Superhands' FIVE 40+ co-op strategy guide

[Superhands]

Hey guys, another step-by-step guide for you here, this one for 3-4 players on FIVE.

This has gotten me to round 45 with 3 players, and that was quite a while ago when I still had a lot to learn about how to play this game so I'm sure I'll improve on that score sometime.

Enjoy!

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Starting area

Stay in the starting room until round 3 or 4, just using your pistol and knife.

When you get overrun, open the door and buy the MPL. Open the elevator ASAP as an escape route if everyone gets overrun.

You’ll want to hold of up here for as long as you can, going down to the next floor when you feel like you’re getting overrun.

It’s in the whole team’s interest to always have the player with the most points opening the next door.

Next floor

Once you get down to the next floor, leave the barricade closed – the upper floor makes an ideal camping spot for 4 players as there are 4 windows. It’s also pretty easy to hold off with 3 players here.

Everyone should buy the MP5K off of the wall with the exception of one player who should buy the PM63 instead. Obviously this player will guard the window closest to the PM63’s location.

I’d recommend one or two players keeping hold of their M1911 with the purpose of upgrading it to the Mustang & Sally, for use in the Pentagon Thief rounds and for taking out big bunches of zombies later in the game. It’s best for the players at the windows close to the locations of the guns on the walls to be the ones to do this, as they won’t need to rely on the MPL as a back-up weapon mid-round being that buyable ammo for the MP5K/PM63 is pretty much right next to them.

It’s ideal to stay here until the end of round 9, leaving a crawler at the end of the round to go and turn on the power, use the box and buy perks.

Of course, if you do get overrun at any time, you may need to open the barricade and move down to the next floor. If you do have to do this, camp on the elevator side of the room, keeping the elevator closed unless overrun to effectively disable the elevator window and make things easier.

Preparing for the next round

So, it’s the end of round 9 and (hopefully) you have a crawler. Time to start spending some points!

As mentioned, have the guy with the most points open the door every time to make sure everyone has a few goes on the box and people can afford perks. You’ll of course need to open the elevator, go down and look through the windows in each of the rooms to see which room the random box is in. Turn on the power switch while you’re down there.

I’ll clear up the basic strategy now as this will affect each player’s priorities in perks and weapons; you’ll have one player running a loop in the War Room, while the rest of the players will camp in the PaP room. The ‘runner’ will need to prioritise getting Juggernog and opening the barricades in the War Room, as having a good weapon when running loops is not absolutely essential especially in the early stages. An SMG will do the job for the runner for now.

The rest of the players can feel free to spam the box and get Juggernog in the coming rounds; it’s more important for them to be able to hold off the zombies from coming in the PaP room windows than it is to be able to get hit a few times extra.

As for what weapons to be aiming for, these are the best choices:

For the runner

Ray Gun

HK/RPK

Winter’s Howl

Awful Lawton

Stakeout

For the campers

Ray Gun

HK/RPK

Mustang & Sally

Awful Lawton

Spaz-12

HS10

Python

Following rounds/end-game strategy

You’ll now start the main strategy, with one player running a loop outside in the War Room and the other 2-3 players camping in the PaP room. Obviously, the guy with the most skills in running loops/trains/kiting should be the one do to this.

The runner will get the majority of the zombies going for him (about 80-90% most of the time, sometimes more), so it should be easy for the PaP room guys to defend.

I won’t go into detail on running the loop in this guide; for a detailed guide on doing this with all the tips you need, please refer to my FIVE solo guide HERE. Just be aware though that, since the players in the room will also be killing zombies, they will be constantly spawning. I point out the best place to shoot in the solo guide, which is just as you pass the elevator on your right, turning and shooting at the bottom of the stairs. This should help you avoid getting trapped by zombies coming out of the windows.

At NO point should any other player walk out into the War Room while the runner is doing his loop – this can cause the zombies to spread everywhere which will make things dangerous for the both of you.

In a 4 player game, it’s ideal to have 2 players watching a window each in the room and have one player in the hallway of the room, shooting the runner’s horde of zombies as they pass by the room. It’s important for this player to stand at the very back of the hallway, far away from the doors, to stop the zombies turning round and coming into the room.

Another important thing; do NOT shoot the horde with the Ray Gun as they pass – this has the potential to make crawlers, particularly at higher rounds. Leaving crawlers in that particular area can spell danger for the runner, so best avoided.

To speed the rounds along, you can take out the entire horde with the Mustang & Sally. Make sure you do take them all out and don’t leave any crawlers though.

The Awful Lawton can also be very useful here if you get overrun. It’s a good idea to have the door-watcher have an Awful Lawton in their arsenal, using it to shoot a bolt out of the room when overrun to lure the zombies out of the room. It’s really best to communicate when playing this map, especially when it comes to doing this. Tell the runner what you’re about to do so he knows what to expect. It’s best for him to stand close to the group of zombies gathering around the bolt, so when it blows up they’ll chase him rather than turning back round and coming into the room.

Monkey bombs can also be used for the same purpose, these are preferable when possible as they last longer and allow everyone to prepare, but the Lawton is quicker to prepare initially and so more suitable if you need to get the zombies away very quickly.

If one of the guys in the room goes down, one of the other guys in the room should try and revive them without using a monkey or bolt when possible; it’s best to avoid distracting the runner’s train whenever possible. Quick Revive will help you do this.

Of course, you will almost always need to use a distraction if the runner goes down. Try when possible to throw the monkey or bolt outside of the PaP room.

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And that’s about it. There’s no real strategy for the Pentagon Thief rounds – just get everyone on the top floor of the War Room and have the guys with the M&S just blast him away as soon as he appears. If done properly, he should never take anyone’s guns.

[Tom852]

Awesome guide! Short, simple and easy to understand, but effective as hell.

I'd like to do this, but it's hard to get a 3+ team ready for FIVE. I remember the last situation when we played FIVE with a nice team was when COTD came out, and we overplayed it. As we all noticed, that we should maybe take a brake from COTD, we just played DOA first (my one and only coop game in DOA), and then FIVE

We did the first part of this strategy, unfortunately got some bad luck at round 9-10-11, so we never made it to jug and to the base floor of the war room. But what I can remember from this game is that it worked so far awesomely well in general.

What I would like to ask is, am I right with my guess that all the zombies spread up more or less to all the windows around there? So that the 2 window-watchers in the pap room do net get that many zombies, but the runner gets to most? Or is it rather hard to watch the windows?

[Superhands]

What I would like to ask is, am I right with my guess that all the zombies spread up more or less to all the windows around there? So that the 2 window-watchers in the pap room do net get that many zombies, but the runner gets to most? Or is it rather hard to watch the windows?

I can't believe I forgot to mention this

But yeah, the runner will always get the majority of the zombies, the PaP room guys will have a pretty easy job well into the 30s.