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Things You Wish You Knew When You First Started Playing
By Dom
A simplified guide for beginners on the basic aspects of the game not easily understood when initially starting.
   
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Dom
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Category: Characters, Game Modes, Gameplay Basics, Loot, Multiplayer, Secrets, Trading, Walkthroughs, Weapons
Languages: English
Class: Demoman, Engineer, Heavy, Medic, Pyro, Scout, Sniper, Soldier, Spy
Posted
Updated
29 May, 2017 @ 1:05pm
23 Jun, 2018 @ 9:26pm
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Guide Index
Overview
Things You Wish You Knew 
Things Covered in this Video 
MORE Things You Wish You Knew 
Things Covered in this Video 
EVEN MORE Things You Wish You Knew 
Things Covered in this Video 
More Guides By Dom 
Comments
Things You Wish You Knew
Things Covered in this Video
These are the points covered:
  • Read through advanced options. There's a lot of useful options in there such as disabling suicide when selecting a class and making mediguns auto-lock on.
  • It's dangerous to stand on top teleporter exits. Enemies coming through automatically kill anyone standing on top.
  • Crits are a gameplay mechanic where sparks and team colour is added to attacks. These attacks deal 3x damage and don't decrease in damage with distance. Random crits are when weapons randomly preform crits. The chance to do a random crit goes up a bit and for a small span of time by dealing damage. Melee weapons have a higher random crit chance than projectile weapons.
    There's WAY more to crits than this. This explanation is simplified for beginners. Read more about how crits work here: https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Critical_hits
  • The payload cart moves at maximum speed when 3 players are pushing it. The 4th player doesn't make it move faster. Scouts and people with the pain train equipped count as 2 players.Scouts cap points faster too and and respawn faster in mann vs machine mode.
  • Gravetalk is a mechanic that not many people know about and they end up feeling like a fool when they learn their words were never transmitted for years. Basically servers that use it. (usually arena,Valve and competitive) make it so the living can't receive chat messages from the dead. This is to not have ghosting or because whatever. Check for gravetalk on the server to join or talk when alive to have the best chance of people reading what you said.
  • Right clicking with most pyro flamethrowers preforms an air blast. Air blasts reflect projectiles, push stick bombs, push enemies back and this one's super important to remember: extinguish teammates who were set on fire by enemies. Nothing is more infuriating in Team Fortress 2 than dying to fire when a friendly pyro could have prevented the death.
  • Spies with disguises on can receive healing and ammo from enemy dispensers. They can do so while invisible too.
  • The spy has a watch called the dead ringer. The mechanics of this watch aren't 100% obvious for new players. The watch makes it so when they take damage they can fake their death. They drop a fake corps and run off while invisible. Be suspicious of fake spy deaths. If you didn't see the spy enter or exit cloak, chances are they are a DR spy.
  • See a friendly spy without a mask on? He's 100% on your team. Spies pretending to by enemy spies have masks on.
  • Look up the price of items before trading. If you're new and someone adds you to trade they're probably trying to scam you out of something you don't know is valuable.
  • New players have small backpacks with limited storage space. Buy some item from the mannco store to go premium and get a bigger backpack. It's recommended to upgrade to premium as soon as possible because backpack space fills up quickly. The best item to buy in the mannco store to upgrade to premium is a crate key. The cheapest thing you like is good too.
  • Don't buy weapons on the store. They're worth nothingness. Save your money. Also usually buy from the steam community market or trade for what you want and you'll likely get a way better deal.
MORE Things You Wish You Knew
Things Covered in this Video
These are the points covered:
  • It's possible to set up parameters that execute when the game is launched. This is done by adding to things to TF2's launch options field on Steam. One example of a launch option is -novid. This one makes it so the intro cinematic is skipped automatically. More info https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1040-JWMT-2947
  • Certain weapons, usually not the newest ones, can be temporarily rented from the mannco store. By clicking “try it out” on a weapon in the store, players are given a temporary copy of the weapon. The weapons expires in a week and can't be used in trading or crafting. During the week the item can be bought from the store at a discount. After the week is up and the weapon expires, another weapon can be tried out, or even the same weapon can be tried out again.
  • Most weapons deal greater damage up close and less damage from afar. Critical hit and minicrits don't decrease in damage over long distances. Another thing to note about damage: weapons like rocket launchers that can hurt the wielder deal reduced self-damage.
  • It's possible to jump onto higher ledges by crouch jumping. A crouch jumping is preformed by holding down the crouch key very-slightly after starting a jump. This technique is also useful for rocketjumps as crouching while rocketjumping increases speed and thus distance travelled.
  • Player taunts aren't just for showing off. Many can deal damage and instantly kill enemies. As an example the spie's melee fencing taunt or the pyro's secondary hadukin taunt. In normal gameplay it's rare and difficult to actually kill an enemy with a taunt but when it does happen, it's GLORIUS.
  • During setup time, medics build ubercharge at 3 times their medigun's normal maximum speed. Healing and overhealing teammates builds uber faster than maintaining maximum overheal on a teammate. Healing allies that are also receiving healed from another source builds uber at a reduced rate. Teammates who haven't taken damage for at lest 10 seconds heal faster. The maximum healing speed boost is reached when they haven't been damaged in 15 seconds. Overheal takes the same amount of time to decays for every class. A full overheal fades away entirely after 15 seconds.
  • As a general rule engineer sentries should never be placed close together. They can cover more space, protect each other and become harder to destroy if spread out within an area. Clumping up sentries together makes them more susceptible to splash damage. If they're spread out it's less likely they're all be destroyed at once.
  • As an engineer it's bad to play as if failure is expected. Planning for failure from the start of a round leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy where failure happens. As an example, starting a 5 control point map by setting up at the first point. Doing this helps insures a loss. The enemy team effectively has one more player if an engineer doesn't set up near the front-line. By setting up at the first point the engineer isn't helping his team and is defending something that can't even be captured yet.
  • It's possible to rotate engineer buildings before building them by clicking alt-fire. This is really useful to make sure teleporter exits don't face walls.
    It's possible to rotate engineer buildings before building them. This is done by clicking alt-fire before placing down a build. This is really useful to make sure teleporter exits don't face walls.
  • A heavy with an edible secondary weapon (like a sadvitch,) can instantly replenish their edible secondary by picking up a healthpack at full health.
  • The scout's Force-A-Nature primary weapon can be used to reach higher areas or cross large gaps. By aiming the weapon downwards and firing while airborne, the scout will be propelled upwards similar to preforming a third jump.
  • The pyro's flamethrowers can be used to light a friendly sniper's arrows on fire. If the lit arrow hits an enemy they get set on fire.
EVEN MORE Things You Wish You Knew
Things Covered in this Video
These are the points covered:
  • One way of getting weapons early on when starting to play Team Fortress 2 is through milestone achievements. Each class has 3 milestone achievements which are granted by completing a certain number of class-specific achievement. Every milestone achievements gives the player a specific weapon from the class they're doing the achievements for.
  • It's best to set the game to the maximum field of view. Doing so allows players to see more around them.
  • Respawn times vary to try to make teammates respawn together. Respawn times can be different between teams, and often change slightly depending on map situations. As an example the team that does not control the point on a king of the hill map respawns faster.
  • It's generally more effective to reload entire clips than to reload-one-round at a time and fire over and over. If there's free time, reload entire clips.
  • Revolvers, pistols, SMGs and a single pellet from shotguns are 100% accurate on their first shot. Then they lose accuracy. After 1.25 seconds of not firing they regain full accuracy again. When shooting targets extremely far away with these weapons it may be better to stagger firing to guarantee the shots will be accurate.
  • Control points take different amounts of time to capture. The capture speed of an individual control point is decided by map makers and they use it as a tool to help balance maps.
  • On payload Upward when on red team if the second-last cart checkpoint isn't captured there's a passage way accessible from the spawn's upstairs exit that leads to the front-line very quickly.
  • As a spy it's better to rotate disguises every so often rather than to disguise as the same class repeatedly. Always disguising as the same class may make it easier for a spy to be recognized as a spy.
  • Spies can quickly disguise as the last disguise used by clicking the last disguise key, the B key by default. It's possible to change what weapon a disguise is using by clicking the last disguise key wile disguised. Depending on if the spy has a primary, secondary, melee or disguise kit out their disguise will switch to a primary, secondary, melee or 4th weapon slot item.
  • Be extra careful when chasing spies upwards, (like up stairs or a hill) and around corners. Clever spies can lead players into these situations and kill them with a trick stab. On an incline spies can jump over players and backstab them and around corners they can quickly circle them for a stab.
  • Spies deal reduced damage to engineer buildings that they're already sapping. This only applies to the spy that placed the sappers. Shooting or hitting enemy buildings sapped by other spies deals regular damage.
  • As an engineer, every melee hit on an engineer buildings as it build or redeplies speeds up the process slightly.
  • Engineer sentries can hurt the engineer who made them. Avoid standing between a sentry and an enemy. Additionally, sentries can't shoot though teammates and other engineer buildings.
  • Sentry Guns don't fire at enemies in range if there is a water's surface in the way. A sentry underwater can't shoot enemies above the water and vice versa.
  • Sentry Guns can do bonus mini-crit damage. This occurs when their target is marked for death, covered in jarate or if the engineer who owns the sentry is under the effect by the buff banner. Sentries can't critically hit and don't take bonus damage from crits.
  • Despite how it appears the heavy shoots bullets from the player's camera. This is why heavies can shoot players despite their miniguns being obscured by cover. Actually all bullet-based weapons shoot from the camera but the heavy in particular has a large disparity between where his minigun is versus where his camera is.
  • The kritzcreag's taunt heals the medic slightly. This healing is very weak and makes the medic venerable so in general, it's better to seek out other sources of healing. In the rare situation where the medic is burning to death and there's no other healing close by the kritzcreag's taunt can possibly save the medic's life.
  • The demoman's sticky bomb launchers can be charged before firing. It's charged by holding down the fire button and letting go. The greater the charge, the more distance the bomb will travel.
  • Enemy sticky bombs stuck to surfaces can be destroyed harmlessly without them exploding. Melee hits, bullets and other sources of damage can destroy them. Note that it's dangerous to destroyed enemy sticky bombs up close as the demoman can detonate them at any time.
  • The soldier's secondary banner weapons, like the buff banner only activate their effect when the soldier lets go of the fire key. This means it's possible to start a banner in a safe area and then let go right before turning a corner for battle.
  • Charging up a huntsman arrows shot for too long makes the sniper's hands shake. Releasing the arrow at this point causes it to fly off inaccuracy. To avoid this from happening keep in mind it's possible to put down the arrow by alt-fireing.
Thanks for reading. Don't forget to like/fav if you did. Subscribe to me on YouTube too.
4 Comments
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MissingNo 5 Feb, 2021 @ 3:42pm 
hey thank you for this guide man, i am really bad at fps and have been trying to get into tf2 bc i heard its fun (and it is! even if im very bad) this has definitively been of help!
SunnyTheLilBro 4 Jul, 2017 @ 6:09am 
man, this guide covers everything. too bad i already know all of these already.
Joak 16 Jun, 2017 @ 10:29pm 
Thanks! i have 1800 hours and i didn't konw a lot of this!
Iced Vro 31 May, 2017 @ 10:22am 
Thanks for sharing this! I have over 100 hours and didn't know half of these!