KF2 Tips for New and Advanced Players: Hell on Earth Tricks

This is a long, opinionated list of tricks compiled by the community during the Hell on Earth era of Killing Floor 2, with additions from the comments. Some numbers have changed in later patches, so treat specifics as version-dependent. Related reading: essential beginner tips and general tips for a good player.

Medic and support tricks

• When in doubt, buy a medic pistol. It weighs 1 kg and costs 200 dosh, and it doubles your team's healing capability.
• Spawning as a medic on wave 1: use the knife rather than the medic pistol; if you find a Bloat, use the 9mm, since Bloats take less damage from the medic pistol.
• Use the syringe on teammates. It recharges twice as fast when used on another player. Against a raging Fleshpound, block, heal and shoot once the syringe is half charged (a full charge takes 15 seconds).
• Throw heals at burning players. Healing halves the damage and duration of a fire DoT, saving armor and therefore money.
• Pocket medic: if you want more healing without being a Medic, take a medic SMG. It supplements a real Medic, it does not replace one.
• Medic dart mechanics (from comments): darts heal at a fixed speed, so spamming them all at once heals no faster, except that Armament or Vaccination gives armor per dart. Shooting slower gives a longer constant heal; faster gives more armor. You regenerate 10 health per second while under a dart: 1 point of missing health becomes health every 100 ms, and a dart adds 20 points by default.
• Grenade in a corner: surrounded with an empty weapon, drop a heal grenade, reload and fire short bursts at head level; at a Scrake or Fleshpound shoot point blank at the head, then jump and run while healing yourself.
• Do not hug the trader pod as Support or Demolitionist: players are forced into the trade menu if you stand too close, so you cannot hand out ammo.

Firebug tricks

• Stop holding left click. After you release the fire button the weapon shoots for 0.35 seconds for free, worth about 5 ammo. Clicking again too soon cancels that bonus.
• Three kinds of fire damage: impact (flames touching the ZED), afterburn (the DoT from impact or ground fire) and ground fire (the flames you leave on the floor, like medic grenades but weaker). Most of your damage is ground fire, so tap-fire at their feet. One or two pulses of a Caulk n Burn handle common trash.
• Heat Wave and Zed Shrapnel (comments): tap and sweep across enemies, let them burn and only fire again if something threatens you. It does not work on Scrakes, Fleshpounds or Sirens, but with Heat Wave all trash can be perma-stumbled.
• Do not set Scrakes on fire.
• Disable big ZEDs with molotovs: throw one at a Scrake or Fleshpound's feet and use the microwave gun (with Heat Wave) to stumble it back into the flames; the ZED panics and you deal heavy damage. Do not do this in multiplayer, where the microwave gun was weak at the time. Tap-fire also applies to the microwave gun.

Dosh and economy

• Do not spam your whole loadout; spend all dosh on the boss wave since it does not carry over. If you cannot carry more, drop the weapon and buy another: it stays for 5 minutes.
• Dropped weapons linger for 5 minutes. Picking up a dead teammate's weapon resets the timer, and on boss waves you can buy a tier 4 weapon, fill it, drop it, and repeat.
• Dosh stays on the ground for 2 minutes. If you must leave, drop your dosh instead of disconnecting with a fortune. Bind dosh dropping to the mouse wheel to do it fast (see drop all dosh with one key).
• SG500 refills (comments): if it is out of ammo, sell it and buy a new one instead of refilling.
• Dual pistols (comments): buy one, drop it, buy the other and pick up the dropped one for full ammo for free. 9mm refill trick: buying a second gun cost 150 and selling returned 112, so a refill cost only 38; since the PvP update, buying dual 9mm no longer resets ammo, but selling does.
• Boss wave trick (solo only): switch to Gunslinger, buy a single Magnum at full ammo, drop it, repeat until you have 1,500 dosh left, then buy the dual Magnums. When one runs dry, drop it and pick up another for full ammo: about twice the damage of spamming the AA12 for the same dosh.
• Free armor on wave 1 (comments): start as SWAT with the left-side skills to get full body armor and a 9mm, then change perk and sell everything; you keep the armor.
• Do not use perk-leveling exploit maps. There is perk XP (capped) and player XP, which is only gained by playing, researching and fighting big ZEDs; you need both for Hell on Earth.

Combat mechanics

• Weapon bash makes trash stumble and cancels the attacks of larger ZEDs, though its damage is low. Heavy weapons can decapitate trash on a bash.
• Fleshpound rage: it rages after a little over 10 seconds without being angered, or from taking too much damage while calm.
• Scrakes slow down while attacking, so with enough health you can outrun a raging Scrake.
• Scrakes vs rockets: they take about 4 times as much damage from the rocket's impact (not the explosion). With concussive rounds and a headshot you can launch one and kill it with fall damage.
• Do not use the SCAR on everything. Great, but ammo is expensive; use a cheaper rifle for one-hit trash.
• Recoil: aiming down sights and crouching reduces it. Switching weapons does not reduce sprint speed.
• Inertia: if you are sprinting and are about to do something that stops sprint (shoot, heal, block), jump just before; your air speed keeps your last ground speed. You can be knocked back in the air, though.
• Bile: turn on your flashlight when hit by Bloat bile to see better.
• Kill Sirens first: they deal heavy damage, ignore armor, destroy grenades, make pre-level-15 Demolitionists useless and are easy to kill for the trouble they cause.
• C4: blasts within a 3-second window each deal 50 percent less damage than the previous one; do not spam it. Nukes are the same: only one nuke affects a ZED at a time.
• Hitscan: bullet weapons hit instantly even with severe lag, except in Zed Time, where you must lead your shots.
• Free Support XP: during trader time, weld and unweld a door until ZEDs spawn.
• Organize weapons: some weapons share priority in the weapon list (Deagle and medic pistol, hunting shotgun and medic SMG). Drop the weapon you want on top and pick it back up.

Boss tips

• You do not need a Commando to see the Patriarch; stick C4 on him and it blinks red, beeping when he is close.
• Hans drains: first drain restores 32.5 percent of max health, the second 27.5 and the third 12.5. During the third drain his shield is stronger than the health he restores, so do not shoot it.
• Invincibility on a boss: a Berserker with an Eviscerator and a Medic. Block the boss while the Medic heals; keep teammates from pulling aggro.
• Railgun (comments): the alt-fire does 750 damage, twice the lock-on mode (auto aim does 375). Use auto on Sirens, Bloats and Husks, manual for large ZEDs.

Tips from the comments

• Watch nearby smaller ZEDs when fighting a large one; a dedicated trash killer helps a lot.
• On wave 1 of Hard or Suicidal, teams can save dosh by using knives and the 9mm on Bloats, swap skills just for wave 1, and heal each other between waves for extra XP and dosh. A level 20 Firebug with RRLL skills and Caulk n Burn can rush and tap-fire feet on wave 1.
• Parrying an unparryable (orange glowing) attack does not stumble but still mitigates damage. Knife block or parry mitigates only about 20 to 30 percent, so block rather than parry and consider taking the hit while backpedaling and shooting.
• Berserker: spamming big ZEDs with light or heavy attacks can flinchlock them; alternate heavy swings and bashes to kill Scrakes in little space. Three Eviscerator blades decap a 6-player HoE Scrake, four for a Fleshpound.
• Demolitionist: with armor-piercing rounds, an RPG and an M79 shot can decap a 6-player HoE Scrake; a Fleshpound needs about 3 RPGs and a grenade. For a Scrake kill you need Bombardier and High Impact besides Armor Piercing.
• Perma parry: hold R for the reload animation on melee weapons and spam parry; it does not work with the Eviscerator and is pointless with the knife.
• Grenade pistol: buy one when surrounded by trash; it does not hurt you.

More reading

The original author pointed readers to Cat's Google doc of technical stats (incaps, weapon stats, perk benefits) and a beginner guide with GIFs. See also shots-to-kill and damage formulas.