How to Play Contagion Properly and Not Be An Idiot

I've played this game for a good bit of time, and I have to say I know it pretty well. So instead of rewriting the keybinds I'm going to assume you know the basics of how to play the game and give you some tips that might help you die slightly less often.

Tip #1: Don't Shoot Riot Zombies ... except with a Garand or Shotgun

So many times I will play this game and people will see the riot zombie and will do one of the following:

• If they have an AR-15, they will open fire into it, and on normal mode they will kill it in 30 shots or so and it will die. Not the optimal method but it works.
  
• They'll shoot the riot zombie with their Sig or 1911. No. Just stop that.
  
• They will bash the riot zombie with their gun, dealing barely any damage and getting themselves hurt unnecessarily.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that you ought to be able to get up behind the riot with a knife and press V and stick your knife under its helmet to kill it. Would be some nice teamwork: one of you distracts the riot, and the other sneaks up and takes it out. But that didn't happen. So, we must play by their rules.

Rule 1: If you don't have a Garand or a Shotgun, it is not your job to kill the riot zombie. Do not shoot at it. You are wasting your ammo. Look at the picture below.

See the 9mm and .45 ACP rounds? That's what your Sig and 1911 are firing. See the .30-06 round? That's what the Garand is firing. Now, normally when you are killing zombies, it doesn't matter what round you are shooting, because you're taking them out with a headshot. But the Riot Zombie is a straight damage sponge. Thus, using a pistol on him is a waste of ammo. Use a Garand or a Shotgun. One full load (8 garand rounds or 6 shotgun shells) will be enough to take him down. Oh, and a BLR fires the same ammo, so it works fine too. So does the Remington 700, if you don't mind reloading halfway through.

But the Garand is flat-out the best way to kill the riot. Look at it this way: there are X bullets on the map, and Y zombies you need to kill. If X < Y and you can't find a melee weapon, you're in trouble. That AR-15 magazine you just dumped into the riot? That could have killed 30 zombies. More like 15 to 20 realistically speaking, but still. The 8 Garand shots? That's 8 zombies max. Now, you may wonder why I don't say the shotgun, when it holds only 6 shells. That should be more efficient, right? Wrong. The shotgun is great to aim into a horde, as you can kill 1, 2, 3, or more zombies with a single shot. That's because the shotgun is really firing a bunch of small bullets at once. So I rate a single shotgun load at killing 10 zombies on average, at least for me personally. But, both work.

This, my friends, is how you kill the Riot (video is really dark, sorry):

Rule 2: If you don't have a Garand or a Shotgun, run away. There are other, better ways to take care of him. First off, the Riot zombie responds positively to attention. Shoot him once in the back and he will likely follow you. If you can lead him into a room, circle around and lock him in, you've bought yourself time to run away. If not, you can have one team member who knows what they are doing, lead the riot away while the rest of the group moves forward to find a weapon to deal with the riot. But honestly, sometimes you don't even have to deal with him. Get far enough ahead, and he'll forget about you.

Rule 3: If you are not the person shooting the Riot Zombie, cover the person who is. Whoever is taking on the Riot should be moving backward slowly, putting shots into its body one by one. If a zombie pops up behind them, they either need to run and switch weapons to deal with it, or panic-fire and waste one of their rifle rounds, or get killed. Help cover the riot killer so he can focus on his job.

Rule 4: If you are in trouble, use your AR-15. It's not optimal, but it's the only other weapon you should consider using on a Riot zombie.

Rule 5: If you are playing on Hard mode, it's going to take more ammo If you are shooting a riot with pistols on Normal, you're just not being smart. But if you're doing it on Hard, you might as well chuck your ammo and gun off the map and beat on the thing with your phone. The Riot takes not one, but two loads of ammo from the shotguns or rifles, on Hard mode. So, please do not use the AR-15 at this point. That's 40 to 60 bullets down the drain for no good reason. It's really worth leading off the riot somewhere if you can.

Rule 5: If you are playing on Extreme mode, treat the Riot Zombie like it's immortal It's not, but it's going to take so much ammo to kill it that taking one on is going to drastically decrease your chances of getting out of the level. If you even have enough ammo to kill it. Treat the Riot as the warden in a prison breakout: you can't take him out, only evade him. A good example is the basement of the Biotec level. There's liable to be a riot down there. If you keep moving and clear out the rest of the zombies, you can lead it in a circle through the labs and outer hallway, while other players push the buttons and get the cure.

So that's one of my tips, and probably the longest one. Basically, the riot zombie is a damage sponge, and the Garand has the most anti-riot potential per bullet. Use it for its job. You have a Garand? Save it, because there will probably be a riot zombie up ahead.

Tip #2: Do not use the machete, fireaxe, or knife

Melee weapons in Contagion are awfully fiddly. Here's the deal: bludgeoning weapons are god. The rest just kind of suck. Here's how you should respond to each weapon:

• Sledgehammer: God-tier
  
• Baseball Bats: Awesome-tier.
  
• Golf club: Also awesome
  
• Wrench: Yes.
  
• Machete: Maybe
  
• Fireaxe: No.
  
• Kabar Knife: Hell no.

Now, there are some modifiers here. If you are playing on Easy Mode, the knife will kill in one stab, so you might as well use it. Usually though it takes two stabs unless you can somehow aim for the head properly. I can't, so I don't use it. If you are using melee, you are exposing yourself to being hit, and thus infected. So don't take risks. Now, you can have fun with the Kabar by going up behind a zombie and hitting V and watching that cool assassination animation as you can see in the picture. But other than that, the Kabar is fairly useless.
The machete isn't actually bad, it's just a bit fiddly to use. The bludgeoning weapons are fairly forgiving: so long as you swing at approximately headlevel, you're good. The fireaxe you need to aim up a slight bit, and learning it takes way longer than it's worth, in my opinion. You do get the reward of chopping off heads with the machete and fireaxe, though. And they have pretty good stealth kill animations. Which has got to be proof of some Law of Contagion: how useful a melee weapon is, is inversely proportional to how cool its stealth kill animation is. But I digress.

Some other things:

• If someone is using a melee weapon, and you are playing on Hard or Extreme mode (i.e. friendly fire is turned on), DO NOT GET CLOSE TO THEM.There is nothing more annoying than going to kill a zombie and having some guy pop his head in trying to shoot it or something else, and having to hold back on swinging so you don't lop his head off, and as a result getting hit yourself. It's obnoxious, don't do it. Also don't shoot at the zombies: you either hit and throw off the melee player's timing, or you miss and hit the player, damaging him. Just leave him / her alone and go after the other zombies. There are bound to be plenty of them.
  
• If you don't know how to use melee weapons, here's how. Hold down right click to wind up, waiting until the zombie gets close, then let go right as they draw into range. It will take some practice. Load up a singleplayer map, preferrably Camp Whitner (or any map and just turn on sv_cheats 1) and play around a bit with the melees until you get a feel for them.
  
• Melee weapons don't use ammo. If there is a zombie standing there alone, don't waste a bullet, try to take it out with melee. If there are more than three or four, or they are tightly packed, you may not want to do this.
  
• Do NOT melee riots unless you (1) know what you're doing, (2) know that it is almost dead (i.e. 7 out of 8 garand shots hit it), or (3) are playing Easy mode, in which case you don't need any of this advice anyways.
  
• Move around while you melee zombies, get into a rhythm of dealing with them one at a time. Get used to how fast they move. If two are coming at you at once, move so that one is closer than the other. Don't be afraid to disengage, and always look over your shoulder every few seconds to be sure you can.
  
• If you screw up a swing, jump back, then turn and sprint away. After that, you can recollect yourself and get ready to hit him again.

Hopefully this helps people be less stupid with melee weapons.

Tip #3: Stop wasting ammo [and how to aim]

I don't know how many players of Contagion have read the Zombie Survival Guide book by Max Brooks. A lot of it is wrong and stupid but one thing it got right: don't use full-auto fire on zombies. Why? It's a fantastic way to waste ammunition.

But there's more to it than that. A lot of players think they are playing some other kind of game with near-unlimited ammo, and as a result they blow 4 or 5 rounds on a single zombie. Or try to shoot a zombie at the other end of a hallway with their pistol.

After you shoot your gun, it doesn't recover from the recoil for about a full two seconds. I've watched it. It takes about that long to settle back down to aim. So during that time, your shot is going to be a bit off. So, don't shoot until you're ready. Don't shoot until they are close. And for god's sake please stop using automatic fire in any but the most desperate situations.

Now, I know aiming in this game is hard. You need to hit a tiny moving target to kill each enemy. That said, there are ways to help you hit more easily:

• Wait until the zombie is close. The farther away it is, the smaller the target. 15 to 20 feet away is the optimal distance to shoot zombies.
  
• Wait until the zombie is moving straight toward you. If it's going after someone else, it's going to be moving laterally to you. Thus, moving target, rather than one steadily growing larger. Try to avoid shooting these. If you have to, lead the zombie a bit and wait until its head wanders in front of your sights, instead of trying to follow it with your sights and deal with your reaction time throwing off the shot.
  
• Strafe to microcorrect. That is, if you are aiming at a far away zombie, and your sensitivity is high (or even fairly low), it might jump to either side of the zombies head with the slightest twitch. Instead, you can strafe (move back and forth with A and D keys) to line up the shot with even more precision. I could draw a diagram to show how it works, but if you envision it in your head and think about it, it makes sense.
  
• If you are using an AR-15 or MP5 or god-forbid the tec9, TAP FIRE. This means tap the mouse really quick, like the button's a hot stove. This will fire a single shot. Until the developers add select fire (which will be never because they don't want to), this is your best chance of using an automatic effectively. In trouble? Do rapid tapping. It will use ammo less rapidly than full auto fire, and will be a bit more accurate, while still putting out that volume of lead you need in a tight situation.

So, that's all to this guide for now. I might add more later on if I feel like it. Maybe a section for how to play Hunted. I hope this helps you get better at playing Contagion.

[tenduril]

Thanks. I mostly made it because I was getting frustrating in multiplayer.

[EnderMega]

Some stuff may be outdated but still a good guide :D, one of the few that is actually usefull.

[tenduril]

Yeah this guide is completely out of date now. I'm not sure I like the fact that you can just shank zombies to death effortlessly like this is the Walking Dead or something where no one uses any weapon but a knife to stab through an (admittedly-rotting) human skull, but it is what it is. Knife used to suck, it's probably god-tier now. Last time I played I remember it being pretty strong.

This guide is 7 years old soon...time flies.

[DeeNaxic]

In my opinion, the knife is as good as any other weapon. For all my solo extreme difficulty - speed runs, I more or less just use the knife. It's always an instant kill, if you remember to aim towards the upper torso.

[EnderMega]

I do think the Fire axe is a good melee, but anyway, actually a good guide.
Just a last tip, learn the weapons sights, most of them are not really acurate, for example I studied the bow, and DAMN the sight is inacurate as heck.
+ always melee and immediately back up.

[Liam McManly]

Still a better tutorial than the game's tutorial. XD

[tenduril]

Yeah I should probably remake this guide honestly.

[midgetpounder1999]

coming back months later, i think kabar knife is close to god tier now. you can use left click an infinite amount of times even when stamina is out.

[Liam McManly]

I had guessed that, I just wanted to add that for anyone else who came here for help like I did. ^_^

[tenduril]

That's a new feature, they added it since I made this guide.