10 tips for Back 4 Blood that will make you a better player

 Back 4 Blood has started. You don't want to be the team's noob? Then we have 10 tips for you here that will make you a better team member.

Back 4 Blood is a zombie shooter, but those who just shoot wildly will not be successful on the higher - and more fun - levels of difficulty. So that you are well prepared for the start of the co-op carnage, we have 10 tips for you that will automatically make you better team members and achieve more successes.

The tips are basically suitable for all levels of difficulty, but are particularly useful on "Nightmare" and "Veteran".

1. Communication is the be-all and end-all

Back 4 Blood is a co-op game and only those who act as a team will be able to achieve success on the higher levels of difficulty.

Continuous communication with your team members is therefore essential. The best way to do this is via voice chat. Talk about your strategy before the round and assign rough roles. Who will buy a Molotov? Who wants to be a close combat fighter? Is there enough money for a team upgrade?

But regardless of whether you use voice chat or not, you should always use the ping system (PC standard: Q). You use it to mark all sorts of things in the game. Do you see a special infected person? Marks it with a ping. You found a cool weapon with a great upgrade that you don't need? Just mark it.

As long as you don't spam the button continuously, your character always says a little saying about what you've discovered.

So you can quickly pass on important information to the team without having to use the voice chat.

2. Build your own decks to increase your chances

Back 4 Blood's card system does not go down well with all veterans, but it is an integral part of the game. After you have mastered your first games and unlocked new cards, you should urgently invest a few minutes in building your own decks.

The standard deck is sufficient for the first matches, but later you will want to customize yourself further. Do you focus on melee weapons? Or do you prefer a supporter who heals particularly efficiently and can carry more healing items with you? How well can you handle trauma damage and how much ammo can your character carry?

All of this and much more can be customized through maps. So if you have a few minutes to breathe between the individual runs, then prepare several decks for different play styles.

It takes a little to warm up to the system - but once you get used to it, it increases the fun of the game and your own benefit for the group.

By the way: You always draw the cards in a fixed order. How you arrange the cards in the deck completely decides which card you are offered first and which last in the game. There is no random factor here. 

3. Birds can be killed

Already in the first missions you have to deal with flocks of birds. These are small, annoying dots distributed more or less randomly on the map. If birds are startled - for example by a shot near them or because a player is walking through them, they fly into the sky, screeching and alerting a horde.

You can simply bypass the swarms and avoid them, but then run the risk of a shot going in the wrong direction and causing an unpleasant surprise later.

Better, however: you can kill the swarm. If your group acts in a coordinated manner and opens fire at the same time, you can catch all of the birds before they soar high into the sky and alert the horde.

Alternatively, you can just throw a hand grenade or a Molotov cocktail at the birds to kill them immediately.

Please don't ask now why a flock of birds scares a horde, but not a hand grenade - you won't get into the next safe room with logic. 

4. You can trick alarm doors

Some doors in Back 4 Blood appear as special "alarm doors" that draw attention to them with a red symbol. If they are opened or smashed by a player, a loud alarm sounds that attracts a horde.

You can, however, trick the alarm doors. With a toolkit you can bypass the security and open the door without an alarm.

However, it is even more efficient to let the zombies do the work. If there are zombies behind the closed alarm door, you can simply lure them with a noise - usually a few shots are enough.

The zombies then smash the door and destroy it without activating the alarm.

Again: don't ask why that is. Do you want to survive? 

5. Copper is a team resource - use it that way

There is one primary currency in Back 4 Blood: copper. You will find this again and again in the levels and get it as a bonus if you are particularly quick or complete secondary goals.

With copper you buy weapons, ammunition, healing - pretty much everything there is. Each player has his own copper supply, but you should always share it brotherly (or sisterly).

This is especially true for the particularly expensive team upgrades. They grant more equipment slots for the whole group or increase the effectiveness of equipment.

But even if a teammate has too little copper to fully equip himself - help him and give him coins so that every player starts the new game optimally.

At the latest, when the friendly Holly saves your bum with the very Molotov that she could only buy with your donation, you will see it as a good investment.

In the end the question remains anyway: What use are the 3,000 coppers that you have accumulated but can no longer spend because your team has been wiped out and the last “continue” has been used up?

6. Always have a tool kit on the team

You should heed this rule right from the first card: Do not leave the Saferoom until you have made sure that at least one player has bought a tool kit.

In (almost) every map there is one or more locked rooms that can only be opened with a tool kit. These rooms are a true loot paradise, often contain powerful weapons, often cards for the whole team and often more copper per person than the tool kit cost.

Occasionally there is even a healing station in the rooms so that players can refresh their health points.

Tool kits are worth every single copper coin as long as you use them for the bonus rooms.

7. Uses different types of weapons

Even if you can stock up on a lot of ammunition in the safe room, it becomes a rare commodity after the first 100 meters at the latest.

So don't hesitate to ask your team about ammunition. After all, all characters can carry all types of ammunition and place them on the floor if necessary so that another cleaner can use them.

For this to work, it's important that you all use different weapons. If the whole team only consists of 4 shotguns, then you're guaranteed to run out of breath halfway through the map.

A well-mixed team, in which no weapon type occurs more than twice, simply has a lot more and sustained firepower. 

8. Leave the safe room quickly

Before you open the door of the safe room, you are completely safe in it. You can shop to your heart's content and plan the strategy.

But the seconds immediately after opening the door of the safe room are crucial. As a rule, shortly after leaving, you lure a number of zombies, along with a few specially infected people.

Should you withdraw into the safe room, a single tall boy can ensure that the whole team is quickly in the mud.

So only let yourself fall back into the safe room if there is really no other option - many games end in the first few seconds and there are often much better positions not far from the safe room to take a stand against the zombies.

There are exceptions to this rule. Particularly large safe rooms can be a nice retreat. The smaller the room, the sooner you should avoid taking a long stand there.

9. Whoever goes ahead crouches

At the lowest difficulty levels, “friendly fire” is not a big problem - but it is a big problem at the higher levels. In order to avoid as much fire at each other as possible, you should heed a very simple rule:

If you go ahead in narrow areas, you move crouched.

The other players can easily shoot over the front man while the crouched player cleans up with a melee weapon, for example.

Basically, it is good to have relatively “fixed positions” in the team, i.e. who is ahead and who is at the bottom. Then it rarely happens that you run through a comrade and shoot 80 life points away from the shotgun with one shot. 

10. Medi-kits have become more valuable

Not that much has changed in Back 4 Blood between beta and launch - most of it is fine-tuning.

A particularly important change, however, affects the healing item "Medi-Kit" and bandages that survivors can carry with them. Both are now able to heal trauma damage, as long as the items have been upgraded through a team upgrade. As a result, you should in most cases prefer a medi-kit to other healing items, such as pills.

Trauma damage is extremely corrosive, especially on the highest difficulty, and any opportunity to regenerate these health points will bring you one step closer to victory.

With these tips you should be well equipped for higher levels of difficulty and be able to slowly but surely beat your way through the maps.

Do you have any other tips that you should consider as a Back 4 Blood player? Tell us your tricks and tips in the comments!