Coop Expert strategies

In an effort to up our game play level, here are some tips:

1) In expert mode, friendly fire is your worst enemy. Make one person the established leader (and point man). Where the leader goes, the other 3 follow. Know where your friends are at all times so that you are less likely to shoot them in the face.

2) Travel in a consistent formation. This will reduce friendly fire incidents a great deal, because you have an expectation of where your teammates are, even when you have to turn to shoot at a charging zombie. A commonly suggested formation is this:
The leader and a buddy travel crouched up front with assault rifles and/or shotguns. The other two travel standing with assault rifles and/or scoped rifles. This will allow the standing players to fire over the heads of the crouched, and the crouched can melee incoming hordes. Others suggest an offset diamond, with the point man crouched. Still others don't recommend a formation at all, but just to stay close. Either way, consistency of team member placement in relation to one another does seem to help a great deal.

3) If a teammate gets incapacitated, he should be close if you are doing your job. Friendly fire damage appears to be disabled when a teammate is incapacitated by a hunter or smoker, so blast away. But fire in short bursts so you don't damage your teammate when they are released.

4) If you are getting mobbed by the horde, crouch down so an assault rifle teammate can headshot the infected's heads around you. If your teammate is getting mobbed and you are close, jump in and start meleeing, shooting away from your teammate. 3 players can stand over a downed teammate, melee the horde off while shooting away from the center.

5) Follow a wall so you are not out in the open. You have less time to prepare for a horde in expert. The trick is to fall into an easily defenable location when the horde hits.

6) If you are indoors and a horde is building, let the leader (pointman) pick a place where your backs aren't vulnerable. If in a hallway or up against a wall, 2 crouch and 2 stand with the wall at your back, each set has a 90 degree arc of responsibility. If in a corner, each player has a 45 degree arc of responsibility. (Again, assuming no tank is around.) The best place to be (if there is no tank around) is a small room or closet. This strategy is frowned upon in versus, but used often in expert coop if the goal is to be slow-and-careful as opposed to speed runs.

7) If you see a hunter that is far away, gun him down. If the hunter is close, melee him away and then shoot while he is stunned. If you start to shoot a close and crouched hunter, he can pounce on you before you get enough shots in him.

8) TANKS - like the intro movie says "run or shoot?" - "both". The mass consensus seems to be this: If you have room to maneuver, every player has > 40 health and you are in a location where there are attractive places for the tank to climb (NM final, DA final, barn area on BH final), light the tank up with a molotov and run. Let the fire do its damage over time. Run around obstacles so the tank takes time to climb or throw. He will be faster when on fire, but again, if you have the space to offer him distractions, this is the way. If a teammate goes down from a tank fist, they are dead - don't try to save them (as much as it may pain you). Get distance on the tank with options for exit in case he comes after you and blast away. If your maneuverability options are not optimal for this or you can not run due to low health, do NOT light the tank on fire. The consensus is to run to a location where you can offer him distractions (like the rooftop crane area on DA). This seems to be the most debated strategy.

9) In each group, there should always be one person with a molotov (for strategy 8) and one with a pipe bomb (for surprise hordes in locations that are not optimal). Do not waste these assets in easy areas.

10) Don't burn through your health packs and pain pills. 20% or lower for health packs - some people will argue that you should be in the "black-n-white" before using a health pack. Since pain pills can be administered quickly, save them for when you need them - when a tank shows up or for a final sprint to the safe room.

11) Don't take a health pack if you have teammates there that need it more - or take it and heal them yourself when they get less than 20%. That means DO NOT heal up when you reach the safe room, then take another when the next round starts. Remember that keeping your friends alive keeps you alive.

12) Some experienced players asked to be team-killed near an exit safe room if their health is below 50%. They would prefer to die and be respawned with 50% health for the next section, as opposed to starting the next section with a low health and possibly needing to burn through a health pack. I myself think of this as an exploit of sorts (this wouldn't happen in real life, since there are no respawns), but others argue that there wouldn't be a zombie apocalypse in real life. If you are ok with this strategy, it can help your team be more successful.

from: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=809871

L4D - 3/12/09 patch

Updates to Left 4 Dead have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Versus Mode Changes

* Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
* Fixed Tank punch being able to hit targets behind walls
* Fixes to 'Tank parking'. The Tank will now run back and attack the Survivors if he becomes AI due to two players expiring the frustration meter
* Fixed a case where a Tank frustration meter could run out right as he was in his death animation and he would come back to life
* Fixed a case where the Tank was moving too slowly while crouching and being shot
* Tanks now have the possibility of spawning in a slightly different position for the first and second teams
* The order that the teams play as Survivors is now determined by which team has the higher overall score. The winning team will play as Survivors first
* The Smoker tongue can now target and grab victims through common infected
* Increased the cone in which a Smoker can grab a target
* The Witch no longer cuts Smoker tongues in a radius around her
* Boomers that explode in mid-air will now hit Survivors directly below them with Bile
* Reduced the damage that burning Hunters do to pounced victims
* Adjusted the time at which players take over from bots to avoid 5 seconds of the bot standing idle while the player finishes connecting.
* Fixed some cases where versus score was not being recalculated properly. It is no longer beneficial to pass pills between players at the end of the round or heal other players and then shoot them
* Fixed a case where it was possible to spectate an AI infected and hit +use to take them over



Server Changes

* Added convar sv_gametype that allows server operators to limit the types of games that will start on their server. Default value is 'coop,versus'. Can be changed to just 'coop' or just 'versus' to limit to those game types


General changes

* Fixed a case where players would join as a dead Survivor when a living Survivor was still available
* Fixed a case where restarting a level due to the team dying would give more than the max primary ammo on restart
* Fixed the speaking icon showing up on the local player during level transition if voice_vox was set to 1
* The scoreboard now shows the numeric value of a player's ping



GameUI

* Quick match will now try to match to any campaign. Removed the preference to match to games according to the player progressing through all campaigns
* Games in a finale are now joinable via the Friends and Steam Group games list

NEWS BREAK: Tank is faster on fire!

Watch more videos of Left 4 Dead

Day 6

Been away from a computer for a while up on the North Shore. We're back in Waikiki today and it's been a great day. Last couple days we were snorkeling in Shark's Cove, I played golf at Turtle Beach on the Palmer Course yesterday morning and then we went up to Waimea Falls yesterday afternoon. This has been such a great week. I'm a bit behind on pics but will try to get some up tonight or tomorrow morning. Today, Heather and I went back to Diamond Head and hiked up and down...twice. We then walked back thru Waikiki where we're staying. After second breakfast at IHOP, we walked up the 14 stories to Mom's flat; awesome workout!!

Day 3

Today we about got thwarted by weather but decided to not let it beat us. We went ahead and hiked Diamond Head. What a great day it turned out to be too. Still had to deal with some weather, but it was such a great hike. Not very long, only about a mile and a half, but quite a climb.

Cheerz!

Day 2

We had grand plans for some snorkeling in Hanauma Bay today but were thwarted by a rather large crowd. By the time we got out there it was closed out, and we were told we could keep driving back and forth till the parking lot opened. Instead we continued up the road and had a nice picnic on Waimanalo Beach. Water was still pretty cold and 20-30 mph winds were really pushing up the waves. After the picnic we went back to the house and got changed out for the Luau. We took Alaynah to a luau when she was 5 months old and thought she'd like it again. She loved it! She met the king early in the evening and when he saw her much later he addressed her by name. She was soooo excited! Couple pics for now, Tuesday will see the Sealife Park and Diamond Head, then hoping to get wet Wednesday at Shark's Cove then some golf at Turtle Bay on Thursday...hope the winds die down!

Cheerz!

Quick Pics...reef #1

Just a couple quick pics from the first reef of the week. Not the greatest vis, so I had to tweak them a bit to bring out the colors. This was a freedive right off the beach in front of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Rainbow Tower. Water is chilly, but you get used to it.

Cheerz!

Checking in from beautiful Hawaii

Greetz all,

SupahG33K checking in from my Mum's flat in fantastic Waikiki. We're a few minutes walk from the beach here so I'll get some more pics out as the week progresses. Lot's to do and we're so excited to be here.

Cheerz!