always focus on them without ignoring the boss completely. Nothing kills you faster as when you get trapped by minions and the boss is joining the party.
• If you want to play with 2 players only you need at least a 101 to heal. Often the best is when you use the medic croosperk weapon of your class. E.g. 301 as support, 401 as commando, 201 as swat.

[Xalla]

headshots, kiting & headshots.

There is no secret way to get better.
Just play the game and see what other players do.
I got 2000h (kf1 + kf2) and just got good at the game by playing and testing everything.
Playing on suicidal / HoE as soon as you are getting bored by the other difficulties.

By going for headshots mostly i mean playing like this (no useless raging / ammo wasting)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PaD0sJ1jTY&ab_channel=Psych0Gamers

[Eze]

Bosses require these actions:

-Learn their patters to know when to run and when to shoot (cues with movements and sound cues, specially Patriarch)
-Use weapons with +1500 dosh price (Tier 4), upgrade them if you can, get a +2000 dosh price if you can (tier 5). Some low tier weapons are lovely, but in later waves they are meant to use as a backup, and not all tier5 weapons are good for bosses.
-Try to have a medic solution (you being a medic or your pal, using crossperk medic weapons) when facing bosses if you choosen the apt difficulty for your skill or level.

If you can join a public game and learn with other players. It's a good chaotic fun.

[!?!]

Use knives only on wave 1.
Prepares your brain on how to zero in on heads with no crosshair.

As for bosses, find cover. Run around the cover.
Learn when to shoot and when you get a face full of damage and need to be behind cover.
The whole headshot thing, forget it when it comes to bosses, their heads are in weird places and constantly bobbing around so some perks like sharpshooter or gunslinger are just screwed.

It also helps if one of you is a medic or if both of you buy a medic pistol to dart each other.

[Mixue Pizza]

Normal bosses just so easy. Shoot them and keep healing yourself.

[Aya]

I feel like these tips could help that I think should carry over to higher difficulties:

Team composition is KEY.

You'll have a lot of trouble killing the big guys let alone the bosses when you have 3 SWATs and 2 Commandos on your team. If you notice that there are multiple commandos, SWATs, and/or Firebugs, it might be worth it to take the Demolitionist.

Then again, the big damage dealers can't do any damage if they're dead. It's also worth it to have a Survivalist (Berserker if someone on your team owns a Piranha Pistol) and Field Medic. Field Medic is self-explanatory, but a Survivalist/Berserker can parry incoming damage with a melee weapon, and both perks have higher damage resistance than other perks (Zerk has the Parry Skill at Level 15, while Survivalist has guns, healing grenades, and SWAT armor).

Basically, don't be the team's third, fourth or fifth trash cleaner if other roles need to be filled (those other roles being burst damage, tank, and healer). Ideally, you'll want your Team Composition to look like this when you have your eyes set on higher difficulties:

Survivalist (Berserker if DLC is available)
Field Medic
Demolitionist
Commando
Support (nice to have, but not as important)
Free slot that isn't SWAT

Berserker/Survivalist during Boss Wave

There's a 2 in 5 chance that you'll have to fight a boss that basically renders the melee class useless. During the boss wave, Berserkers or Survivalists might wanna instead pick other perks, depending on what void needs to be filled in your team composition.

Basically, having a tank will help your team live long enough to reach the boss wave, but on the boss wave itself, there's a 40% chance that your tank will suddenly become useless

Don't use the M32

This should not need to be its own tip, but it's pretty frustrating when players grab this weapon because they remember it being an anti-everything death machine in the first Killing Floor game. In KF2, it's a shadow of its former self and is actually regarded as one of the worst Demolitionist weapons in the game. You're much better off going with an RPG/HX combo

The Medic Pistol

Since this weapon has an ammo reserve of 240, deals 20 damage (Clot/Crawler/Stalker has a head health of 20), and only weighs a single weight block, it's probably a good idea to replace your 9mm with this as soon as possible, especially since this thing's basically the new Killing Floor 1 syringe.

Most perks have a loadout where you can carry 14 blocks worth of perk weapons too, so these are in my opinion, the only acceptable excuses for not carrying a Medic Pistol on your person

-You're a Medic, and you already have weapons with better healing darts than your starting pistol
-You're a Commando with the Medic Rifle
-You're a Support with the Medic Shotgun
-You're a SWAT with the Medic SMG
-You're a Sharpshooter with the Corruptor Carbine

If you're playing Medic yourself, I think it's also worth it to drop your Medic Pistol as soon as you get a better healing item, since your teammates could also be an additional source of healing. If you're not playing medic, then it's helpful to remember that despite popular belief, the Medic actually doesn't have eyes on the back of his head, so you might wanna get the Medic Pistol or cross-perk medic weapon so as to top up the healthbars of people your medic might miss, or even keep the medic alive.

[Freekill]

General tips:

Have in mind that different perks are good at, Firebugs are great for area denial and killing weak zeds, Supports are great at killing Gorefasts and even big zeds, the list goes on.

When playing solo, focus on dealing damage all the time, no one is getting the aggro out of you, but reload and prepare to kill big zeds in the shortest time span possible.

When with teammates, do your perk job, but prepare to coordinate attacks with your allies, big zeds health increase by each player you have present, so it would be a good idea to not shoot bigs zeds alone, unless you wanna be a red paste on the wall.

Some games call for keeping lanes, others for roaming, see how your team plays then go with the flow.

Defending and jumping at the same time a raged Fleshpound with your knife can reduce a good chunk of damage and sends you really far, enough to be safe enough to heal and reload, just don't enrage him immediately unless you can handle it.

Have in mind how much damage your weapons does to each enemy, specially Scrakes (-50% explosive/poison damage) and Fleshpounds (Overall great resistance to everything but explosives).

Scrakes take unholy amount of damage from direct hit damage on the head with a RPG, with the right perks and level, you can instakill it on max difficulty and playercount.

AK-12 is pretty.

[CaptainCrazy]

Feel free to add me I would be happy to help you learn and get past some maps.

[AT]

Stay in normal and hard modes until you have higher level perks and are more used to the game - the zeds get faster and gain extra abilities in suicidal and HoE.

Positioning is important. It varies level by level but you'll want to find spots where zeds aren't falling on your head or cornering you. Some are obvious (the guard tower on prison) others are obscure (the chloe bisset corner with bad routefinding on hellmark).

Most situations can be best dealt with best by staying relatively still and methodically picking off zeds as they close in, rather than running backwards and getting jumped from behind.
The more you play the better sense you have of which order to target the zeds and when you need to move. And gradually you'll also find that you land more headshots without needing to aim.

Aiming for the head generally gives the best results, though is not needed in all cases. Some zeds have specific weaknesses :
- Crawlers (spider zeds) - you can jump on them to stun them (just jumping when mobbed by them can save you). The poison ones don't release gas if you headshot them.
- Rioters (armoured zeds) - shoot them in the knees (unless you have a powerful gun that can shoot through the head armour)
- Husks (flame zeds) - a hit or two on the backpack will blow them up, you get a clear shot just before they shoot. Don't trust on other zeds to block their shots.
- EDARS (robots) - shoot them in the middle of the body (one hit to break the armour, and one to blow them up). They are also highly vulnerable to some weapon types (helios and tesla in particular).
- Fleshpounds (big berzerker zeds) - vulnerable to explosives
- Scrakes (chainsaw zeds) - won't chase you until you injure them

Bosses:
- Hans - gets much tougher on higher difficulties. On normal/hard just try to make sure you aren't reloading when he shields up (to give you the best chance of knocking him down before he grabs you) and watch out for the red grenades he throws for his final wave (high damage).

- Patriarch - the 'fleshy' parts take more damage than the metal parts. Keep around cover as best you can against his ranged attacks and make sure to get out of the way any time he starts pressing buttons on his arm (missiles). With more players you can block him off when he runs but with 1-2 players you either have to catch him (commando or tagging him with c4 can help) or you are in it for the long run.
He will call out his attacks so listen for the cues.
On the subject of c4, wait a second between detonations (it loses damage otherwise).

- Matriarch - the matriach is a slave to her AI and will always chase whoever is doing the most damage (with occasional reassessments) unless you block her path. She alternates between her two long ranged weapons unless the sequence in interrupted for short ranged attacks, and running circles around a blocking object like a bus works well enough - with two players you can just stop shooting if you need to back off and heal while the other tags her and gets her attention for a while (cue benny hill music).
EDARs spawn in in three waves for her, but if you take your time and shoot her gun/helmet off while her shield is down you can skip the first wave.
High level firebugs on low difficulty can face-tank her plasma beam giving you all the time in the world to shoot her.

- Abomination - can get messy for two players as he spawns in more and more mini-mes. While he is still in his armoured state shooting the little guys will cause him splash damage, and knocking the armour off will knock him down.
He is generally considered a damage sponge boss that you just have to blaze away at until you win, but he also has a crippling vulnerability to groundfire (flame weapons hitting the ground in front of him rather than the boss directly) and can be staggered and backed up in all stages of the fight.
On the subject of groundfire - flame weapons can be used in a more ammo-efficient way by tapping the fire button rather than holding it down. The tap-spray lasts a short time allowing you to hit both the zeds and put groundfire down to damage them further.

- King Fleshpound - mostly involves running backwards and jumping when attacked (so the impact throws you out of range of a follow up, also works for matty and patty and normal fleshpounds). Heal up, block with the knife if you need to, and shoot him whenever he doesn't have his arms up.
Smaller fleshpounds should be shot as they spawn in so that you don't get sandwiched but a lot of this fight is situational awareness - have some idea of where you are running so you don't get backed into a wall and try to not stand at a higher position as the fleshpounds laser can be ducked (making it harmless) but only if you are on the same level or lower.

[ZiFFA]

Originally posted by Aya:

I feel like these tips could help that I think should carry over to higher difficulties:

Team composition is KEY.

You'll have a lot of trouble killing the big guys let alone the bosses when you have 3 SWATs and 2 Commandos on your team. If you notice that there are multiple commandos, SWATs, and/or Firebugs, it might be worth it to take the Demolitionist.

Then again, the big damage dealers can't do any damage if they're dead. It's also worth it to have a Survivalist (Berserker if someone on your team owns a Piranha Pistol) and Field Medic. Field Medic is self-explanatory, but a Survivalist/Berserker can parry incoming damage with a melee weapon, and both perks have higher damage resistance than other perks (Zerk has the Parry Skill at Level 15, while Survivalist has guns, healing grenades, and SWAT armor).

Basically, don't be the team's third, fourth or fifth trash cleaner if other roles need to be filled (those other roles being burst damage, tank, and healer). Ideally, you'll want your Team Composition to look like this when you have your eyes set on higher difficulties:

Survivalist (Berserker if DLC is available)
Field Medic
Demolitionist
Commando
Support (nice to have, but not as important)
Free slot that isn't SWAT

Berserker/Survivalist during Boss Wave

There's a 2 in 5 chance that you'll have to fight a boss that basically renders the melee class useless. During the boss wave, Berserkers or Survivalists might wanna instead pick other perks, depending on what void needs to be filled in your team composition.

Basically, having a tank will help your team live long enough to reach the boss wave, but on the boss wave itself, there's a 40% chance that your tank will suddenly become useless

Don't use the M32

This should not need to be its own tip, but it's pretty frustrating when players grab this weapon because they remember it being an anti-everything death machine in the first Killing Floor game. In KF2, it's a shadow of its former self and is actually regarded as one of the worst Demolitionist weapons in the game. You're much better off going with an RPG/HX combo

The Medic Pistol

Since this weapon has an ammo reserve of 240, deals 20 damage (Clot/Crawler/Stalker has a head health of 20), and only weighs a single weight block, it's probably a good idea to replace your 9mm with this as soon as possible, especially since this thing's basically the new Killing Floor 1 syringe.

Most perks have a loadout where you can carry 14 blocks worth of perk weapons too, so these are in my opinion, the only acceptable excuses for not carrying a Medic Pistol on your person

-You're a Medic, and you already have weapons with better healing darts than your starting pistol
-You're a Commando with the Medic Rifle
-You're a Support with the Medic Shotgun
-You're a SWAT with the Medic SMG
-You're a Sharpshooter with the Corruptor Carbine

If you're playing Medic yourself, I think it's also worth it to drop your Medic Pistol as soon as you get a better healing item, since your teammates could also be an additional source of healing. If you're not playing medic, then it's helpful to remember that despite popular belief, the Medic actually doesn't have eyes on the back of his head, so you might wanna get the Medic Pistol or cross-perk medic weapon so as to top up the healthbars of people your medic might miss, or even keep the medic alive.

The only boss that cause issue to zerk is Abom, due to his mechanics mostly consisting on Vomiting and getting poison damage from his minion, if you predict the boss, switching to Resistance instead of Parry will makes things much easyer and you csn face tank it with no issue(ofc with medic), other bosses are pretty much ok to deal with has a zerk, Patty might be an issue if you go for missle parry or minigun parry if you don't time it well, matriarch shock laser is much easyer to parry in comparison, and if you miss, you don't risk getting one shotted.