What is a good tactic to kill a witch in Left 4 Dead without being hit?

Question

When you encounter a Witch in Left 4 Dead, the best thing to do is probably to switch off the lights and leave her alone.

But what to do when the AI director decides to put her straight on your way and the only possibility you have is killing her?

Most of the time, the player who wakes her up is attacked and heavily damaged.

How to avoid her claws? Which strategy to use? Are there any strategic differences between Left 4 Dead 1 and Left 4 Dead 2?

Asked by Drake

Answer

Well, when I play with my regular team mates together, we mostly avoid killing the witch. But if you absolutely need to, there are two ways:

• Fire and kite: Unless the surroundings/terrain is flat wide area with no place to hide or climb, let one with a mid/long-range weapon shoot the witch and start running around IMMEDIATELY. While she's chasing the guy, the rest of the team unloads on her with whatever they have. Depending on difficulty she drops dead in less than 10 seconds. Don't try this on Expert, especially if your team is not good at tracking targets while firing.

• Crowning: If on campaign, the one player with the auto-shotgun gets near and gets the fast kill. On expert, it is possible to use the shotgun, but is also very risky. If the first shot misses a single pellet, you're dead. So, if you have no other choice and only the shotgun at your disposal: Get real close and aim for the chest, AS SHE'S STANDING UP. I do it like this: I get close to touch her, crouch and keep my aim on the head. As she starts standing up, I pull the trigger the moment my cross aim is at the middle of her chest.

On versus, a good team usually has already set up a trap around her, so be extra cautious. Don't even try it with the shotgun. If you miss the first one and there is a boomer around, you're going down pretty fast.

If you are soloing, and NEED to get that witch off the street, you can also use the sniper rifle from a safe distance. The first shot HAS to be headshot, which causes her to stumble and give you about two extra seconds to unload further.

That's it.

UPDATE: As of December 3rd, 2010 Update, the witch can't be killed by crowning (1 shot in the head with the shotgun) in Realism Versus. All other methods still work, though.

Answered by Bora

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Left 4 Dead local co-op for 4 players

Question

Does the original Left 4 Dead support local co-op for 4 players? Not using XBox Live but physically sitting in the same room looking at the same tv.

Answer

Left 4 Dead and its sequel both support 2 players maximum in local co-op mode.

You can, however, join a campaign game lobby with a team of two local players and round out the game with 2 more. Alternatively, you can System Link 2 Xboxes with 2 TVs and play 4 player in the same room (assuming all of this gear fits in the same room ;) )

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Accessing bonus campaigns in L4D game of the year edition

Question

I have the L4D game of the year edition and I understand there are 3 new campaigns that are on the disc. When I played through with a friend I did not see an option to play Crash Course, The Sacrifice or The Last Stand. Are these only available in single player? Do I have to do something in the game to unlock the extra campaigns?

Sorry Xbox 360 edition.

Answer

The "Game of the Year" edition of Left4Dead is a bit confusing, and you might call it an outright misnomer.

If we're talking about the Xbox 360 edition, it comes with just the Survival mode, which was free DLC anyhow - but it's on the disc, as opposed to something you've got to download from Xbox Live. If you want the other campaigns, Crash Course and The Sacrifice, you're going to have to pony up 560 Microsoft points (~$7) each (or wait for a sale/price drop sometime in the future)

If you're talking about the PC edition, it comes with all the DLC campaigns, but again, that was free DLC for PC users. You'll get everything via Steam when you install it.

Effectively there's very little difference between the "Standard" and "Game of the Year" editions on both platforms.

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How can I avoid wasting shots on zombies that are already dead, but haven't fallen in Left-4-Dead?

Question

In Left-4-Dead, zombies don't always fall immediately when killed (especially with a pistol or machine gun), but instead there is a delay. Since I've currently been shooting zombies until they fall, I've been wasting bullets. How do you figure out when to stop shooting and when to move onto the next zombie?

Answer

Here are a couple ideas.

Foremost, after a while you just get a "feel" for when a zombie is dead, or when he is still coming after you. You know about how much damage it takes. Note that different difficulties will require you to get different feels for this, so you'd need to play on the same one for a while.

Alternatively, you can switch your fire between a couple of zombies. A bullet usually stops or at least slows down a zombie, even if he is going to continue rushing at you. This gives you some time to deal with other zombies that may have gotten ahead in the rush due to this. You can always come back to the first zombie later on if you discover he's really still alive.

Note that you can't rely on their "animations" per se because of the ragdoll physics. If a zombie starts falling, he's dead, but quite often they take a full second or more before they actually begin to fall. You can't rely on a certain pose or position to indicate that a zombie is dead.

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Do the weapons have different melee effectiveness in Left 4 Dead?

Question

Do different weapons used for melee in Left for Dead 1 either do more damage or more knockback or are they different in any other way?

Answer

Since this question is tagged left-4-dead, and all your recent questions have been about L4D1, I will assume you're not talking about L4D2...

In which case, the answer is no, no matter what weapon you are holding when you melee, it will have the same effect.

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How can you make your player scream in Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2?

Question

I remember when I played Left 4 Dead, a couple of months ago, that some players were able to let their controlled character do a scaring long scream.

How did they do? Is it possible to do this also in Left 4 Dead 2?

Answer

Valve removed the vocalization commands to stop people spamming in multiplayer games, all that is left are the speech wheel that come up when you press z or x (using default controls).

Edit: This is the very hacky way of doing it through the radial commands which may or may not work.

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Do the characters in Left 4 Dead have different attributes?

Question

In Left 4 Dead, and also Left 4 Dead 2, does it make any difference which character you pick? Do they have different speed, toughness, accuracy, etc, or are they identical?

In single player, do they have different AI (weapon preferences, more likely to use or share healthpacks, etc)?

Answer

The only difference is in the bot AIs. This Question goes into depth on the specifics of that.

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Is there any way to play Left 4 Dead on a LAN?

Question

It seems the only option for playing Left 4 Dead with my friends is to have all computers online, even though I bought the 4 pack from Valve. Is there anyway to plan a LAN game on Left 4 Dead 1?

Answer

It is possible. If you use srcds to set up a dedicated server and note the LAN IP of the computer hosting it, you can enable the developer console in-game (under Keyboard settings then advanced) press the ~ key (on foreign keyboards, it is usually whichever key is next to the 1 key) to open it and enter the command connect <LAN IP of server> into it. You'll then be dropped into the game. Make sure to edit the key of the server so that random people don't start joining. Consider setting it to LAN-only.

If you're using a non-QWERTY keyboard, sometimes binding the developer console may not work. If so, you can edit the launch options and add --console. Then, whenever you launch the game, you'll have console open.

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