*Super's Hybrid 90 Sec PaP Strategy; Kill-Maximising Method*

[Superhands]

Hey guys, so in the ongoing search of methods to get better and better starts on NML, I've created the bastard child of conventional PaP methods and my 90 second method, to maximise kills before PaP.

With conventional methods, the last part of the strategy can always be a huge pain in the arse; this method alleviates that tough last part into something much more manageable and just as effective.

Normally gets 50-60 kills before PaP, which with good following spawns can easily lead to 100-110 kills with 4 M&S shots by the time you get Jugg at about 2:45; as good a start as you can hope for.

1) Get at least 1670 points before the 1st siren
2) After the siren, hang by the side-drop for about 6-8 seconds and get some double-knifes
3) Approach the other side-drop corner, then approach the PaP before preparing a grenade in the cage (shown in-video)
4) This grenade should go off before the 2nd siren, killing your entire hoard
5) Make way for the teleporter pad, knifing any dogs
6) Gather a hoard, spraying them with your pistol, saving the last clip
7) At the 3rd siren start cooking your 2nd nade (you may have to delay a few seconds to wait for stragglers)
8) After the nade goes off, shoot any survivors and knife when out of ammo

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[Chopper]

Very nice mate, loving that cage grenade

This is about as consistent as you can get. Can maybe shave 4 or 5 seconds off doing it all downstairs but that is hella tough and will not make any difference in the long run, and needs lots of luck with no dogs on 2nd grenade. I'm going to work on this alot.

Thanks Super :D

[Mr. Jay]

Cheers super.

And my work sucks.

[Superhands]

Cheers guys, yeah Chopper I've only seen a few people use that nade, yourself included, works so nicely :)

[Ehjookayted]

I'm not surprised at all that I came up with a slightly similar version to this last week. You, me, Chopper, we all think the same when it comes to No Man's Land. That's something special.

I was at around 1:45, doing things a little wrong, or going down when knifing those fast crawlers. You perfected something that I had envisioned, and that, my friend, is truly something awesome. 8-)

[Superhands]

Cheers Eye, yeah Chopper and myself have been discussing strategy quite a bit and we always tend to have the same ideas

Similar thing with 5and5, I remember talking to you guys about a quick Shi No Numa strategy when we were discussing making a speed runs guide, didn't tell anyone else about it and he released a video of the very same strategy a couple of weeks later, great minds think alike :D

[Chopper]

Cheers Eye, yeah Chopper and myself have been discussing strategy quite a bit and we always tend to have the same ideas

Similar thing with 5and5, I remember talking to you guys about a quick Shi No Numa strategy when we were discussing making a speed runs guide, didn't tell anyone else about it and he released a video of the very same strategy a couple of weeks later, great minds think alike

We may have broken Shang between the 3 of us

The community will be updated as we test and iron out the kinks.

Only 3 people have ever been to 100 on Shang, me and Super will be 4 and 5 hopefully.

[Superhands]

I actually hate Shangri La... not that it's too tough or anything like that, in fact I did 89 on it after the first week before getting the dreaded g_spawn error. Just hate the feel of it. Even more reason to conquer it and get the 100 so I can wash my hands of it altogether ;)

[Chopper]

The only thing that's giving me slight issues are the screaming zombies Super - so far I'm staying put, you know where and circling.

But if they spawn at the beginning of a fresh hoard the difficulty increases by at least 3 times.

Love love love Firezombies, hello Mr Trap

Like you Super I'm not a fan, did a single 50 on it and washed my hands....or so I thought ;)

[Superhands]

Yeah I know what you mean mate, if they spawn from the very start may even be worth using a shot to get rid of them quickly if possible.

[Tom852]

Why is everybody disliking Shangri??? I like it so much Probably even my top favorite in challenging maps.

BtT. What kind of spawn is this again in the vid??

I like the first nade, quite a nice kill count granter as it looks. I'll try that next time I go to NML, which is not planned in the near future

Now I have to hurry with Shangri, otherwise you'll say I stole your strategy (I'll imagine everyone will do the same thing)

[shirtlesservice]

Back to the topic at hand (good luck to hands, chopper, and eye though )

This strategy is netting my more than 5000 right off of the second grenade, and over 1000 almost every time on the first ms shot. this is gonna make getting a 320 alot easier, thanks hands!

[selectyeti89]

I have been doing this for about a week now, before I even saw this post and I got exactly 51 kills at pap time about 6 times in a row. Every time I got about 280 then died with close to 20 shots left .

[Ehjookayted]

Just did your version of this tonight; it's probably the best way to ensure a PAP. Even if you can't make it across that gap to throw the corner grenade, you can easily cut back for another grenade.

Each time I used this strategy, or at least began the process of it, I PAP'd with at least 45 kills each time, at least 5500 points.

Unfortunately, I got dizzy tonight and nearly threw up.

My point: this is awesome, glad all our minds came together for this and you perfected it.

[Superhands]

Cheers guys, yeah absolutely right Eye this is a mish-mash of all of the best parts of various PaP strategies, including my own, to make what I believe to be the ultimate balance between effectiveness and consistency.

[Tom852]

*Super's Hybrid 90 Sec PaP Strategy; Kill-Maximising Method*

A detailed review and experience report by Tom

§1) Preface

Super has done a lot of nice NML contributions. I think his best work was - at least for me personally - the 90s PAP strategy on the Pad. To be honest, i was never really satisfied with it. My main concerns about it are:

[*:3jei76sn]you loose all the quick double knife kills, straight after the first siren
[*:3jei76sn]you loose all the single dog knife kills
[*:3jei76sn]the first nade could do way more kills, than just 5-6 - as super does it in his pad pap.

Now Super brought this here to us, and when we have a look:

[*:3jei76sn]corrected
[*:3jei76sn]corrected
[*:3jei76sn]corrected

§2) First Look

It promises a lot. A 90s pap with a ton of kills! I was really exited to try it out. But I noticed quickly, that it cannot be done without practicing the strategy first of all, as well I had to develop a feel for it. Fortunately, it was quite an easy work, to correct my faults I did in the beginning. I caught the timing quite fast.

So it seemed as a strategy, that you cannot just do and copy. You need to practice it a bit, and think on your own, how you can solve the occuring problems. Once you got the hang on the strat, it goes orgasmic. See here one of my first few tries. Although I was still warming up and finding my "hang" on the strategy, I just broke several personal records.

Jug + Pap at 2:20

Jug with only 2 shots.

100 kills at 3min with only 6 shots, as well something I could never ever achieve before.

It looked like a potential 300+, although my Pap-to-Jug strategy was not optimal imho.

§3) Problems and weaknesses of the strategy

a) Timing [step 2-3 of the author's numbering]

You will notice quickly, that when you really hang out 6-8s at the sidedrop to doubleknife at least 3 zombones, you need to hurry like hell to get a good first nade. Your sprinting can then tend to mess the zombies a bit, so that the nade will not catch all of them.

Interesting is also to talk about a nade slightly after the 2nd siren. It is unavoidable to accidentially throw some of too late nades, as you could already see in the vid above. But when you place it really well, it actually still can take out the full wave, and spare you the crawlers. But however, even if you get crawlers, you'll have lots of time to knife them (=more pts but less faster spawn).

Therefore, I wished the creator gave us some more words about the timing. I'm not really sure, if a quite late nade is good or bad.

But as said, you'll adapt the optimal solution for yourself quickly on your own.

The turn around pap [step 3]

Here I faced lots of difficulties. The main problem is, that you get a straight line there, built by all the spawner's at the backswamp. And this line is very hungry for human flesh:

I also wished here some words about it from Super. But let's think about it on our own. All you need to do, is try to lead this backswamp spawner line to the right side as good as you can... Or, just shorten your path a bit. When you actually just think about leading them to the right side as good as you can, you'll already be able to dodge them. It is also something that just needs some tries and some practice. But quite soon you'll manage to handle this line:

c) The dogs up at the pad [step 5]

Unfortunately, it will simply be impossible to always get rid of all dogs. Very often, you have those b!*ches up at the pad, and ruining everything:

Maybe we can have a word by Super or Chopper, how it is best to handle those dogs.

d) The second nade [step 7]

As I already said, your first nade tends to be very very late. Therefore, I have like 5 zombies up the pad and 15 still in the swamp, when I'm supposed to cook my second nade in Round 4. Sometimes I didn't even manage to throw the 2nd nade before the 4th siren.

Here we notice something, we already knew from the PAD only strategy. The later your first nade, the longer you wait until you get the group for the second nade.

But as we now, there is some kind of spawn break after the second nade in Round 4. And therefore, this does not matter at all. See the final full run. I'm very late, but on the other hand I have a nice group already ready after pap. If I papped earlier, I would have needed to gather the group first, so it compensates each other. I hope this is right what I say.

Therefore, a point that I think is worth to mention, is the timing stuff again. Imho it's worth to wait a while with the 2nd nade and throw it more precise, then hurry with it, just to get fckd by a straggler.

e) Reliability

Whereas the executors and audience of super's NML strategy were used to the massively ultra save pad only thing, we are now faced with something, that can always lead to some problems and fails. Here is just an example. A dumb spawner at the wrong place and wrong time, hitting me, slowing me, messing it.

I would not consider it consistent, and I'm saying this although I think I got the trick of the strategy.

§4) Positive aspects

a) Problems can be trained

Most points mentioned at §3 can be avoided by practicing. Or you can at least minimize their occurrence.

Kill count

As I already mentioned, the first nade guarantees you a ton of kills. All the dogs you knife, the few double knifes. Yummy. This is really an awesome base for 300+ runs!

c) Point count

Yummy yummy. As you kill more, you gain more points. Here is something, I never could think of with the pad only strategy. I got 5k already just by throwing nade 2. There wasn't even a need to knife them. Or when you still knife them, you'll have up to 1.5k points left after the Pap, which leads to those freaking early jugs.

d) Shot count

This strategy really opens the door to get your 100 kills with only a few shots used - see the top, first video. It's just a yummy thing.

§5) Conclusion

My PAP got slower, my Jug got faster, and I have some more kills at 3:00. And therefore...

This opened me the gate to the magic 300 kills.

I will never ever use something else again! This is epic stuff here!!

But pay attention. It is not so reliable like the pad only strategy. Like any strategy, it needs some practice first, before you can execute it well. But afterall, it's the best strategy I have seen for NML so far.

But of course, this is just my opinion and everything said is very subjective.

I was of course too proud to do the 300. So I didn't do it. But I could have done it. Well ok.... uhm.... whatever.

But enjoy the final, full run video:

[Superhands]

Brilliant review Tom [brains] I love it when an outside observer brings up things that can also go wrong with the strategy as it allows me to answer questions etc., but you even answered a lot of those questions

About dogs on the telepad... best advice is to just ignore them and run like normal, they can sometimes screw you over but that's inevitable with most NML PaP strategies. Then you just have to hope that you catch them with the 2nd grenade, which is normally the case. Even if it doesn't kill them, it should damage them enough to be a single-knife kill.

I think in general it's better to get the 1st nade out before the siren, tends to get the respawners in quicker as Tom already pointed out. Though it's not disastrous to get it out a little late and leave a few crawlers, you may even still kill the whole group with it after the siren as Tom also mentioned.

[shirtlesservice]

§5) Conclusion

My PAP got slower, my Jug got faster, and I have some more kills at 3:00.

This is the same for me, my PaP is around 1:40 with this strat, but my Jugg is about 2:25.... considering i use the Pad to go for Jugg most of the time, this is a pretty big improvement from the 2:45 i normally get. :D

[Tom852]

I just wrote down what came into my mind and uploaded the videos, that support my thoughts

But really hands, this stuff will get me my 300 kills, definitely. When it will happen is just a question of how much patience I have. But it will happen with this. Thank you so much for it. Seriously, this is the thread that gave me my 300 kills. And also the triple crown... I always felt incomplete without the 300 kills, but now I can do it!

One thing is for sure: Once I've got my 300, you'll never ever see me again trying NML solo.

It's amazing what you do. You come up with those awesome strategies. Moon Rec Bay for solo or coop... NML... In this Shangri discussion, you're the only one not straggling and delaying and aborting and whatever, you're the one that tells "hey I'm at 80 with 0 downs, gonna finish tomorrow".

Just big respect for all your work.

[Superhands]

Appreciate that Tom, if my work also helps awesome players like yourself in some way, then that's really great.

As for me just knuckilng down with Shang straight away... got a busy week ahead, today and tomorrow are the only days I have all day free so it seemed like a good time. Maybe free at the weekend but I didn't wanna spend another whole weekend doing nothing but playing zombies, already done that once this month with the Moon 100 :lol:

[Tom852]

And three or four days later, NML is pwnd.

[The Clay Bird]

have no idea how you guys can do this... i consider myself a pretty good zombies player, but my knife simply will not slash fast enough to successfully implement this strategy... any tips? are you guys on console or PC?

[way2g00d]

have no idea how you guys can do this... i consider myself a pretty good zombies player, but my knife simply will not slash fast enough to successfully implement this strategy... any tips? are you guys on console or PC?

They are on pc, Chopper, Eye are on ps3, 5and5 and jLoves2game I think are on xbox. I don't count. But knife (swiping) you need to get as close as possible. Hope that helps.

[Ehjookayted]

have no idea how you guys can do this... i consider myself a pretty good zombies player, but my knife simply will not slash fast enough to successfully implement this strategy... any tips? are you guys on console or PC?

They are on pc, Chopper, Eye are on ps3, 5and5 and jLoves2game I think are on xbox. I don't count. But knife (swiping) you need to get as close as possible. Hope that helps.

Superhands and Tom are on PC as well.

[Tom852]

On PC it's btw kinda impossible to stab. I sometimes manage to do it while backing up at max distance to the zombie. But it's really difficult to do ;)