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I am an avid Expert player who (as of writing) has 1300 hours of experience in L4D2. Although there are people who are definitely more qualified to talk about this topic than I am, I think I'm pretty up there. I intend to eventually turn "Getting Good at Expert" into a series of guides, with each one going into intricate detail about certain mechanics, situations, items, maps, etc. As for right now though, this guide will cover very surface-level information about Expert mode, and give some of the most vital miscellaneous tips I can think of.

This guide is going to assume that you are already familiar with the basic mechanics of the game, such as movement, shooting, aim, what the special infected do, what the weapons are like, what the items do, etc. This is not a guide for complete beginners to L4D2! This guide is aimed at a generally experienced audience who wants to step their game up to an advanced level.

Expert mode is the hardest difficulty setting in L4D2 (duh). However, there are some differences between Expert and other difficulties that are very important to keep in mind:

• Common Zombies deal 20 damage per hit. (10 damage if they hit you from directly behind)
  
  
• Common Zombies have more health (or take less damage? Either way, they take more bullets to kill)
  
  
• The Witch will instakill you if she hits you. Not incapacitate, kill.
  
  
• It is significantly harder to crown the witch (the pellets need to hit the head).
  
  
• The Tank will instantly incapacitate you if you are hit by any of his attacks, even from full health.
  
  
• The Tank's rock throw attack is significantly harder to dodge.
  
  
• The Tank has significantly more health (8000).
  
  
• Friendly fire does a TON of damage, even enough to instantly incap a teammate in some cases.
  
  
• Special infected will kill you in seconds if you are not saved by a teammate. The Hunter is the fastest at this and can incap and kill a full health survivor in roughly 7.5 seconds total.

Does that sound tough to you?..... Well, that's good, because it is very important to note that:

Expert is hard, Expert is absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BRUTAL. This difficulty WILL make you its ♥♥♥♥♥ when you are just starting out, and it's not uncommon for somebody's first expert campaign to take over 30+ retries (my first was 48!)

But my point is, you are going to struggle when you first start out, and that's okay. If that doesn't sound fun to you or you don't think you're ready yet, there's no shame in sticking to Normal or Advanced. We play video games for fun, after all. However, let's move on to the next section.

If you take away just one thing from this guide, I want it to be this clause:


This is the most important thing to incorporate into your gameplay if you want to survive Expert mode. Now of course, there are going to be some rare situations where this clause is not true, but for 99% of gameplay, this is the general guideline you should follow.

Now, let's talk about these priorities.

Since everything in Expert does a truckload of damage when it hits you, whats the solution? Well, it's simply to do your best not to get hit in the first place.

In Normal mode, and somewhat in Advanced, you can take two fingers, a melee weapon into a horde of zombies and hold W+M1 on your keyboard and face very minimal consequences. If you try a stunt like that in Expert mode, you are going to get incapped very quickly and your teammates are going to facepalm. The reason why this two-button combo doesn't work in Expert is because you are putting yourself in a situation where it is very difficult to not get hit, AKA this action goes directly against Priority #1.

Priority #1 also involves being careful of your teammates guns, specifically their line-of-fire. If you go running sideways across your teammates line-of-fire while they're mag-dumping a horde of zombies, they are more than likely not going to have enough time to react to you sprinting in front of their gun to stop shooting for a second, and you are going to get shot in the back and take a very significant amount of damage. Be mindful of where your teammates are and where they're shooting and act accordingly. Also, don't run straight through your teammates. This causes similar situations where your teammate will shoot you on accident at no fault of their own. Either go around them, or if the space is too tight, wait for them to move out of the way instead.


Now, you may be wondering why this is priority #1.5 and not priority #2. The reason for this is because of this concept: Your health is not the important thing per se, but rather the health of the entire team as a whole, including yours.

Generally speaking, everybody's own health is their own responsibility to take care of. However, if you are in a spot where you are not in immediate danger, why not take advantage of that and make sure your teammates are doing alright? Take a look around and see where your teammates are. You may find that one of them is in danger of being caught by a special, or is currently being swarmed by commons, or otherwise would greatly benefit from some support from a teammate. Don't be afraid to help your teammates in situations like this, as they will genuinely appreciate the support when they need it. However, be weary of potentially shooting your teammate due to the inaccuracy that your weapon inherently has. Ultimately, it's up to you if you want to risk shooting near your teammate to help them while they're being swarmed. Although you can end up preventing your teammate from taking some damage, you may end up doing more damage than they would have taken otherwise, especially if you have a sniper rifle of some kind, dealing 45 damage to your teammate in a single shot.

Priority #1.5 also means being careful not to harm your teammates yourself. As I previously mentioned, friendly fire does a TON of damage on expert mode, to the point of where a single friendly fire incident can make or break a run. Because of this, it is important to be mindful of where your teammates are, and to do your best to ensure that there is very minimal chance of your bullets hitting a teammate when you shoot. Remember, killing zombies generally falls under priority #2, making it less important than ensuring that you don't damage your teammates (you also can use your shove to stun the zombie without risking damaging a teammate, as the shove doesn't damage your own team).

Something else to mention: sometimes, friendly fire just happens. Somebody somewhere (or multiple people) make a mistake, somebody gets shot, and it can be infuriating to both parties involved. You may be be tempted to argue about who's fault it was, claiming that either it was the person who shot or the person who ran in front, but here's the best way to go about it: just accept that it happened and move on. ♥♥♥♥ happens. It doesn't matter who's fault it was, the damage has already been done. Arguing is going to tilt people and lower team morale for no benefit to anyone. The team has already been punished for the mistake with the lowering of a survivor's health, you don't need to add to the penalty by making a fuss about it and making people uncomfortable. (Of course, teamkillers are a-whole-nother problem, but I will be making a guide solely dedicated to dealing with these rascals.)

This basically just means that everything else can wait when compared to preventing yourself / your team from taking damage.

For example, say you are about 2 seconds into a healing animation with a medkit, when suddenly your teammate gets snagged by a hunter. You can make one of two choices, finish your healing animation and then assist the teammate, or drop what you are doing, cancel the animation, immediately help your teammate, and then heal afterwards. Let's take a look at that first option. Since healing with a medkit takes 5 full seconds to complete, and the hunter jumped on your teammate 2 seconds in, that leaves 3 seconds of subjecting your teammate to a hunter. Doing the math, assuming the hunter does roughly 30 damage per second, your teammate is going to go down by the time you are done healing no matter what, given that it takes some time to pull your gun out. Shooting the hunter off after your heal, you revive your teammate. The situation as it stands leaves you with 80hp, your teammate with a down, 30 temporary hp, and the team minus a health kit. Now, imagine the same situation, but this time, you let go of left click as soon as you notice that your teammate is about to get pounced by a hunter. You shove the hunter off after he does only about 15 damage to your teammate, and then you kill it. You then use your health kit and heal yourself. You are now at 80hp, your teammate is at 65hp, and you're down a medkit. See how this second option leaves your team in a much better state than before?

This same concept of dropping what you're doing applies to a lot of things; if you're reviving a teammate and you notice that a zombie is coming up and about to slap you (and you otherwise don't think your downed teammate will be able to kill it), it's usually better to just drop the revive and defend yourself (unless you physically cant afford to drop the revive, such as in a situation where your teammate will instantly die if you let go of E). There are more examples, but these can be learned by simply playing the game and developing game sense (or maybe I'll cover them in another guide, who knows.)

Now that you know some of the decision making stuff, here's one of the most important mechanics in the whole game: the shove.

The shove is your main tool of avoiding damage (apart from proper positioning and decision making). As important as it is to avoid damage, it's also important to use your shove sparingly so that you have it when you need it. Try to use your shove only when you think it would prevent you from getting hit (or otherwise one of the other uses of shoves, such as saving a teammate from a special or stunning a special infected).

A tech you can do with shoves to get more out of each individual shove during a horde is to swing your camera horizontally a bit when you shove, I'd say about 90 degrees or so. The shove is actually active for a short period of time instead of happening for a single instant, and so when you swing your camera, you're effectively widening the effective area of your shove, reducing the amount of shoves you need to achieve the same results. Note that you can swing your camera farther than 90 degrees and still have this work, but the wider you swing, the faster you need to turn, and the easier it is to disorient yourself. Therefore, a nice comfy 90 degrees is my recommendation, but feel free to experiment.

Paying attention to audio in Left 4 Dead 2 is one of the most important things you can do. Having a pair of headphones also helps you determine exactly where a sound is coming from, allowing you to instantly know where something is happening without having to look. To truly showcase how important sound is in this game, here are some things that you can tell is happening, even with your eyes closed, just by paying attention to sound:

• A zombie is running up to you and about to hit you (footsteps, usually accompanied by zombie noises, but not always)
  
  
• A horde is about to spawn (subtle musical cue)
  
  
• A special infected is about to spawn, and what kind of special it is (specific, subtle musical cue)
  
  
• A special infected is around the area (special infected noises)
  
  
• A hunter or smoker is about to attack a survivor, or in the case of a charger, has gained line of sight with a survivor (specific special infected noises)
  
  
• A hunter, smoker, charger, spitter or boomer has used their main attack (unique special infected noises)
  
  
• A tank fight is ahead (subtle tank groans)
  
  
• A witch is ahead, and which state of anger she is in before she gets startled (witch crying, 3 states of possible anger)
  
  
• A witch has been startled (very obvious witch scream and music change)
  
  
• A witch has died (unique witch death scream)
  
  
• A teammate is taking damage (grunts of pain)
  
  
• A teammate is caught by a special (a voice line from the distressed survivor, as well as a global specific musical sound cue unique to each special type)
  
  
• A teammate is shooting, reloading, healing, or about to throw a grenade (voice lines, gun noises)
  
  
• A nearby teammate went down, or is now hanging off of a ledge (voice line, musical cue)
  
  
• A nearby downed teammate is about to bleed out or fall to their death (the same noise that you hear when you are about to bleed out / fall)
  
  
• A teammate died (global piano sound cue)
  
  
• A teammate is at low health (voice lines mentioning complaints of pain or similar)
  
  
• A teammate is black and white (voice lines mentioning something along the lines of "I go down again, and I'm dead", "I'm not gonna make it much longer my friends, I am seriously hurt..." etc.)

I'm sure there are more things you can use your ears for, but I think it goes without saying that many of the things on this list are very important information to be aware of. You can obtain all this information without having to look around, leaving your eyes free to obtain visual information, allowing you to make better informed decisions when things get heated.

If for whatever reason you cannot use your ears, perhaps you are having audio issues, inadequate audio equipment, or god-forbid have a hearing disability, turning on the captions in the settings will give you visual subtitles indicating most of, but not all, of these auditory warnings. These settings can be found at:

Options > Audio > Captioning > Full Captions.

I also recommend turning these on even if you do have functional audio, because the captions will appear at the same time as the sound cue, and the caption will tell you exactly what the sound cue means. Feel free to turn these off if you get to the point where you can recognize the sound cues without the captions, but there's no harm in keeping them on unless you simply wish for less screen clutter.

This section is dedicated to a bunch of tips that don't really fit into their own category. Note that there may be situational exceptions to these tips. Here's a list:

• I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend playing with this mod. It shows you the numeric value of all of your teammates' health, and is useful for determining breakpoints, how much time a downed survivor has before they naturally bleed out (hp / 3 = time left in seconds), and much more. Please install it, it will make your life so much better. https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=121088866&searchtext=
  
  
• Try not to use medkits unless either you are black and white, or the overall team health is very bad and the team is in danger of being wiped.
  
  
• It's better to consume a healing item than to leave it behind. (Be careful on Hard Rain though)
  
  
• Please don't bile the tank. It causes a horde to spawn that you will have to deal with once the bile wears off. However, if a horde is already present during a tank fight, by all means feel free to bile that mf if you feel like it's appropriate.
  
  
• Throwing a bile does not stop zombies from attacking a biled teammate. However, if you hit a zombie with a bile, the zombies will prioritize the biled zombie over the biled survivor. EDIT: Oops, that's the mandela effect. Zombies will ALWAYS prioritize biled survivors unless you throw a pipe bomb.
  
  
• You may run into situations where the level design seems to make priority #1 and #1.5 near impossible. You may want to consider saving some resources specifically for these events, such as pipebombs, biles, pills or adrenaline.

Alright, that's it for this guide.

Currently, I have plans to make guides for several topics, namely:

• Medkits / other healing items
  
  
• Grenade usage
  
  
• Teamwork
  
  
• Vanilla map strategy guides
  
  
• Dealing with teamkillers / griefers

If you can think of other topics you'd like to see covered, feel free to leave it in a comment. If you think this guide would benefit from certain information being added, or if I missed something or was wrong about something, please tell me so. Just remember to be polite pls :)

June 4th, 2024: Fixed the misinformation of "zombies will prioritize biled zombies over biled survivors." I could've sworn that this was true at some point, but after attempting to follow my own advice, I discovered that this was simply untrue.