KF2 Survival Basics: Match, Perk and Teamwork Tips

This is an English retelling of a short Italian beginner guide, written with a lot of attitude. It covers the choices that decide whether a match goes well: which game to join, which perk to play, how to spend perk skills and how to cooperate. For deeper material, see the Medic perk page.

First steps

You have finished downloading Killing Floor 2, a game full of violence and more violence. The start screen offers lots of tiles, but you mostly want to tear zombies apart, so the easiest first move is to jump into a random match.

Choosing a match

Before playing, look at more than ping:

• ping and the map;
• the number of players (the game is cooperative, so cooperation matters);
• the difficulty level;
• the number of rounds.

If every perk you own is low level, there is no point joining Suicidal or Hell on Earth games, where you will only be meat for the ZEDs. Round count matters too: starting from a low wave lets you play an entire match, earn XP and have fun, which is the point of the game. Joining a match already at its last wave can give you an easy achievement without doing much.

Choosing a perk

KF2 offers several perks, but none is immortal: there is no perk that suits every match and every group. The guide's example: you enter a lobby with three Berserkers and become the fourth player. The tempting choice is another Berserker because the team will be stronger, and the next round everyone dies. Sometimes you must play the Medic or another perk you do not love if you want to win.

Customizing the perk

Unlike the first game, KF2 lets you customize a perk with skills. Every 5 levels you get a choice of two skills. Often the two options fall into these roles:

1. a skill that is purely for yourself, because you are already strong;
2. a skill that helps the team, because you do have teammates.

It comes back to the same question: cooperate, or be the lone player who ruins the match?

Cooperation

KF2 is played with other people, so some teamwork and mutual help are necessary.

• The number of ZEDs and their health depend on both the difficulty and the number of players. A 6-player game spawns more ZEDs with more health than the same game with 5 or fewer players.
• Each player can press B (the default key) to give Dosh to teammates, so share money to keep everyone equipped.