If you just started playing and you are going solo, I highly recommend choosing Grant.

Grant's Quarterstaff heavy attack is highly effective at the beginning of the game against large groups of zombies, it can help push back a bunch of Zeds at one of the gates before placing a final plank. It also has a decent range for the light strike too, which when you get on top of something like a car, striking at the zombies is very efficient.

(other weapons tend to be difficult to handle and weak until high-end quality in my opinion)

His Sniper rifle is perfect against Human enemies on later missions too.

His Revolver is recommended for when things go loud because of the high damage output.

His Molotov is great especially once upgraded, because you can just toss one or two of them at the gates to get rid of a large group of zombies very quickly.

Once you have chosen Grant or anyone else you wanted, I highly recommend you remove the Suppressors off the guns, you can either do so by modifying it in the weapons section or you can remove it in-game by pressing the "Y" Key on your keyboard, this is to help create noise in the game (only do this on Defence missions)

Also make sure that once you are in the lobby of the mission, that you have "barbed wire" equipped, I don't remember if you had other options at the start of the game, but just in case have them equipped.

Now once you spawn inside the level I Highly recommend placing Barbed wire at the Front gate and the Back Gate, barbed wire will slow down the zombies allowing you to take them out without them lunging at you, but don't get to close because they will still grab you if you are right on them.

Also don't place barbed wire directly on the alley gate, for some reason it is glitched and zombies don't slow down at all, it is better to place it on the side of the container next to gate.

Once you barbed the gates, go to the top floor of the buildings and grab both the boxes with materials in them and craft a Molotov and Bandage, I changed my key for the crafting menu but I think it was originally the "TAB" key to open it.

(I changed it because when I sprint with "SHIFT" and press "TAB" to craft on the run, it usually opens the steam menu, which stops me in-game leaving me vulnerable to attack)

I recommend you always have full stock of materials and Molotov/bandages.

Now with the limited time left before the round start quickly grab planks and some ammo.

Now the way a defence mission works is once a round starts, zombies will bust down a random gate (either the front gate, alley gate or back gate) and to shut the gates you will need to use planks to fix and shut the gate, the amount of planks needed is dependent on how many people are currently in the level.

1-2 players = 3 planks
3-4 players = 5 planks

But being so you can only hold two planks at a time, you must leave a gate defenceless to pick up more planks in order to place the final plank. this is why having one other player will benefit you but more then that will not.

It is recommended to close the gates as they are breached because once all gates are open together, you will have 1:30 seconds to close one gate before you get overrun. Each gate only gets breached once for each round, so as long as you close at least one gate, you have around 8:00 minutes to close the remaining two gates, so don't rush yourself.

Each Gate has a set amount of zombies that can spawn from them and once they all spawn in no more spawn in until you kill them.

For Hard difficulty or higher, one of the rounds will have a horde event on a gate, meaning larger quantity of zombies can spawn from them then usual and quicker spawn rate too.

Now once a round starts and a gate is breached, immediately rush to it and toss a Molotov at the gate, this will either kill or slow down the zombies long enough to fix each door on the gate, then quickly grab more planks and rush back to the gate and use a combination of heavy melee attacks and a Molotov to push back the zombies long enough to place the final plank in the middle of the gate.

(Now that the gate is closed you don't have to worry about being over run, so you have around 9 minutes to finish this round)

After the first gate is close I recommend you go back to the two boxes with materials in to resupply on the equipment you used up or you can do this after the second gate.

If there is too many zombies to handle I recommend you go to the opposite side of where the zombies are and start shooting a none suppressed gun, just like the Comic and TV show the zombies will go to a location if they see or hear something there, so my strategy is usually to shoot the gun a few times (try not to kill any zombies because they will re-spawn at the gate) then go inside the building to avoid the attention of the Zeds and make your way around the area to the gate you need to close, if done right the gate will be empty, but sometimes there will be stragglers that either didn't hear or are slow (Bloaters tend to stay at a gate for the most part).

This method is a good way to also round up the zombies to cull the numbers before closing the final gate.

For harder difficulties the final round will have a horde event spawn on a gate and the gates will be breached faster, so if the horde gate isn't the first gate opened, you will have to deal with it later.

You will be rushed to close the first gate before all gates are opened on this round, but once it is closed I advise you to use the noise attract strategy to lure all Zeds away from the horde gate and closed it first before the other remaining one.

Now you have one more gate left, but you might have around 30-40 zombies in the area, so you should use the noise attract strat again to get them away from the last gate, if you accomplished that and closed the final gate, you will be tasked to wipe out the remaining Zeds to Finish the level.

You can either do this by going around killing them normally or sound the alarm and wait until they all gather around the alarm and toss your remaining Molotovs at them then heavy strike their heads.

following these strategies, I can do overkill difficulty solo.

When I first started playing, I beat this level and immediately went straight to "Hell or High Water" mission and I got to the final area before I died for the final time because the level 3 horde kept blocking me, so I had three options

Option 1: Keep playing the mission until i beat it
Option 2: Go back to "The First Shot" and keep replaying it on hard difficulty
Option 3: Quit the game

I chose option 2.

I have probably played "The First Shot" mission over a hundred times before going back to "Hell or High Water".

I kept playing on hard difficulty to get Common rare weapons and to level up my character and as long as you avoid upgrading the base (to open more of the map) you can manage your upkeep while you are doing this.

I think you have to play on very hard for common weapon mods to spawn, but you got to do this until you at least have a decent suppressor and scope for the rifle.

Once I had the best sniper rifle, revolver and mods that I can get (sniper should have the best suppressor and scope) and a high level character. I finally went back to "Hell or High Water" and I beat it, it was a struggle to beat that level until I got my high-end gear, now I can fully stealth all human areas without making noise.

Well that's it, I know this game is old and abandoned and there is a lot of seasoned vets on here who already know all this, but I just wanted to make my own guide for those who bought a Steam Key and are new to the game. plus I wanted to jot down a guide that I would personally give my friend.

This is my First time making a guide, so I might have some errors in it, but I hope to fix and even add screenshots later on.

thank you for reading or following my guide