Use our Anacrusis tips to help you and your team of survivors as you explore the stranded, alien-infested starship. In this new four-play, co-operative shooter, you and three other players will need to use teamwork and an assortment of weapons, grenades, and perks to power up and fight your way through hordes of horrible aliens. If you’ve played even just a short amount of Left 4 Dead 1 or 2, you’ll be immediately familiar with the simple, linear gameplay, although there are a few twists in The Anacrusis that you need to be aware of. Here are 10 Anacrusis tips to get your team off to a good start.
1. Sticking together is essential in The Anacrusis
As a four-player, co-op game, teamwork is essential in The Anacrusis. That means looking after your fellow players and not just yourself, communicating (we’ll touch on that later), and sticking together. Considering you’re a team of four fighting a lot more than four aliens at a time, strength in numbers is crucial to surviving each encounter. Always stay reasonably close together, and use your Pulses to push back aliens for yourself and your friends if you start getting overrun.
Moreover, there are plenty of special alien types that will catch you off guard with immobilizing mechanics, such as the Grabber and Gooper. Escaping either the Grabber’s grasp or the Gooper’s goop requires the help of another player, and if you’re powering ahead as a one-player army or lagging behind to selfishly scavenge for loot, you’re going to pay the price and annoy your team. Group up!
2. Use the ping system to communicate and mark items
On the subject of teamwork, another of our Anacrusis tips is that communication is also really important. There is a ping system that you can use to place waypoints in the world, but you can also contextually mark weapons, grenades, and healing items to highlight them for your teammates so that they can always stay stocked up on items. You can also ping any special aliens to highlight them with a red outline and make them more obvious priority targets. Holding down the ping button will bring up a wheel of advanced options, including 3-second timers and a “this way” command to lead your team.
The Anacrusis has in-game voice chat too, so you can use a microphone to speak directly to your fellow survivors, which is obviously the best form of communication but isn’t always available for all players. Making use of the ping system, turning on subtitles, and paying attention to the action feed in the top-right corner of the screen will all really help with your overall team awareness as you play.
3. Be wary of friendly fire and fall damage
The Anacrusis can be incredibly chaotic as aliens flood into the rooms and corridors of the starship to attack you and your team, but you need to be careful about where you’re pointing your gun as friendly fire is always on. Currently, The Anacrusis doesn’t appear to have any difficulty options or adjustments, so this is something you’ll need to be aware of all the time to avoid accidentally downing your teammates.
Another of our Anacrusis tips is to be aware of fall damage. Unlike Left 4 Dead, there’s no rescue mechanic to save a player if they’ve fallen off a ledge but are just barely hanging on. If you fall in The Anacrusis, you’re going to really hurt yourself, potentially going down as well, or you’ll completely die and will need to be respawned if there is no hope of rescue or you’ve run out of lives. Look before you leap!
4. Use Health Scanners to heal you or your teammates
If you do find yourself clawed to ribbons by aliens, riddled with teammates’ bullets, or recovering from a great fall, you’ll need to heal yourself with Health Scanners or Health Booster. Health Scanners are the first-aid-kit-equivalents of The Anacrusis – using one restores a massive portion of your health and any lives you’ve lost as a result of losing all your health and being downed. Your lives are represented by the white dots under your health bar, and if you lose all of them, you’ll die the next time you lose all your health.
For a slightly less effective health boost, you can use Health Boosters to give you a large amount of temporary health that decays over time. You’ll notice that this is represented in your health bar as a thinner line. Health items can also be given or administered to teammates if they need it more than you - use the right trigger on controller or left mouse button to use health items for yourself or left trigger or right mouse button to administer them to teammates. If you or a teammate is at particularly low health, they’ll also suffer with slower movement thanks to the limping mechanic, which might explain why you’re walking slowly or finding it hard to Anacrusis sprint as you play.
5. Respawn your Anacrusis teammates as you all need to be alive to finish missions
The Anacrusis obviously borrows a lot of standard mechanics from Left 4 Dead and similar games in the genre, but its respawn system is a big change that adds extra challenges. When a player dies in The Anacrusis, be that from falling into a pit of fire, bleeding out while downed, or getting downed by aliens one too many times, they can be respawned by teammates at any time with a simple button press. The catch is that it takes time to respawn players, attracts a horde of aliens, and all players must be alive in the final saferoom to end a mission. This results in frantic encounters in the saferooms as crowds of aliens claw at the doors to get to you while you bring back other players to end the mission quickly.
When respawning players, living teammates need to be fully prepared to fight and protect their no-longer-fallen friends as they’ll come back with nothing more than the basic pistol. They need to find some of the best Anacrusis guns as soon as possible to get back in the fight.
6. Look and listen for Matter Compilers to get perks
Another Anacrusis tip is to look for Matter Compiler consoles to get perks as you explore the Anacrusis. These consoles are either obviously placed or well-hidden across each mission so a bit of exploration between hordes will sometimes reward you with a bonus perk. You’re looking for a tall console with a holographic, blue question mark above it. These compilers also make a unique noise, so listen out for that.
As you approach a Matter Compiler, you’ll need to activate it and after a short time, it’ll present you with three random perks for you to choose from. Each player gets their own set to choose from, so your perk choice won’t affect your teammates. These perks include general bonuses, such as increases to your health, ammo reserves, or Pulse energy, or more specific perks such as Tracking Rounds for the SMB or Criticality, which causes enemies to explode if they’re killed with a headshot. You might want to learn about all Anacrusis perks from Matter Compilers so you know what to look for to suit your playstyle.
7. Use and upgrade your Pulse ability to keep aliens back
The Anacrusis Pulse ability is comparable to the Left 4 Dead shove – using it blasts back aliens that are surrounding you. It feels a bit weak at first but can be used multiple times in quick succession if you need it. You can also use it while near teammates create some space for them if they’re out of Pulse energy. Your own Pulse energy is represented by the three large, blue circles at the bottom of your HUD which slowly recharges after using a Pulse. Certain Matter Compiler perks will allow you to upgrade your Pulse with extra energy, more range, or faster charging for example.
8. Prioritize the Grabber and Brute special aliens in The Anacrusis
When you’re fighting aliens in The Anacrusis, you’ll come across special alien types with unique abilities that need to be taken down quickly. Arguably the two most deadly are the Brute – a massive, bullet-sponge monster with devastating melee attacks and knockback – and the Grabber – a horrible spider-like alien that grapples players that get too close. Take these special aliens down as quickly as possible and preferably before they do anything to your team. Players trapped by Grabbers can be rescued only by killing the Grabber itself, so responding quickly to any grabs is crucial to save your teammates.
An honorable mention goes to the Flasher, which emits blindingly bright light, as you’ll have to take this special alien down as quickly as possible out of necessity. The Gooper, which vomits a slowing sludge that coats the floor and players, also gets a mention because it has similar immobilizing abilities like the Grabber. If players get gooped enough, they become fully encased and unable to move, leaving it to their teammates to shoot the goop off them.
9. Pick up weapons for an ammo refill in a pinch
Sometimes you’ll burn through your ammo as you fight an alien horde in The Anacrusis and won’t find a Weapon Charging Station for a while, so switching to a new weapon is the best way to get ammo back in a pinch. You can find the Plasma Rifle, SMB, and Blaster quite often on the ground as you explore each level and they come fully stocked. If you can find the same weapon that you’re already holding, even better – its ammo will automatically go into your reserves so you can reload and get back to shooting more aliens.
It’s important to remember that everyone gets a basic pistol with infinite ammo if your primary weapon’s reserves are running low or if you’ve been downed. You can also find special weapons that take up their own inventory slot and come with very limited ammo but pack a serious punch.
10. Save Anacrusis special weapons for hordes and special aliens
Our final Anacrusis tip is to save those special weapons for particularly massive hordes or special aliens. The Auto Turret is the ultimate defense weapon and is great for those encounters where you have to defend yourselves in an enclosed area. The Laser Rifle is the ultimate special alien killer with its powerful and accurate beam. Finally, the Arc Rifle is a perfect herd-thinning weapon that fires a bolt of chaining electricity that hits multiple enemies at once. Make sure you save your special weapons and use the right tool for the job.
However, these weapons aren’t hugely rare, so don’t be afraid to use them. It’s important to avoid saving them for very dire situations that never happen or use them when it’s already too late. Just make sure to coordinate with your team to prevent using all your special weapons at once, having none left for future fights.
