Learning to recognise what you’re up against quickly and minimise damage.

Introduction

After 65+ hours +Beta, I’m getting to grips with recognising what special I’m hearing or looking at, and getting better at reacting and getting out of danger/taking it out for the team.

The higher the difficulty + further in the run, the more diversity you’ll see in variants during a single map. On the first map on recruit for example you’d likely only see the Tallboy variant of the Tallboys, later on you’ll have bruisers and crushers pairing up.

I’d like to give you a concise, accurate and hopefully appealing guide on what I’ve learnt.

Reeker Variants

Try not to hit these things with a bat.

The Reeker and Exploder are fine to try kill before they reach you, but with the Retch targeting you it’s best to run and let a teammate kill it.

REEKER VARIANT

Recognising:

• Thumping footsteps.
• Pale white with some red on chest.
• Gurgling and a bit of roaring.

How they attack:

• They will perform a charge and try to self destruct on you.
• They can only deal damage through melee to bait you to attack them.
• Explosion doesn’t hurt, but will obscure vision, spawn horde, and most corruption cards include movement/action slowing effects.
• The explosion will send you flying.

Weakspot:

• They don’t have a glowing weakspot but take more damage from the stomach.

Strategy:

• They’re slightly sturdy but easy to kill before they’re close.
• Their turning sucks during charge so it’s easy to just strafe them a bit.
• Try to let teammates get clear before you resume blasting them.

RETCH VARIANT

Recognising:

• Thumping footsteps.
• Gray with a red chest and the easiest to spot weakspot.
• Gurgling and a bit of roaring.

How they attack:

• They will keep at a good distance and spew acid.
• Explosion doesn’t deal damage but will leave acid on the ground, obscure vision, spawn horde, and most corruption cards include movement/action slowing effects.
• Their entrails on a cleaner can spawn horde.

Weakspot:

• Their head and top half of spine.

Strategy:

• If you know you’re being targeted, you won’t lose much if you immediately start moving to the side of it, the acid does good damage and will hurt as soon as it hits you.

  

• Hit the shots on the head and they’ll go down in no time.
• Try to let teammates get clear before you resume blasting them.

EXPLODER VARIANT

Recognising:

• Thumping footsteps.
• Spiky and dark red.
• Gurgling and a bit of roaring.

How they attack:

• They will perform a charge and try to self destruct on you, for good damage.
• The explosion will send you flying.
• They can explode on direct contact or will flash/glow a certain way when the explosion timer has started.

Weakspot:

• Middle of chest.

Strategy:

• They’re weak and well placed shots will blow them up before they’re close.
• Their turning sucks so it’s easy to just strafe them a bit.
• Their explosion does damage and has a wider radius than the others but they are weaker and melee attack weaker.
• Try to let teammates get clear before you resume blasting them.

 

Tallboy Variants

TALLBOY VARIANT

Recognising:

• Thumping footsteps.
• Palest of the three, smooth skin, arm is a bit h*ntai with the tentacles, thinnest of the arms.
• Some roaring and deep breathing.

How they attack:

• They will perform a charge and try to overhead smash you.
• The smash will send you flying.

Weakspot:

• On their right upper arm usually hidden from you.

Strategy:

• They’re the toughest ones.
• Always maintain distance, they can turn on a whim and a dime and have a large reach.
• Baiting them out consistently is risky.
• The cleaner it’s targeting is best to lead it to expose its back to the rest of the team.

BRUISER VARIANT

Recognising:

• Thumping footsteps.
• Dark red, green tones and spiky, the arm is fat as hell especially at the end and also spiky.
• Some roaring and deep breathing.

How they attack:

• Once in range they will either smash down on you for good damage, or
• Go into a frenzy spam attack all around itself.
• The smash won’t send you flying out of harms way.

Weakspot:

• On their right upper arm usually hidden from you.

Strategy:

• They deal good AOE damage and are slightly weaker than the other two.
• Always maintain distance, they can turn on a whim and a dime and have a large reach.
• Baiting them out consistently is risky and probably not worth trying.
• The cleaner it’s targeting is best to lead it to expose its back to the rest of the team.
• Contrary to what someone copy pasted on the wiki, it never really picks up speed or charges.

CRUSHER VARIANT

Crusher? I barely know her!

Recognising:

• Thumping footsteps.
• Dark green tones, the arm is huge and very h*ntai with the tentacles.
• Some roaring and deep breathing.

How they attack:

• Squeeze Attack: They really love to break out into a sprint, and will grab you when they’re in range – very soon.
• They can do crazy damage and the mutations are absolutely brutal for health and trauma.

Weakspot:

• Huge and on their neck-face.

Strategy:

• They will catchup to you unreasonably fast, and you will often underestimate how early and how much you have to go into flight mode to get away safely.

  

• Always maintain distance, they can turn on a whim and a dime.
• Don’t bait these guys out, you will lose.
• The cleaner it’s targeting is best to run, the others can blast it.
• If it grabs someone PLEASE run to it’s front and blast its neck to free them, and most likely keep blasting.
• If you see a corruption card for them, definitely have a stun gun or two for the frontliners.

 

Stinger Variants

STINGER VARIANT

Recognising:

• Web noises.
• Spit noises.
• High-pitched gargling noises and sound closer to jungle wildlife than any other ridden.
• Pale all over, big teardrop shaped weakspot.

How they attack:

• They’ll try get line of sight and currently you have about 0.5 seconds before it’ll start shooting painful projectiles at you.
• If undisturbed they’ll sit on one wall and just keep shooting, if they’re on the ground or being fired at they will try change positions.

Weakspot:

• On their chest.

Strategy:

• They’re weak and if you’re good at hitting weakspots or have long ranged players they will go down very quickly.

  

• Tagging them will make tracking them way easier for the whole team.
• Breaking line of sight asap (if possible/you aren’t surrounded) pretty much nullifies them.
• One difference from Left 4 Dead is that although it may not do that much damage or have that much effect on the run – it’s not a very fair special, unless you have a sniper that can one shot it as it appears, someone is just going to take damage and you can’t do much about that except just take it down asap as half the time you should be stunning them with melee/weakspot damage, it doesn’t faze them.

HOCKER VARIANT

Recognising:

• Web noises.
• Spit noises.
• Low-pitched throat clicking/gargling noises.
• Dark red and really bloody/burnt looking, big teardrop shaped weakspot.

How they attack:

• They’ll try get line of sight and currently will shoot a pinning web at you pretty soon after.
• They will jump around to change positions and out of harms way.
• During hordes they are rough as the ridden get free real estate and the mutations make them hurt a lot more.
• Currently they can send you flying when hit by the web.

Weakspot:

• On their chest.

Strategy:

• They’re weak and if you’re good at hitting weakspots or have long ranged players they will go down very quickly.
• Tagging them will make tracking them way easier for the whole team.
• Breaking line of sight asap (if possible/you aren’t surrounded) pretty much nullifies them.
• Especially if you’re indoors these guys will try get closer, punching them in the chest sometimes staggers them.
• Try not to be too close to an edge/jumping when webbed as you may fly away.
• If you’re aware of them try to group up for a quick free when someone is caught.

STALKER VARIANT

Recognising:

• Screechy dinosaur noises.
• Pale but the most notable is the exposed brain/weakspot.

How they attack:

• They’ll try get line of sight and will charge a pounce while standing some distance away, they can pounce vertically.
• They will run away to change positions and recharge out of harms way.
• During hordes they are rough as the ridden get free real estate and the mutations make them hurt a lot more.

Weakspot:

• On their chest.

Strategy:

• They’re weak and if you’re good at hitting weakspots or have long ranged players they will go down very quickly.
• Tagging them will make tracking them way easier for the whole team.
• Breaking line of sight asap (if possible/you aren’t surrounded) pretty much nullifies them.
• Especially if you’re indoors these guys will try get closer, punching them in the head staggers them.
• If you’re aware of them, don’t be too close to eachother as everyone will get staggered by a pounce, try to be in running distance from the team for a quick free when someone is caught.
• As melee staggers them, if it is close to you and about to pounce, or someone is grabbed punch it asap for a stun and finish it off.

 

Snitcher + Tattler

SNITCHER VARIANT

Recognising:

• Lots of creepy glowing eyes (despite it still being near-blind) – these may be waypoints for ridden instead?
• Tall and thin, wobbly head, weakspot is a good chunk of upper body.

How they attack:

• If they hear noise, or you fire bullets near them, they will walk towards where the sound came from.
• When they are hit, or within a couple metres of you, they will scream and bring a horde and a few specials.

Weakspot:

• Their super long neck.

Strategy:

• They’re not super weak but the weakspots make it easy to inflict max damage.
• Grenade is super safe but ultimately that grenade is better saved.
• Bait them with noise to sneak around, or lure to an explosive barrel/cannister.
• Tagging them will help in dark levels for teammates to keep moving around them.
• If you have an AA12 or melee weapon you can beat it into submission before it’s able to scream.

TATTLER VARIANT

The reason I call it a Tattler is because there was a card I saw called “Tattler” and these are slightly different.

These will spawn with certain cards, you will do well to check the card to see what it says.

This one is basically the same on all fronts, except it’s grey and no weakspots.

It will alert if it dies also, so unless it’s going to pose a threat later, or it is an event, avoid it.

Fin.

I’m working on YouTube videos, Tips and Tricks and also ones to aid this guide, and maybe one to substitute it also.

Lemme know anything I can add to this (with a bit of wiki reading, it was basically all from memory) and if there’s cards I can be on the lookout for to also to complete it more.

I use the same name everywhere so feel free to follow or come by stream and play/chat and do deck building theory!

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