There's no written or implicit rule for this, but you might want to make Hard the limit if you've just started. Start at Medium and go from there. Is Medium too hard? Try Easy. Is Medium too easy? Try Hard.

There are three classes in Survival. All of these classes start with different shield values, weapons, and special abilities. All three are valid options and just depend on personal preference and play-style.

• Assault: 150 base shield, Frag Grenades (straight up explosive), CV-10 Pistol Sidearm. The assault's special ability is his jetpack, which is often used to get to high places or to more effectively kite large groups of dinos.
  
  
• Support: 200 base shield, Smoke Grenades (dinos stop attacking players in the cloud), M-40 Magnum Sidearm. The Support's special ability is the Medic Gun which is the only way in the game to directly heal players.
  
  
• Recon: 100 base shield, EMP Grenades (stuns regular dinos, repairs mechanical), CV-10s Silenced Pistol Sidearm. The Recon's special ability is a cloak, particularly useful for getting around the horde to restore the generator, to get a teammate back on his feet or to simply escape hairy situations.

Note: as you level, you'll unlock more options for starting gear that you can customise in the 'Loadout' from the Escape or Main Menu.

• Lookout for fallen teammates: You can notice them by their names being slightly bigger on-screen and having a skull next to it, and by their names on the top left of the HUD being yellow. If you're close by, start heading towards them in case they don't manage a second-wind.
  
  
• Repair the generator: depending on the difficulty, you're given more than enough time, but pay attention to it and keep track of the timer. Don't expect someone else to grab it unless you specifically see them running straight for it.
  
  
• Focus-fire the big ones: in the last couple of waves especially, you'll have a lot of the large dinos to deal with. Depending on how many are left alive at regular intervals, more regular dinos will spawn. This can easily overrun an unorganised team. It's good practice to call out a T-Rex and his location when you see him. All though none of the large dinos are to be underestimated, T-Rex is a good first target because of his lethal ranged attack.
  
  
• On Objective waves: try and move as a group, and move fast. There is often a large dino to deal with, meaning more spawns if left for too long.

Similar to Deus Ex, Augments in Orion are basically perks and upgrades. Some of them offer situational abilities that can be activated, while others offer passive bonuses like suppressing fall damage or boosting your shields or accuracy.

Augments are obtained via the consoles in the area that you first spawn in. However they won't be active until the Generator has been activated. Once accessible, the mouse-over tooltips in the Augments shop make them pretty self-explanatory.

The first thing you should know is that if you die, you'll lose anything you didn't spawn with at the start. So it's a good idea to first maximise your chances of survival. To that end there are 2 augments that are often considered crucial:

• Iron Pecs: doubles your shields (5000 Credits).
  
  
• Energizer: doubles energy for twice the jetpack, healing, cloak and utility gun time (2500 Credits).

At this point you can safely start looking at Weapons and other Augments and go with whatever suits your play style most.

There is no traditional way to restock on Ammo in Orion.

Most players opt to carry a Utility Gun (5000 credits from the Weapons shop, or unlocked as a starting item at Support level 10). The Utility Gun can heal mechanical units like vehicles and the generator, and replenish player ammo (left click = target, right click = self). The Utility Gun can however *not* heal player health.

Note: the Utility Gun (green beam) is not to be confused with the Support class's special ability Medic Gun (blue beam) which in turn *can* heal players.

An alternative is the Ammo Kit for 500 credits from the Weapons Shop.

Shields will only recharge so long as you're at maximum health.

As with ammo, there is no conventional way.

If you're lucky, you'll have a Support in your team that will be able to heal you. If not, useful Augments for this are Vampire (cannibalise dead Raptors by standing over them and holding 'E') and Wolverine (passive health regeneration).

Another solution, though situational, can be to drop into spectator between waves (default 'N' to bring up Class Selection > Spectate) and spawn back in if there is no support around and you have no money to buy the needed Augments. Be careful that you're not doing this on an objective wave as you'll be stuck in spectator for the duration of it, which defeats the point. Going to spectator is the same as dieing however, you'll lose any Augments bought, and drop all your weapons where you stand. Money and score board stats remain. When you spawn back in, your second-winds will also be replenished.

Regardless of the class you're playing, you can run up to them and hold your use key (default 'E') to revive them. Supports however, can use their special ability Medic Gun to revive them faster, and from a certain distance.

You have a limited amount of second-winds per life. You can get more by levelling your class or by buying the Augment "Gambler".

There are several types of attack that aren't all that obvious when first playing the game.

• Compys(ies?): these tiny little buggers are hard to spot, especially when standing in grass. And whereas they don't do all that much damage, it's constant (meaning your shields aren't recharging) and often don't come alone. If you hear a Raptor-like attack, but see nothing around you, look to your feet. An easy way to deal with these at lower difficulties is to simply melee them by hitting 'V' on your keyboard.
  
  
• Dilos: these are the dinos that you may recognise from Jurassic Park that spit venom. They're not just ranged attacks though, they leave a corrosive cloud on the ground that can quickly drop your shields and hp if stood in for too long. So look out for those green bubbles!
  
  
• Flying dinos: Rhams in particular can easily attack you without ever appearing on your screen. Listen for a bird-like screech when playing, this indicates that a Rham or Pterodactyl is diving towards a player. Look up and, short of trying to take them out, at least make sure they're not heading for you. Rhams and Pterodactyls are easiest dealt with by the person they're targeting as they'll stay relatively centred on their screen. Combining how fast they fly and often not-ideal peer-to-peer pings, they might be tough targets for others.

Almost certainly a Stegosaurus or a Triceratops.

If you see them nearby, watch out for their ground stomp. They'll frequently lift off their front legs and slam back down. At this point, you really want to be mid air, so just time a jump carefully when this happens.

They can also directly charge you which would have the same effect, so be careful.

• Red: for Dinosaurs part of the current wave.
  
  
• Orange: for Dinosaurs part of the world/map but not specific to a particular wave.
  
  
• Green: for the Generator and other points of interest.
  
  
• Blue: for Teammates.

There are two types of levels, both increased by the experience you earn killing dinosaurs.

• Class-specific: these levels determine how far along you are in a certain class's progression. You can view your progress towards class-specific unlocks on the Escape or Main Menu > Accomplishments > Statistics Tab > *Show Details*. These are the levels that you're notified about centre-screen.
  
  
• Global: these levels are determined by the sum of the xp you've earned with each class. This is mostly just for show and to give other players a rough idea of your experience.

So if you find yourself unlocking level 7 bonuses while the score boards say you're level 13, it's because you've already levelled up other classes contributing to your overall experience/level, but have only just become level 7 with the current.

The amount of experience you earn depends on class-level (you'll unlock XP Bonuses as you level), difficulty, and other potential multipliers like Double-XP weekends. This may sound like a messy thing to work out for a new player, but thankfully the end result is conveniently displayed as the 'XP Scale', available at the top right of the scoreboards during a game (TAB).

So that's great, but where does experience actually come from? Well, here's a quick breakdown of XP sources in Survival and Conquest (each to be multiplied by the player's aforementioned XP Scale):

• Raptor Kill: 10xp
  
• Compy Kill: 5xp
  
• Dilo Kill: 15xp
  
• Rham Kill: 10xp
  
• Ptero Kill: 15xp
  
• Stego Kill: 25xp
  
• Trike Kill: 25xp
  
• T-Rex Kill: 50xp
  
• Deino Kill: 50xp
  
• Spino Kill: 50xp
  
• Wave Completion: 50xp
  
• Victory: 400xp

This is a very quick and simple overview of levelling and experience. More on that can be found at Dino Horde Wiki's page on its Persistent Leveling System[orion-dino-horde.wikia.com].