So... with the ongoing debate of zerker being overpowered and all, me and my buddy came up with an idea:
Knife'em All Challenge
(dunno, maybe somebody did this before?)
Rules are simple enough: hell on earth, one player, and as the name suggests - you kill everything with your knife only. No 9MM or other weapons, no armor, no grenades allowed.
It turns out that it's perfectly doable. For those who would try it themselves, I prepared some basic tips.
General tips: pick kitable map (duh!). Don't collect any weaponry lying around - it will only slow you down. If you have a choice between killing something while taking damage, or just avoiding the incoming damage - it's usually best to pick the latter. Tips below are for lvl6 zerk, one-player HoE. And I seriously doubt it's possible to kill a scrake with a knife playing any other class, or with zerk level 4 or lower.
Clots, bloats, gorefasts, stalkers - pretty much no comment here. On HoE solo you can kill a gorefast instantly with even primary knife attack. Just a friendly reminder that stunning something by bodyshot in a narrow place can help you control the zed flow or buy you some time when running from danger. You might also want to decapitate bloats with primary attack so they don't explode and damage nearby scrakes.
Crawlers can be quite annoying. Trigger their leap, backpedal, hit them in that small head of theirs. One alt bodyshot won't be enough to kill it if you miss. You might want to watch out for groups of crawlers running in close formation. When you crouch to kill the first one, the second and even the third can start jumping over his back and damage you. Continuously. Also, gathered around fleshpounds, they will make triggering fleshie's attack difficult, and often lead to autorage.
UPDATE: If you're not that good at taking crawler headshots, or in a hurry, try one alt body attack and one primary. First one stuns, other one kills. Much more time efficient than several primary slashes, or two alts.
Husks will be your main pain in the *ss. Whenever there's an opportunity to kill one without getting damage from other zeds, take it. Not only they will make all the other enemies jump around and mess with you timings, but also they can rage scrakes with their fireballs, and we really, really don't want that to happen. Best to come in contact with him to trigger his melee attack, dodge it, and then counter - but you probably already know that. 3 alt headshots.
Sirens will also require 3 alt headshots to go down. Best to take cover around the corner and make physical contact to trigger her pathetic biting attack instead of a scream. On the other hand, you can also find them handy to keep one at the maximum scream distance, triggering its scream continuously, so it will disintegrate incoming husk shots.
Scrake is the tricky part. You'll need 9 alt headshots to take him down. You can hit him three times without raging, but that only applies to an undamaged one, and that's quite rare given all the husk shots and bloat bile flying around. Getting these three 'free' shots without triggering his normal proximity attack is also tricky, due to very low reach of your knife. The remaining 6 hits you'll have to score while being sawed in half. If you do it flawless, you'll be left with 45 health. More realistically, you will usually end up with anything between 30 and 10 health, so the best is to leave them for the dessert, when all other zeds are gone. And let's face it: if any scrake will rage on you when you're unprepared (not at full health, other zeds biting you), you will almost certainly die.
UPDATE: To make it clear: it is crucial to be at maximum health when scrake enters rage mode. So, If you get hacked while trying to score the first hits, run and heal. There is no room for mistakes, and even 10 hit points can make the difference. If there is even one more player on the server, you won't be able to kill SC on your own that way, you'll need to cooperate.
Fleshpounds are piece of cake when you know the mechanics and you've learned the right timing (and since we're talking about zerking on HoE, I'm sure you do). You don't need to worry about raging him via damage threshold, because it's not likely you'll hurt him fast enough while dodging his swings (you'd need 6 consecutive alt attacks in 3 seconds for that). Also, you'll be frequently triggering his attacks, so the autorage timer will be reset often. Just keep on looking back, so no surprise zed blocks your backpedal, and you'll be fine. 19 alt headshots and you're done.
Patty: Excuse me, but I have better things to do than stunlocking him for 30 minutes, so I didn't do the final fight.
For those interested, random piece of information: if you ever wondered how much money you get after 10 waves of killing zeds and not spending a single penny: I earned 8345 pounds. 531 kills, time: 1h 5min.
Good luck and enjoy knifing
Knife'em All Challenge
(dunno, maybe somebody did this before?)
Rules are simple enough: hell on earth, one player, and as the name suggests - you kill everything with your knife only. No 9MM or other weapons, no armor, no grenades allowed.
It turns out that it's perfectly doable. For those who would try it themselves, I prepared some basic tips.
General tips: pick kitable map (duh!). Don't collect any weaponry lying around - it will only slow you down. If you have a choice between killing something while taking damage, or just avoiding the incoming damage - it's usually best to pick the latter. Tips below are for lvl6 zerk, one-player HoE. And I seriously doubt it's possible to kill a scrake with a knife playing any other class, or with zerk level 4 or lower.
Clots, bloats, gorefasts, stalkers - pretty much no comment here. On HoE solo you can kill a gorefast instantly with even primary knife attack. Just a friendly reminder that stunning something by bodyshot in a narrow place can help you control the zed flow or buy you some time when running from danger. You might also want to decapitate bloats with primary attack so they don't explode and damage nearby scrakes.
Crawlers can be quite annoying. Trigger their leap, backpedal, hit them in that small head of theirs. One alt bodyshot won't be enough to kill it if you miss. You might want to watch out for groups of crawlers running in close formation. When you crouch to kill the first one, the second and even the third can start jumping over his back and damage you. Continuously. Also, gathered around fleshpounds, they will make triggering fleshie's attack difficult, and often lead to autorage.
UPDATE: If you're not that good at taking crawler headshots, or in a hurry, try one alt body attack and one primary. First one stuns, other one kills. Much more time efficient than several primary slashes, or two alts.
Husks will be your main pain in the *ss. Whenever there's an opportunity to kill one without getting damage from other zeds, take it. Not only they will make all the other enemies jump around and mess with you timings, but also they can rage scrakes with their fireballs, and we really, really don't want that to happen. Best to come in contact with him to trigger his melee attack, dodge it, and then counter - but you probably already know that. 3 alt headshots.
Sirens will also require 3 alt headshots to go down. Best to take cover around the corner and make physical contact to trigger her pathetic biting attack instead of a scream. On the other hand, you can also find them handy to keep one at the maximum scream distance, triggering its scream continuously, so it will disintegrate incoming husk shots.
Scrake is the tricky part. You'll need 9 alt headshots to take him down. You can hit him three times without raging, but that only applies to an undamaged one, and that's quite rare given all the husk shots and bloat bile flying around. Getting these three 'free' shots without triggering his normal proximity attack is also tricky, due to very low reach of your knife. The remaining 6 hits you'll have to score while being sawed in half. If you do it flawless, you'll be left with 45 health. More realistically, you will usually end up with anything between 30 and 10 health, so the best is to leave them for the dessert, when all other zeds are gone. And let's face it: if any scrake will rage on you when you're unprepared (not at full health, other zeds biting you), you will almost certainly die.
UPDATE: To make it clear: it is crucial to be at maximum health when scrake enters rage mode. So, If you get hacked while trying to score the first hits, run and heal. There is no room for mistakes, and even 10 hit points can make the difference. If there is even one more player on the server, you won't be able to kill SC on your own that way, you'll need to cooperate.
Fleshpounds are piece of cake when you know the mechanics and you've learned the right timing (and since we're talking about zerking on HoE, I'm sure you do). You don't need to worry about raging him via damage threshold, because it's not likely you'll hurt him fast enough while dodging his swings (you'd need 6 consecutive alt attacks in 3 seconds for that). Also, you'll be frequently triggering his attacks, so the autorage timer will be reset often. Just keep on looking back, so no surprise zed blocks your backpedal, and you'll be fine. 19 alt headshots and you're done.
Patty: Excuse me, but I have better things to do than stunlocking him for 30 minutes, so I didn't do the final fight.
For those interested, random piece of information: if you ever wondered how much money you get after 10 waves of killing zeds and not spending a single penny: I earned 8345 pounds. 531 kills, time: 1h 5min.
Good luck and enjoy knifing
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