Advanced Strategy

WARNING: THIS IS INTERIM MATERIAL. HELP AND REFINEMENT NEEDED.

Assuming you've read the beginners guide and have played the game awhile, you'll find that no matter how many trinkets you have and how many monsters you slay, you end up finding yourself in situations that get you killed. You start a new game, try again, and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

But there are certain sure fire ways to optimize your gameplay beyond trinkets and statistics. Here are a few suggestions on ways to step up you game.

### **Bunny Hopping**

If you jump while running you keep your momentum but do not lose stamina providing you release the run button shortly afterward; Simply tap the run button and jump button to virtually run forever.

More than that however is the greatly improved ability to dodge projectiles, adding verticality into their path and also making yourself a fast and ever-moving target.

### **Circling Enemies**

If you circle enemies you will almost always dodge their initial projectile. Simply keep doing this until the enemies are dead. If it's a large enough group, you can do this to cause infighting and redirect harmful missiles into the crowd. This not only causes enemies to be distracted so you can prioritize imminent threats, you also are maximizing your damage.

### **Using Crouch and Crouch Jump**

Any window you see, you can usually hop through; this can make for a hasty escape from pursuing monsters. You can also jump onto furniture or behind furniture, putting distance between melee and missile attackers and yourself.

### **Choose Your Targets**

If you have a clown, a faceless, and a doctor pursuing you along with nurses and cutters, you need to be able to identify the largest threat in the group and eliminate it quickly to help you manage your danger level. In that particular scenario, The clown is the most dangerous: his projectiles home in and he's very dangerous in melee. The Faceless is the next best choice to kill because his projectiles do quite a bit of damage; a resourceful player can use this to their advantage. The doctor would be the next, but generally is a very low threat unless you get hit by his projectiles, since he is slow and his projectiles do not track you. The nurses and cutters are merely clutter and will often be killed as you shoot at the larger enemies - they're only a threat if they are in melee range.

### **Line Up Enemies**

Particularly relevant when using the Nailgun, Railgun, or the Shotgun, You need to maximize every shot you have: every railgun ray, every shotgun pellet, every bullet, every nail counts. One bullet could be the difference between life and death. So your best plan is do aim to be as accurate as possible. If you cannot do so safely, try to create distance. If you cannot do that, focus on each target as they come at you individually.

If you aim at an enemy he is likely to move; typically it's straight for you but it can also be in other directions. Generally speaking enemies have a pretty consistent pattern of movement, to the point you can more or less predict their trajectory.

There are two methods of aiming: direct sighting and leading. Generally speaking the superior method of aiming is to let the enemy walk into you crosshair and shoot, moving it to match the enemies movement. The other is to move the crosshair onto an enemy and shoot. A good player can do both interchangeably and maximize his effectiveness.

### **Manipulate the system**

Despite the random nature of Unloved, it's fairly orderly and predicable once you get the pattern down. If you can find a pattern, you can take advantage of the pattern. With Aggro for instance, items you pick up have a lot of heat or very little heat depending on if they are dropped items or items in unkeyed areas. You know as well yellow and red messages indicate heat buildup and release; you know certain exploitable furniture. You can create pathways to funnel monsters. You know what certain weapons are best for and what type of damage and spread they have. You can remember where ammo stashes are.

There's no way to possibly explain every single pattern, every single leg up. But if you keep in mind ways to create an advantage with all the exits, ammo drops, enemy behavior, exct. you can "clutch" the game in your favor when it seems like you're in a bad spot.

Like any game of chance there are no guarantees, but if you keep in mind some of these tips you might turn a hopeless situation into a sliver of hope, a sliver into a crack, a crack into a "here's johnny" moment. You can force your way into a victory.