L4D2 Expert Realism Tips

A collection of tips and techniques to help improve teamwork and make you a better player!

Introduction

There are lots of ways to approach playing this game. Some folks like to rush, some like to freelance, some like to play as if its a single-player game and your teammates are just your backup.

For the group of friends that I play with, we find the most enjoyment out of taking the “co-op” game style seriously and really trying to form as solid and cohesive a unit as we can in a campaign, so that our individual gameplay is predictable to our teammates which then allows us to depend on each other more and really meld into a team.

So here are some tips that we’ve accumulated over the years. I hope you find some of them useful, and look forward to hearing your tips in return.

Teamwork

• Guard your health and your teammates' health above all else.
  
• Have and use a microphone
  
• Stay with the group (generally speaking). Don't roam too far ahead or lag too far behind unless an area is secure
  
• Trust your teammates to make their shots. If a teammate is engaged with an enemy, expect that they'll execute the play. Be ready to support them, but only when you see they need it.
  
• If a teammate is engulfed by flames (whether from a molotov or gas can) and becomes incapacitated, it is possible to pick them up before they burn to death (even without adrenaline) if you react quickly enough. (Take adrenaline first for even faster results.)

Positioning/Movement

• Know where your teammates are aiming! Don't pass through their line of fire (LOF).
  
• If you see that you are in a teammate's LOF, move out of it!
  
• If you have to pass a teammate from their side, pass behind them, not in front of them (which would put you in their LOF)
  
• Use your microphone to communicate any unusual movements, etc. with the team
  
• Don't take risky shots that pass close to a teammate (except in critical circumstances). You never know when they might move unexpectedly.
  
• When you're not in the lead, you are support. Guard the sides and rear. Don't try to pass the leader in confined spaces.
  
• Don't be in a hurry to take the lead. Your turn will come.
  
• Don't walk directly behind a teammate. If they stop suddenly and start firing, or if they have to start firing while backing up you will pass through each other and you’ll get shot. Keep to either side of a teammate who is in front of you if possible.
  
• If you're moving forward and stop to take a shot, wait a moment before firing if you can - just in case someone is following too closely.
  
• Try to avoid firing while backing up , especially if you aren't 100% sure where your teammates are. Try to hold your ground while firing whenever possible. (Exceptions would include when a Jockey or other Special Infected (SI) is advancing on you.)
  
• Don't block a doorway by standing it in and firing.
  
• If someone is standing in a doorway and firing, don't try to pass through them.
  
• Know where defensible positions are. Be ready to move to the nearest one in case of horde. Move through a map as close to those positions as you can.
  
• Avoid open areas (spaces where you can be attacked from all sides) where possible. (i.e. Swamp Fever level 1, after crossing the river don't walk on the plank path. Stay to the left edge. along the fence.)
  
• When the NPCs say things like “Stay on the walkway”, you can be pretty sure there are better options. Keep off the beaten path and you may find new caches of supplies or more defensible positions.
  
• Consider the value of defending against a horde from two different spots. The horde will likely split and be may be easier to defend for each team of two players.

Tactics

• When a teammate is incapacitated (incapped), nearly always your priority should be in defending them (and yourself) from infected rather than in getting them back up. Otherwise you risk getting incapped yourself while attempting to get them up. In some circumstances, you may need to violate this guideline, particularly if you have adrenaline you can use to get them up quickly.
  
• When a teammate is incapped with a lot of their temporary health remaining, consider not getting them up right away. If under attack by a horde of common infected (CI) or SI, consider leaving them down and using them as a 'meat shield' or decoy, allowing the CI to collect on them rather than you, and protecting them as best you can until the horde subsides.
  
• If your attention is focused elsewhere but you think there may be a zombie coming behind you and want to quickly turn to defend yourself, consider doing a melee punch first rather than firing your weapon in case a teammate might end up in your line of fire.
  
• Make it a habit of always checking your targets before firing a weapon. This helps to avoid unnecessary friendly fire (FF) incidents. The minor cost in time lost before shooting will more than pay off in reduced team damage, and as you develop this reflex, the delay will become nearly unnoticeable.
  
• When there are zombies in between you and another teammate and you are each in each other's line of fire, aim down and shoot at the zombies’ legs or feet to avoid FF.
  
• In the event of a horde, if a better or more ideally defensible position is not accessible, group up next to each other with your backs to one another or against a wall, forming a phalanx of sorts (much like the ancient Romans did). As an alternative, also consider jumping up on any objects or structures that may be readily available. If the infected have to climb something to get to you (even if it is small) it gives you extra time.
  
• If you want to develop tactics for how to play a certain map effectivtely, play it by youself with just bots. Figure out how to keep the bots healthy and you'll gain some insights into how to be more successful with a team of human players.

Weapons

Melee (pronounced MAY-lay)

• When defending against a horde using a melee weapon, alternate primary fire with secondary fire "punches" to give the melee weapon’s primary action time to "reload".
  
• Different melee weapons will have a different "punch" to "fire" ratio. The tonfa (billy club) has a very fast "reload" and you can often exclusively use the primary fire button. Other weapons (fire axe, etc.) may sometimes require more secondary than primary fire actions in order to effectively fight off a large horde.
  
• The effective angle of melee weapons seems to be roughly inverse to the speed of a weapon's reload. A tonfa's angle of effectiveness is relatively small, where an axe or baseball bat is fairly broad.

Shotgun

• Shotguns produce a wide spread of damage and knock back targets that the pellets strike. Fire shotguns slowly when battling common infected to conserve ammo and minimize the number of reloads needed during combat. Potentially even reload between each shot to force a slower shooting rate. You can easily defend a narrow tunnel alone this way.

Sniper/Hunting Rifle

• For all intents useless in Exp Realism :-) That said, if you like an extra challenge...

Machine Gun (AK-47, M-16, etc.)

• Short, controlled bursts will enhance accuracy

Magnum

• The one-shot kill

Grenade Launcher

• Gimme a G/L and a magnum, and I’ll have a good time. :-)

Special Infected

• When SI are near, don't advance into unknown areas. Hold your ground or retreat to an area where you have maximum visibility on the SI, and a longer distance to see and counter them.
  
• Pay attention to the recharge intervals of the SI. Once a boomer or smoker has attacked (and hopefully missed), you can pursue them as they are retreating and recharging without having to worry about getting hit with a primary attack.

Boomer

• If possible, melee punch the Boomer away before shooting/exploding it to avoid being boomed

Charger

• When you hear the Charger's roar that indicates he is charging, move. If you can tell where the Charger is coming from by the direction of the roar, move sideways from that path. Don't stop to look for the Charger, just move immediately.
  
• Retreat and strafe to the side when a Charger is charging you in order to give yourself more time to get out of its path.

Hunter

• When you see a Hunter is ready to pounce on you, begin melee punching right away so as to dead-stop the Hunter. Don't try to get in that last shot, just try to block the pounce.
  
• As you block the Hunter's pounce, move backward so the Hunter won't be likely to scratch you and do 40HP of damage.
  
• If you have a chainsaw, pointing it up in the air as the Hunter pounces may block the pounce and damage/kill the Hunter.
  
• Unless you are great at deadstopping a Hunter, it's safer to just sidestep the pounces and continue circle-strafing and firing at it until it's dead.
  
• After sidestepping the pounce, if you're close enough to the hunter you can sometimes melee them to throw them off from taking a second pounce, and then you can turn the tables on them.

Jockey

• Blocking a Jockey's leap is challenging, particularly if your connection is at all slow or your ping is in the higher end of the green range (above 80 or so). Basically, you have to time a leaping melee punch so you are as high as the Jockey when it leaps. If you can start your leap from a level higher than the Jockey (i.e. on a dock, step or ledge), that will make it easier to accomplish.
  
• If you have a chainsaw, pointing it up in the air as the Jockey pounces may block the pounce and damage/kill the Jockey.
  
• Don't advance towards a Jockey (unless they're in sight and you're ready to block their leap). Hold your ground or retreat to give you (and your teammates) more time to kill them.

Smoker

• If you know where the Smoker is, ducking out from behind cover and then ducking back right away may induce the Smoker to shoot its tongue at you but it will miss because you got out of range right away. Once the tongue has been shot, you can chase after the Smoker and kill it before it can recharge.

Spitter

• When you hear a Spitter spitting, move. If you don't see where the spit is going, assume that it is aimed at your location and move out of that spot.If you are reviving a fallen teammate, you can be virtually certain that the spit will be aimed at you and your teammate, so move right away.

Tank

• In Scavenge-style finales, consider the tactical advantage of leaving the Tank alive for as long as possible in order to reduce the number of CI that are spawned.If possible, one teammate can kite the Tank around the map so the other players can gather cans, etc. (example: one person leading the Tank around the white semi trailer at the end of the alley in The Passing finale while the rest of the team gathers & pours the gas)
  
• As a general rule, do not bile a Tank or throw bile while a Tank is active, the reason being that you may make things more difficult for yourself by having to deal with a horde at the same time, which could slow you down and allow the Tank to run you down. It should only be done as a last resort. A notable exception to this is when you just want to get past him and run (not necessarily killing him), or to distract him (i.e. the final tank of the finale of Hard Rain, when you're attempting to escape to Virgil's boat.)

Witch
It is not possible to crown a Witch in Exp Realism. Your options to deal with one are:

• avoiding her :-)
  
• burning her and running away until she dies from the fire
  
• setting her off and going into the safe room so she gives up on you (her cry will change when that happens)
  
• setting up a firing squad, with frag rounds for all and an M60 preferably
  
• using the “closed door” exploit. In Expert Realism, witches can’t break through doors, so if you light one on fire and go in a room with a closeable door (and close it), she’ll burn to death without being able to get to you. Alternatively, a teammate can shoot at her from outside the door, but they have to be careful not to shoot out the door for her. Using a melee weapon on her is far safer, faster and saves ammo too! If you’re careful, you may be able to shoot out part of the door and then shoot her through the hole you’ve made.
  
  (I don’t like using this exploit, as it breaks the small-R realism of the game for me. Same goes for rushing. In a real zombie apocalypse, there wouldn’t be just 30 zombies on the planet who kept re-appearing ahead of you as they were killed. There’d be 30,000 zombies spread over the whole landscape, so rushing ahead would just get you dead faster. Playing slowly and in control preserves the plausibility better for me. Having a creature with foot-long claws that can’t break through a door as she’s trying to disembowel you just isn’t plausible, so we try not to use it if there are other options.)

Postscript

That’s it for now. If you have any suggestions, additions or corrections, drop me a line and I’ll try to incorporate ‘em.

Thanks to Shad0WeN for helping out with this guide, and to the group of friends who show up day after day as we keep on saving our species from imminent destruction, one horde at a time.

[Hawk]

Another tip:

If you hear an indication of a Special spawn, draw your primary weapon, since they're generally better than secondary guns

[76561198802712428]

Nightstick is useful due to its fast swing speed, and if a teammate is incapacitated, a bile bomb can draw the infected away provided said teammate is not puked on by a Boomer, and if so, a pipe bomb will do the job, as pipe bombs will override puked on Survivors.

[ᴇɴᴄʟᴀᴠᴇ]

5 Years later and this guide is still useful.

[Saboteur60]

1) don't be there in the first place. Stay to the edges of open spaces. For example, on Swamp Fever, chapter 1 - after you cross the river on the boat, the bots are saying "Stay on the planks" or whatever, and that path takes you straight throught the middle of that area. I go left along the fence and get to that next cabin from its rear. Avoid the "obvious" paths and you'll find strategicly better ways to go - and probably find items strewn around that you wouldn't otherwise have run across.

2) use throwables (pipe, bile) to control where the horde goes, giving you a chance to get to a more defensible location

3) back-to-back defense. If you have a molly, use it to "cover" part of the area.

Usually the zombies are coming from one primary direction so a molly in the right place can signficantly cut down on the number of common you have to deal with.

[pocketaces]

Apologies if this sounds really stupid, but what would you do if in middle of progressing through the chapter, (preferably a open space), a huge ass horde appears? I know its like "find a corner, shoot and shove, camp there wif ur team and get thru tgt xd" its kind of troublesome getting downed 2 times because Zombies love flanking

[Saboteur60]

I'd have one player draw the tank away so the other can get the fallen teammates up. Then kite the tank around the white semi, hopefully getting it to run over the fire barrel and ignite (if you don't have a molly). Sometimes you just gotta start the map over and tip your cap to the director! :D

[pocketaces]

Also sabo, what would you do if a tank spawns and traps us in a enclosed area? Lets say The Parish Map 3 where the safe room's exit is just below the bridge, sometimes a tank will spawn and because of the small space, at least 2 of us will go down ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Saboteur60]

Its up to you and your teammates not to damage each other. You shouldn't be running out into their line-of-fire, and they shouldn't be shooting near you when you're taking on common with your melee. Of course melee weaps aren't good for SI, but that's why you have your primary and your teammates covering you (co-op, right?). But if a teammate is charged, then a melee is the best way to get them free.

[pocketaces]

Shad0, you recommend getting melee for Expert realism? I don't because
1. You get in the way of your mate's fire
2. Useless against most SI
3. Since you're in front, its likely a zombie will flank you from behind
But a melee is often a 1 hit kill compared to pistols and deagle so yeah idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[molten]

I feel I'm ready to skip expert from advanced, thank you for that guide :)