Beyond the obvious controls for using your legs and your trigger finger, it is also important to know keyboard usage specific to Zombie Survival, so I shall tell you of them below:

- "Use", by default bound to E, will allow you to pick up dropped gear and also pick up props which will be used to set up barricades.

- "Suit zoom", by default bound to Z, will allow you to ghost through barricades if you are a human. This will make you move slowly and be unable to attack or place nails, but it is still a vital feature if used correctly. Remember that this only works with barricades that are NAILED DOWN.

- "Run", by default bound to Shift, will allow you to keep props you've picked up in their place while you freely move around them, this is incredibly handy for setting up barricades when you don't have a second man to hold the item or nail it for you.

- "Reload", by default bound to R, will, apart from allowing you to reload guns, also allow you to remove nails already placed down, as long as you have a claw hammer equipped at the time.

- Holding the Alt key will allow you to open a menu of items to drop, should you wish to share any items (for example ammo which you don't need) with other players.

When you first begin, you will be given a choice of weapons, ammunition, gear and traits which you can apply to yourself. Initially, you may be tempted to buy purely guns and ammunition so you can take out many infected personnel during your last stand.

DON'T only buy guns and ammo and plan on purely killing the enemy while others support you, most people will also have the same idea, and having too many dedicated gunners will mean that everyone dies early on. Make sure that someone is going to be a handyman, and ideally at least one person is a first-aider. It is absolutely, incontestably, CRITICAL that someone is nailing barricades in place to make sure everyone is safe at least for a few waves.

When you choose your role, be it gunner (armed to the teeth), medic (carrying medical equipment), handyman (using a hammer and nails), supplier (placing resupply and arsenal crates), or any other role, make sure you perform it well. Keep talking to the other players and ask if they need your services at any specific locations, tell them that you are available with your specialist skills and equipment so they know who to call. Teamwork will help you last many more waves than chaos!

When you first arrive at your location, you probably won't have much time to be picky about the best location for good barricadable props, so get in there and scout the building before you get eaten in the middle of contemplation!

Firstly, check where all the entrances to your little zone are, check where useful props are. At first, don't barricade the innermost room where you plan to make your last stand, actually place barricades at outer layers, in rooms and hallways near your final room FIRST. If the area is too large or has too many nooks and crannies to cover with barricades all round, cordon off a section in (for example) a hallway leading up to the main room and block it up with barricades at all sides, using larger, more durable props first. Make sure to cover any gaps with smaller items of furniture, leaving little gaps small enough that headcrabs cannot get through, but large enough to shoot/swing through.

Secondly, cover the next layers of the area as in step one and continue until you have blockaded your final room up. Set up the arsenal and resupply crates in that room, as well as any turrets your team has.

Finally, make sure that all people with hammers (including yourself, possibly) are fixing any damaged barricades, there is a repair limit, but if that limit is reached, the prop has lasted 2.5 times its original durability! Call any gunners to areas where the infected are attacking most heavily.

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If you are a handyman, I would recommend lots of little tricks below to make the most of your barricades:

- Stand furniture such as sofas ("couches") and beds upright, then they will cover doorways much more effectively. Then infected cannot destroy the little props on top and just climb over, they have to break through a strong barricade piece instead.

- Ideally, with doorways, have one tall/stood up piece of furniture just outside, with too little a gap to squeeze through, one similar piece of furniture actually in the doorway, and yet another piece of similar furniture just inside the doorway, again with too little room to squeeze past. This triple layer takes a long time to break through.

- Hammering barricades to fix them is almost always slower than the rate at which they are being destroyed, kill some infected to give you breathing space and fixing time.

- Intentionally leave little gaps in all your barricades that can be shot through, this will allow people to kill attackers and help each barricade last even longer.

- After you've nailed down all barricades, stay near the frontmost layer and keep fixing them until they are almost broken, but don't leave it too late.

- If a barricade is just about to be destroyed, tell the others and retreat to the next layer, otherwise you could encounter a sudden moment of chaos as the infected break through.

This section is dedicated for those among you who will be defending the barricades, but also will be helpful if you find yourself later able to do gunnery.

For specialist gunners, it is obviously recommended to buy your desired friearms on the Worth Menu at the start of the game (and maybe favourite it so you don't drop in with shoddy default equipment on another server). However, it is also possible to obtain guns from fallen comrades and through points at arsenal crates later in the game.

Whether obtaining guns earlier or later, remember the following:
- Only buy from arsenal crates what you immediately need during waves, and use the discount between waves to stack up on ammunition.
- You can purchace guns themselves from arsenal crates as well as ammunition.
- Never, EVER stray outside your barricade to pick up dead comrades' weapons unless the round is over and the zombies are ALL dead (press and hold TAB to check).
- If a less intelligent ally is about to stray outside at the thought of obtaining gear, yell at them to go back! If they die, that's another bad guy breaking your stuff.
- If you have less ammunition, try to make it count, but if you have plenty to spare, take potshots at the enemy.
- Use other people's resupply crates as often as you can achieve.

Now in every zombie themed game they always like to say "aim for the head". This is fairly true, but more important than focussing on headshots would be getting shots in the first place, if you have an inaccurate weapon like certain pistols or shotguns and SMGs, go for reliable body shots. You can even use a technique where you aim approximately for the zombie's collarbone or neck, then you might get a headshot, but if not, you'll likely get a nice body hit.

Early on, you have the opportunity of obtaining guns via the worth menu, they include pistols, a submachinegun, a shotgun and a rifle. Like in a shooting game, choose what best suits your style. Whatever you choose however, make sure that you aim down the sights at any range other than point-blank (and even then, it's not a bad idea). Check your ammunition regularly and manually reload whenever you can, it's better to start every encounter with a full clip.

In this gamemode, you can reasonably use close combat weapons from the safety of a good barricade, but outside your barricades you are very likely to die with any weapon, and zombies have an advantage in Close Quarters Combat.

If you use close combat weapons at any point, you should consider these points:
- Do not attempt to engage in close combat outside your defences unless you have to. Even if you win a couple of times, they'll quickly wear you down until you are dead.
- Be careful with your attacks from behind defences, if there is a gap you can hit them through, they can likely hit you through it too.
- Melée weapons outreach zombie arms most of the time, so you can hit them while making sure they don't hit you. Watch out for zombies with poisonous projectiles though.
- Time your attacks, an experienced player can knock zombies back and stave them from making any return attacks.
- Neither you nor the zombies can hit each other through fences without projectile weapons, you can tempt and distract them from your barricades by hugging the fence in their view.