Back 4 Blood Beginners Guide
Welcome to our Back 4 Blood Beginners Guide. This is a Beginner’s Beginner guide – as in written by a beginner – written for beginners. This guide was written for and from the Open Beta, it’s almost a guaranteed fact that by the time you’re reading this guide, it will be outdated.
Character Selection – Back 4 Blood Beginners Guide
Evangelo
- Evangelo can break out of grabs once every 60 seconds
- +75% Breakout Speed
- + 25% Stamina Regen
Team Effect
- +5% Team Movement Speed
Personal Thoughts:
Evangelo’s ability works off a hold “e” and break out of any grab in about 0.5 seconds. On paper this seems fine in a game where incaps can be painful – especially with less than ideal teammates. With bots you can’t rely on – Evangelo seems like the optimal if not only pick. The biggest issue with his active ability is that it is REACTIVE rather than PREVENTATIVE – while theoretically you could take a grab and break out for a teammate who was about to get grabbed – how easy is it to make that judgement call? In most situations you shouldn’t be getting grabbed at all – and I think grabs have an instant damage effect in addition to a DoT.
Evangelo’s stamina regen is a good upside to a mediocore active ability. More stamina in general enables more options for playstyles, helping Evangelo be an all-rounder front line, or a capable kiter if necessary.
Team Buff – While movespeed is crucial to kiting – stamina is a more versatile resource than direct movespeed. Nothing to write home about – probably the most underwhelming team buff.
Walker
- Precision Kills grant walker +20% Accuracy for 5 seconds
- +10% Damage
Team Effect
- +10 Team Health
Personal Thoughts:
Walker’s Precision kills I would assume refers to headshot or weakpoints. While I haven’t tested it, the impact of increased accuracy seem middling. Hipfire in B4B seems accurate, aiming down sights with decent trigger discipline can ensure your shot files true the majority of the time.
10% Damage is significant, but with ridden not generally being tanky – you’ll probably be looking to stack damage with the character in order to reach breakpoints for quickly dealing with the mutated ridden.
10 team health can be nice – it could mean the difference between a down or not – but in general the team effect is just ok.
Holly – Back 4 Blood Beginners Guide
- Holly recovers 10 Stamina when she kills a Ridden
- +10% Damage Resistance
Team Effect
- +25 Team Stamina
Personal Thoughts:
The strongest frontline character – where stamina is king being able to regenerate actively rather than passively is a powerful option.
The damage resistance compliments the frontline aspect of the character – where you’ll be expected to take the brunt of damage for your party.
The team stamina is crucial for allowing your entire team to protect themselves – and ensure that you can get the infinite-horde sections over as fast as possible.
Holly is usually a key character for any group – and a character that should never be left out of a 4-man.
Mom – Back 4 Blood Beginners Guide
- Mom can instantly revive an incapacitated teammate once per level.
- +1 Support Inventory
Team Effect
- +1 Team Extra Life
Personal Thoughts:
People say support is crucial to nightmare, but for veteran I’ve found that with a coordniated group – you can get away without having a mom, but it certainly is safer with one. For starters the instant revive is useful – if not finiky to work around. Building mom as a support character with cards such as that which gives additional health when you pick up other characters is awkward – since there doesn’t seem to be a way to PREVENT yourself from using the instant-pickup. Ultimately it seems like it would be useful to instantly have a party member off the ground, but much like lfd2 – at times it can be useful to have that player on the ground as a meatshield (horde bait). If that player is using a melee weapon in addition to being on the ground, they can effectively clear and deal with anything short of mutated infected without an issue. Mom’s instant revive is probably the most visible perk with the least visible impact.
The extra support inventory lends to the support-character theory. In general pain pills giving temporary health are king – this could change with things such as medkits removing trauma, but much like the previous discussion, preventative is better than reactive. With the card where support given to others is also taken by yourself, mom’s increased support inventory with pain pills can result in a massive boost to team health when your team might need it most.
The extra team life I’ve found to be largely irrelevant – perhaps with a teammate or team that is constantly struggling it could make the difference, but even if a player dies – there is usually little consequence to them simply spawning a bit further ahead with all their respective equipment.
Hoffman – Back 4 Blood Beginners Guide
- Hoffman has a chance to find ammo whenever he kills a Ridden
- +Offensive Inventory
Team Effect
- +10% Max Team Ammo Capacity
Personal Thoughts:
I’ve seen discussion saying that Hoffman is the odd one out – usually left out of coordinated groups. In my experience playing with and without hoffmans – the difference in ammo is notable. The extra offensive inventory can be especially powerful given the current potency of pipebombs as both a distraction and killing tool.
The max team ammo capacity doesn’t have a great interaction with his ammo drops already keeping everyone topped up, but I suppose its more thematically appropriate than gameplay useful.
Cards – A Basic Overview – Back 4 Blood Beginners Guide
There are 4 categories to cards:
- Reflex – These cards typically focus on adjusting your characters stamina, use speed or move speed, and actions such as reloading, weapon swap, or aim speed.
- Brawn – These are generally about health and melee – trauma resistance, offensive accessories, and some damage resistance.
- Discipline – These are typically about ammo, health regen, support accessories, most damage resist, and accuracy.
- Fortune – These are generally follow carrying capacity – be it for offesnive items or support and copper – related bonuses.
-Reflex
-Brawn
-Discipline
-Fortune
Each branch of the “supply lines” unlocks seem to focus on each of these categories –
Top : Reflex
Middle: Discipline
Bottom: Brawn
Rather than list all the cards here – I’d recommend you take a look at the list made by other guides:
Cards Continued – Understanding the System – Back 4 Blood Beginners Guide
When you first start out, you won’t have any cards from the supply line besides the base kit – this section won’t be relevant to you – and if you’re feeling overwhelmed it’s probably a good idea to just skip over this part for now. The Card System is your way of tailoring the game to your playstyle. For many players, this is either the most interesting or least engaging part of the game.
Personally – build making like this is really interesting – and the deck system has a good mix of complexity and choice making flexibility that I’ll be interested in messing around with more in the future. If you don’t like the decks or don’t have an idea of what there is to explore, let me try to explain some of the mechanics as I understand them.
For starters: Decks are NOT randomized – you don’t make a deck and get a selection of 5 random cards from there – you get the whole deck IN ORDER. This means that you will always get to choose from your 2nd-6th card on your first mission.
Why not your 1st? Because as the game currently reminds you several times – your first card of your deck is your STARTING card, you always will have this card active – no selection required. (In this way you get 2 active cards from your deck for the first level).
Alright – but why is this interesting?
Well for starters after playing for a while you should have a good idea of what the threats of each levels are. Maybe it would be a good idea to ensure you get a card that gives you an extra pipebomb when you have to push through that infinite horde. Maybe you should ensure you can take “use speed” when you have to load 6 shells that take F O R E V E R to interact with.
Having a suite of card choices lets you adjust to how the runs going.
Turns out that your team hasn’t gone down at all? Maybe skip that health card for some more damage or copper. Having a miserable run of down after down? Might be a good time to get that health regen on every down.
Weapons & Ammo – Throwables and Useables
Weapon Categories:
- Melee
- Bat
- Fire Axe
- Machete
- Hatchet
- Combat knife**The combat knife requires the card and replaces your default bash. It does count as a melee kill for any melee card effects.
- Sidearms
- The Belgian (Shotgun)
- 357 Magnum (Rifle)
- M1911 (Pistol/SMG)
- Desert Eagle (Sniper)
- Tec 9 (Pistol/SMG)
- Glock 23 / Glock 23 Auto (Pistol/SMG)
- Beretta M9 / Beretta M9 Auto (Pistol/SMG)
- UZI (Pistol/SMG)
- Primaries (Pistol/SMG Ammo)
- Vector
- MP5
- UMP45
- M249
- RPK
- Primaries (Shotgun Ammo)
- TAC14
- 870 EXPRESS
- SUPER 90
- AA12
- Primaries (Rifle Ammo)
- SCAR
- M16
- AK47
- M4 CARBINE
- RANCH RIFLE
- RPK*
- M249** These are both light machine guns.
- Primaries (Sniper Ammo)
- M1A
- PHOENIX 350L
- BARRET M95
- Items
- Defib
- Ammo Pack
- Toolkit
- Support Items
- Bandage
- Pills
- First Aid Kit
- Offensive Items
- Molotav
- Gernade
- Fireworks
- Pipe Bombs
Spending Copper
Copper is crucial to scaling. Most of the time the only reason to slow down if you’re not low on supplies is to take your time collecting copper.
There are several ways you can spend your copper – the most obvious would be the “shop” at the start of each map. Priority purchases should be the team buffs – these are buffs that last your whole campaign run (they carry over map to map). Quality of amount of support and offensive items should be prioritized followed by stamina buffs followed by health / tool upgrades. It is worth noting that the team upgrades don’t seem to change UNLESS you buy the ones avaliable (ie, if you decide not to buy the tool quality team upgrade, next store it’ll still be waiting there until someone purchases it)
- Attachments/Weapons: For the most part attachments and weapons are not useful purchases – there is no shortage of equipment to be found the map. Ammo shouldn’t be an issue.
- Health: Purchasing health can be useful, but rather than spend copper if you have any form of health regen it’s generally better to eek value out of that instead.
- Ammo: Purchasing ammo is generally not useful – especially with a hoffman. Ask your party for ammo instead – if they’re not on the same weapon type they’ll have ammo to spare.
- Other Equipment: It’s nice to have at least someone have a toolkit – as the mini-safe rooms typically have heals, attachments, and an effective refund on your copper spent on the kit. Besides that having offensive frags can be used to instantly kill the tall-bois, pain pills and be a great tool to shield your team from damage that would be otherwise more costly to heal, and pipe bombs are a good tool to either kill whole hordes of infected, buy your team some much needed space, or cheese some infinite-horde events.
Besides the store – sometimes additional purchases will exist on the map. The most notable are
Med Cabnets – On survivor there are 4 charges for free, veteran or higher each cabinet gets one free charge and subsequent charges cost 400 copper per use. Besides specific cards – these cabinets are the only way to remove trauma, so it’s a good idea to keep some copper on hand in case one shows up.
Random Cards – There are occasional cards around the map that can be purchased for copper. These are not added to your permanent deck – but will be active for the remainder for the run. These cards that show up do not have to be ones you’ve already unlocked through the supply – and can be purchased by everyone for the same price. (You can find cards you already have active – and they can stack).
Mutated Ridden
There are several different types of special infected (mutated ridden) – weather because they are placeholders or it plays into the lore of the mutations (I’ve heard it both ways), they can be a pain to identify. Knowing what you’re fighting can do though is one of the better ways to have a better chance of survival.
Brusiers aka “Tall-bois”
I call them chargers on account of their oversized arms. These guys are slow, tanky, and if they get close enough will either pound the ground dealing massive damage and launching players back or commit to a grab which will incapacitate and do regular damage until your team can free you. In general the best thing to do against bruisers is to give up space – if it’s chasing you focus on booking it backwards – and let your teammates pump them full of lead. Don’t try to stand your ground verus them – it’s not a risk you need to take – work with your space to kite backwards – treat them as a real threat because they are one. If you have someone with enough offensive capacity – it’s not a bad idea to use a grenade to instantly kill any special – the tall-bois being no exception to this.
Retch
It’s a spitter from lfd2, but instead of a single patch this thing vomits a lethal stream. They can be hard to dodge with the speed of their projectile, your best bet if it targets you is to just start playing the floor is lava while you trust your team to deal with it. The model is very similar to the Exploder, but the Retcher has the weakpoint on the head instead of the chest.
Exploder
Think of a boomer – his goal is pretty much to get within hugging distance before having an explosive painful end. There is a small range where he does knockback rather than damage, but in general if you hear him prime – get ready for him to charge in a straight line and try to move out of the way. The model is very similar to the Retch, but the Exploder has the weapoint on the center of its chest instead of its head.
Hocker
I call them “Webbers” – These guys will fire a fast projectile that if it hits will “web” a player, incapacitating them and applying a DoT until a teammate frees them. These guys are hard to dodge – and can be lethal mixed with hordes or other specials. In general your best option against these guys are to play close and get ready to melee eachother. Pings can also help to direct your team to focus fire. Visually they are very similar to stingers
Stinger
Stingers are like webbers in that they stay at a range and shoot at the players, but they have a direct damage shot that doesn’t incapacitate players, making them generally less threatening than a Hocker. They can chew through your health if you are not aware though, so regularly ping them for your team if you can. Visually they are very similar to Hockers.
Sleepers
If you’ve played DRG, these are basically the equivalent of cave leeches. These noisy buggers are stuck in pods attached to walls – they can be on the inside or outside of buildings. When you get close enough they’ll leap out incapacitating you like a hunter from LFD. In general – you should take minimal damage from these fellas unless you happen to be carelessly scouting on your own. These are more of a jump scare inconvenience than as a run ender.
Snitch
I call them screamers on account of… well I think you get the idea. These guys look like they have flowers for a head – It’s difficult even with an end game sniper rifle to deal with these guys silently, its generally best to either find a way around or bite the bullet and burst it down. The last thing you want to be doing is to be pissing it off constantly – focus fire it down and then deal with the horde so you’re not fighting 2-3 groups with minimal progress.
