The Complete Guide to Left 4 Dead

Health and Healing

Health management is very important as how much health you have decrees how fast you can move. In turn this determines whether or not you can keep up with your team and whether you can outrun a tank. You need to keep a close eye on your own and your team-mate’s health bars if you’re going to survive on the harder difficulty modes.

There are two kinds of health in Left 4 Dead: regular health is a solid bar, and temporary health is a dotted line. While your health bar is still green (i.e. above 40 percent) you can still move at full speed. If your health dips into the amber zone your speed will decrease, and when it reaches 1HP, you’re a hobbling, crippled wreck who can be incapacitated by a single swipe.

Regular health only decreases when you sustain damage. Temporary health slowly drips away to nothing over time. If you’re incapacitated you’ll always get up with temporary health, which gives you a reasonable speed with which to hobble to the nearest safe corner and heal yourself.

The second time you’re incapacitated when you get up your screen will be black and white. This signifies that the next time you are knocked down you’ll be killed. This is the proper time to use a medkit if you have one. A medkit restores 80 percent of your missing health, and resets your knockdown counter. The downside is that it takes a while to use, and while patching yourself up you can’t defend yourself or help your team – you have to stand rooted in one spot with your hands full.

The other problem with medkits is how often you come across them. On easy difficulty, you can find medkits in health cabinets and stashed away in rooms. On expert you’ll only find them in the safe-room and a few other choice places. For example in the finale of Death Toll you can find three of them on the way to the boathouse: one in the bathroom of the abandoned house, one in the small concrete shed in the car park, and another in the wooden summer house. On most other maps you won’t find any at all.

As they reset your knockdown counter, and take so long to use you should generally eat pills instead, and hoard your medkit until you’re black and white. When you take a dose of pills you’re instantly awarded an extra temporary 50HP on top of your current health. This can be the difference between the next hit you receive being an incapacitation or death. If you’re hit after using pills your regular health will be sapped first, and when it reaches zero further hits will deplete your temporary health.

There are a couple of times you should always use pills. The first is whenever you pass pills on the ground when you already have some in your inventory. Check to see that no one else’s need is greater and if it isn’t then take your existing pills and pick up the new bottle.

The other time you should always take pills is when there’s a tank approaching. Always make sure you’re carrying pills in your inventory for this very reason. If your health is low take them immediately; if someone else is hobbling and they have no pills give them yours. You need to be at full speed to outrun a charging tank. Hobbled survivors are tank-bait and will almost always die.

Knockdowns, Incapacitations and Death

If your team doesn’t react quickly to your squeals of agony when you’re attacked by a special infected and your health reaches zero you’ll find yourself incapacitated. Incapacitations leave you prone on the ground with only your pistols to protect you, and you can only fire them much slower than you do normally. Their accuracy is much reduced as well, which makes it difficult to shoot targets at range. At least you’re not totally helpless. As soon as you hit the floor, start defending yourself.

Although you still have quite a lot of temporary health, it’ll be quickly sapped if you are surrounded by a horde of infected trying to stomp on your head. Start firing as rapidly as possible into the thickest parts of the horde, at about head height. You can work out where the largest groups are by looking at the hit indicator circle in the middle of your screen. Just be careful not to incapacitate the team-mate trying to get you up.

It takes around 240 seconds for an incapacitated team-mate to bleed out, but if they’re surrounded by a horde, or have a special infected on them they’ll die far faster. It takes five seconds to resurrect an incapacitated team-mate and the timer is reset every time an infected strikes the rescuer. If you want to help a downed team mate the best thing you can do for them is get the horde off their back. If three of you are still standing and one of you has been downed then two of you should melee away the waves of infected while the third rescues.

If all three of your team-mates are down by the time you clear the horde you need to make a decision who to save first. Take a look at each player’s health bar. Remember, when you’re the last man standing and the survival of you team depends on you not getting incapacitated yourself.

If someone has just been attacked and they still have a solid health bar, then that’s who you need to save. If you can get them out of trouble before they are incapacitated there will be two of you to save the other two guys, which makes your job far simpler. If everyone else is incapacitated already, resurrect the team-mate closest to you, or the one in the best cover, and then quickly save the survivor with the least chance of survival - if they’re still alive.

Ideally, you need to know instinctively how long people will last after they have been knocked down or snagged. A downed survivor engulfed by the horde will die in a matter of seconds, especially if he’s been hit by the boomer first. Anyone being attacked by a flaming hunter will also die very quickly. However, a survivor who’s been grabbed by a smoker will last a very long time before they are killed, as will someone who’s hanging off a ledge. Check everyone’s status and then act accordingly.

Of course, in this situation nothing’s going to be easy, so you’ll need to fight your way to the most important survivor before you can even do anything. Your actions can turn you from doofus into the hero of the moment. First clear the infected. Push the infected back with a melee swipe, instantly shoot for your target, and then repeat the action. This is extremely important when someone’s been jumped by a hunter and quick reactions by you can have them back on their feet before it’s game over for them.