Postby DaHeckIzDat » March 18th, 2018, 10:42 pm
For anyone who's thinking about getting into this, here's a few tips I came up with...
1. Try to be the last one out of the bus. When the doors open, you can see all the other players jump out. Most of them are freaking suicidal, so they'll jump the second they get the chance. Now watch the kill counter. It'll go down drastically in the first minute of the game. I've seen matches where the player count was reduced to fifty before the first storm even arrived! If you get in the middle of that mess, you're leaving everything up to chance and will most likely die. The better strategy is to pick a spot on the opposite end of the map from where the bus starts. By that time there'll probably be less than ten other people still onboard, which means you'll have much less competition scavenging, and less chance to getting beaten to death with a freaking pickaxe (seriously, it there anything more embarrassing than that?). And then when you do finally jump out, keep an eye out for other players who might've picked the same destination. Race them if you feel confident you can get down there first, but don't hesitate to find a new landing place with less competition. Honestly, the longer you can go without seeing another player in this game, the better.
2. Lone houses are better than cities. Again, this comes down to you wanting to avoid people at the beginning of the game. It's true that weapons and items always spawn inside buildings, so the more buildings there are the more stuff there is to grab, but remember: you're not the only one who knows that! Even if you follow my previous tip and wait until the last second to drop, you will NEVER, EVER be the only person in a town. And more than likely, that other person will have found a weapon before you and will pick you off before you can even make it inside. Basically, the smaller the area, the better your chances for survival, but any place that actually has a name on the map is going to be risky. Luckily there are plenty of houses in unnamed parts of the map that other players are far more likely to ignore, so head for one of them first. You might not find a great weapon (those are hidden in more high risk areas) but once you start to feel like you're not quite so helpless, then you can venture into more dangerous areas in search of better gear.
3. I'm not sure if this is still applicable, but another benefit of waiting to jump out of the bus has always been because the eye of the storm used to seem to form on the opposite end of the map that the bus spawned at. The farther you were from the starting area, the less running you had to do to keep safe. Then again, I played a couple matches today and the eye seemed to spawn completely randomly, so... take this with a grain of salt.
4. Hide! This has been said before, but this isn't some CoD deathmatch. You only have one life, so you'll be better served playing cautiously than aggressively. Once you're well equipped and safely in the storm's eye, find a place that you think other players will pass by get yourself a nice cozy corner, and wait. Keep an eye on the map and the timer so that you don't accidentally get caught in the storm. Then, when somebody runs by, let them have it!
5. Don't be afraid to sit back and let the other players take care of each other. You're playing for survival, not score. All that matters is that you be the last one alive. My best matches were the ones when I didn't see anyone until the very end of the game. I've never won, but those were the matches when I placed in the top ten.
6. Building is fine, but you're just as well off not building. The only time when building anything seems to have any benefit is when there's only three of four players left with no room in eye to run around, so they each set up impromptu sniping towers to try and take each other down before the eye shrinks even more. More often than that, I'll see someone trying to make a little floating shelter for themselves, and I'll simply shoot the floor out from underneath them. So if you do decide to build your way to victory, make sure you cover your butt when you do it.
7. In the event that you get a kill, it's super tempting to run over there and sort through their gear for any goodies that might be better than your current loadout. Feel free to do this, but make absolutely sure you're safe first. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten focused on picking stuff up, only to forget I'm in a literal warzone and get capped in the back of my head.
8. If possible, play with headphones. I'm no hardcore gamer, but the difference between surviving an encounter with another player and getting your head blown off can be as simple as knowing which direction their footsteps are coming from. Your TV might let you know they're there, but your headphones will tell you if they're on your left or right. And speaking of...
9. Sneak! If you can hear their footsteps, they can hear yours. Sneaking doesn't eliminate sound completely, but it deadens it enough that your enemies will be far less likely to hear you sneaking around the house when they've set up a sniping nest in the upstairs bedroom. In fact, I always go low when I approach a new town, just in case somebody's watching me.
10. Always assume someone's watching you.
Hope that helps!