As most people out there have attention span shorter than anything one can imagine, this guide is a compressed, easy to read generic guide for new players looking to start playing killer, or survivor players who look forward to playing killers whether for quest or other purposes. I have reached rank 5 on both sides within the same month, which was not very challenging due to the current scoring mechanics.

While rank does not equal skill, not being able to get to past on level 10 on either survivor or killer means you may be missing something vital in the gameplay.

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” - Benjamin Franklin

On a typical map with 4 survivors present, there will be a total of 7 generators, in order for the exit gates to be powered, the survivor needs to activate 5 of them.


[Pic: Rare case of four generators in a cluster]

An easy yet important task at the start is to identify which 3 out of the 7 generators can be guarded with ease, and prioritize on not letting them get touched by the surivovrs. As per the screenshot below, you can see a few examples of closely spawned generators being played against the survivor team.

An experienced team (Rank 10 to 1) will avoid creating clusters, knowing it will result in a 2K (2 kill) or worse as they cannot start working on generators without alerting you, where as unorganized players with little experience, even with voice communication, will fail to identity this as a major hazard as they rush to complete other 4 generators to create the deadly cluster.

The tight clusters creates significant risk to survivors, regardless of rank and organization level (Survive with your friends (SWF) or not). Obtaining and securing the cluster may not be always possible on all maps, however, should the opportunity present itself, it's vital that you exploit the situation to your advantage.

Just waiting at those 3 generators will do the trick from rank 20 to 10 as players rush to blindly complete generators. To maximize your scoring potential, go out and about to scout for hunts once those 3 you have identified as priority are clear.

Keep in mind of the basement's location, as it provides you as a killer with great advantage if you manage to hook a downed survivor inside the basement.

"Know your enemy, know yourself."
The goal of the game is to sacrafice survivors by downing them and put them on a hook, a meter will start running and once it reaches the end, the survivor is 'sacraficed'. To down a survivor, you need to hit them two times, or perform a grab, either while they are vaulting over an object, or in the middle of doing something.

Do keep in mind that some perks allow you or the survivor to negate or alter certain mechanics.

While moving, if you hold down your attack button ,it will cause a 'lunge', which provides you with a short speed boost at the cost of longer recovery time. When you lunge, you cannot grab a survivor.

To grab a survivor while he/she is unhooking someone, doing generators, popping your totems, or vaulting over a window, walk up to them and tap your attack key without holding it down, and you will have the survivor on your shoulder regardless of their health state. More experienced survivors will cancel the action in time to prevent a grab.

Survivors leaves yellow scratch marks that can only be seen by you as the killer. An injured survivor will drop pools of blood until they are healed, and can be ampified by perks or add ons which induce bleeding that turns it into a red carpet behind them. As a new killer, using skills such as "Sloppy Butcher" can help you tremendously if you do not have "Nurse's Calling" available. Failing skillchecks, staying in one spot too long, or fast action on a surivovr will create a notification bubble to you, it's vital to make a determination on whether it's being done as a distraction to draw you away from more sinister plots or simply someone pulling a blunder.

Survivors are also drawn to multiple features on the map - boxes, totems, empty hooks (which can be sabotaged for easy points), hooked survivors, vantage points, search for those spots will aid you in tracking them down a lot better than simply patrolling generators.

Always target the weakest one that has issue shaking you off if the strongest player cannot be caught. Once you hook the weak link, other survivors will be drawn in for various reasons (particularly bloodpoints, unhooking a person is 1500 BP, more points and quicker than a generator). Premade teams, particular if there's a team damsel, hit the hooked person when safe to upset the team and force them to make irrational decisions.

Certain killers and survivors have unrealistic expectation on how other parties should behave, ie a killer player expect survivors not to loop him or bodyblock him, or a survivor expects a killer not to camp when the entire team is visible near a hooked person.

Do always keep in mind that you win some, you lose some, and it's better to learn from mistakes and develope countermeasures than write a salty post on the forum.

Note: Hook mechanics and rank scoring system are omitted as they can be found in other sources.

Camping is highly viable from rank 20 to 10 as the survivors do not tend to think carefully about their actions, nor have elaborate plans prior to going for a rescue, and will attempt to unhook even when you are present. It's possible to hit the recently unhooked and re-hook them, however if this should be the course of action you would like to take, let it happen as early as possible as the person who unhooked have just done you a favor by sending his teammate into phase 2 on next hook.

Another situation where you would camp is when 2 or even 3 survivors showed up to attempt the rescue, simple mathmatics tells us that there's one (1) on the hook and three (3) running around like headless chicken, so no one is doing generators. Therefore, it's beneficial to stall their progress by camping the hooked person as you have the entire survivor team on lockdown.

You can also prevent the unhooking attempt completely by standing in front of the hooked person. Do keep in mind not to hit the person on the hook if there is clearly other survivors aroundl; this is not for politeness reasons, but due to the fact that your attack cooldown creates an window of opporuntiy for the victim's team to unhook safely while you are locked in the animation.

Smart ones will do generators and before you know it, the gate is already open and you only get 1K. So while camping works in most instances, do adapt to the situation at hand and re-assess the situation as need. If you have a perfect triangle (generators that are so close you can look at all 3 from a single point) it's better to secure the triangle than camp, as securing the triangle will gurantee future death of other survivors.

Both the survivor team and killer can physically block each other. When you are transporting a downed survivor, you may encounter survivors standing in doorways to take hits from you to slow you down. This is a legitimate strategy, as the time you spend hitting them may allow whoever you are carrying to escape, you can also do the same by blocking narrow pathways, allowing you to employ certain strategies (ie one shot with hillbilly chainsaw)



[Pic: Farmhouse basement, which is narror enough for you to block the whole path by just standing there.]

To avoid these kind of issues, be less predictable as to which hook you are heading to by making a few trick turns (where time permits) after you pick up a downed person to confuse the other survivors about which hook you are heading to, and always have a backup plan ready if your originally intented hook is no longer available or impossible to reach.

Hooks can be temporarily sabotaged (3 mins), a common strategy is to leave them 95% sabotaged and blow the hook off just before you can reach it to save the victim on your shoulder. Having a flashlight shined in your face also makes you drop your victim, but in rank 20 to 10 the chance of encountering a well equiped flashlight user is low to none. To avoid flashlights, either look up, or spin in a circle, this will prevent general blind as a normal flashlight takes approx 1.1+ second to complete a blind, and a purple flashlight with add on takes 0.65 seconds to blind.

If you come across particularly annoying yet legitimate strategies used by other teams, let it be survivors or killers, research if you can add them to your own bag of tricks instead of griping about it - field test them, discover where the weakness is.

After all, keep in mind this is a PVP game, expecting cuddles or thinking other players should play in accordance with your code of honor are highly unrealistic.

Don't fall into the mindset of "I am survivor/killer main so I am never going to touch X", always play other side from time to time even if you have strong disdain for it, so you will not become the laughing stock on the forum who doesn't know how Borrowed Time or Hex: Ruin works.