Killing Floor

Recently I've picked up Killing Floor again, as something to do when I was a little too bored with WoW. Killing Floor, for your information, is a survival horror game. Originally a mod for an older Unreal Tournament game, it was released on Steam quite some time ago (2009) as a stand-alone game, upgraded graphics and all. It's a highly addictive co-operative game, where up to 6 players in one game fend off waves of ugly, merciless clones.

Anyways, playing Killing Floor again, I noticed a lot of people had no clue what they were doing, were too busy panicking while being attacked by specimens to listen to any advice anyone had to offer, and generally just got themselves and their teammembers killed time and time again.
So I thought I'd use this blog what I actually intended to use it for, to help out other (or in this case, new) players.

I'll start off with some basics and provide a little more information in another post on the perks available, the weaponry, and the enemies you'll be facing.


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First off, you should know how this all works. When you enter a game (if it's not yet in progress) you'll be in a lobby. There you can choose your perk, chat with the other players, read the map description, and change your settings. When you're ready to go, you press the actual Ready button and wait for the game to start.

You'll then have a few seconds before enemies appear over the map who will try to hunt you down and kill you. The objective is fairly simple, stay alive and eliminate all the enemies. In the upper right corner of your screen there's a handy little counter which tells you how many specimens still walk (or crawl) around. Finish them all off and you'll be given some clone-free time, also during this brief intermission, a trader will open up her secure location to your team for a little while so you can come in and buy (or sell) weapons, buy armour, or get ammo.
You make purchases with english pounds, which you acquire by killing off clones. Find the trader by following the red arrow on the top left corner of your screen, and/or use the glowing (and flowing) red trail that appears between waves.

Once the "trader time" expires, the trader will close her doors, put you outside, and relocate.
At the same time, a new wave of enemies will spawn and move in, so it's time to blast more clones. Per wave (also dependant on the number of players, more players means more enemies) more clones spawn, also more dangerous specimens will join in on the attempt to kill you.
This keeps on going until you've finished off all the waves of enemies (the number of waves can be found under the enemy counter, for example 3/10) and a last break is activated in which you can visit the trader one last time. After she closes her doors for the last time, you'll be facing the mighty Patriarch. You will be shown where he spawns, and he'll be alone.

He'll want revenge for the murdering of his precious (but incredibly ugly) children, so he'll come after your team, using rockets and a machine gun, as well as awesome melee strikes (awesome as in, very powerful). If he becomes injured, he'll cloak and run away to heal off somewhere.
Some non-dangerous clones will bother you during that time, and he'll eventually return to try again. Manage to kill him together, and the map is over.
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Certain enemies start spawning from specific waves, so if you pay attention, you'll know what to expect from a next wave. However where the enemies spawn, how they're grouped up (if at all) and with what number, is always completely random.
It's important to note that there are not just a bunch of difficulty levels in Killing Floor, but also different game lengths. Each length as a set number of waves, as well as a Patriarch fight after the last wave. (the wave counter will count it as another wave)
Short means 4 waves, Medium is 7, and Long is as much as 10 waves.
(so counting the Patriarch, that would actually be 5, 8 and 11)

That's the entire set-up of the game. But that's not all there is to it, Killing Floor features (though originally 6) no less than 7 perks which help greatly in fighting off the clones. An explanation of all of these perks (and more) in the next post. Hope this helped.