Back 4 Blood, the new cooperative FPS from Turtle Rock Studios which is not called Left 4 Dead 3, is preparing to open its recruiting campaign for fresh troops. Based on our experience during the beta and early access, we offer you our survival guide to get your Cleaner career off to a good start. Welcome to Fort Hope, recruits!
Whether it's choosing your Cleaner, your gear, your deck of cards, or the Infected to face, there's a lot to remember in order to survive. So arm yourself with your gray matter and a pen to take a few notes, before ending up in the flesh for the monsters waiting for you outside!
Cleaner: a good or a bad situation?
When the game is launched, it invites you to start a first solo game, accompanied by bots. While this is a good place to start, don't stick around too long, as the singleplayer currently doesn't unlock essential resources for the co-op campaign. We will come back to this later.
You will therefore have to choose between four Cleaners (out of the eight in total after completing the first act of the campaign). This choice is crucial depending on your style of play as well as the needs of the team. Characters like Walker or Jim are perfect for those who prefer ranged combat and inflict a lot of damage.
Holly is the master of hand-to-hand combat, since each elimination grants her stamina, allowing her to slaughter a chain of infected in melee. Evangelo is the master of dodging, being able to extricate himself from the grips of special infected and benefiting from an improved movement speed.
Doc, Hoffman and Mom are said to be support or utility characters. Hoffman excels at offensive items like bombs, and each kill will be able to drop ammo for the team. Doc and Mum are the healers par excellence, one being able to heal more efficiently, the other being able to revive downed allies instantly.
Finally, we have Karlee, who is an excellent scout, being able to “sense” special infected and important items within range. Be careful though, this sixth sense does not always work, but can still be useful to thwart ambushes that can lead to tragedy.
The right equipment for the right job
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Each refuge that marks the progress in an act will allow you to buy equipment. Utility items, healing items, offensive items, weapons and attachments for these, and most importantly, team upgrades (costing 1 coins). It is indeed important to share the accumulated money in order to buy those team improvements that will be essential to progress in each act.
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We suggest that you always have at least one tool box. Indeed, each act segment has one or more doors that can only be opened thanks to this object. Behind these, you will find many resources and a medicine cabinet. Back 4 Blood has two types of damage: direct and trauma. Direct damage can be healed via bandages and a medkit, but trauma damage can only be healed through said cabinets. Pills or skills giving temporary hit points can temporarily make up for this lack.
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The offensive objects are also essential, in particular the artisanal bomb, allowing to relieve the team of a horde attack because attracting all the infected around before a beautiful firework of guts. The molotov cocktail is not left out, since it creates a wall of flames between your team and the infected. Finally, the grenade is useful for inflicting heavy damage on special infected or dispersing a group of birds which, if excited by approaching or shooting at them, can also attract a horde.
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As for weapons, we advise you to equip yourself with guns that can kill normal infected in one shot. Shotguns, sniper rifles and the Rifle Ranch, a mix between assault rifle and sniper rifle, are perfect tools for this. As ammunition is expensive, we also advise you to favor the secondary weapon against normal infected. If your guilty pleasure is melee, we recommend the hatchet or fire axe, which are currently the melee weapons inflicting the most damage.
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As you progress, you will collect weapons of higher rarity and therefore more effective. Be careful however, it will not be possible to transfer the accessories, themselves subject to a rarity system, present on your currently equipped weapon. These are also scattered throughout each level, so it is better to favor a better quality weapon, even if it means losing the accessories of your previous weapon.
Deck: the winning compositions
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By completing each act segment in co-op, you will receive a certain number of supply points. These are essential in Back 4 Blood, as they allow you to unlock cards that provide significant bonuses to your character via supply chains.
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Back 4 Blood indeed stands out from Left 4 Dead with a deck system comprising up to 15 cards. These can increase your melee or ranged damage, increase your stamina or hit points, provide team bonuses, and more.
It is therefore important to equip yourself with the right cards according to the gameplay of each Cleaner. For this, we refer you to our first part detailing the strengths of each of them in order to build a deck accordingly. Note, however, that cards like the knife are very useful for beginners, because they replace your melee attack aimed at repelling the infected. This way, you can kill them in one shot, instead of just pushing them away, and in the process save your precious stamina.
Also note that the first card of each deck will accompany you from the start of an act. So arrange your deck according to your most pressing needs.
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To acquire these cards, it is therefore necessary to accumulate points to spend in the supply chains, cut after the first into three parts. We advise you to unlock all three each time before progressing to the next ones, in order to widen your range of cards and be able to complete the deck of different Cleaners according to the needs of the team.
Special Infected: Anatomy Lesson on Mutations
Along with the Common Infected, Back 4 Blood also features special Left 4 Dead-inspired Infected, referred to here as Mutations. For the sake of simplicity, we will differentiate them into five categories: giants, golems, jumpers, situationals and bosses.
Giants are recognizable by their size and one arm disproportionate to the other. They are slow, but can wreak havoc once in range. One of their mutations can hit the ground hard and throw you a few feet. Be careful not to hang around near a precipice, therefore. The other mutation can grab an ally and turn them into a piñata for other infected. It will therefore be necessary to release it urgently.
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The golems are recognizable by their imposing mass and their propensity to come and explode in your ranks. One mutation thus causes an explosion inflicting heavy damage, while the other will have fun vomiting on you, slowing you down and generating puddles of poison on the ground. If it explodes near you, it will coat you in bile which will attract other infected.
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Jumpers are distinguished by their small size and extreme agility. They can cling to walls and jump around to confuse you. One mutation can cover you in a kind of web immobilizing you and spit damage-dealing spikes at you, and the second can jump on you to hug you and drag you away from your allies.
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Situationals can appear in certain areas or depending on the cards that the game will lay down to put a spoke in your wheels. The most common, which we like to call the mural sphincter, can jump on you and immobilize you if you don't eliminate it first. Another situational infected is the snitch: if not taken down quietly or quickly, it will emit a sound that will draw a horde towards you.
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Some normal Infected may mutate to be more resilient or deal damage to you if you defeat them in melee. You will therefore have to constantly adapt and have the necessary weapons to respond to each potential threat.
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As for the bosses... we prefer to leave you the surprise of discovering them. In any case, each special infected has a red protrusion that acts as a weak point. You know what to do if you see one.
Get to work, Cleaners!
This concludes our survival guide for Back 4 Blood. We hope these tips will help beginners and seasoned alike clean up the infected threat for a scheduled release on October 12 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass.
Good luck, Cleaners!
