G
Grape
Guest
I wrote this up this afternoon. Please feel free to add anything.
WEAPON TIPS & TRICKS
Difficulty Levels:
* Not difficult
** Not difficult but takes some practice to be able to do in a fight
*** Takes lots of practice to be able to do at all
**** Seems impossible at first
- Not applicable
GENERAL INFO
Aiming
These aiming tips apply mostly to weapons like the 357, crossbow, and shotgun (and pistol if that's all you've got), where one well-placed hit is very powerful.
** When aiming for a moving target, rather than try to move and hit the target directly, place your crosshair where you think the target will be in an instant, then shoot when it arrives at that point.
** A variation on the above: placing your crosshair where it will need to be when you've moved in some way. For example, when dodging fire during a fight, if you're bunnyhopping around you'll be in a crouch position at some point. In that instant, aim at your opponent, but not at the head. Aim for where you think the head would be if you were standing or in the middle of a hop (practice this with a friend). When you're no longer crouching, execute a perfect headshot. Err on the low side so that if you're slightly off, you'll still get a shot to the body.
Auto-Reload
* All weapons except the smg and ar2 will automatically reload when you aren't using them, so rarely should you reload while in a fight -- you should be switching between weapons so you aren't wasting time reloading. See special notes for ar2 and smg.
Headshots
Most weapons deal more damage to your opponent if you hit him in the head. A notable exception is the crossbow.
Using Zoom
* More accurate distance shots can be made using zoom. Hold zoom, press and hold fire, choose your target, then release zoom to fire. This is most often used for sniping with the mag, but can also be useful at times for other weapons like the ar2 and the pistol (shooting explosive barrels), and for guiding the rpg.
Weapon Muting
* Pressing the flashlight at the same time as firing these weapons will mute their sound: ar2 secondary fire, pistol, shotgun, and 357. (You can press flashlight with other weapons but they have a continuous sound so it makes no difference.) This will give you an advantage over someone who would have been able to react if they had heard your shot. Good for orbing someone from behind (could have turned to see you then tried to dodge), or, for instance, killing snipers on the battlements in 2fort by approaching them from the side (doesn't alert the rest of the snipers waiting to die at your hands).
INDIVIDUAL WEAPONS IN-DEPTH (Alphabetical Order)
357 (Magnum)
Most of the tips for the 357 were explained at the top.
AR2 (Pulse Rifle)
** Shoot an orb, then quickly switch to the grav gun and use secondary fire to catch the orb.
** Shoot an orb, then quickly switch to the grav gun and use primary fire to zap the orb, giving it a boost of speed. This makes the orb much harder to dodge or catch and allows it to cover more space and bounch more often before it expires.
- You cannot shoot an orb while you are reloading your primary ammunition, so run a clip empty only when you don't intend to orb someone.
- As mentioned, this weapon won't automatically reload. Unlike with the smg, you don't want to empty a clip then put this weapon away and reload it afterwards when you get a chance. If you've got to use a lot of this weapon at once, only go so far as to nearly empty it, so you can still get to an orb right away if you need to.
- Orbs don't follow a straight path, but curve slightly towards your enemies.
** Defence: Orbs can be caught with the grav gun. Fast orbs are much harder to catch (****).
** Defence: If an opponent is holding an orb in the grav gun, zap the orb with your own grav gun. This will give you ownership of the orb and it will kill your opponent, not you, if he releases it again (without catching it or zapping it again himself).
* Indirect orb hits are usually much easier to get than direct ones, especially if you are not bothering to fast-orb. Bounce orbs off walls.
* If your opponent seems adept at catching or deflecting orbs, fire more than one.
Crossbow
** Study the maps you play most to find useful ricochet shots, then employ them during fights. If you can predict where your opponent is but you can't see them (they can't see you
, these are especially useful.
** Fire ahead of moving targets, predicting where they will be by the time your bolt reaches them.
* Put a SLAM on the ground and stand directly over it, then fire the crossbow at the slam. The bolt will move very slowly away from it in the direction your were facing. You can set a highly impractical trap for an opponent you know will be coming around a corner soon, but not too soon: drop a SLAM and fire off a few slow bolts spaced closely together to meet him when he arrives.
Crowbar/Stunstick
- The crowbar deals less damage than the stunstick (25 vs 40) and has a shorter reach, but can be swung more frequently. So the crobar is better for keeping in close, relentlessly hacking away at your opponent, whereas the stunstick is more of a one-hit wonder because of the time between stikes.
Frag (Grenade)
** Toss a grenade with secondary fire, then quickly switch to the grav gun and use secondary fire to catch the nade. Wait for a time, then throw the grenade when you think it will explode exactly when it reaches your opponent. This is called cooking.
** Defence: If someone simply tosses or throws a grenade at you, it is usually very easy to capture it in your gravity gun before it explodes. This resets the timer on the nade, allowing you to treat it as your own and cook it as above.
** Defence: Sometimes the nade is so near to exploding that it would go off before you could pull it to you with your grav gun, or sometimes you just don't want to use the nade. In these cases you can use the primary fire of your grav gun to deflect it. This applies to cooked grenades, which you will usually be unable to catch unless they are very undercooked.
** If you opponent seems adept at deflecting cooked nades, hold it a hair longer than normal so it explodes before he can hit it with his grav gun.
* Defence: If you are close enough, rush an opponent who's going to fire a cooked nade at you. They'll either get rid of it or they'll inflict damage on themselves as well as on you.
*** Countering the above defence: So they rush you while your cooking a nade. Let them, just keep a cool head an dodge whatever they're pummeling you with. Don't get rid of the nade, time it to explode behind them, still close enough to cause them damage but far enough away that the damage you take is minimal. Finish with ar2, shotgun, or smg.
- You can judge how close to exploding a grenade is by how quickly it is ticking.
Physcannon (Gravity Gun)
* Stand on an object and hit is with the primary fire. It will propel you into the air.
**** Hold a prop aimed slightly downwards towards the ground so it's forced beneath the surface a bit (the angle will depend on the size of the prop), run (not sprint) forwards, let go of the prop, wait a bit (keep moving), jump. You will fly.
*** Holding a prop, orb, or nade, fire it away from you, then quickly switch to another weapon and back to grav gun again, then use secondary fire on the object to re-catch it. The weapon switch must be preformed extremely rapidly or you will not succeed making the catch. This technique is useful for resetting the timer on nades and orbs (hitting enemies with the same orb indefinitely), and for confusing your opponent. It is called yoyoing.
*** When collecting inventory items from hard-to-reach places by picking them up with the grav gun, there is a delay between each secondary fire (about half a second). If you use the yoyo technique to switch away from the grav gun and back again between each pickup (again, extremely rapidly), you can shorten this time, possibly making the difference between killing and dying in some situations.
** The timer on a nade can also be reset by simply dropping the nade and picking it up again. This isn't very useful, though.
Pistol
- For setting off explosive barrels, use your pistol instead of other weapons in maps where ammo is scarce.
RPG
- Conserve rpg ammo by using only one rocket per opponent, finishing with the ar2, shotgun, or smg, or even the crowbar or pistol.
* Aim for the ground, wall, or ceiling (depending on the situation) in the general area of an opponent who is jumping around alot, rather than trying for a direct hit. The splash will damage him a lot and allow you to move in for the finish.
- To make aiming easier, get above your opponent when you can. If firing from the same level as your opponent, flick your mouse down when you think the rocket has reached him.
* Defence: Rush an opponent who is using an rpg. This will make them less willing to fire it, and will damage them as well as you if they do decide to use it.
** Defence: Intercept or block incoming shots with physics props. If you can put a table between you and a rocket, especially if you get the rocket by throwing the table rather than just holding it, you'll significantly reduce the damage you take.
** Practice trick shots in maps you play often, such as guiding your rocket around corners and other obstacles. Sometimes really large flicks of the mouse are needed.
** Learn to judge how far your rocket has travelled so you can time your mouse flicks well.
* Fire a rocket into a pool of water, then repeatedly guide it in and out of the water without letting it hit anything. The water will eventually slow the rocket to about the same speed as a crossbow bolt shot from a slam. Not useful.
Shotgun
- Two single shots (primary fire) deal more damage than one double (secondary fire).
SLAM
* See crossbow trick.
* Attach a SLAM to a prop, then remove the prop and the SLAM will remain floating, making it less visible to the unsuspecting.
SMG
- Like the ar2, this weapon does not have auto-reload. However, secondary fire (contact nade) still works even when you're reloading, so you don't need to worry about timing reloads to when you do not want to use a nade. Secondary fire does interrupt the reload, though.
- - -
WEAPON TIPS & TRICKS
Difficulty Levels:
* Not difficult
** Not difficult but takes some practice to be able to do in a fight
*** Takes lots of practice to be able to do at all
**** Seems impossible at first
- Not applicable
GENERAL INFO
Aiming
These aiming tips apply mostly to weapons like the 357, crossbow, and shotgun (and pistol if that's all you've got), where one well-placed hit is very powerful.
** When aiming for a moving target, rather than try to move and hit the target directly, place your crosshair where you think the target will be in an instant, then shoot when it arrives at that point.
** A variation on the above: placing your crosshair where it will need to be when you've moved in some way. For example, when dodging fire during a fight, if you're bunnyhopping around you'll be in a crouch position at some point. In that instant, aim at your opponent, but not at the head. Aim for where you think the head would be if you were standing or in the middle of a hop (practice this with a friend). When you're no longer crouching, execute a perfect headshot. Err on the low side so that if you're slightly off, you'll still get a shot to the body.
Auto-Reload
* All weapons except the smg and ar2 will automatically reload when you aren't using them, so rarely should you reload while in a fight -- you should be switching between weapons so you aren't wasting time reloading. See special notes for ar2 and smg.
Headshots
Most weapons deal more damage to your opponent if you hit him in the head. A notable exception is the crossbow.
Using Zoom
* More accurate distance shots can be made using zoom. Hold zoom, press and hold fire, choose your target, then release zoom to fire. This is most often used for sniping with the mag, but can also be useful at times for other weapons like the ar2 and the pistol (shooting explosive barrels), and for guiding the rpg.
Weapon Muting
* Pressing the flashlight at the same time as firing these weapons will mute their sound: ar2 secondary fire, pistol, shotgun, and 357. (You can press flashlight with other weapons but they have a continuous sound so it makes no difference.) This will give you an advantage over someone who would have been able to react if they had heard your shot. Good for orbing someone from behind (could have turned to see you then tried to dodge), or, for instance, killing snipers on the battlements in 2fort by approaching them from the side (doesn't alert the rest of the snipers waiting to die at your hands).
INDIVIDUAL WEAPONS IN-DEPTH (Alphabetical Order)
357 (Magnum)
Most of the tips for the 357 were explained at the top.
AR2 (Pulse Rifle)
** Shoot an orb, then quickly switch to the grav gun and use secondary fire to catch the orb.
** Shoot an orb, then quickly switch to the grav gun and use primary fire to zap the orb, giving it a boost of speed. This makes the orb much harder to dodge or catch and allows it to cover more space and bounch more often before it expires.
- You cannot shoot an orb while you are reloading your primary ammunition, so run a clip empty only when you don't intend to orb someone.
- As mentioned, this weapon won't automatically reload. Unlike with the smg, you don't want to empty a clip then put this weapon away and reload it afterwards when you get a chance. If you've got to use a lot of this weapon at once, only go so far as to nearly empty it, so you can still get to an orb right away if you need to.
- Orbs don't follow a straight path, but curve slightly towards your enemies.
** Defence: Orbs can be caught with the grav gun. Fast orbs are much harder to catch (****).
** Defence: If an opponent is holding an orb in the grav gun, zap the orb with your own grav gun. This will give you ownership of the orb and it will kill your opponent, not you, if he releases it again (without catching it or zapping it again himself).
* Indirect orb hits are usually much easier to get than direct ones, especially if you are not bothering to fast-orb. Bounce orbs off walls.
* If your opponent seems adept at catching or deflecting orbs, fire more than one.
Crossbow
** Study the maps you play most to find useful ricochet shots, then employ them during fights. If you can predict where your opponent is but you can't see them (they can't see you
, these are especially useful. ** Fire ahead of moving targets, predicting where they will be by the time your bolt reaches them.
* Put a SLAM on the ground and stand directly over it, then fire the crossbow at the slam. The bolt will move very slowly away from it in the direction your were facing. You can set a highly impractical trap for an opponent you know will be coming around a corner soon, but not too soon: drop a SLAM and fire off a few slow bolts spaced closely together to meet him when he arrives.
Crowbar/Stunstick
- The crowbar deals less damage than the stunstick (25 vs 40) and has a shorter reach, but can be swung more frequently. So the crobar is better for keeping in close, relentlessly hacking away at your opponent, whereas the stunstick is more of a one-hit wonder because of the time between stikes.
Frag (Grenade)
** Toss a grenade with secondary fire, then quickly switch to the grav gun and use secondary fire to catch the nade. Wait for a time, then throw the grenade when you think it will explode exactly when it reaches your opponent. This is called cooking.
** Defence: If someone simply tosses or throws a grenade at you, it is usually very easy to capture it in your gravity gun before it explodes. This resets the timer on the nade, allowing you to treat it as your own and cook it as above.
** Defence: Sometimes the nade is so near to exploding that it would go off before you could pull it to you with your grav gun, or sometimes you just don't want to use the nade. In these cases you can use the primary fire of your grav gun to deflect it. This applies to cooked grenades, which you will usually be unable to catch unless they are very undercooked.
** If you opponent seems adept at deflecting cooked nades, hold it a hair longer than normal so it explodes before he can hit it with his grav gun.
* Defence: If you are close enough, rush an opponent who's going to fire a cooked nade at you. They'll either get rid of it or they'll inflict damage on themselves as well as on you.
*** Countering the above defence: So they rush you while your cooking a nade. Let them, just keep a cool head an dodge whatever they're pummeling you with.
Don't get rid of the nade, time it to explode behind them, still close enough to cause them damage but far enough away that the damage you take is minimal. Finish with ar2, shotgun, or smg.- You can judge how close to exploding a grenade is by how quickly it is ticking.
Physcannon (Gravity Gun)
* Stand on an object and hit is with the primary fire. It will propel you into the air.
**** Hold a prop aimed slightly downwards towards the ground so it's forced beneath the surface a bit (the angle will depend on the size of the prop), run (not sprint) forwards, let go of the prop, wait a bit (keep moving), jump. You will fly.
*** Holding a prop, orb, or nade, fire it away from you, then quickly switch to another weapon and back to grav gun again, then use secondary fire on the object to re-catch it. The weapon switch must be preformed extremely rapidly or you will not succeed making the catch. This technique is useful for resetting the timer on nades and orbs (hitting enemies with the same orb indefinitely), and for confusing your opponent. It is called yoyoing.
*** When collecting inventory items from hard-to-reach places by picking them up with the grav gun, there is a delay between each secondary fire (about half a second). If you use the yoyo technique to switch away from the grav gun and back again between each pickup (again, extremely rapidly), you can shorten this time, possibly making the difference between killing and dying in some situations.
** The timer on a nade can also be reset by simply dropping the nade and picking it up again. This isn't very useful, though.
Pistol
- For setting off explosive barrels, use your pistol instead of other weapons in maps where ammo is scarce.
RPG
- Conserve rpg ammo by using only one rocket per opponent, finishing with the ar2, shotgun, or smg, or even the crowbar or pistol.
* Aim for the ground, wall, or ceiling (depending on the situation) in the general area of an opponent who is jumping around alot, rather than trying for a direct hit. The splash will damage him a lot and allow you to move in for the finish.
- To make aiming easier, get above your opponent when you can. If firing from the same level as your opponent, flick your mouse down when you think the rocket has reached him.
* Defence: Rush an opponent who is using an rpg. This will make them less willing to fire it, and will damage them as well as you if they do decide to use it.
** Defence: Intercept or block incoming shots with physics props. If you can put a table between you and a rocket, especially if you get the rocket by throwing the table rather than just holding it, you'll significantly reduce the damage you take.
** Practice trick shots in maps you play often, such as guiding your rocket around corners and other obstacles. Sometimes really large flicks of the mouse are needed.
** Learn to judge how far your rocket has travelled so you can time your mouse flicks well.
* Fire a rocket into a pool of water, then repeatedly guide it in and out of the water without letting it hit anything. The water will eventually slow the rocket to about the same speed as a crossbow bolt shot from a slam. Not useful.
Shotgun
- Two single shots (primary fire) deal more damage than one double (secondary fire).
SLAM
* See crossbow trick.
* Attach a SLAM to a prop, then remove the prop and the SLAM will remain floating, making it less visible to the unsuspecting.
SMG
- Like the ar2, this weapon does not have auto-reload. However, secondary fire (contact nade) still works even when you're reloading, so you don't need to worry about timing reloads to when you do not want to use a nade. Secondary fire does interrupt the reload, though.
- - -
