shitter guide (v 0.2)

Do not walk to other bases.
Just walking around or cruising in a vehicle can be really comfy, but in the long run it'll be a huge waste of time; it gets boring quick. To get to a fight, learn to redeploy hop, or take an ESF.

Just like pretty much any FPS, your mouse sensitivity needs to be low, to ensure that your crosshair doesn't go all over the place when tracking an enemy. There isn't really a fixed value, but it should take you at least 20 cm to do a 360° hipfire rotation (possibly more, depending on your desk and mousepad size).

As a newb, you'll want to stick to support classes at first. Compared to heavy or light assaults of similar skill, a medic prints certs like mad (engineer a bit less, but ARs, which are medic-exclusive, statistically are the best guns in the game, so that's a big help). One of the first things you should cert into is your Jesus gun: the first few ranks are cheap, then it gets more expensive, the last rank costing 500 certs. Don't be afraid, this thing will pay back for itself in no time. (hold left click to heal, hold right click to revive)

Remember that you're a combat medic, not a healbitch who occasionally kills somebody. When in a fight, first you make sure the enemy is dead, or at least that you're behind cover, and then revive friendlies.
Speaking of reviving, learn when reviving somebody is a bad idea. This will come with time through playing, but the general idea is that if they'll get killed again really soon (for example, if they have died in the middle of a busy doorway, they'll likely die again as soon as you res them) you shouldn't revive them.

Even if you decide not to play medic, stick to one class at first. Certs can be ridiculously hard to earn when you're first starting out, and spreading certs out between classes, instead of focusing on one specific class, is definitely not a good idea.


Your first purchase should be a sight for your  starter weapon. Buy either the 1x or 2x 5-cert sight; this should be your very first purchase, seeing as nearly all the iron sights are considered terrible. Then buy a forward grip (it reduces the horizontal component of recoil). Depending on the weapon, a laser sight might actually be more appropriate (it reduces hipfire CoF), but if you're not very familiar with the game you should always be trying to force long range engagements and to avoid short range engagements. Some weapons have access to high velocity ammo (HVA) or soft point ammo (SPA). Strictly speaking, a weapon with either of those is always better than a weapon without them, but the benefits can vary a lot per gun, so it's recommended that you ask /ps2g/ whether HVA or SPA is better on a specific gun.

Medkits are very useful, as they allow you to refill your health instantly (note, not your shield)(seeing as they currently work, you also have a fraction of a second on near-invulnerability, but that will hopefully get fixed some day). Restoration kits slowly refill your health over time, and are generally seen as inferior (although they do have half the resource cost medkits do).
You may be tempted to get reskits instead of medkits because of their lower cert cost, but all ranks besides the first one have the same cost.
Get medkits, those things will give a huge boost to your survivability. Two or three is enough, but if you happen to have enough certs laying around, get the fourth medkit. Medkits (and reskits) are unlocked for all classes.

NEARLY ALL STARTER WEAPONS ARE GOOD. This can not be stressed enough. That 1000 cert gun isn't an upgrade over your current gun, but merely a sidegrade. All guns are sidegrades. The general rule is that, the more a gun differs from that class' starter, the higher the cert cost.
The only real exception to this is the Gauss SAW. This is the NC HA's starting LMG, it kicks like a fucking mule and has huge CoF growth. Experienced players can make the most of it because of its high damage and accuracy, but it is strongly recommended that you get the 100-cert GD-22S if you want to play HA.

Get the empire specific anti-air lock on rocket launcher. these have slightly lower damage than your basic RL when dumbfired, but they lock on to enemy aircraft (duh) within a certain range.
A2G air can be really annoying to ground troops, and even only getting the lock warning will make them fuck off for a bit. In case you're wondering, it takes between two and three G2A rockets to kill an ESF.

You aren't the main character in an action movie, you die just as easily as everybody else. Don't blindly rush rooms, cap points and so on. Learn to outsmart your opponents, and eventually to outshoot them.

Whenever you die, take some time to think about why you died. Were there too many enemies? Did you stay out of cover for too much time? Did you try to 1v1 a MAX without explosives?
Then, make a conscious effort not to repeat that same error again.

You generally should run on your own, since being around zergs (read: bad players) won't make you improve anyhow. When possible, look for 24v24 - 48v48 fights, as those tend to be decent sized without being huge clusterfucks.
If you play at low-pop times, consider joining a squad to find a fight.
If you find one that suits your taste join an outfit (which is just a fancy word for clan). Playing with the same group of people regularly tends to build up a relationship of mutual trust, which is an extremely good thing, seeing as in this game you can't even rely on an average friendly to not "accidentally" shoot you in the head.

Don't try to get into flying. It is long and painful process and frustrating as hell. Even if you manage to become proficient (which will take at the very least 100 hours of flying), don't expect to catch up with people who have been flying for years now, unless you practice a few hours a day literally every day. Knowing the basics can be very useful nonetheless, there are some good tutorials on youtube.
Also, flying physics are nothing like what you would expect them to be. All of the air game essentially revolves around a bug which has never been fixed (and never will), which allows you to fly backwards while shooting at your enemy. This has defined the air game, much like Quake's bunnyhopping and strafejumping has defined the gameplay in that game.

Tanks require comparatively huge cert investments, so don't bother until you get the infantry game sorted out. However, if you see a tanker that seems to know what they're doing, always try to hop in their gunner seat, possibly as an engineer.

Once you unlock medkits or reskits, any class can use them.
However, C4 only gets unlocked on one specific class. Most people unlock it on LA first, because the jetpacks allow them to dunk on vehicles with ease, or on medic, because a medkit can be redundant if you're using the AoE heal (read: self heal).
C4 is an extremely valuable tool, since one brick OHKs infantry, flashes, harassers, turrets, MAXes (without flak armor), ESFs and valks (although these two do take some real skill), and two bricks will OHK a lightning, an MBT, a MAX with flak armor, and do a sizeable chunk of damage to sundies.
C4 is rather expensive, costing 200 certs for the first brick and 500 certs for the second one, but it is worth it.

Don't play infiltrator.
Really, don't.
There are several reasons for this. Either you'll play SMG inf, meaning that you'll abuse faulty netcode and kill players while you still appear cloaked to them, or you'll use a BASR and snipe from far away, meaning that you'll just be a major annoyance to enemies while occasionally getting a kill.
This will not help you improve anyhow, since sniping doesn't pose any kind of threat to you (besides potentially getting countersniped), and close-quarters infiltrator doesn't translate well to other classes, since the only way to make it work is abusing the cloak.
However, if you're playing with a group, playing infiltrator can have some advantages, such as using EMP grenades (which destroy enemy deployables and weaken enemies (by removing their shields), as well as disabling their HUD) or spamming motion sensors.

Buying burst-fire weapons often seems like a good idea to new players that got bored of their current gun; it is not. Those weapons, while potentially very effective in the hands of an experienced player, are tougher to use, and require a complete shift in the way you use a gun to be used properly. If you buy a burst-fire weapon at this stage, you're likely wasting your certs and your time.

If you get killed by a seemingly OP thing, such as a vehicle, a MAX, a sniper rifle or a shotgun, resist the urge to use one yourself. If you pull a vehicle out of rage, you'll likely get killed real quick.
Of course, you may pull vehicles or MAXes if you think it can be useful in this specific situation, but using something simply because you got killed by it is a terrible idea.


Ever since launch, this game has been in a steady decline; in early February, SOE/DBG got sold. Seeing as it is not clear what the future of the game is, it is recommended that you don't spend money on it until you decide you're sure you'll stick with it, and even then, think about it twice.